So I bet you’re wondering what I have to show for my first two-weeks-and-some-odd-days worth of work.

Well, I took pictures for you.

That’s it. That, and an additional four books on the library shelf (and one e-book not on any shelf because that’s not how those work). Now, were I a fiction writer first and a historian second, I imagine this might be different — or perhaps not, given that I’ve decided to write about a gender that is not mine in a place I have never been during a time I will never know. And I’ve been worrying about that a lot in the last two weeks, especially once the books I requested started coming in and I started having specifics to really worry about.

If you’re curious about what those four books are, by the way, I’m keeping a running spreadsheet of titles here and I made a Goodreads shelf, too. I’m happy to take suggestions!

To continue the main thought, I foresee a lot of internal wrestling with the ‘stay in your lane’ philosophy in my future. If you happen to be unfamilar with this phrase, then A) lucky you and B) have a quick’n’dirty definition from Urban Dictionary.

I have a rough relationship with this particular framing because I understand where it comes from, I can see the good it does (plus it’s kind of fun to say), but I also think it can be weaponized in a really unhelpful way. Much like all frameworks, I suppose: you can always use them to crack someone over the head if that’s what you want to do.

The best solution to the dilemma presented by ‘stay in your lane’ seems to me — and I have seen other people say this, too, which has been validating — to be research. Do your homework, essentially, and your lane widens — or, if it doesn’t widen, it at least has some other lanes running through it, giving you some different paving options to enjoy.

Or it’s possible I’m pushing the metaphor too far.

In any case, in order to make myself comfortable with putting this story out in the wild to any degree, I have to be able to assure myself that the homework is done, the boxes are checked, and my historical (1920s) gay romance featuring two Cambridge students, one from Kent, one from Damascus, falling in love while on an academic tour that starts in Turkey and ends in Egypt sits on at least a moderately sound pile of receipts.

Now, of course, the problem that runs parallel to this one (and one which most academics know to some degree) is that research is so easy in comparison to writing. You can just keep making reading lists and accumulating notes and sending ILL requests and soon you’re like Casaubon in Middlemarch and no-one will come to tea with you.

And this is a problem to which I know I am very subject. My master’s thesis took at least a year longer than it really needed to because I just had to spend more time with my primary sources and, look, was that a new book that was tangentially related to the subject and so on and so forth. That also had to do with a lot of anxiety about searching for “real jobs” (whatever those are) and making decisions about further graduate schooling and so on, but I know I still do it because I catch myself doing it at work. (I’m a processing archivist, by the way, if you didn’t know, and a digital library project co-ordinator.)

Me: ‘Oh, look, there’s one more obituary of X Individual that might maybe–‘

Also me: ‘You’ve read five different obituaries and unless this was written by X Individual before their death, it’s just going to be the same paragraphs, possibly in the same order. Call it.’

Me (sighing deeply): ‘Okay. Fine.’

I haven’t reached that point here yet and I’m hoping that keeping myself accountable (even if just to the inside of my own head) via these blog posts will help me recognize the point when it arrives.

In housekeeping news, I’ve decided that two weeks is too long a stretch between posts. It builds up too much expectation on my part for producing this marvellously thought out essay on the creative process that is pretty unlikely to happen. Instead I’m going to aim for a weekly posting on Fridays, so I’ll see you next week!