April 25, 2022
Daily Diary, Day 603:
I had another good weekend of writing, with a total of 2346 new words written on Mrs. Stein Solves a Crime, which I am now confidently calling a novella rather than a short story. My use of twenty-minute writing sprints really helped, and I was pleased that I got as much written, despite three long phone calls on Saturday and two on Sunday.
I didn’t do quite as well on getting in my full hour of walking each day. It was quite hot on Sunday, so I skipped my second walk--which did have the benefit of getting more writing time so I was able to meet my daily goal. I am hoping that as hotter weather sets in that I can go back to doing my sixty-minute walks in the early morning. Today it is supposed to get up into higher 80s, so I am going to see how long I can go this morning--without that slowly healing broken toe hurting.
I was also able to accomplish my writing goals this weekend because I only went down one short rabbit hole of research, and that was to figure out what coins a fairly wealthy person might have in their purse. Most of the research I discovered was for collectors—so lots of pictures and descriptions—but most concentrated on what value the coins would have today. In addition, it wasn’t clear to me whether the descriptions they gave for coins—like “Seated Liberty Dime” or “Double-eagle” were simply descriptions of the engraving that collectors use, or what people would call a that coin in 1882. I suspect it was the former not the latter. I stopped myself from going further down the rabbit hole when I found myself pulling out my hand calculator to figure out how heavy a purse with ten dollars in coin would feel—given that I wasn’t actually going to have a character carrying around this money. I could see I was verging on creating the kind of detail that—if I actually included in the story—would be more of the dreaded historical fiction “info dump” that I try to avoid making.
However, if you are interested in a fairly good overview of money that was used in the west, do take a look at this article.