On Research

Things are quiet today. Didn’t sleep well last night due to a variety of reasons. The Squire not being one of them thank goodness. He’s at his mom’s for the weekend. I had planned on doing writing and have done my weekly vignette at According to Hoyt finally. Past few weeks have been hectic so I have skipped them. So with lack of sleep and feeling a little listless I decided to do some research for my current work in progress. No, not that little snippet I posted a few weeks ago, for the current novel I am working on.

You see, I have taken a premise and gone running with it. Leave it aside for the moment. Near future present day, no big tech type stuff going on. I had thought I was finished it last year and started book two. Realized that it was the wrong book, labeled it number three and THEN started book two. Things were going great got about 30,000 words into it when I realized that I had some HUGE plot holes in book one. So, saved, closed and pulled up book one to go back over it.

I ripped out about seven thousand words that didn’t feel right. No worries, saved them for something else later. After I rework that short story or novella, depending on how much working needs to be done with it I may release it as a tease or something else. I re-examined my assumptions and started writing more words to fill in the holes.

This is about research again right? Yeah, that’s right finding the information you need in order not to trip up your readers. In this case I had to go read a few government documents. The Emergency Measures Act (Canadian law on what the federal government can and can not do from public welfare to actual declaration of war). Long boring reading for most part, a little back tracking and checking other acts referenced in the EMA. So why do I need it? Well, there used to be a government document called the “War Measures” Act, last used in the 1970’s during the FLQ crisis in Quebec. It was finally updated and brought into alignment with the Canadian Charter of Rights. Big deal actually. Stipulates what the government can and can’t do for how long. Reason why I had to look this up was because I am a bit of a fossil and only remembered it from history as the “War Measures Act”. Of course the new Act can into effect after I had almost graduated high school.

Heavy reading and important reading. How much will I use in my current work? That depends on numerous factors. Not much honestly, and only in passing here and there probably. The big important deal is knowing how the government is going to act and react, when it will, how it will escalate, and so on. Reasoning is that it has a lot of powers in what it can do to keep things moving. How effective would it be in practice? Well it depends on numerous factors.

So, research done and I have to rip more words out and get more writing done. After that maybe I will look up something easier like how to build a solar oven and bake beans off the grid.