"Writing the first draft"

 

Writing the first draft can be something of a struggle... There are times you want to give up and the finished, polished, published book can seem entirely out of reach. Yet if you do not go on, in spite of the obstacles on your way, how can you hope to achieve anything? 

Places you know, places you don't

 

Write about what you know! Which would-be novelist never came across this piece of advice, given by established authors, in writing magazines, and such? A wise piece of advice. But is it one that should be followed, especially when writing about different places?

 

If you were to write only about what you know, you would not be able to write about places where you had never been. And actually, you could not write about the past either, since, except if you are the lucky owner of a time-travelling machine, none of us have experienced it first-hand (or only through reading books, and visiting museums and old houses). Should that stop you? I don’t think so. At least, I didn’t let this piece of advice stop me from writing about a time that is not mine and places I have never visited. 

Yet, I do understand, that what this advice truly means, is that if you write about what you do not know yourself, there are more risks of using clichés, of being boring, of being to descriptive, as if we tried to make up for our ignorance. How to avoid that? 

In my soon to be published historical fiction novel As Winter Came and Went, I wrote about two types of places. Places I knew and places I didn’t:

• One place I know very well worked itself into the novel. Though the plot is set in the 19th century, the landscape of this place I wrote about changed very little, allowing me to describe it as I know it. It was easy and very agreeable to be able to set a good part of my novel in this place, which I really love, and I hope that this enable me to make my descriptions more authentic, effective, attractive.

 

• Then, a chapter of the novel is set in a place I never visited. I know about this place, I saw many pictures of this place, I’ve got a good idea of what this place looks like. This could have been enough to make it a credible enough setting. But I chose a different course: instead of describing the place I had heard of, I described another place, where I’d actually been. I sort of swapped the place I didn’t know for one I did, giving the second the name of the first. Why did I do that? Because the atmosphere of the second place and the impressions on my sense of sight, touch, smell, were both strong and interesting, I thought they could be worked into my novel and attributed to some of the characters. This resolved the problem of authenticity.

 

• But not every place can be exchanged for another. Another location of As Winter… was difficult to write about: though I had been to a place nearby, I had no direct experience of this specific location. So what did I do? Did I look at touristic brochures? Did I watch films set in that location? Actually, I did a bit of both, but this is not what made me able to describe this place. What I did to achieve that was very simple: I took the liberty of completely imagining the place I was describing, using but vague geographical references. In fact, I decided I did not so much want to describe a place as its effect on the main character’s mind. And I took the decision to wrap it all in magical realism and symbolism. So in that case, I exchanged a specific location for an atmosphere.

 

I’ll give more details about those different places (and give their names!) once I have published my novel.

 

I’ll conclude this post with my advice relating to writing about places you know and places you don’t:

 

• Writing about places you know well is easier and can help you be more authentic. You can also lend your characters your own feelings about this place and thus give depth to their personality.

 

• Being able to use those personal feelings about a place can help you steer clear of clichés and stereotypes, even if that place has already inspired many authors over the centuries.

 

• Yet not knowing a place should not stop you from writing about it. You can “exchange” it for a similar place you do know. For instance, if you want to set your novel in the Himalayan range, where you have never been, but know the French Alps very well, why not use that knowledge? The Mount Blanc cannot be substituted for Mount Everest but the feelings the mountain arouse, the cold, the rugged landscape, the hostile beauty of the mountain-range are so many elements that you can use in those descriptions.

 

• Another solution is to read touristic brochures, watch films, read books, find as many pictures and maps as you can of the place you want to describe, while trying to find an original angle for your description.

 

• And the last solution is to use the symbolism of a place instead of its geography, and be imaginative. After all, imagination is a writer’s most precious tool! 

"5 things a writer needs"

 

Right, so I've got the cat, the notebook, the pen... Now I'll make myself some coffee and have a piece of cake! Except that the cat is staring at me reproachfully... All right, all right, I'll eat some fruit instead...  

Old houses and historical fiction

 

I love visiting old houses. Medieval castles, 17th and 18th century châteaux, Georgian houses… Houses lived in by famous people. Houses preserved in such a way that time seems to have frozen, for hundred years or more… Stepping into the lives of people gone, of people past, feeling all the while as if I was the ghost, intruding into a world that is not my own. I love looking at the quaint, antique furniture. I love imagining what it would have been like to live in such a place. And for that reason, I find that old houses are an invaluable source of information and inspiration to write historical fiction.

Old houses and gardens can provide wonderful settings for historical fiction. As you walk on their grounds, as you gaze upon the ancient stones you can easily imagine the people who once dwelled there, who once walked on these paths, who looked at the same manor/chapel/castle as you do. When I create a novel, I tend to “play” the scenes in my head like the scenes from a film: for that reason, the setting and the costumes are very important to me, to help me visualize and produce those scenes, even if I do not describe them in the actual written passage.

