Noel C. Cilker

I'm noticing an increase in the amount of "What are you doing these days?" inquiries, so I think it's time to hop back onto the ol' Blogger and bring you up to date with my book progress. Things are going well. I'm splitting my time between working on the book and some family business stuff, so I'm not writing every  day, but I'm writing consistently. Every week I'm able to get around 3,000 to 4,000 words written which is a moderate success. I'm at about 54,000 right now which, according to the length of your average historical narrative, is about halfway. It's difficult to measure these things, though, because it's a rough draft. The story could end up being much longer - because I have a mountain of research to draw from - or much shorter - because an editor just crossed out that mountain of research and more. My biggest realization from my last post (has it been almost two months already?) is that I'm feeling this weird di...

I find, from time to time, that it's difficult to explain to people  exactly  what it is I write. "It's history," I say, "but it's not a textbook. It's going to read like a novel." "Oh, so you mean a historical fiction?" I'm asked. "No, it's all true, all nonfiction. It's more like a historical narrative, I guess." "Oh," is the usual response I get, usually accompanied with a quizzical expression of someone who doesn't get it but would rather talk about something else. I really don't know what to call the genre. The closest I've found is Narrative History which is taking history and telling it in story form. This genre allows for more speculation, more dramatic elements and, for the reader, a more exciting and engaging bit of history. The problem I face, though, is how much license can I take and still have it counted as a history book? Passages like this easily count as history...

A lot has happened since I posted a month ago. The biggest accomplishment is that I've hit about 25,000 words in my rough draft. That's in the vicinity of 25% completion, although with all the cutting and editing I'm going to have to do, it could be considered less. One thing I'm noticing is that I'm using a lot of quotes from primary and secondary sources. A LOT. This sometimes makes me feel a little guilty because I wonder if I should count them toward my daily goal of 1,000 words. After all, all it takes is some copying and pasting of a paragraphs-long firsthand account and suddenly I'm the most efficient writer in Berkeley! A thousand words by lunchtime! But is it a cop out to take someone else's words and add them to my count? For instance, here's a paragraph I wrote about the service in some early Chinese restaurants in San Francisco. Keep in mind this is a rough draft with no editing. "Gwai-lo" in the first line is a Cantonese word for...