Yes, I'm working on my historical novel again, so not all the words I'm writing will appear here. This is a way for me to bide my time until I start revising The Egyptian Building. This handily allows me to put off revising TEB, but we won't talk about that right now.
The historical is not getting written (or rewritten, rather) at the same breakneck pace as the contemporary novels. Damn if those details don't keep popping up. When you have to stop in mid-sentence to research wagon wheels, structure of, you just can't write as quickly.
Llike almost anything on close inspection, wagon wheels are surprisingly interesting. One of the things I needed to learn about was the structure of the iron tire in the seventeenth century. I knew that a hoop-shaped strip of iron was bound around a wooden wheel to help with durability. But when? Was it always hoop-shaped? Yes and no. Those crafty Romans had the hoop-shaped iron tires, but those vanished with the Roman empire. Through medieval and early modern times, they attached iron "shoes" around the rim of the wheel. The hoop-shaped tire didn't reappear until the eighteenth century. This I now know, thanks to the Worshipful Company of Wheelwrights.
Therefore, my characters are traveling in a wagon with shoes. One of the wheels needs to be fixed.
226 words | February 5, 2006 10:57 PM | Writer's block