I have noticed recently that when I am writing something I have a very bad tendency to focus on parts of the story that don't really matter. I was writing something last night about the execution of Anne Boleyn and suddenly thought 'How did people tell the time in Tudor days when they were out and about? Did they have watches?' This question wasn't completely unrelated to my story since I was mentioning the time of her execution, but it wasn't a really important detail. In the end, it didn't matter.
This isn't the first time I have done this. When I was editing my novella I had a very strange debate with myself along the lines of, if someone travelled forwards in time from Tudor days would they be wearing underwear as we know it? (I must confess I did worry about my state of mind at that point). Again, it was completely irrelevant to the story and wouldn't have made any difference to the ending (or indeed any part of the narrative). This has made me think about my llife in general, and how I have approached things in the past (and sometimes still do.) I can have massive problems, issues that need sorting out but sometimes what I get most upset about is something that really makes no difference at the end of the day. I'm not sure why this happens. Maybe it's because the big stuff is fairly insurmountable (war, pestilence, famine and death) that we focus on the small things because they are things that we might have some chance of sorting out.
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