Was skimming through Bookworld the other day and ran across a meme that I empathize with so much it's scary. The concept was "Ten signs that a book has been written by me," and I nearly fell out of my chair when I got to #9 because it sounds EXACTLY like me!
"It is a daring blend of nit-picking historical accuracy (picture its author spending a week researching what the Georgians ate for breakfast, only to discover that it was probably something as banal as toast, and then eventually summing up the week's work with "after breakfast they went out") and outrageous inaccuracy and anachronism (when the author doesn't have a week to spare and decides to write a description of a shipwreck in half an hour without knowing where the ship is, what sort of ship it is, what the bits of the ship are called, what would have happened to the passengers or any other sort of actual helpful detail, but does manage to sweep a cursed box out to sea along with its fanatically obsessed owner. Who doesn't yet have a name.)"The only way this description could be more like me was if the author spent a week researching Georgian breakfast habits, only to discover that she had glaring deficiencies in her understanding of Georgian tableware and food etiquette. Which would, in turn, send the author into a nervous tizzy of further research, culminating in a buying spree at Amazon.com of boxes of books that, when they finally arrived, would undermine her confidence more than enlighten her. The author would never get around to writing about the shipwreck because, weeks later, she would still be determining what shape teaspoon to give her breakfast-eaters. Ultimately, months later, the author would throw up her hands in frustration and declare that her characters all share a disdain for breakfast and (counter to all cultural practices of the time) refuse to eat it.
