Day 113

Do you have a pet writing project or subject

…

In my case, I do. The history of my family. This had only become a project in the last few months, and it is one of those things that we would all like to know something about, and probably think it’s too hard to do.

After all, time passes, the first-hand sources of material die, and you have to go the hard road and start digging for information. I’m lucky in a sense, my older brother has been doing this for a few years now and has been visiting the places where we came from.

But, from my standpoint, this is an excellent exercise in characterisation, especially if you want to write historical fiction. It has led me down a path of searching for records in the most unlikely places, discovering just how much information from the past has been digitised and is accessible.

It has also led to the discovery of newspaper archives, one of the more interesting sources of information, and just a little thrill every time I uncover another snippet about one of my ancestors.

And no, not yet, have I discovered a true gem of a discovery, though one path led to a possible connection, very remote, to J R R Tolkien, and another to Harriet Beecher Stowe.

They have yet to be proved, but I don’t think we could be that lucky.