Marginalia (4), or, Alligators beware

[netpositive]

Books should not be falling down, sideways, upside down,
or backwards.
-from a training manual for library workers

Currently researching John Pope and the Army of Virginia
via _The Second Bull Run Campaign: July-August 1862_ by
David G. Martin. It's part of a "Great Campaigns" series.

The campaigns may be great. The proof/editing, however...

So far:
- corrected two certain date typos (p. 40, 174)
- run into a conflict in dates for an event (p. 34 vs 57) and
- found one error that should have been caught in copyediting
(p. 114. Hint: Yankees would not be surprised to find Yankees).

I'm barely halfway through the book yet.

Not quite sure what's more scary - that I'm noticing this
many errors in (supposedly) professional publications - or
that I know enough about the subject to *be* noticing them.

And I didn't even want to know this much about 2BR, dammit.
It's tangential to my main plotline, and I was hoping I could
get away with "using" a shorter book than the definitive work
by Hennessey, which makes this 299-pager look housecat-sized.

However, at the moment I am following where main characters go.

Of course, there's new, possibly more relevant books coming out all the time. *sigh*

Help! I'm outnumbered by CW historians. Send reinforcements now!

The time to begin writing an article is when
you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that
time you begin to clearly and logically perceive
what it is you really want to say.
-Mark Twain

Progress update, or lack thereof:

Am struggling with outline for the first "section"
of _Attack!_. This covers 1-2 books' worth of plot,
and includes the event that will "change history".

[Whether 1 or 2 is a whole 'nother issue -- as in, I have
at least 2 more "sections" of plot to follow this up with --
but any decision on division can just wait until I organize
large numbers of raw words into disciplined rank and file
and general them to all march in the same direction.]

I know what I want to happen to the characters,
and most of the events that I need to include,
but shaping it into a simple prose synopsis is
rapidly exhausting my "inexhaustible" patience. :P

However, I have already realized that if I don't
have the event outline *complete* before moving on,
I'm going to end up rewriting pages because they
conflict with known elements in my major sources.

[Part of my conceit is to stay within existing history
as much as is practicable. Even after things change to
the alternate history path, divergence from "recorded"
history is going to be slow, and often subtle. I know
that different people -- and even historians -- may see
events differently. But I refuse to use that excuse as a
cop out for not being well-researched. It's key *to me* to
get it right -- so that then *I* can make it all go wrong.]

I.e. The very few early pages I wrote just last week, that
I was nonetheless kinda happy about getting done and out?

I see now that I have to go back and rewrite all but one.

And the whole middle part of my outline isn't done yet.

Which means more research/annotation as well as more writing.

Augh.

No, I'm not being patient right now, am I.

I'm out of practice with writing, and feeling out of sorts
with life. I constantly feel like I don't have enough time --
but yet I have to make it.

Okay. My immediate objective is to drain the bloody swamp.
Alligators, beware.

...[he] looked across the page to the rest of the book
left in the reader's hand. It was going to be a long epic.
-Bored of the Rings