Last June I wrote a short blog, my first ever, questioning whether I could write a book. This blog followed on from listening to other writers chatting about what they did and the frustrations of getting their books published. They did not go into the research aspects of writing a novel or for that matter the research needed to go into a non-fiction book. Now eight months later, I have written 48,000 words on the making of a model railroad and have still to finish the opus.
Now as to the research aspect, I have quire a few books on various aspects of railway modelling covering track laying, wiring, control, scenery, making buildings all of which I used to great affect when making my own layout but whatever you read about and seems so straightforward is not like that when you get down to it yourself. Research then expands to talking to other modellers and viewing a lot of Youtube videos on specific elements of construction and honing your own ideas and eventually comes out the other end in your writings as good advise for the modelling novice.
A book on modelling needs illustrating and the best option for this is to use examples of your own works by means of photographs. Herein lay a few problems namely describing the ideal way to do something and finding that you can’t photograph your works because they don’t reflect good practice but may show a practical alternate approach. Illustrating something that you yourself hadn’t included in you own works is another problem which is overcome with creating quality drawings to impart the knowledge the reader would expect. Fortunately my diagrams were technical drawings, I would not have been able to create an artwork type of drawing. So far I have managed those 48,000 words in nine chapters with over 120 photos and diagrams but I am now running into another problem and that is explaining and illustrating finishing touches to a layout when my own layout is only about a third complete. Is this a case of cart before the horse or book before the actual model?
One thing I have found in writing a book is that it is fun and frustrating at the same time and with a non-fiction book I don’t have to create each characters’ profile, a plot-line and keep introducing action highlights in a story, I only have to write about something I know which makes it easier and with an interactive style that I hope will keep my readers riveted to the point of taking up railway modelling.