I’m finally caught up from the conference. Or, at least, caught up enough to take some time and write and schedule a few blogs. While at the conference, I explored and got confirmation on the hot new idea I had, and I’ve been busily immersing myself in the research. Yesterday, I wrote a few pages to find my character’s voice, and wrote up the synopsis of the novel. It’s funny, but using real historical figures and events gives the plot a very strong spine, which makes me confident of the tension, conflict and action. However, dealing with real historical figures makes me less confident of the characters — one part of which I am usually totally confident because I tend to begin with characters and don’t start the story plotting until I know who my character is and what her main conflict will be.

Fortunately, there are many sources for my research, and I live near a university library. Which brings me to another change in this business: Google, and its desire to scan and digitize every book in existence.

As a fiction author, I feel the sting of the digitizing project, because we writers worry that we will lose control of our own work through this process. That’s why the Google vs Author’s Guild settlement still faces opposition in court.

As a researcher, who wants and needs to get hold of as many extant research sources as possible, I have been awed to discover just how much is now available on line — much of it digitized by Google. Whole books, long out of copyright, which would have taken me months to trace down in a used book store (although probably only weeks now for many, with E-Bay, another way the research end of this business has changed).

The hard part of research (the reading, cross-checking facts, etc.) is even a little easier, because digitized books can be searched for keywords. I read and scan quickly, but keywords makes my work faster and more thorough.

I don’t know how the Google settlement will go in the future. I do know I want writers, and their estates, to be fairly compensated for digitized work that has been given a new life by Google.

But at the moment, immersed in the lives of those who lived hundreds of years ago, and reading books published over a hundred years ago courtesy of Google books, I am awed by the power of this new possibility.