But I’m telling you anyway.\u00a0\u00a0 One of the ways you get multi-sensory accuracy into a work is to get it into your life.\u00a0\u00a0 Back when I was first writing for publication, I was immersed in a busy life that included regular doses of excitement and gore: I was a volunteer with the county EMS, and our station lay between a military base in a dry county and the nearest bars.\u00a0\u00a0 Car wrecks (lots), fires, explosions, fights,\u00a0 death by violence and death that came as quietly as a sigh.\u00a0\u00a0 If it’s part of a human and it breaks, bleeds, or leaks–I’ve seen it.\u00a0 I also had a rideable horse then, and rode almost daily.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
However, it’s been years since I worked with EMS (impossible to do if you’ve got a small child clinging to your knees) and the juvenile traumas are far behind us,\u00a0 so to keep my experience of what some call “gritty reality”\u00a0 fresh, I take what opportunities I can–opportunities that come more often in the country than the city (for writing in this universe, anyway.) \u00a0 I walk the land, I deal with horses and tractors and shovels and only slightly modernized versions of tools Paks would’ve known. \u00a0\u00a0 Tomorrow morning early\u00a0 it will be one of the less glamorous\u00a0 and more gruesome chores.<\/p>\n
A not-so-little lamb will end the day in the freezer.\u00a0\u00a0 We could’ve wished for cooler weather, but the writer-mind will store every sensory detail, compare it to the experience we had last time (on a near-freezing day of cold drizzle)\u00a0 and someday, somewhere, a few elements of that will show up in a book.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Tonight I’ll recheck the instrument of death and ensure that it’s perfectly clean and functional…the goal is for the animal to suffer no anxiety or pain.<\/p>\n
Luckily, my editor called today with her last comments on the revised ms. and I’ve completed all she told me about (but forgot to ask her how she decided on the Track Changes section she sent me Friday that I’d emailed in early in the morning.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
But I’m telling you anyway.\u00a0\u00a0 One of the ways you get multi-sensory accuracy into a work is to get it into your life.\u00a0\u00a0 Back when I was first writing for publication, I was immersed in a busy life that included regular doses of excitement and gore: I was a volunteer with the county EMS, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[12],"class_list":["post-243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-beyond-writing","tag-research"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=243"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":245,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243\/revisions\/245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}