WRITING FROM AN OUTLINE, PART 3: Expand to the Next Level

ByLee Ann

Canadian author and teacher Jack Hodgins says of fiction writing, “Write the first draft to find out what you’re writing about.” For non-fiction writing I would say, “Write the first draft to find out what other research you need to do.”

I’ve just finished the first draft of Chapter 6. I’ve drafted this chapter faster than any of the others and I think I know why. Instead of starting to write directly from my high-level outline, I:

  • reviewed the outline, Chapter 6 outline
  • did some research to understand the topics better and find good primary sources, then
  • expanded the outline to a lower level of detail, figuring out the best order for the topics in the chapter. Chapter 6 details

Then I wrote the chapter, topic by topic, making notes of the additional research I need to do.

This really worked for me! I knew what I needed to write each day, got a first draft done quickly and seemed to stay more focussed and less likely to stray too far into research that is interesting but not important to the story. I now know exactly what I need to research next to fill in the holes in the chapter.

Over the six days it took me to complete this process, I also made sure to balance each day. For me that means:

  1. Do work on the book, then
  2. Do something physical, then
  3. Do something else.

I lived a balanced day every day for six days – yay for me! Then I took the weekend off. Now I’m ready to tackle Chapter 7 in the same way I drafted Chapter 6, and then the first draft will be DONE!

I’ll let you know how it goes.

MORE FUN FACTS ABOUT ONTARIO ROADS

ByLee Ann

Here’s more from Footpaths to Freeways: The Story of Ontario’s Roads, published by the Ontario Ministry of Transportation and Communications in 1984. Who knew the history of roads could be so interesting? For more on this fascinating topic, you’ll just have to wait for my book on the Muskoka Colonization Road!

Car licences have been issued in Ontario since 1903. The earliest were leather tags; licence plates came about in 1925.

The first highway patrol officer was appointed in 1907. Until 1946, motorcycle patrol officers had to buy their own motorcycles.

Chauffeurs had to have drivers’ licences starting in 1909; licences became compulsory for all Ontario drivers in 1927. At first there was no driver’s test; you just filled out an application form.

By 1914 traffic jams were a constant problem along Lake Shore Road between Toronto and Hamilton.

Ontario’s first hard-surfaced highway, between Toronto and Hamilton, was paved in cement and completed in 1917. It was built to help deal with the traffic jams on Lake Shore Road and at the time, it was one of the longest hard-surfaced highways in the world.

The first gasoline tax came into effect in 1925, to help pay for highway improvements.

Ontario’s first set of traffic lights was installed in Hamilton in July 1925 at the intersection of King and Main Streets.

When it opened in 1939, the Queen Elizabeth Way in the Niagara region was the longest continuous divided highway in Canada.

Highway 400 is the second-longest freeway in Ontario (401 is the longest.) The 400 stretches from Toronto through Barrie to Parry Sound and will end up in Sudbury in about 2017. The portion of the highway between Toronto and Lake Simcoe roughly follows the route of the historic “Toronto Carrying-Place Trail” a major portage route linking Lake Ontario with Lake Simcoe and the northern Great Lakes. The trail was widely used over three hundred years ago by First Nations people and fur traders.

BOOK WRITING 101: You Get By With a Little Help From Your Friends – And Strangers

ByLee Ann

I’m always amazed at how willing people are to help me with my writing project. Friends and family (mostly my husband) will listen to me blather on about my latest discovery, or let me read a chapter out loud, or come with me to some little museum or historical site while I page through rare books or take pictures.

But the most amazing is when complete strangers go out of their way for me. I had two instances of that last week. Carol Stevens heads up the Perry Township Historical Society, a tiny group of genealogists who are planning to put together a book about the history of their township. I contacted her not – as her brochure requested – to give her information but rather to ask if her group had any information for me about the Muskoka Road, which came through Perry Township on its way to North Bay. The group met and then emailed me all the information they knew, and sent me the names of several books to look up, two of which were new resources to me. Carol even offered to drive 20 kilometres to the Huntsville library to meet me, in case there was more I might want to ask her.

I also called Heather Crewe, Director of Education and Training at the Ontario Good Roads Association. I’ve been trying to find out if the “Good Roads Train” – a travelling, hands-on training program for road-builders that ran in the summer of 1901 – made any stops in Muskoka. (This is the kind of thing I wonder about these days.) I simply hoped Heather could refer me to someone in the organization who knew where their archival material was. But she spent a good 15 minutes on the phone with me, then rooted through her office, scanned in some pages from a couple of publications the OGRS had produced, gave me an on-line reference and two contact names of people she thought might know more.

This kind of thing happens a lot to writers, I think, judging from the long list of “thank-yous” that appear at the back of most books.

I’ve already started to build my thank-you list.

BOOK WRITING 101: How To Make Progress Even When…

ByLee Ann

I arrived in Muskoka a week ago with a goal: to do what Charlotte Gray calls “walking around research” for the next two chapters I need to write. This means exploring resources that can only be found locally, interviewing local people who know the Muskoka Road and Muskoka history, combing through unpublished manuscripts in small-town libraries and driving parts of the road.

While travelling to Muskoka I lost my voice (and it stayed lost for five days.) I developed a deep, barking cough and felt my energy collapse like a snow-cone in this Ontario heat wave. I think I picked up a bug on an Air Canada flight just days before I left for Muskoka.

