Because I’ve got a lot going on. I am still embedded in my rewrites, I’m still working away on my research, and meanwhile I’ve joined Scribophile and I’m doing Camp NaNoWriMo for April. But don’t worry; my goal is only 10,000 words.
I wish I could source the oft-quoted but never footnoted sentence: “In 1940, the Soviet Union executed most of the Boy Scouts held at Ostashkov Prison.” It appears to have happened as part of the Katyn massacre–but I can’t find Boy Scouts listed on the rolls of the dead. Then again, I also think the listing might not include Ostashkov prison, which is pretty far from the Katyn forest. The problem is that an awful lot of the sources don’t include Boy Scouts as victims of the massacre.
Which leads me to the question of whether I’m writing history, or historical fiction, and whether it’s okay to make these connections that I don’t have explicated. For instance, the Kedyw Battalion was made up of Boy Scouts; the Kedyw Battalion carried out multiple assassinations during the Occupation of Poland; therefore Boy Scouts were carrying out executions. I can’t find sources that make that middle connection, and it’s frustrating.
I continue to wonder whether I’m the right person to write this book. It feels more and more overwhelming, and finding a story with a beginning, middle, end? Some days it feels like it’s never going to happen.
ellen mcbee 
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