Experiences writing “The Azaleas”

     I got the idea for writing the Azaleas from a print a friend bought for her office by Sam Abell (you can see it here on Art.com Sam Abell’s The Azaleas ). I’m not sure why but the first thing that popped into my head was a post revolutionary war carriage going between the rows of flowers and trees.  As a funny note, it turns out I’d seen that picture everyday for a year at work, a small version taken from a motivational calendar was pinned outside a coworker’s cubical. I didn’t realize this fact until several months after writing the story. So, no, if I meet you and you’re wearing your hair in a different style from the last time we saw each other I probably won’t notice that either.

     Hopefully, if you’ve made it this far in this post, you’ve read The Azaleas found here The Azaleas. If not, this is basically a page of spoilers, so consider this your warning.

     Now I had a series of problems to solve. The principle ones being firstly, I know approximately nothing about that period in history (I grew up in Canada, and in Canadian schools time for US History is used for Hockey instead) and secondly why would anyone want to read about a carriage going down a lane surrounded by flowers and trees anyway? The second problem was pretty easy, don’t have anyone drive down the driveway. The first problem really wasn’t too difficult to fix either. A little search engine work and I had the basic details I needed. And the biggest part of that was figuring out the right time to set the story and place. After the war ended and in and around Charleston, South Carolina. So now I had the most basic of framework to hang my story from.

     Somewhere along the line here I decided the main character would be a teen-aged girl. I credit/blame that on the Vicodin I was taking at the time. I made the wild assumption that girls then as now are generally interested in clothing. So I needed to find out something about dress styles. Along with a dress she needed something to carry the letter from her father in, some sort of purse.

     Dress and purse. And a carriage, a boat from Europe with a Portuguese name. The general geography of the Charleston area, mostly the region of the shoreline. Plus a little bit of history to get the timeline approximately right.

    Google searches and museum websites are great research tools. I found pictures of the dress style on a museum website via a google search, and conveniently one picture was of two dresses, both using a brocade fabric. Maps.Google gave me great views of the South Carolina shoreline, although I didn’t check names any further than that, so I don’t know if either Morris or Sullivan’s Island were called something different two centuries ago. Since I didn’t really include anything outside of modern comprehension none of the details require any great degree of explanation. I think it would have been much more difficult to integrate the details if a wheel had come off the wagon and Anne was called to help with the repairs.

How long did this take? All totalled up, somewhere around three to four hours for the research and the writing.