Too Close to Home?--Reading Inside Your Own Genre

One of the reasons I have chosen to write historical fiction is because I have always loved reading it. Last year, almost every single book I read was an HF title, and this year I've had to make a conscious effort to branch out in other genres.

In some ways, however, becoming a historical novelist myself has been a double-edged sword when it comes to enjoying other historical novels. On the one hand, it makes me enjoy good historical novels even more. Besides appreciating the stories, I can also better appreciate the craft that went into writing them. On the other hand, it makes me more critical of poor historical novels. I am unable to turn a blind eye to flaws that I have worked hard to avoid in my own writing.

One example of this is my (relatively) new appreciation for narrative voice. After agonizing over whether to use first person or third person narrative in my novels and weighing the pros and cons of each, it gives me greater delight to see other authors use first or third person narrative well. I recently finished reading two of Kate Quinn's books where she changes between multiple first person narrators and some third person narration, and I was awed by the effectiveness of her approach.

Another example is the use of dialogue tags (e.g. he said, she chortled, they moaned). I've started to work harder on giving each of my characters distinct voices and getting rid of superfluous or distracting   dialogue tags. I also work hard on finding a balance between the invisible "said" and the sticks-out-like-a-sore-thumb verbs like "guffawed", "reminisced", "interpolated". (M.m. Bennetts had a lovely post a couple months ago on her philosophy of using dialogue tags.) Now, as I read other writers, especially historical novelists, I find myself automatically judging the flow of their dialogue--which leads to either a greater or lesser appreciation for their work.

A third example is in the realm of historical accuracy. I find that I can forgive a lot of liberties in eras I know little about. "What? You completely rearranged the chronology of this Roman emperor's reign? Fine by me--it was a great story!" In eras I have extensively researched, however (i.e. the Middle Ages), I tend to take umbrage over too much manipulation of facts. I especially hate having modern ideas superimposed on this time period. Knowing the history behind a brilliant novel like Anya Seton's Katherine makes me love it immeasurably more. Knowing the history behind a hack job like...well, let's not mention any names...makes me despise it utterly.

As much as I love reading books in my own genre, sometimes I find that I need to move outside it a little bit--not out of historical fiction entirely, but at least, into a different time period. I'm curious--do any other authors feel the same? Do you read books similar to your own, or are they a little bit too close to home?

Write What You Know: The Universality of Utter Frustration

There's a scene in my current WIP, Flower of the Desert, where Count Raymond, one of the Crusader nobles, feigns illness so he doesn't have to ride out to battle with the rest of the men. His plan? To accept the surrender of the enemy's citadel while his fellows are otherwise engaged.

Unfortunately, his rival Bohemond suspects his sudden sickness, and--sending a midnight messenger up the mountain--performs a power grab of his own. Bohemond makes a secret agreement with the citadel commander who promises to surrender only to him.

The Crusaders capturing the city of Antioch

I've had fun imagining Count Raymond's utter frustration when his carefully laid plan goes awry. I've had fun typing how furious he must have been when the citadel commander refused to fly his flag and bade him send up Bohemond's instead. The fun, however, has been entirely on my side of the computer screen, and not on Raymond's.

As a former teacher and now a stay-at-home mom, I've never been in a situation that's similar, on the surface, to Raymond's. But like most of humankind, I have experienced the emotion of utter frustration. So, in a sense, I'm writing what I know.

I used to think utter frustration was encapsulated in the computer printer not working--when you're about to be late to class, and the ink cartridge keeps telling you it needs to align, and you need that stupid assignment that you just finished seconds ago to PRINT! I now know that printing problems, although they're a close second, must yield the podium to the greatest frustration of all: taking apart my son's port-a-crib.

Normal port-a-cribs have their challenges, but this port-a-crib is a punishment that should have been reserved for one of the lowest circles in Dante's Inferno. The bottom bars (as well as the top bars) lock, and each bar has hidden pressure points that must be pushed so that it will fold in two places.

You have only to read the warning tag on the side of the crib to realize that its makers were not concerned with being user-friendly:

BASSINET WARNING 

FALL HAZARO-To help prewenl talls, DO NOT use this product when the inlanl begins to push up on hands and krees or has reached the manufaclurer’s recommended maximum weight, whichever comes lirst. 

SUFFOCATION HAZARD-Inlands can sullocade: In gaps between an etra pad and side of the bassinetcradle. On soft bedding. 

-NEVER add a mattress, pillow, comforber, or padding Use ONLY the pad provided by manutachurer. 

