I just moved. It wasn’t a particularly long move (just two states down the Northeast Corridor) or a particularly big one (the movers eyed me askance as they surveyed the sum of my goods and chattels: two side tables, a bed, a desk, and eighty-five boxes of books), but the process of adjusting to a new apartment has whetted my appreciation for all the simple things in life that really aren’t so simple at all. There are so many little things we take for granted until they’re just not there.

Take the mail, for example. We needn’t go into why I’m not getting mine (it would take far too long, and involve language inappropriate for a public post), but the sudden inaccessibility of the contents of my mailbox made me realize what an incredible thing it is that you can take a little piece of paper, scrawl an address across it in your sloppiest handwriting, stick it in a box, and nine out of ten times it will actually get where it’s supposed to go. That’s pretty amazing. When you multiply it by millions, it’s nothing short of mind-boggling. Then there are flush toilets, air conditioners, internet connections– hundreds of amenities that we take for granted so long as they work, and occasion much tearing of hair and gnashing of teeth when they don’t.

You can blame some of this on my Bar Exam review class. You know it’s bad when musing about the mechanics of the mail is preferable to memorizing applicable statutes of limitations. But it did occur to me, as I dozed off in Bar Review the other day, that being forced to stop and think about the amenities we take for granted is no bad thing for an author of historical novels. When we look at the weft of our lives, the fibres that make up the base of the fabric aren’t the big or unusual things, they’re the bits we don’t even notice: the automatic stop at the computer to check for new mail, the unthinking removal and replacement of toiletries in their accustomed spots as contact lenses go in or out, the click that activates the air conditioner.

That, I think, is the hardest part of writing historical fiction: recreating the patterns of daily life. Not the nights at Almack’s or the rides in Hyde Park or the tension-fraught outing to Vauxhall, but the sound of metal scraping the scuttle as the maid cleans out the coal dust or the feel of a porcelain handle beneath the heroine’s palm as she reaches for her morning chocolate, all things so commonplace that our heroine herself probably wouldn’t even notice them– unless they were missing. Like my mail. Um, not like I’m bitter or anything.

Of course, having found a commonplace, the breaking of it provides excellent scope for drama. Our heroine gropes for her morning chocolate. But it isn’t there. Why? Have the servants deserted the house, taking with them various valuables (including the chocolate pot) to make up for their unpaid back wages? Is the kitchen in a furor because the new Lord of Blackacre has suddenly appeared after ten years on the Continent, bringing with him an uppity French chef? Or is the heroine not in her own bed at all? Perhaps she’s been kidnapped… preferably by pirates. There are far too few pirate novels in the world today. I miss those.

That, however, is a topic for another post. Before I ramble on further, I should get back to work. I still have seventy-eight boxes of books to unpack….

Which everyday luxuries would you miss the most if they suddenly weren’t there?