So much for interviewing people. So much for energy and focus. So much for working during the week and enjoying the weekend with friends and family at the cottage. Yesterday – the first day my energy felt normal, my voice was nearly recovered and, thanks to constantly drinking cough suppressant, I could allow myself to go out in public – I came up with a new plan. I’ve looked at my original goal, looked at my time remaining (five days) and divided the specific things I wanted to do into “Must Do” and “To Do Next Time” lists.

Must Do:

  • Get to Parry Sound District and at least visit two of the small communities that used to be on the road: Emsdale and Burk’s Falls. Find their local libraries and see if there is any primary source material there: family histories, memoirs, diaries that relate anyone’s direct experience with the road or homesteading on the road.
  • Arrange to meet the people in Muskoka who I’ve previously emailed or phoned and who have information to share that can help me.

To Do Next Time

  • Everything else that was on the list: all the other towns in Parry Sound District, all the other libraries and historical sites, all the driving of the road.

OK, maybe the original list was a bit ambitious for a two-week timeframe. That would be typical of me. Maybe I have to spend more of August in Muskoka than I planned. And maybe September too.

Well, I can think of worse consequences from a summer cold.

At least I had this to look at while recuperating:

View from the dock

Fun Facts About Ontario Roads: 1700 to 1903

ByLee Ann

I bet you didn’t know there are fun facts about Ontario roads! Neither did I, until I started researching the Muskoka Colonization Road. Here is some of what I learned from a book called Footpaths to Freeways: The Story of Ontario’s Roads, published in 1984 by the Ontario Ministry of Transportation and Communications. More to come in a later post. Enjoy!

Ontario’s first “roads” were actually its rivers and lakes, linked where necessary by portages (meaning “carrying place”) and used by natives and fur traders for hundreds of years.

Most roads in Ontario were dirt until well into the 20th century.

“Corduroy Roads” were made by laying logs across over dirt roads and were used to cross swamps and bogs. A big improvement to dirt and corduroy roads were “macadamized” (gravelled) roads, used from the mid-1830s. Another innovation from about the same time was planked roads, which cost about ¼ that of gravel roads. Lumber was cheap and readily available, but plank roads got torn up by horses’ hooves and had to be replaced more often.

“Statute labour” was introduced by the government in 1793, compelling landowners to provide up to 12 days’ labour a year for road and bridge construction, based on the assessed value of their property. This law has still not been repealed by the Ontario government, so is still in effect in any township that has not formally abolished it.

The original purpose of Yonge Street in Toronto was as a military road leading north, opening a route to the upper Great Lakes. As of August 1794 Yonge Street had been partly “opened” (cut out of the bush) but construction stopped because of the threat of American attack and the need to take the soldiers who were building the road to the Niagara Frontier.

Toll roads have been in use in Ontario since 1825.

In 1896, A.W. Campbell, Ontario’s Instructor in Road-Making stated in his report: “By far the greatest part of the mileage of the province is mud, ruts and pitch-holes.”

The first car owner in Canada was John Moodie of Hamilton. In 1898, he bought a single cylinder, gasoline-powered “runabout” manufactured by the Winton Motor Carriage Company of Cleveland.

Early automobiles were known by their detractors as “devil’s carts” “stink wagons” and “juggernauts of the streets”.

High-performance cars of 1902 could travel at a staggering 20 miles per hour [32 kph], prompting a maximum speed limit of 15 mph [24 kph] to be established in 1903. Early speed traps included two constables placed one-tenth of a mile apart, to clock each passing car using a stopwatch. To stop a speeding car, the police simply threw a plank studded with nails into the path of an oncoming motorist. If the driver could stop before reaching the plank, he was driving within the speed limit and was free to go. If not – hopefully he had a spare tire.

BOOK MATH: How Many Words Will it Take to Tell This Story?

ByLee Ann

Most of you, my loyal readers, will note that at the right hand side of this page is a Word Count Estimator, where I track my progress towards completing the first draft of the book. Many of my sharper-eyed readers will have noticed that recently I changed the total estimated word count, from 40,000 to 30,000.

No, I was not trying to pull a fast one and make it seem like I’m making faster progress than I really am. What I realized was that the first draft is going to be shorter than the final book. That’s because:

  1. I’m not going to write the first chapter or the last one until I’ve finished chapters 2 to 7, which contain the meat of the story. Chapter 1 will be a brief description of the trip from Toronto to Muskoka, first in 1859 and then in 2011, as a way of introducing the Muskoka Road and the story I’m about to tell.  Chapter 8 will be a back-roads enthusiast’s guide to driving the Muskoka Road today – at least, the parts of it that still exist between Washago and North Bay. Over the summer I’ll be taking these drives myself, in order to be able to write about them.
  2. Chapters 2 to 7 still have lots of holes in them that I need to fill with more research, which will result in a larger word count.

So, based on what I’ve drafted so far – Chapters 2, 3, 4 and 5 – and how long I expect Chapters 6 and 7 to be, I came up with a revised total number of words for the first draft. 

Over the summer I’ll be in Muskoka, doing the kind of research that can only be done locally, like talking to historians and librarians, reading unpublished manuscripts and visiting important sites along the Muskoka Road. I’ll be driving the road. And I’ll be completing the first draft of Chapters 2 to 7.

Meanwhile, I’ve added a new page to the blog, called “About This Book.” You’ll find it below the picture on the right hand side of this page. “About This Book” spells out what I’m working towards, one word at a time.