-If a sheet is used with the pad, use ONLY the one prowided by the bassinet or cradle manutadurer or one specifically designed to fit the dimension of the basshet or cradle mattress. To reduce the risk of SIDS (Sudden infant Dead Syndrome). Pedatricians recommend healthy infants be placed on their back to sleep, unless otherwise advised by your physician.

I kid you not. This is, letter for letter, the exact spelling of the tag on the outside of the port-a-crib. It looks like the "manutachurer" scanned in the text from the tag on another crib and then didn't care to (or wasn't able to?) read through it to see if there were any errors. 

While I may never have been thwarted in my plans to seize a mountainside fortress, I have definitely been thwarted more than once in my plans to collapse a recalcitrant port-a-crib. And if Count Raymond feels like cursing a little when he hears the bad news, I would certainly not be the one to cast the first stone.

The Alien Past: The Difficulties of Writing Religion

Last week the Historical Novel Society posted an interview with Lindsey Davis, the author of the Marcus Didius Falco series (some of my favorite books!). One of the questions Richard Lee asked was: "What do you find most alien about the past? Does it help or hinder your writing?"

Lindsey Davis' answer was quite concise. "Religion. I leave it out as much as possible."

I appreciate the honesty of this answer. And thinking back over the twenty books in the Falco series, I can see how Lindsey Davis does leave out the real heart of the Roman religion. Sure, she has Vestal Virgins as murder suspects and her protagonist being appointed the Procurator of the Sacred Geese, but throughout it all, Falco remains a dyed in the wool skeptic.

Skepticism seems to be the route many historical novelists choose to take for their protagonists. Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth comes to mind, where Ellen, one of the principal characters, is far more of a "free-thinker" than one would expect in twelfth century England. Follett's sequel World Without End imbues its characters with even more unbelief. Caris, the daughter of a fourteenth century wool merchant, is as unlikely a candidate for a nun as you will find. She doesn’t believe either prayer or relics have the power to heal; she doubts that the Church really knows what God thinks about things.

I think that many historical novelists choose to portray their protagonist as a skeptic is because they have a hard time relating to a true believer in religion. Like Lindsey Davis, they find the rituals and creeds of the past completely alien, and even more alien, the idea that such things could be taken seriously by someone. Religion is equated with superstition, something difficult for an educated modern to fathom, portray, or endorse.

But to correctly display a time period where religion was all-encompassing, would it not be the braver course to make the protagonist a believer rather than a skeptic?

A year and a half ago, I posted about some thoughts Sharon Kay Penman had on this subject. She listed religion as the number one way that the medieval world differed from ours. "All men--be they Christian, Jew, or Muslim--were convinced that theirs was the True Faith.... They can respect one another's courage, but neither side doubts that damnation awaits their foes." In her novels, Penman tries to make her characters, "acknowledge this bedrock belief, so alien to most of us today."

Anya Seton's novel Katherine is another book, along with Penman's, that seriously embraces the religious milieu of the period in which it is set. Whether or not Seton believed in the words of medieval mystics like Julian of Norwich, she made sure to show us that her heroine Katherine Swynford did. Instead of making Katherine a skeptic to make her more "relatable", Seton made her a believer and thus a better window into the world of the fourteenth century.

While writing the Chronicles of Tancred, I try to write about religion as if I were an eleventh century Norman adhering to the rites and rule of the Church of Rome. In some ways the fact that I am a twenty-first century American Protestant helps me in that task; in other ways it hinders me.

But when a scruffy drunkard has a vision of St. Andrew informing the Crusaders where the Holy Lance is buried, it's not my place to make my protagonist distrust him simply because I, the author, am dubious of visions, don't embrace the Roman Catholic view of sainthood, and don't believe relics have special powers. Instead, I must put myself in Tancred's worn-out boots. And though they might be more difficult to walk in, they make the journey more rewarding.

The Whole Art and Joy of Words

To say the thing you really mean,

the whole of it, nothing more or less or

other than what you really mean; 

that's the whole art and joy of words. 

--C. S. Lewis

I don't know if you've ever noticed it before--it's the quote on the header of this blog. The Greek tutor says it in C.S. Lewis' Till We Have Faces, and it's one of my favorite quotes about writing.

What it all boils down to is precision--using language to convey precisely what you want to convey. And precision--as knife throwers, crane operators, and race car drivers know--can only come through practice. *sigh*

The World's Best Writing, Part II

Last week I shared a scene from Jack London's The Call of the Wild as an example of great action writing. This week I want to share one of my favorite descriptive scenes--the opening paragraphs of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night.

