Writing, research, writing research

I seem now to be involved in an ever-expanding cycle of writing and research. For example, today I worked on the scene where Hani turns up at Haus Lehrs and finds the Special Class from the now closed down Waldorf School in full swing in the cellar. Now, I’m not sure whether this class was held in the cellar, though I’m guessing it probably was because it had to be hidden. So, immediately I had to know what Haus Lehrs loked like. Did it have the type of cellar that you could use as a normal living space?  Many German houses do have such cellars, but not all of them. Would the porch door be open, but with a chain on the actual front door as I’ve portrayed it? How many children were in this class? What were they like? What was Karl Schubert, their teacher, like?

Many of the questions don’t actually arise until you start the writing and then you want a fairly immediate answer. Thank goodness for the Internet! But of course, that is only the start and is not all that reliable. It can, nevertheless, lead you to all sorts of more critical, more reliable articles and papers.

And, on a more mundane level, I’ve had to fiddle with a bike so that I can remember what it is like when you have a really bad puncture.

All part of the writing life!