In A Flap

I organized my day so that I would have the afternoon to begin sorting through my outline. With the afternoon a total of 25 minutes away, I can already sense my hesitation becoming greater. I may have done a very foolish thing.

I decided to set my book in the 1920s. Why? Well, because I wanted my main character to be a flapper. I like flappers. I see them as my foremothers in their free spiritedness and their beginnings of independence. It's not the true 1920s though because I've got a supernatural aspect to the novel, and this is freeing in its own way. I don't have to worry about who the President was, or who was plotting what war because its not going to matter. The research freak in me is telling me that this is horrible and that I'm setting myself up for an overly complicated setting about which I know very little. I don't know what slang they would use, or what flapper culture was really like. Did they get along with each other? Was there the beginnings of a sisterhood there? Would flappers go out alone or in packs?

I DON'T KNOW.

And it scares the living shit out of me that I've decided to write this book because I DON'T KNOW. I only shout to emphasize that I'm up shit creek here. No paddle in sight.

So, here's my plan: I'm going to forge ahead with the outline anyway. Once the outline is complete, I'll start with the research because I'll have a sense of what aspects of flapper culture will become important, and what parts I don't really need. Then, I'll swallow my fear and let my imagination just do its thing. If there are glaring inaccuracies when it's finished, I really have to let that go because it's not really the 1920s anyway. It's the 1920s in my world, which I want to make a little more interesting, a little more seedy, and a lot more weird.