Testing the Dialectic

Finally got over the hump, figured out how to make a scene that worked, completed 2,000 words and brought the novel to almost the middle point.

And this morning has all been in trying to generate a decent map of Highgate Cemetery. I think my google-fu has grown weak.

I remember how searching online used to be. Before the spiders had crawled up and down the web indexing everything, you searched in a dendritic tree. Tentative searches until you could find a hub, then exploring the branches off that hub, working crabwise, hoping you were going to finally stumble upon a webring that had everything.

Root searches have a flaw. I turned up one actual map of notable tombs at Highgate, but it was a copy by a retiree of what is apparently a free map handout from somewhere and there is no explanation. So many hours of trying to track down the names mentioned.

Can you imagine the difficulty in trying to restrict search terms to find a "Scrimgeour "who is actually buried there? If you don't make "Highgate" a required term, the engines fill with Harry Potter. If you do, then the results fill with travel agencies wanting to sell you tickets to go visit the cemetery. And low on the page? More Harry Potter.

This is both a historical novel (apparently BookBub calls them "Present-Past." No, I don't like it either) and an action scene. So I need to know the actual historical person and I need to know what the stone looks like in situ so I can figure out if my characters can take cover behind it.

Well, I have enough stones to make it work. And I've looked at the landscape. Which is really lousy for the kind of action I had contemplated. It is far from clear fields of fire. Plus there really aren't any handy stones lying around. And the place is public and crowded and sneaking weapons in there is a level of ridiculous that's only going to be surpassed by the sword fight I'm going to have among the stalls of the Globe itself.

I'm doing it anyhow. I'm trying to leave strict realism alone because that way leads to boring events.

And the stones aren't lining up at all right. Heck, the one guy I really wanted there (as opposed to the guy everyone expects to be featured), is on the West side. Which is guided tours only and restricted hours. So...it's gonna be more Bullit geography.

(I couldn't find a picture of Karl Marx driving a Ford Mustang GT Fastback, so instead here's a traffic light with, yes, a little picture of Karl Marx for walk. I wonder who is stop? Pick your Austrian School favorite.)

So my week total is off. I'm writing the last chapter of Part II, and before I gave up today put down 800 words of draft on it. Had to stop just as a medieval broadhead spanged off the tomb of Claudia Jones, British black feminist communist and that's a lot of ists. The "beat" isn't happening and I have to go back and find the moment. 

But I have confidence that by the end of the weekend I'll be in planning for the third part of the book.