I love it when you learn useful things by accident.
These days, human beings are taking in information at an unprecedented rate. In fact, we do it without knowing it. Everyone knows that a fifth grader studying sentence diagrams is taking in new information, but adults do the exact same thing when they scroll through Facebook. You’re learning things about your friends and family and the various brands that pay for ads. Oh, look. Cousin Fred’s moving. Marcie’s baby is growing up so fast. Heather’s still complaining about her co-workers. This brand of underwear is having a sale.
Usually, this information is less than helpful in our daily lives. (The information we learn at school also tends to be relatively useless after a certain point, but I digress.) In fact, it can be downright overwhelming. But every once in a while, you stumble across something that’s so rewarding, you wonder if the twelve hours you’ve spent on Pinterest this week has been worth it.
Yes, I’ll admit to learning several useful things off social media. For instance, the wedding vows included in Where I Stand were inspired by a set of traditional Irish wedding vows I randomly saw when scrolling the depths of Pinterest one day. I’ve accidentally trained my Instagram to recommend things about motherhood and the caring of infants. (Fun fact! In my upcoming novel Where Arrows Fall, Alynn’s daughter Elspeth was originally going to be a newborn. I figured that Instagram, the place where way too many individuals and companies talk about what to do with and expect from a new baby, would be the most reliable and honest source of information. However, having a newborn Elspeth proved to be too complicated, so I aged her up by a few months.)
One of the most valuable sources of accidental information I’ve stumbled across, however, is other novels. Now, obviously, you can’t take all the historical or scientific information presented in a novel and assume it’s a hundred percent correct. That said, some books are more accurate than others. The Cadfael Chronicles is an absolute gold mine of information. It describes in detail the daily life of monks, several historical events that took place in England in the 1100s, and some of the problems that might arise in a medieval society. I’ve also learned a lot about Welsh culture. Cadfael, the titular main character, was born in Wales but “grew up with one foot on either side of the border” with England. His character, and the descriptions of some of the other Welsh characters, has been invaluable to me.
Yes, I’m introducing a Welsh character in Where Arrows Fall. Go ahead and get hyped for it. (And the amount of research that Ellis Peters put into the Cadfael Chronicles is astounding. I fully trust her depiction of Welsh people. And if it turns out I’ve been misled…I’ll just claim that Welsh culture has changed in the past thousand years. I’ll be right one way or another.)
That said, I’m finally having a small party to celebrate my graduation tomorrow, so I have some preparations to make. What’s the most interesting factoid you remember from a novel or a social media post? Let me know in the comments below! God bless you, dear readers, and don’t forget to review us on Amazon!