As you might have guessed, going from about half-way through my notes for The Jews of Warsaw all the way to completion was a bit more than I could manage in one week, given the way the week worked out. I made it to within 59 pages of the end, which is a sneeze over 85% of the way through.

To my credit, though, most of Saturday, from lunchtime until early evening, was taken up with having the girls at a party at the local water park, Wetlands. It’s not exactly my scene, so I didn’t go in, but there was no way I was going to disappear off home and just leave them there, so I got a white mocha from the Ingles Starbucks a short drive away, and got to work with the second leg of my research.

A Relevant Embarrassment.

There is a ton of material in The Jews of Warsaw that should inspire anyone wanting to tell a tale that is entirely human, offering up bravery, greed, hate, cruelty and with some fair amount of honor blended in.

There’s also a lot to be said for those courageous souls who stood and fought in the Spring of 1943; their story is a tribute to their kind – however you want to define that term. I don’t simply mean ‘Jews,’ since there was a lot of dishonor and selfishness evident within the ghetto too, which, if you take my perspective, is understandable because all of the qualities I’ve just mentioned – bravery, greed, hate, etc. – are all quintessentially human. By ‘their kind,’ then, I simply mean anyone prepared to stand, fight and face absolutely overwhelming odds, as the correct reaction to the hate that resulted in so much suffering and killing.

There are characters and events that took place in the story of the ghetto that I hope I can translate into the distinctly different geography of The Black Box Factory. Inspired by Margaret Attwood, I want to base my story events on real events in history.

The story of the Warsaw ghetto, as opposed to that of the inspirational uprising, is an embarrassment to human history. The issue is that it doesn’t translate very well. I needed a more relevant embarrassment.

Infamy.

It’s embarrassing that the story of the Japanese Americans did not occur to me earlier on as a potential research avenue. The premises and events won’t translate any easier than the Warsaw ghetto, but the locations and agencies involved offer a more relevant geography.

What’s even better is the way that working through the story of the Internment more directly addresses the notion that ‘it can’t happen here.’

It did – we have to overlook only the mechanized, industrial slaughter machine that the Nazis put into action in the east of Europe, but that’s a ridiculously low bar for any respectable moral standard and certainly not an acceptable way to rationalize the Internment.

Progress.

As you can imagine, with only one afternoon spent on it, even if I’m resorting to the – hopefully much faster – research technique I used for my ETSU history readings, I’ve only made it to the start of Chapter 2.

Juggling.

I’ll go into what I learn in better detail once I’ve completed it, but that obviously won’t be for a while. I have a lot of projects being juggled right now, and I only started this new line of research now because the arrangement at the water park wouldn’t have worked for my Warsaw notes.

I don’t expect to hear from my Alpha Reader about having finished The Old Man and having any feedback any time soon. It’s obviously more of a workload addition than either of us expected, so I’ll be in the market for a different Alpha Reader for the next novel. I’d prefer to have someone from my Beta Reader pool take on the task, so if you’re interested in being either a Beta or an Alpha Reader, feel free to contact me. I’ll be asking through this blog, on Facebook and Twitter when the time comes.

Up Next…

Finishing the last fifteen percent of my Warsaw notes in the next seven days is entirely possible, so that’ll remain my goal for this coming week.

There are other things that will be going on, but the focus of my personal time and energy will be in this direction.

It would be awesome if I got far enough in combing through all my notes to pull everything together here for the next post, so let’s hope for that, although no promises here.

Until then, have a great week and stay safe.

Categories: Black Box Factory, Japanese American Internment, Research

Tags: Black Box Factory, Japanese American Internment