The big issues for me are starting and stopping.

Starting is always a problem. Where do you look to see if there is a tavern or alehouse close to Queenhithe? Where do you find a plan of a the farmhouse of a prosperous Devon farmer?

London does have lots of resources, such as the AGAS map, which makes it so much easier to navigate the streets of the 17^th Century city.

Devon has relatively few (pun coming up!) resources which allow you to get down to the roots (!), but Janet Few’s books and Ivan Root’s work do help.

Stopping is an issue too. I’m really interested in the period my work is set in, so I will just keep reading and forget to do any writing. And once you have done all that reading, you have to resist the temptation to put everything in, particularly when you feel the pressure to keep the word count rising.

It’s a hard life writing 😏.