 

For the same reason, interiors are very important. What better way to have a glimpse at the way people lived centuries ago, than to look at their drawing rooms, bedrooms, kitchens, furnished as they were all those years back, as if they were still lived in? A copper pan, a Chinese vase… A pile of scones, a painting by Constable. Dueling swords above the mantelpiece… Meissen plates, silver forks, sweet-peas picked that morning in the kitchen-garden… Morris wallpaper, letters on a writing desk… A goose-feather quill, a gilded clock... Small details, tiny details that somehow call back to life a patchwork of different historical periods.

I try to imagine my characters, the ones I’m currently writing about, others whose story I still have to invent, pushing the door, entering the room. Choosing a book from the shelves of the library, sitting down by the bow window. Or embroidering a cushion, as they look at the gardens and at the hills afar and a spaniel, tired out from a walk in the forest, sleeps at their feet. I take in the different details, some of which will make it into my novel. Objects, rooms, views, buildings...

As Winter Came and Went is set in the early 19th century and the characters live in and visit a number of fine houses, manors and such. I based myself on real houses to write about some of those fictional ones. Others are a mix of many different historical ones, with the architecture of one and the interiors of another. Gardens also play a role and I work in the same way, drawing inspiration from the different parks, woodland-gardens, kitchen-gardens, orchards, etc. that I visit.

 But I was not only inspired by “grand” houses. Stables, farms, longhouses, churches, thatched-cottages are so many historical buildings which are essential to the setting of my historical fiction novel, and to the feeling of authenticity which I strive to give it. A pub on the road-side, a cluster of cottages… An old post-office, a tiny village church… All quaintly historical. And with a little imagination, what stops you from going on a time-travelling journey as you walk along the cobbled streets of a small fishing harbour and look at the same horizon on which the wives and children of sailors projected their hopes and their fears?

 

"A Writer's Nightmare..."

 

One aspect of the blank page, about which I already wrote an article...

Publishing and the marriage market

I’m currently writing the first draft of the sequel to As Winter Came and Went, and working on the motivations and life-goals of the main characters. The heroine, a young woman living in 1820s England, whose social background is what we’d call today upper-middle class has many interrogations about marriage: she longs to be independent and be able to do her own things, make her own decisions but, because of her background, of her family, of society, she is in a situation where if she marries, she will be dependent on her husband, and if she does not, being a woman, she will not have more freedom and be dependent on her parents.

Thankfully, things have changed today, in some countries at least. For a woman to make a success of her life is not synonymous with making a good marriage. Though there are still way too many inequalities, women can have brilliant careers, women can decide whether or not they want to bear/raise/devote their time to children, women can vote and make political decisions, etc. The road towards total equality is still long, in some parts of the world more than in others, but there has, in a couple of centuries, being major advances than can only give hope for the future, for women, but also for all the different minorities whose voices, for one reason or another, are not heard as they should be. 

Anyhow, this post is not so much to talk about the condition of women as to share a comparison, maybe (probably) a very silly one, that came to my mind as I was writing my heroine thoughts. Aren’t writers in today’s world a bit in the same situation as women in the patriarchal society of 19th century Europe? Isn’t the publishing world like some sort of marriage market?

A publishing contract is a match between a writer and a publisher, just like marriage is a contract between two people. The writer brings a dowry, his/her book. In exchange, the publisher offers his protection and his name. Just like, in the 19th century, a man’s name and protection could help a woman to navigate her way in society, in the 21st century, the name of a publisher/publishing company, can give “respectability” (and credibility) to an aspiring author. There are even professional matchmakers, in the guise of agents. And writers depend on all these people, if they want to succeed, if they want their books to reach a wide audience.

Silly as it may sound, this comparison helped me pinpoint something that bothered me from the start when I started to interest myself at the publishing industry. We, authors, have the ideas, write the books, do all the hard work of editing and revising, and then what? And then we have to beg, we have to sell our charms, we have to smile and be ingratiating and seduce so that an agent will deign take an interest in us and propose a match to a publisher. And what do we get in exchange? A name, “respectability” and… pocket money (for we must be realistic: most authors do not become millionaires and cannot live solely from their writing). 

So yes, I do think there is something of the patriarchal society in the publishing industry. And I’m not saying that to revile any publisher or agent, but, as a writer, I’m not sure our position is that enviable or that we have much freedom. Do we even have the power to decide what becomes of our book? 

And this is why I believe self-publishing is such a wonderful opportunity and that it will become the future of publication. For self-publication, though it is a difficult route to choose, though it does not always give good results, though it does not have among the general public as good a reputation as traditional publishing, gives power to authors, and especially power over their own work and over their creativity. Yes, it is daunting to be the sole person responsible for the success of your book, but isn’t freedom and independence often daunting at first?

