My
older brother has Parkinson’s Disease, and back in March he fell and ended up
in a nursing home with much of his memory gone. At the time, I had three ideas
for as yet unwritten middle-grade historicals and was almost ready to start one
about a girl living in Chicago’s Pullman District during the 1894 Pullman
strike.
As
I have written in previous posts, Donald’s situation made me realize that I
should work on my memoirs before anything happened to my own memory. So I set
the Pullman novel aside for a while.
I’m
just about finished with the part of my memoirs that covers my early years, and
the latter years are better documented and less likely to be lost to my
children if they don’t get written up right away. As a result, I had begun working
on the outline for the Pullman book. I had the setting and the basic character arc
but was having trouble coming up with the plot. I couldn’t even seem to force
it.
The
book after that was to be about a girl living and working on the Erie Canal. My
anticipated timing had me beginning it sometime this winter, but that isn’t a
great time for a research trip to New York, and I had already planned the trip
for August.
There
was no reason to postpone it, so Roland and I went as planned. We just returned,
and the ideas have been flowing like the canal itself. Actually, the canal is
rather sluggish, so that may not be a good analogy. But the ideas for the Erie
Canal book started flowing even though I wasn’t ready for them yet. By the time
I returned I had the story setting, the protagonist’s character arc, most of
the important characters, some of the backstory, and a well-developed plot.
It
became clear to me that I’m meant to write the Erie Canal book next. If I had a
contract for the Pullman book, I would be agonizing about it right now. But
because I have the flexibility to pick and choose my projects as circumstances
dictate, I can put that one aside until later and work on Muddy Waters first.
I
wouldn’t turn down a three-book contract, but sometimes there are advantages to
not being sought-after.
__________
The
image at the head of this post shows a painting by Edward Lamson Henry called
“Round the Bend” portraying passenger travel along the Erie Canal around 1836. Almost
every museum along the canal had a copy. The date the painting was created is
unknown, but E.L. Henry died in 1919 and the image is in the public domain.
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