road blocks

I've come to a scene in my novel where the hero and heroine tour the Quinault Indian Reservation. I've never been to the Reservation and finding photographs and images of it have proved more difficult than I expected.

As with my scene about pool, I want my readers to believe me. I want them to think I've been to the reservation and have done the things my hero and heroine are doing there. This is hard.

I have maps and some physical descriptions of the land in general, but I'm picky. I want details! It's not such a bad M.O. to make up some things, considering very few have been to the Quinault Indian Reservation. But that one reader that says "there's no ravine near the river" would surely drive the bow and arrow deep into my heart.

All of this whining stems from my detachment from writing these last couple of days. I feel out of sorts, which could be period, if we're being totally honest here, or even the distraction of my boy friend having a couple days off from work. But I'll lay the blame on my mind trying to sabotage me. It feels unprepared to move forward, so I stall.

My proposed plan to get out of this is to take some of the research I did today and just write through the scatteredness, throwing in some key words I want and coming back to the reality and detail of the scene at a later time. During revisions.

I'm glad we got this settled.

grand total: 22856

P.S. I haven't forgotten about the review. I plan to do that this weekend.

Quote of the Day: I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all. ~Richard Wright, American Hunger, 1977