Not much to update at the mo' since the holiday season tends to throw things for a loop. I am currently in the thick of Burgundian history, trying to get a grasp of those very independent, surprisingly modern Dutch people whom Maximilian had to contend with once he came into possession of Burgundy. The mercantile system is, unsurprisingly, quite complicated so you feel smugly triumphant when you finally 'get it.' From what I've seen so far, the Burgundian dukes were fairly 'laissez faire' with the economic system so when Max came in with his demands for armies and money to pay the armies, it went over like the proverbial lead balloon. There is still a lot to learn - I'm a military historian by trade so the intricacies of social and economic history take particular concentration but I feel I'm making progress.
More importantly, I've got to get on with the writing. The little notebook I kept when I was in Austria last September is filled with these exhortations. "Write more." "You need to get on with the writing." Etc. This still applies. As a matter of fact, it's one of the Main New Year's Resolutions in addition to learning German and going to the gym regularly. The biggest obstacle is simply a lack of guts - I find I write something that remains palatable for a few days until I re-read it a few weeks later and hate it entirely. The last post is just such an example. But this is why it's a draft. I read something that compared writers to potters. Your draft is your clay. You can't make anything awesome without some clay.
But things will return to normal this week and the first section will start to take some shape. I think one of the best things a potential author can do is have a steady source of good reading material on hand. Good prose improves your own while badly written stuff leads to nothing but more of it. For something particularly good, I recommend The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova.
In other news, Happy New Year! How on earth is it 2011 already?!
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