I love how the description is full but not florid. Every adjective is there for a reason. The similes and metaphors ("rotted like water lilies," "its tan prayer rug of a beach") are striking but not outlandish. The world of the story that is about to unfold is as vibrant as the sun on the Riviera.

On the pleasant shore of the French Riviera, about half way between Marseilles and the Italian border, stands a large, proud, rose-colored hotel. Deferential palms cool its flushed façade, and before it stretches a short dazzling beach. Lately is has become a summer resort of notable and fashionable people; a decade ago it was almost deserted after its English clientele went north in April. Now, many bungalows cluster near it, but when this story begins only the cupolas of a dozen old villas rotted like water lilies among the massed pines between Gausse’s Hotel des Etrangers and Cannes, five miles away. 

The hotel and its bright tan prayer rug of a beach were one. In the early morning the distant image of Cannes, the pink and cream of old fortifications, the purple Alp that bounded Italy, were cast across the water and lay quavering in the ripples and rings sent up by sea-plants through the clear shallows. Before eight a man came down to the beach in a blue bathrobe and with much preliminary application to his person of the chilly water, and much grunting and loud breathing, floundered a minute in the sea. When he had gone, beach and bay were quiet for an hour. Merchantmen crawled westward on the horizon; bus boys shouted in the hotel court; the dew dried upon the pines. In another hour the horns of motors began to blow down from the winding road along the low range of the Maures, which separates the littoral from true Provencal France. 

A mile from the sea, where pines give way to dusty poplars, is an isolated railroad stop, whence one June morning in 1925 a victoria brought a woman and her daughter down to Gausse’s Hotel. The mother’s face was of a fading prettiness that would soon be patted with broken veins; her expression was both tranquil and aware in a pleasant way. However, one’s eye moved on quickly to her daughter, who had magic in her pink palms and cheeks lit to a lovely flame, like the thrilling flush of children after their cold baths in the evening. Her fine forehead sloped gently up to where her hair, bordering it like an armorial shield, burst into lovelocks and waves and curlicues of ash blonde and gold. Her eyes were bright, big, clear, wet, and shining; the color of her cheeks was real, breaking close to the surface from the strong young pump of her heart. Her body hovered delicately on the last edge of childhood—she was almost eighteen, nearly complete, but the dew was still on her. 

The World's Best Writing, Part I

Once upon a time, when I used to teach high school English classes, I gave my students examples of writing that it would behoove them to imitate. They're also examples that I look to for writing style inspiration.

The scene below--from The Call of the Wild, by Jack London--describes events with a furious and breathless momentum that places you in the middle of the action. I love the strong verbs, the short clauses, and the effective use of ellipses in the second paragraph.

“Now, MUSH!” 

Thornton’s command cracked out like a pistol-shot. Buck threw himself forward, tightening the traces with a jarring lunge. His whole body was gathered compactly together in the tremendous effort, the muscles writhing and knotting like live things under the silky fur. His great chest was low to the ground, his head forward and down, while his feet were flying like mad, the claws scarring the hard-packed snow in parallel grooves. The sled swayed and trembled, half-started forward. One of his feet slipped, and one man groaned aloud. Then the sled lurched ahead in what appeared a rapid succession of jerks, though it never really came to a dead stop again…half an inch…an inch…two inches… The jerks perceptibly diminished; as the sled gained momentum, he caught them up, till it was moving steadily along.

Men gasped and began to breathe again, unaware that for a moment they had ceased to breathe. Thornton was running behind, encouraging Buck with short, cheery words. The distance had been measured off, and as he neared the pile of firewood which marked the end of the hundred yards, a cheer began to grow and grow, which burst into a roar as he passed the firewood and halted at command. Every man was tearing himself loose, even Matthewson. Hats and mittens were flying in the air. Men were shaking hands, it did not matter with whom, and bubbling over in a general incoherent babel. 

Why Christians must Write and What They must Write about

This summer my alma mater, New Saint Andrews College, held a writing conference/workshop called Three Days in the Wordsmithy. I seriously considered attending, but what with David's work and the problem of finding babysitting, those plans failed to come to fruition.

Yesterday, I saw that CanonWired has released a video of Douglas Wilson's introductory talk at the conference, titled "Why Christians must Write and What They must Write about." Normally, I avoid watching Internet videos the way my husband avoids eating vegetables (why would you want to waste time watching a video when you could read/skim an article much more quickly?), but I made an exception and watched this one through to the bitter end. The end turned out to be the best part, so I'm glad I made it that far.


