godslioness wrote:I have a silly question!
How do you pronounce Physick?
(like psychic or physic)
Fab job on your book
Hi Godslioness!
It's pronounced just like "physic." The K on the end is really just a variant, archaic spelling. Before there were such things as dictionaries, spellings even of everyday words tended to vary dramatically, even when it came to someone's name. For example, an early player in the Salem panic was Lieutenant Ingersoll, whose name appears variously as "Ingersoll," "Ingasoll", "Ingason" and so forth. The variations can give us an interesting sense of how the language sounded, which as you've probably gathered, is something that I found very compelling.
KH
DebsScott wrote:Hello and welcome Ms. Howe! First please allow me to compliment you on your novel. It is great reading...you've done a wonderful job pulling me into the story with your seamless time shifts, fantastic descriptions of very believable characters and real history. Brilliant!
My question is this: As I read your book, it seems like it was so effortless for you to include real history in your story. I have done some writing myself and have found, at times, the research that goes into a story can be tedious but an absolute must to insure accuracy. Did you ever encounter this problem while writing and what was the best way to overcome it? Was it easier for you to jot down thoughts and notes as they occurred to you then research as needed? Or did you gather all your research first (history, herbs and their uses etc.) then entwine it into the story? (Oops...okay, that was more than one question.)
Thank you for allowing us to read your book and discuss it in this manner; it is incredibly courageous of you!
Hi DebsScott!
Thank you so much for these kind words. It's been a real pleasure watching people's responses as the book unfolds.
This is a difficult question to answer. I've learned that I work in layers. I'll be drawn to a given question or milieu (the time period, the most basic elements of the plot). I'll begin reading and research, which in this case meant getting a thorough grounding in the secondary source literature. I spent so much time reading before I knew for sure that it would work as a novel that I used the materials to teach a research seminar for freshmen at BU, because I find that the surest way to learn something well is to have to teach it to someone else. Then I let everything simmer. The simmering goes on for awhile.
Finally, I mapped out an outline for the whole book, including specific characters, locations, time periods, and so forth. My first plan for the book was to illustrate the historical portion of the story not in a narrative fashion, but through made-up primary sources (you see the residue of this technique in Deliverance's probate record, and in some of Prudence's journal entries). Then we would read exactly what Connie reads, when she reads it. But after awhile that seemed too dry or academic an approach, so I set it aside.
All of which is a very long way of saying that I wrote the entire book in order as you see it, but that the actual writing took place after about a year and a half of research and lots and lots of simmering. A few details and tweaks were added along the way of course, twists discarded, characters who I thought would be important wound not up being in the story at all, and a few showed up without my consciously inviting them. But each snippet from the past relates directly to the action in the present, and so I had to write them all in order, or the thread might have gotten lost.
I hope that you enjoy the rest of the book! Thank you so much for reading.
KH
