How I Like to Learn – and Write – About History

ByLee Ann

I started to write the book last week. Yes, I’m out of the archives and onto the page! Starting with the surveyors’ stories, because that’s where I feel like starting.

You should see my office: piles of open books, propped up maps and pages from surveyor diaries cover my desk and the floor. I sit in the middle of it in front of my laptop, typing, then looking something up (where is Eldon?), typing then checking the Thesaurus (what’s another word for explore?), typing then googling (where is the mouth of the Muskoka river?) 

I worked for four hours today and I have almost the same word count as I had on Friday. 1,626 very rough words. That’s because I did a lot of rewriting, trying for the right blend of storytelling and data, and trying for the right pace. I want this book to be more story than data. By that I mean that I want to offer the facts in such a way that the reader almost doesn’t notice that she’s learning something. That’s how I like to learn – and write – about history.

I could tell you that Charles Unwin surveyed the 25 miles from Lake Couchiching to the Great Falls on the South Branch of the Muskoka River in 1856-57 and you’d learn something. But wouldn’t you rather know that nobody wanted to hire on with his survey team because he was paying less than anyone else in town and there was plenty of other construction work in Orillia for guys to do? So he had to write to his boss and, in beautiful 19th century style, “respectfully beg” to be able to pay his guys the going rate.

So now you’ve learned a little more about the management issues faced by the surveyors, the competitive labour market in Orillia in 1856, the tight rein the government had on the surveyors’ expenses, and also – I hope –  about business correspondence as it compares to today. (Fun idea: send your boss an email and sign off with, “I have the honour to be, Sir, your most humble servant.”)

This is how I like to learn about history: though story. This is how I like to write about history, even though it might take me half a day to find Unwin’s accounts and field notes on microfilm and then photocopy and type the relevant bits so I have a colourful paragraph or two to include in the book.

How about you? Don’t you wish your history teacher taught more in story style than with data?

INTO THE ARCHIVES, PART 2: In Which I Find Some Great Material and Lose My Balance

ByLee Ann

Last week, Mr. Busy and I spent four glorious research days in Toronto. I say glorious because:

  • I got to read the hand-written diaries and field notes of several Muskoka Road surveyors (and found out the black flies were just as horrific in Muskoka in the 1850s as they are today.)
  • We got to go to surveyor David Gibson’s house, which still stands in North York and which in 1851 was a 5-hour horseback ride from Toronto.
Gibson House c. 1851
  • I found the only copy in Ontario of a guidebook called, “The Ferguson Highway: Beauty Spots and Points of Interest in Northern Ontario”, published in 1929. (This was at the Toronto Reference Library and yes, I’ll admit that only another researcher would understand my delight.)

We also went to see the new smash musical “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert,” which is FABULOUS, although way outside the scope of this blog.

What I want to tell you is this: I should have taken better care of my physical self. Four days of hunching over a microfilm reader has pinched all the muscles in my neck and upper back and aggravated my arthritis, which I have in every joint in my body. I know better – but got caught up in the research.

So aside from a trip to the gym immediately upon our return and a 9-1-1 call to my massage therapist, I have renewed my vow to maintain a healthy balance while writing this book. For me, a healthy balance means that every day of the week I:

1. Do work on the book, then

2. Do something physical, then

3. Do something else.

I think lack of balance is an occupational hazard for writers. The work is sedentary, and the nature of the material we work with – whether researching or creating a fictional world – is so seductive, we are prone to sitting at our desks, living happily in our heads, for way too long. It takes discipline to stand up and walk away from something that is so very interesting.

“Dedication, not discipline” it says on my whiteboard. I meant that as a reminder to myself to not get too intense about the project; to make sure I enjoy the process. But I’m thinking that in another context, discipline is not such a bad idea. A little discipline… a little dedication to staying balanced and physically healthy, is exactly what I need.

BABY-BOOMER IN THE BLOGOSPHERE PART 2: In Praise of Deep Thinking

ByLee Ann

Did you know there’s now evidence that our brains are being physically changed by the Internet? Not because of exposure to radiation from computers, but because of the radically different way we take in information on the Net. I recently learned about this, and I’m a bit freaked out about it.

