Looking until you see . . .
I have -- just today -- finished the second in a series of courses from the National Institute for Genealogical Studies affiliated with the University of Toronto. It is called Analysis and Skills Mentoring, Part 2, and it's designed to make students stop and think, take things -- like deeds and wills -- apart, examine them, analyze every detail, see if the parts can hint at more than the whole, and then extrapolate what steps ought to be taken from there.
Sometimes when I began an assignment I felt almost at sea without a compass or sextant. But eventually I found small things, details really -- an additional fifty acres, a witness at a wedding, the death record of a child -- that gave me a bearing. And in the end I felt I had learned things I wanted to learn. I learned how to look. And then I learned how to see.
Once when we were in New Orleans, I took two of my boys on a swamp boat morning. We looked, but we didn't see until the man who was taking us pointed out the alligator blending in with the fallen tree, the nutria swimming nearby, the meaning of the wind blowing a certain direction at a certain time of day. Those are things that come when you spend time with deeds and indentures, swamps and bayous, herds of cattle, musty church registers -- all the things that it takes expertise and familiarity to read.
That same sort of attention to detail and nuance is what ultimately makes a book. I admire a writer who can sit down and work their way in synopsis form from start to finish, who knows they are learning about the characters in that context so they don't have to watch and learn about them in the messiest bits of a book.
But that writer is not me. I need to spend time with my characters. I need to watch them interact with each other, with their past, with their friends and enemies. Only in that contest can I discover what makes them tick, pick out the details that hold the key to their character, be true, in my writing, to who they are.
That's why it takes a long time for me to really get into a book. It's a getting to know you sort of process. It's like looking at documents I've never seen before and trying to learn all I can about them, like looking at a swamp and only gradually seeing what is actually there.
You remember that "hidden pictures" game that was in lots of kids' magazines? Maybe still is. Where you see a picture, and there are, within it, hidden objects. Genealogy is like that. So is bayou fishing. And being a cowboy. And writing books.
Spence and Sadie are getting clearer. I see new details. They're beginning to make sense. Whew.
Sometimes when I began an assignment I felt almost at sea without a compass or sextant. But eventually I found small things, details really -- an additional fifty acres, a witness at a wedding, the death record of a child -- that gave me a bearing. And in the end I felt I had learned things I wanted to learn. I learned how to look. And then I learned how to see.
Once when we were in New Orleans, I took two of my boys on a swamp boat morning. We looked, but we didn't see until the man who was taking us pointed out the alligator blending in with the fallen tree, the nutria swimming nearby, the meaning of the wind blowing a certain direction at a certain time of day. Those are things that come when you spend time with deeds and indentures, swamps and bayous, herds of cattle, musty church registers -- all the things that it takes expertise and familiarity to read.
That same sort of attention to detail and nuance is what ultimately makes a book. I admire a writer who can sit down and work their way in synopsis form from start to finish, who knows they are learning about the characters in that context so they don't have to watch and learn about them in the messiest bits of a book.
But that writer is not me. I need to spend time with my characters. I need to watch them interact with each other, with their past, with their friends and enemies. Only in that contest can I discover what makes them tick, pick out the details that hold the key to their character, be true, in my writing, to who they are.
That's why it takes a long time for me to really get into a book. It's a getting to know you sort of process. It's like looking at documents I've never seen before and trying to learn all I can about them, like looking at a swamp and only gradually seeing what is actually there.
You remember that "hidden pictures" game that was in lots of kids' magazines? Maybe still is. Where you see a picture, and there are, within it, hidden objects. Genealogy is like that. So is bayou fishing. And being a cowboy. And writing books.
Spence and Sadie are getting clearer. I see new details. They're beginning to make sense. Whew.
posted by Anne McAllister at 12:15 PM
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