New Ideas and New Orleans

Damn You soon-to-be hurricane Issac! *Fist Shaking to the Heavens!* 

For several months my girlfriends and I have been planning a bachelorette weekend in the Big Easy as one last hurrah before my good friend enters the solemn state of matrimony and we have no more excuses to flash people, drink like we are still 20 and pretend we can handle it the next morning, celebrate until the next one gets married (or until we go to Miami in March..., Yes?).  We are supposed to leave this Friday and Al Rooker had me throwing shoes at the TV this morning because Issac is supposed to touch down in New Orleans Wednesday some time (AAARRRGGHHH!!!!).  

Nonetheless, I am really excited because I've never been to New Orleans.  I don't know about you, but when I think of the city several things come to mind (admittedly, most have nothing to do with New Orleans, but I do not attest to making sense with my associations):

 

Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise (Interview with the Vampire...obviously my association goes right there first because...well, why not?).

True Blood (again, no actual relation to New Orleans, but vampire related, so therefore I think of New Orleans and then Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise all over again...mmm...Alex Skarsgard...)

The real cast of the Real World New Orleans and this:

 

Food because I'm going to do a lot of eating down there if its going to be raining.  A lot of drinking too, so add booze to this list.

And voodoo...which gets to the real reason for this post.  I have been interested in an idea for a story involving voodoo and a modern teenage girl that comes from another time, but I know nothing about New Orleans or voodoo which makes me feel very inadequate in my abilities to write about it although the idea (in my opinion) is brilliant.  So, my plan is to do a little research while I am down there and document my impressions of the city so that I can recreate something reasonably authentic when I draft my little diddy.  "They" say that you should write what you know, but what's the fun in that?  And what would writing fiction be if you can't use your imagination?  So, I have developed a research plan that includes making time to visit the burial site of a well known voodoo queen, reading books on the subject, and, as I mentioned, throughly documenting my time in New Orleans.  Hopefully, when I am ready to write the story, I will at least have a basic understanding and can build from there.

If you are in the same place with your WiP or have ideas and are a bit skiddish about research or writing about something that you don't know, here are a few links that I found helpful:

TOR.com: Writing What You Don't Know

Writer's Digest: How to Research Your Novel

Sally Thacker: Researching the Historical Novel

Mary Carroll Moore: Researching Your Book -- How to Do It, When to Stop and Get to Writing

So with that, please pray that we make it there, that Issac takes his butt somewhere else, and that I am not hungover focused enough to execute my plan when I do get there!