Before the era of the search engine, when we looked up information primarily in printed books, our brains functioned in such a way that we could concentrate deeply on a topic, sometimes for a considerable length of time.

Now, if you want to know something, you Google it and in about two seconds you have hundreds of sites to choose from. Click on a site, scan it, surf away, scan the next, link to a newspaper article, scan it, click on a video that shows you how. All while responding to tweets and noting the pop-up that says you have three emails.

This rapid-fire stream of information blips requires a different kind of processing by our brains. And according to the research, our brains are physically changing to adapt to this need. Also according to research, the more you get your information this way, the less able you are to concentrate, the more distracted and distractable you are and the more you have problems with short-term memory.

One of my favourite bloggers is Zoom of Knitnut.net. Politically savvy, creative and influential, hers is one of my “go to” sites for what’s new and important in Ottawa. Her post of August 23 first alerted me to this issue. Titled, “I Still Love the Internet Even if It’s Making Me Stupid,” Zoom laments the loss of her short-term memory (she can’t remember from the bottom of the screen to the top what she wanted to Google) and the ability to concentrate (“what sinks in sinks in, if I miss something it doesn’t matter.”) She attributes this to what she cheerfully describes as her “heavy-duty, addicted” use of the Internet.

Because Zoom always provides excellent background references, she links to an in-depth article by Nicholas Carr in Atlantic Monthly magazine. I read the article and got worried. I read the comments on the article and got scared. Some people said, “This is too long” and said they stopped reading. Some responded with inane comments that had nothing to do with the article. From what I could figure out from the hints given by the commentors, they were all made by people 20-30 years old. The ones who may also be “heavy-duty, addicted” Internet users.

I, on the other hand, love in-depth research. I revere deep thinking. Time to contemplate keeps me grounded. Flashing blips agitate me; I have to close my eyes to TV shows that bombard my eyes with pulsing images. Even too many icons on my desktop bother me. Fifteen tabs open on Firefox, like Zoom does regularly? I can’t do it. I even turn off email notifications when I’m writing.

So I worry about the 20-30 year olds. This age group wants their information fast, in blips, or they’ll surf away. I’m already at 500 words here – is anybody still with me?

I can write short paragraphs, bullet points, one topic per post. I can master the art of the 300 word essay. But I would also like to include the occasional lengthy post, or a big fat paragraph, even if it looks like a giant cement block on the page. I might like to provide links to long articles that I think give some additional insight.

We still have the ability to think deeply. Let’s use it… before we lose it.

THE COST OF DOING BUISINESS (MAKING ART)

ByLee Ann

It is not going to cost me a lot of money to write this book. It will, however, cost me some money. I will have to go to the Ontario Archives in Toronto at least twice. I will have to travel to and around Muskoka. Parking alone in downtown Ottawa, where I spent time at the Archives and at the main branch of the library, cost $30 in one day. Some reference material will cost money to borrow, like the book I’ve ordered from the University of Guelph.

The money I make from writing magazine articles and running workshops doesn’t come close to covering the expenses I will incur in the writing of this book.

I’ve never applied for arts funding before, but I plan to do so this time. This is what arts funding is for. To help cover the cost of doing the business of making art, and to help pay for the daily living expenses of the artist while she’s working on a project.

The rules of the game are:

  • I have to show that I am a professional writer, which is defined by the Ontario Arts Council as someone who “has developed skills through training and/or practice AND is recognized as such by artists working in the same artistic tradition, AND has a history of public presentation or publication AND seeks payment for his/her work AND actively practices his or her art.”
  • I have to provide documentation of at least three “publishing credits”: books, stories or articles I’ve published and been paid for. My workshops (for which I am paid) may or may not count. My self-published book does not count.
  • I have to provide between 20 and 40 pages of manuscript, depending on the funding program I apply to.
  • If I receive a grant, I have to provide a report describing how much writing I was able to accomplish due to the receipt of the grant. 

Deadline for application to the City of Ottawa is January 17, and to the Ontario Arts Council is February 15, 2011.

Life just got a whole lot busier.

