Multi-Tasking

I spent the day at a genealogical conference, the first one I've ever been to. I have, over the past ten years or so, listened to a lot of tapes recorded at conferences (I spent untold hours driving to my son's baseball games and listening to how to sort through court records and make sense of families who burned down courthouses when they left the county). But until today I'd never been to a conference before.

I really enjoyed it. Learned a lot -- about territorial records, about midwest research, using newspapers to pick up details you might not ever find elsewhere, about wringing dead relatives out of indexes who insist they aren't there. Very enlightening. And at the same time, I kept thinking about Spence -- about the background he would have in his family in Montana to become the man he's become.

I think that's good. I think it helps sometimes to think about a book from a completely different perspective. When you come to a point, as I have now, where I feel I'm treading water storywise, it's always handy to have a new way to get somewhere.

The genealogy conference, odd as it seems, may have given me that. It made me think about all the things in Spence's past that make him the man he is. It gave me some ideas for research that I haven't had time to get going on yet. And, at the same time, it awakened me to genealogical possibilities with a few of my 'brickwall relatives' that I haven't yet explored.

Between Spence and the brickwall relatives, it was a pretty full day. I had intended to write some more tonight. But since I can barely keep my eyelids raised, that's not going to happen. I'll do it tomorrow.

My other writing task -- the Desire blog -- ended today. So I have one less writing task to deal with. Maybe I can focus some of that energy on Spence. I'd like that.