Wordsmithy | Why Christians must write, and what they must write about | Doug Wilson from Daniel Foucachon on Vimeo.


Just in case you also have an aversion to watching videos on the Internet--or don't have 26 minutes of time to spare--let me give you Doug Wilson's summary of the main points (in bold), with my notes following them.

1. You can't teach writing, but you can learn it. God has gifted some people with the ability to become good writers. The best writing teacher in the world can't make a gifted writer out of an ungifted person. Buy writing books and study them, but don't think you can force God into granting you a talent which he hasn't bestowed. If, however, you are truly called by God to be a writer, develop that calling and don't hide your talent in the ground.

2. Why should you write? Because Jesus is the Word and you're a Christian. Christians are inherently "people of the book," and people who must love words. All Christians are called to literacy, but some are especially gifted in the world of literature and should use those gifts to bless the rest of the Body of Christ.

3. How should you write?

• Pursue godliness - write with a Christian worldview
• Be interested in the world God has made - interested people are interesting
• Be observant - look around you; don't bury your head in the sand
• Love words - I love that he said this!
• Love words in time - or as he puts it another way, love "narratival unfolding"
• Be critical of your own work - and let others critique it; the only thing that should offend you is when there's not enough red marks
• Adopt as your subject matter the cosmos (i.e. everything) because God put it here for you to write about - a great reminder that anything is fair game to write about, as long as you keep the first point (pursuing godliness) in mind

So that, in a nutshell is the great start to the conference I never got to attend. If the first talk is any indicator, it sounds like the whole event was full of good pointers for Christian authors, whether novices or experienced in their craft.

* * * * *

And while we're on the subject of Christian authors, I'd like to give a shout-out to Daniel Wilson, a former high school student of mine and an aspiring author. This talk from the Wordsmithy conference reminded me of the tagline of Daniel's blog, "A writer's mission to create worlds with words, just like his Heavenly Father once did." I love that line!

Daniel's on another mission right now to gain 100 followers. Head on over to his blog and check it out--and if you like what you see, be sure to add yourself with Google Friend Connect.

The Most Feared Punctuation on Earth

I'll admit it: I'm extremely partial to semicolons. That's not to say I like them when they're used poorly, and I have been known to substitute an em-dash in a pinch. But, as one of my dear proofreaders can attest, I do tend to throw out semicolons like rice at a wedding (or like rice used to be thrown at weddings, before it was deemed hazardous to birds).

Today I ran across a funny article by The Oatmeal titled, "How to Use a Semicolon: The Most Feared Punctuation on Earth." If you're struggling with the rules of semicolon-age, or just want a good laugh, head on over there to read the rules, see the examples, and enjoy the funny illustrations. You can learn why, "The ice cream truck man drove by my house today; he had big, hairy knuckles" is a prime candidate for semicolon insertion, whereas, "I fought the bear and won. Also, I never kiss plague rats on the mouth," should stick with the more humdrum punctuation of a full stop.

I also enjoyed the explanation of how the semicolon can be used as a "super comma," enabling you to create descriptive lists such as this one:

My favorite people include Samuel Slaughterjaws, a famous unicorn hunter; my uncle Wilfred, a world champion at mayonnaise eating contests; and Nikola Tesla, the most awesome dude to ever fire a lightning bolt at an angry peasant.

Of Sequels and Such

One of the interesting (or do I mean frustrating?) things about writing a sequel, is that you have to catch the reader up on all of the relevant backstory from the previous book. How much time should you spend on reintroducing characters? How many of the subplots does the reader need to know? As I write the first chunk of chapters for Flower of the Desert, I have been dealing with these questions in a very concrete way. And sometimes, finding the right answers to them feels like pounding my forehead against a slab of concrete.

I remember reading various sequels whose opening chapters annoyed me to no end. If the author spends too much time on rehash, you think, "I already know all this from the last book--let's get on with the story!" If the author rushes through the recap too quickly and with too many narrative gaps, you feel a little bit of vertigo--"Was the plot of the last book really that confusing?" My least favorite sensation is when the sequel, in a botched attempt to summarize, tells a slightly different version of the story than the previous book. "That's not the way it happened...."

So, here's to hoping I don't make any of those mistakes with Flower of the Desert: Book II of the Chronicles of Tancred. Thanks for reading and enjoy the sneak peek at the cover for my WIP!

