The value of research

Raissa Falgui wrote in her blog post here, ‘The Author as an Actor’: “I have more works in English and write with more elegance in the language for the simple reason that I have been exposed to a much, much larger body of literary works in it, being a bookworm child of two English teachers.”

It set me thinking about the role our early reading plays in our later writing. Raissa mentions her precepts in writing: Clear, Correct, Concise, Coherent, and Considerate.

The role of correctness in writing is one I never undervalue. For a short story I may take 20 to 30 minutes actually writing it, but have almost certainly done at least two weeks of research prior to writing the first word, and often considerably more.

Online sources are useful, but I also love to use libraries. We all know they are full of books. A little research will uncover the Dewey Decimal system’s categorisation of non-fiction books. Some judicious enquiries may find your library has a newspaper archive. At fourteen I spent weeks in that of my father’s library trawling through old paper newspapers in the roof-space, to gather material for a project on the Congo. Many libraries have digital archives now, as I discovered at the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth. I was delighted when my older son’s absence from school was explained by his presence in that library researching his current projects.

Although we have a population of only 22,000 in all the inhabited Orkney islands, here in Orkney we have a main library in the biggest town, with extensive archives, particularly rich in local history and creative authors. Our ‘second town’ branch has a smaller archive, but without the permanent staff of the large Kirkwall archive. I know of an author on one of the smallest islands who comes into Kirkwall for the winters and spends her days at the archives. In the summer she moves back to her smaller island, and I imagine that is when she writes. Her books show meticulous research, that must take many months. The local library also has a presence on many media, and this week they asked about a manuscript that had been discovered among the Balfour papers, that one of the staff was researching.

So many local people chipped in with information, it was excellent to see community spirit and collaborative intelligence and knowledge being shared. Within two days a few jokes and a lot of knowledge and theories had been shared on the post.

The original suggestion was that it was an astrological chart showing the state of the planets and stars at the date and time of someone’s birth. The next responder suggested that the outer ring has primum mobile at top right, and the next one in has the astrological signs of the zodiac, the names of the planets in a column, observing that it is pre-1781 and predates the discovery of Uranus. The horizon is shown at lower right and the altitude and declination of each planet. The next answer used AI to discover as much as they could about it, the possibility that it is a vovelle for making astronomical calculations. The earth is shown at the centre of the system also suggesting age.

Then people suggested its date to be over 400 years. Another person suggests that the outer zodiacal rings are not aligned showing the difference between the astrological and astronomical positions, with the first point of Aries having moved into Pisces. I know this to be an indication of age, as I had looked at the differences between the position of stars in the Neolithic compared to the present.

Twenty six people commented with suggestions within a day of the query being posted, and although most of these replies overlapped, there was some real thought and knowledge that had gone into the replies. A couple of jokes were posted too: “Put it back or pass it on… Have you seen night of the demon?”

“It’s an early B & F Kemp taco disk”,

“It’s an old tachograph”,

“Tachograph disk for a horse and cart from the 18^th century”.

Since the library regularly posts its own humourous posts, I’m sure these were also welcomed.

So when researching for your writing, use all the facilities at your disposal. Don’t just look up Wikipedia, ask friends whose knowledge may help you, use libraries and archives, museums as well as simple observation.