Aeroplanes mostly

It seems, from looking out of the window, a little early for nine thirty in the morning. The sun seems very yellow against the red bricks of the houses opposite and with the bare trees it looks crisp outside.

However, I must do an hour or so of writing before I shall have to quit to start preparing for friends who are coming for lunch.

Writing:
Yesterday I managed, very slowly because I was tired and fragile, to rewrite the opening scene of BIRDS - which is an aeroplane crash - and happens in 1913. I first sketched out the scene before I had really done the research - so sketch was exactly the right word! A great book was Before Amelia: Women Pilots in the Early Days of Aviation by Eileen F. LeBow. I only intended to dip into it to get the relevent info but ended up reading it cover-to-cover. The first woman to gain a pilot's licence was in 1909 and the book tells the stories of the various pioneer female aviators up until the First World War.
I also found the de Havilland museum which is near me in Hertfordshire very useful when I went there a few weeks ago. Unfortunately the earliest aeroplanes there date from the 1920s but the exhibition of the story of the de Havilland family and how they initially became interested in aviation was fascinating.

http://www.dehavillandmuseum.co.uk/

Blogging:
Having posted on a couple of boards and groups yesterday about my blog, I've discovered several more writer friends have blogs - it seems more popular than I thought. But then again, are writers simply more likely to have a blog because they are writers?