Author vs. Mother

Trying to get writing done with two six-month-old boys can be challenging. Last week--with the twins being sick, exhausted, teething, traumatized, and generally ill-tempered--it was especially challenging. Saturday, my self-imposed deadline, has come and gone, and I'm still trying to finish the rough draft of Road from the West. 

While pondering all the infant-provoked adversities that have afflicted my writing schedule (pardon me as I pause this blog post to go clean vomit off the rug), I ran across an interview with Nichole Bernier about the challenges of being both a writer and a mother. Ms. Bernier is "a freelance writer based in Boston, and the author of the novel The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D, to be published by Crown/Random House in early 2012." She has five children ranging in age from 21 months to 10 years old and offers an excellent perspective on mixing authorship with motherhood.

When asked about the impact of children on her writing career, Ms. Bernier says:

Being a mother has made me a lot more disciplined, because you have to take advantage of writing time when it comes, and I can't procrastinate deadlines until the last minute, because you never know what might get in the way. All-nighters aren't a viable option anymore.

All-nighters aren't the only thing a mom/author has to give up. Ms. Bernier mentions a theory of hers called "Three Things," the idea that anyone who has kids can only successfully devote their time to three other activities. "If you work outside the home, that's one big thing. If you exercise regularly, that's another. If you knit or belong to a book club or hold a board position at the kids' school or adore reality TV, there you go."

So what exactly has it meant for Ms. Bernier to juggle the roles of mother and author?

In practical terms, it meant years of giving over babysitting time to something that may or may not pay off financially.... In mental terms, it means finding the discipline to work when you have the time. The faucet has to go on and off based on the family schedule, not the ebb and flow of your ideas or mood. Emotionally, it's meant sometimes curbing the inner toddler that wants to throw a foot-stomping tantrum about not being able to write as much as some other writers do. Spending all day on revisions, or traveling for conferences or retreats--those aren't things that happen easily with family life. That's when I have to go back to square one and remind myself how lucky I am to know what it is I love to do and pursue it, because many people never do.

In an effort to help other mothers pursue that love of writing and break into the publishing world, Ms. Bernier offers a list of advice: make your writing as good as it can be, learn about agents and the querying process, and have a thick skin to rejection. But my favorite piece of advice is this one:

Network on social media. Write essays, articles, blogs, clever email, anything that's a limbering-up exercise to keep your thinking process sharp and your creativity going. But don't let that become so time consuming that it usurps the actual writing you want to see published.

*Sigh* Better get back to that manuscript I was working on.... New self-imposed deadline: Tuesday.

A Certain Degree of Shamelessness

What's wrong with literary self-promotion? Is it crass to energetically promote a novel or collection of poems or short stories that you have worked long and hard upon, and from which you hope to make a few dollars? Is there something immoral about an author renting out his image to build up his brand? Why should only rappers and athletes have their names on sneakers?

Columnist Paul Devlin asks these questions at the beginning of a 2006 article entitled "For Whom the Shill Tolls: Hemingway's Lost Work for Ringling Bros. and Ballantine Ale." In the piece, Mr. Devlin points out that Hemingway's self-promotion (while doing ad spots for these companies) was completely in keeping with American literary tradition. "Unlike their European counterparts, who could rely on the patronage of kings, nobles, or government-funded churches, American writers have long had to keep an eye on money, marketing, and 'self-legendizing.'" 


An essay in today's New York Times shows this American "self-legendizing" in action, in the person of nineteenth century poet Walt Whitman:

Walt Whitman notoriously wrote his own anonymous reviews, which would not be out of place today on Amazon. “An American bard at last!” he raved in 1855. “Large, proud, affectionate, eating, drinking and breeding, his costume manly and free, his face sunburnt and bearded.”

While Devlin sees this self-promotion as particularly American in nature, the New York Times essay shows that being born a European has never been a sure guarantee of patronage. Writers have had to resort to these sorts of Walt Whitman shenanigans ever since the days of clay tablets and papyrus scrolls. 

In 440 B.C. or so, a first-time Greek author named Herodotus paid for his own book tour around the Aegean. His big break came during the Olympic Games, when he stood up in the temple of Zeus and declaimed his “Histories” to the wealthy, influential crowd. 

This self-promoting trend did not stop with the "father of history." Book parties abounded at Oxford during the Middle Ages thrown by clergymen aspiring to be authors. Hot air balloons soared over the skies of nineteenth century Paris with the names of newly published short stories painted on the sides.


