I can think of several reasons why I do so much research when I’m working on a writing project. The first that comes to mind is that I’m making decisions. I actually spend a very long time (maybe too much time) thinking about a scene before I ever start writing it. Typically I can’t write for more than four hours at a time, so if I have the general idea down pat, then I can use those four hours as effectively as possible.
Back to my point, there are a lot of decisions to be made even when they’re completely miniscule. I make big decisions for my characters and their outcomes, but I also make decisions about the tiniest details that often have no consequences. Sometimes time goes by and I’ll see these tiny details out in the real world. I love that. I always aim for the worlds of my characters to be as close to reality as possible. So when these little details that I’ve decided are right for my story/stories appear beyond the realm of fiction, well, I sort of feel like I’ve done my story justice.
In the first NF article/post, I talked at length about the conference alignment of the NHL as it is presented in the new story. I gave my own reasons for why I made the decision to name the Quebec City team the Bulldogs instead of the Nordiques. Today, I was flipping through the current issue of The Hockey News and landed on an article by senior writer Ken Campbell entitled “Fleur de League”. It is in regard to now being the right time for Quebec City to have an NHL team to call its own again (if you read my NF post, you’ll know why QC has a team in my story version of the NHL). The introduction of Campbell’s article is as follows:
If Quebec City ever gets an NHL team again, it would be considered sacrilege to call it anything but the Nordiques. We all get that. But if you really want to harken back to the salad days of professional hockey in La Vielle Capitale, you might want to consider the Bulldogs for a moniker.
After all, no professional team in Quebec City has even come close to the legendary Bulldogs, who won their first of consecutive Stanley Cups exactly 100 years ago. With future Hall of Famers Joe Malone, goalie Paddy Moran and defenseman ‘Bad’ Joe Hall in the lineup, the Bulldogs were the toast of the hockey world two years running.
The article goes on with a brief history of the Bulldogs; it brings up the Nordiques, the Avalanche, the Coyotes, the Thrashers, and the Jets; and it gives reasons as to why Quebec City is right. But that’s not what’s important here. I was stuck on those first two paragraphs for a few moments with a dumb smile on my face. This is the senior writer from a hockey magazine–arguably the most read hockey publication in North America–posing to his readership a decision that I consciously made for my own purposes. The last time I modified my alignment document, with the Bulldogs name, was a couple of days before the end of March. This current issue of THN is on stands until May 14th.
Obviously it was only coincidence (and as Campbell writes, obviously a team in QC would be re-named the Nordiques, not the Bulldogs). But it’s really damn cool. As I’ve said before, I want my current project to be the new Part Three of the trilogy. I mean that I want it to be my new favorite story that I’ve written and my new best story that I’ve written. To take it even further, I want it to be the new story that I’m most proud of. I want to be on point, even in the smallest of details. So far, I think I am.