INTO THE ARCHIVES: The Danger of Drowning in Data

ByLee Ann
Sculpture in front of Library and Archives Canada
My favourite sculpture in Ottawa, in front of Library and Archives Canada

Award-winning writer Charlotte Gray (my idol – have I mentioned that?) says that “every research trip is a fishing trip.” I think this is true. But there are two styles of fishing: there’s casting a net, and there’s setting a line. I’m not sure if Charlotte said that or if I did, but in any case, last week I cast my net in the online catalogues of:

  • the public libraries in Ottawa and Muskoka;
  • Library and Archives Canada (LAC); and
  • the Ontario Archives (OA) in Toronto…

 looking for anything they have on the Muskoka Road. Some of this I know from the article I wrote, but now I can indulge in more detail.

My focus until Christmas (as you, my loyal followers will know from earlier posts!) is on the surveyors of the road. But I know that I will find most of the information about the surveyors in the Ontario Archives in Toronto. In fact, most of the data I need for the entire book is in Toronto. Toronto is a five-hour drive and it doesn’t make much sense to make a separate trip there for every single topic in the book. So I’ve decided:

  1. To order up everything I think I’ll need  for the book from the OA catalogue, drive to Toronto and look at all of it over a few days. (I know I’ll have to go back.)
  2. Wait until early November to go to Toronto, when Mr. Busy can come with me. We’ll combine the research trip into a bit of a getaway. 
  3. Meantime, order up  everything I think I’ll need from the public libraries and LAC, taking advantage of the time before the Toronto trip to review some local material.

 The search of local material has snagged all kinds of fascinating results! Like: A Guidebook Containing Information for Intending Settlers With Illustrations, published by the Government of Canada in 1886. And a photograph titled, “Dredge fleet at Muskoka Road, December 1916.” Neither of these have anything to do with the surveyors, of course. Plus, each one includes an interesting twist. The guidebook is only available through the University of Guelph library and they charge $12.00 plus $2.00 shipping to lend it out. The photograph is actually a glass negative, available for viewing only at LAC’s “preservation centre” in Gatineau, and only with prior arrangements with an archivist.

I ordered the guidebook and will talk about my need for arts funding in a later post. I’ve deferred arranging to look at the photograph until later.

This net-casting is dangerous work! I can easily drown in data. I can easily get sidetracked and lose sight of what I wanted to achieve as a first milestone. I have to force myself to file information that is not related to the first milestone and look at it later. (I should probably have delayed ordering the guidebook until after Christmas!) I need really, really good records and files, so that months from now I can cast my line directly to a piece of data that I already know exists, instead of casting my net all over again, trying to remember where I saw a particular reference that I now need.

To remind myself of this, here’s what I’ve added to my whiteboard:

Reminders to stay focussed
Keeping myself on track

BABY BOOMER IN THE BLOGOSPHERE

ByLee Ann

I promised to say something about this new-to-me experience of blogging. Well, as someone who is a card-carrying female Canadian baby boomer, I can tell you: the blogosphere is not my world. In fact, according to Technorati’s 2009 report “State of the Blogosphere,” most bloggers are between the ages of 18-44, American, and male.

I do have a website – who doesn’t these days? – but I certainly don’t Twitter, although my blogger friends tell me I might consider doing that, since that’s one way for people to find my blog.

I do have a Facebook account, but I hardly ever use it. I set it up years ago when my kids were in their early teens so I could stealth them. They of course forgot they had made me their “friend” because I never posted anything on their walls; I snooped silently on their postings and when concerned, had to be very creative about how I approached them with what I’d learned on FB.

I am, after all, a member of the generation that started all this technology stuff. So it wasn’t a huge stretch to come up with the idea of writing this blog. I was chatting with my son, “Corporate Guy” (a recent Business Marketing grad) about how businesses have really started to expand into social networking. A website is no longer sufficient – businesses worldwide are now using all manner of blogs, tweets and walls to reach their increasingly Internet-dependent customers. Those “Generation Ys” are now getting jobs and buying stuff! And so I thought, hey, I could write a blog about writing my book!

Are Gen Y’s interested in blogs about historical adventure books? Would they at least tell their Boomer parents about the blog so they can subscribe? I guess we’ll find out!

Muskoka Books and I plan to link the blog to several Muskoka area and history-based sites, helping it to do what it needs to do. Which is: bring people to the site so they can watch a writer in the act of getting from idea to published book.

Yikes. Sounds suspiciously like the stealthing I used to do on Facebook.