On my website www.erroluys.com I tell the story of my incredible quest
for my historical novel, BRAZIL, the original manuscript a staggering
750,000 hand-written words. Actually. 736,200 to be precise.
I searched for the story of Brazil for five years, a literary
bandeirante - a pathfinder - wandering through Brazil's past. At times
I felt the thorn-studded entanglements of the caatingas closing in and
couldn't see the wood for the trees! Like those bold adventurers with
their magnificent obsessions, I'd no choice but to press forward. What
fired my enthusiasm wasn't golden El Dorado but a real treasure - the
untold story of the Brazilians and their epic history.
On the 20th anniversary of my novel, for the first time I share my
mighty journey of twenty thousand kilometers across the length and
breadth of Brazil in 1981. I traveled through the heart of a nation in
which the flame of freedom was newly lit after years of military
dictator****p, the journal I kept colored by the voices and emotions of
the era.
http://www.erroluys.com/BrazilTheMakingofaNovelJournal.htm
I explore the exhaustive processes that went into the making of a
monumental novel with a first draft of three-quarters of million words
written in the old-fa****oned way, by hand. I reveal the early genesis
of my ideas for plot lines and characters, the detailed planning of my
outline, the initial burst of reading and inquiry that brought a broad
grasp of my subject.
http://www.erroluys.com/BrazilTheMakingofaNovelOutline.htm
I give examples of the detailed research and background work that went
into shaping my fictional characters, both major and minor, as I went
along and remained constant to the end. While not bound by the
constraints of the historian, I felt myself obligated to get the facts
right.
http://www.erroluys.com/BrazilTheMakingofaNovelResearch.htm
The writing spanned four years with five drafts in the shaping and
editing of the manuscript. Examples of this creative process are shown
in the pages reproduced from my handwritten originals and various
drafts to proof pages.
http://www.erroluys.com/BrazilTheMakingofaNovelWriting.htm
Of all the accolades a writer could hope for at the end of an epic
work like Brazil none brought more joy than a simple question asked by
the famed Brazilian historian and sociologist Gilberto Freyre: "I
should like to know if Uys had an unpublished jornal intime of a
Brazilian family?"
There was no private journal, just the will to understand the
Brazilian "thing" and a passion for writing and storytelling, which
lies at the heart of every good novel.
Over the years, readers and reviewers have sung the praises of Brazil,
most notably Professor Wilson Martins.
http://www.erroluys.com/ABraziliansAppreciationofBRAZIL.htm
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