Which are of course - reading, writing and relentless research (I never was much use at 'rithmetic).
I'd cracked on with my household chores all week to leave myself clear to write over the weekend. A story of my mother told me at Christmas gave me an idea for a neat short story plot set in wartime Wales, which I reckoned was going to be about 2000 words - so do-able over two days.
There were some loose ends to tie off, but thankfully the internet proved a godsend... first I read about the 'Women's Land Army' for which there are a lot of 'living history' projects (I also picked up a subplot from one Land Girl's recollections); then I had to check some details on rationing, which again is amply described as part of the National Curriculum.
Next I emailed a gog friend to have him translate some dialogue for me... the story's set in North Wales and my Welsh is villainously hwntw), which turned into a discussion about rugby.
By now most of Saturday morning had gone flying by, and then the postman arrived with two books from Amazon I'd bought to research my next story, set in the Edwardian era. Of course I couldn't resist a delve. The first's a compilation of contemporary fashion advice (cashmere stockings anyone?), which showed that I knew next to nothing about the subject. The second's a book of potted biographies of leading lights in the Suffragette movement, and so fascinating I read it from cover-to-cover.
Saturday night - words written nil.
Sunday morning I set to work on the story, but the new subplot I'd acquired meant checking up on the use of Yiddish by Britain's Jewish community. There wasn't so much about this online, but lots of fascinating digressions, so I didn't get down to writing until after lunch... I managed about 1200 words by eight o'clock, but still only one third of the way through, and the prospect of self-editing to remove any didacticity, a word I've just checked existed in the online OED... I think I need a shed, and no wireless router :)
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Rise ye daughters of a land!
Rise ye daughters of a land that vaunts it liberty
make reckless rulers understand that women must be free!
It's a line from 'The Women's Marseillaise' culled from the book I mention above. I was only looking in it for a little background detail, a few names and quotes at most, but it's radically (no pun intended) altered the whole piece.
I discovered that I was unforgivably ignorant of the history of women's suffrage. Today we have a rather comic view of suffragettes (I blame 'Mary Poppins'), and have forgotten the violence meted out to them, whether in police brutality or forced feeding of hunger strikers in prison. I knew of these things happening to men at the same time as my great-great-grandfather was gaoled on a charge of sedition for his role in the Tonypandy Riots of 1910, but didn't realise how commited these women were, what sacrifices they made, or how widespread was their support. Aside from suffragettes,there were non-militant women suffragists, women in the anti-suffragist movement, and women who believed that it was a side issue to the cause of socialism and universal suffrage for working class men and women. feminism comes in at all levels with many of the women becoming deeply alienated from men, Sylvia Pankhurst wrote about how three quarters of men carried STDs and how women should preserve the purity of their bodies by not associating with any man.
It's opened up a world of plots and characters I'd never dreamt of... imagine an aristocratic militant suffragette woman involved with a male-working class tg character who's a committed socialist... class politics, sex, gender... I'm fair fizzing with ideas!