Some people rail at the fact that there are too many self-published books, whose quality is often mediocre. That the market is saturated by them. They’re right. But there’s another way to see this boom: self-publishing gives to people who would never have the opportunity to be published to get their work out there. And by doing that, it motivates more people to write and express themselves and find a voice through writing. 

In a few decades, we have gone from a world were only a social elite could write and be published to one that gives people from all backgrounds the opportunity to become an author. To have freedom and speech, express it and share it with others. I suppose, self-publishing is part of the same social and economic phenomenon as the growth of the Internet. 

So I won’t navigate my way through the marriage market that is the publishing industry. I’d rather take the destiny of my novel in my own hands, make my own creative decisions. And if it’s a complete failure? Well, I’ll only have myself to blame. And I won’t have any regrets.

"Hunting for ideas..."

Ideas for a short story, ideas for a blog post, ideas for a novel... Sometimes they're easy to find and captures, sometimes you've got to literally hunt for them, and still they elude you. And this applies to other types of creative processes... Right now I'm hunting for ideas for my next cartoons. Mmh, I think I can spot one over there... We'll see next week if I managed to catch it! 

As Winter Came and Went - Extract 2

Here is another extract of As Winter Came and Went. I think I'll try to post one per month on this blog, until the novel is published, which should be in December 2018.

This passage is situated at the beginning of the second chapter of the novel. The date is September 1820.

Please note that this is not necessarily the final version, since I am still in the process of revising my manuscript.

Feel free to comment and let me know if you like or dislike it, what you think work or doesn’t work, and if this taster makes you want to read the rest of the book!

Extract of Chapter 2

He looks at the fresh horses being harnessed to the stage coach. They already seem exhausted as if by the thought of the journey ahead. No rest, for them, no rest. A life spent trudging through the heavy mud of the road, with the wind and the rain flung at their faces. They sigh, life has been unfair to us. They did not ask to be born horses. They did not ask to pull the stage coach or for the road to be impracticable.
Two of them are bay, there is also a grey and a roan. After a few miles, they will be so splattered in mud there will be no telling what their colour was. The roan is skittish and rears and steps aside. The darker bay, which is especially bitter, tells him off by biting his neck. The driver cries hoarsely and lashes his whip over their ears. They sigh, we have a long way ahead.

Dennys looks at them and remembers the chestnut horse he left in Africa. He’s forgotten much but not that horse. He can see again every single hair on the gleaming coat, orange and gold, copper and brown, the white whiskers around the mottled-pink nose, the eyes reflecting the ochre-coloured land they gazed upon, the curved tips of the ears. How many days did he spend on the Chestnut’s back? How much of the two years he was in Africa? More than a companion, a friend. He left him where the palm trees dance and a great river flows. 

They sent me to buy horses on the day after we arrived. You go, Oliver said, you always had an eye for them. When we’d arrived, when we’d got off the boat, it was night. We were greeted by the warmth of an African night as we first set foot on this land. A few buildings, a few houses, and beyond, the night. I imagined Africa before I even saw her.
He joins his fellow passengers back inside the coach. Andrew is there, asleep in a corner, along with a newly-wed couple, a middle-aged woman carrying two baskets, one with a hen in it, and one without, and a shrunken old man with a face wrinkled like an apple. The couple is whispering and holding hands oblivious to their cramped surroundings.
A crack of the whip and they’re off. Whinnies, squeals. The roan must be annoying the dark bay again.
“Those roads are real bad,” the woman with the baskets mutters as they’re jostled and tumbled about. The hen squawks in assent. The old man is chuckling alone and rubbing his hands. The couple stops whispering for a bit to look at him surreptitiously.
The woman opens the basket in which there is no hen: it contains a whole roasted chicken instead. She takes a wing and eats it with relish. The hen becomes very quiet all of a sudden. The old man licks his lips.
The chickens in Africa, they weren’t as fat. Small and lean. Stringy ‘cause they ran too much. The cows were different too, like another breed of animal altogether. Thin and long-legged. Horns curved in the shape of a crescent, and a hump on their back. They raised clouds of dust as they were taken to market. Sacks full of spices, some common, some rare, and their smell was stronger than that of the fish and the meat. Meat and fish that’d been too long in the sun. Covered in flies they were. But the heady scent of the spices, they smothered the rest. Pointed domes, red and yellow and orange. Dried herbs. A sugary tea in a dusty glass; on the surface float two shrivelled mint leaves.
He gazes at the landscape as he would at a strange land. The low, thatched houses, the bramble in the hedgerows, where blackberries ripen, the yellowing leaves of the trees. A village. Dogs bark, big burly sheepdogs with thick coats. A woman stands in her doorway, rubbing floury hands on her apron, gazing at the coach with dumb, hostile eyes.  

"Why should I be just a horse?"

Should I say what happened next? No. You'll know what happened if you read the novel when I publish it!