#yes crowborough is hever castle in my mind

[laolafi]

I love, love, love writing these scenes, as a haver of obscure specialist knowledge.

I pride myself on research going down the most absurd rabbit holes to find the adequate amount of information for absolutely anything at all ... The popularity and class associations of the name Thomasina in the 1920s. French restaurants in London in 1925. Which villages you pass driving from Ripon to London before there was a motorway. German citizenship laws. The appropriate slang words for genitalia in the early 1910s. Floorplans of Hever Castle. The name of the Reform synagogue in New York an upper-class family with British Ashkenazi background was most likely to join in the late 1920s, and also which neighbourhood they would move to. The reactions of the British press to the November pogroms. Female underwear fashions in the mid-1920s. The nature of the relationship the Prince of Wales' mistress had with the husband she was still married to, because I really need that for a throwaway line. That kind of thing. No one could ever accuse me of not being meticulous. I know that's something my readers enjoy about my writing. It's also super fun (especially when female underwear is involved, ngl).

But when it comes to specialised knowledge I inherently have, it just. hits. different. Things start to flow and it's a thing of beauty and immense joy.

I'm just writing the best patient handover in the history of patient handovers. Yes, they're standing in the courtyard of an English castle that was transformed into an army hospital and it's World War I and the nurses are wearing starched petticoats and the ambulance driver would never take offense at being called just that, and I've never worked in such a setting and I do take offense at being called an ambulance driver, but still. It's a handover that would make me proud to watch if it was taking place at my local large university clinic and it was my student medic, not a Duke's daughter volunteering as an army nurse, doing the handing-over.

It's so fun, pouring a part of yourself onto the page. Effortlessly, for all that it took a lot of real-life effort to get to that point. I couldn't stop smiling when I wrote this.

I love, love, LOVE it when I can tell a fic author has integrated their specialized knowledge in a fic. I was reading a fic that at some point included the character going to visit an art therapist, and it's so clear that the author is an art therapist themself, and the details included are just immaculate and I love it. I've previously read about a character doing fencing for no other reason than the author clearly wanting to write a sport they understood. A character being given a hyperfixation on bugs just so the author can infodump themselves.

I eat it up every time, it brings such a smile to my face