And today? Do we still have the same need to self-promote as did Herodotus, Whitman, and Hemingway? Absolutely! A Washington Post article from 2009 says: 

Book publishers actively market and promote authors, of course, particularly the big names, but for thousands of writers it's a figure-it-out-yourself world of creating book trailers, Web sites and blogs, social networking and crashing on friends' couches during a tour you arrange.... Authors are expected to behave like mini-entrepreneurs. 

The one thing that has changed, however, is the public perception (and self-perception) of the people who engage in this kind of self-promotion.  "In the intervening years," writes Devlin, "our culture has become increasingly preoccupied with 'authenticity,' and the reclusive genius seems more romantic to us than the swaggering boaster does." 


As one of the thousands of writers in a "figure-it-out-yourself" world, I must admit that I often feel a sense of great awkwardness in thrusting--or attempting to thrust--my work into the limelight. "Is it crass," Devlin asks, "to energetically promote a novel...that you have worked long and hard upon, and from which you hope to make a few dollars?" I suppose not, but it doesn't exactly feel noble either. 

In such moments of doubt, I look to history for reassurance. It’s always comforting to be reminded that literary whoring — I mean, self-marketing — has been practiced by the greats. 

The most revered of French novelists recognized the need for P.R. “For artists, the great problem to solve is how to get oneself noticed,” Balzac observed in “Lost Illusions,” his classic novel about literary life in early 19th-century Paris. As another master, Stendhal, remarked in his autobiography “Memoirs of an Egotist,” “Great success is not possible without a certain degree of shamelessness, and even of out-and-out charlatanism.” Those words should be on the Authors Guild coat of arms.

All Fiction is Fan Fiction

"Overheard on the Titanic," by Austin Kleon (Available for purchase here)

I read an interesting article yesterday by author/artist Austin Kleon titled "How to Steal Like an Artist (and 9 Other Things Nobody Told Me)." Mr. Kleon, who creates poetry by blacking out most of the words of newspaper articles, offers some amusingly illustrated advice for authors, artists, musicians, or any other kind of creative type. My favorite section of his essay states:

The question every young writer asks is: “What should I write?”
And the cliched answer is, “Write what you know.”
This advice always leads to terrible stories in which nothing interesting happens.
The best advice is not to write what you know, it’s write what you *like*.
Write the kind of story you like best.
We make art because we like art.
All fiction, in fact, is fan fiction.
The best way to find the work you should be doing is to think about the work you want to see done that isn’t being done, and then go do it.
Draw the art you want to see, make the music you want to hear, write the books you want to read.

 And that is why I write historical fiction.

Wherein Jasper Fforde Provides His Autograph and Advice for Writers

 On Monday night of this week, I had the distinct privilege of going to a Jasper Fforde book signing at the local Barnes & Noble. I went with a couple of friends, my mom, and my little brother (who was coerced into coming for lack of a babysitter). It started at 7pm; we got there an hour early, and just managed to get seats in the second to last row.

Jasper Fforde, in case you have not been introduced, is a Welsh author famous for his literary satire/fantasy. His current United States/Canada book signing tour is in honor of the recent publication of One of Our Thursdays is Missing, the sixth installment in the Thursday Next series that began with The Eyre Affair. Other series that he is in the process of writing are The Nursery Crime books and the Shades of Grey trilogy. Fforde writes like a quirky, modern P. G. Wodehouse, and the clever--but bizarre--nature of his characters, settings, and plots afford hours of entertainment. I have reviewed two of his books on my blog Read Room, The Last Dragonslayer and Shades of Grey: The Road to High Saffron.

The event at Barnes & Noble was billed as a reading from the new book and a book signing, so when I arrived there, I didn't realize that Fforde would actually be giving a forty-five minute talk on how his writing career started. Not only was his talk fascinating for all the readers interested in his back story, but it was also enlightening for aspiring writers.

The loudest message that I came away with was "Don't give up on getting your work published." Fforde was writing for ten years and had completed six books before any agent or publisher would touch his work. He mailed out dozens and dozens of query letters with first chapter included and received just as many rejection letters in response. Some of those queries are for the same books which are now receiving worldwide acclaim. Readers love them. He just had to get past the threshold guardians of the publishing houses before he could reach his audience.

When Fforde finally found an agent who would market his work, it was an agent who had just started up her own firm and had no clients--the perfect agent for new authors, Fforde says, because a new agent is willing to actually read submissions without rejecting them out of hand. She liked Fforde's book The Last Dragonslayer, but feared that in the current climate people would see it as a Harry Potter rip off. "Have you got anything else?" she asked. He sent her The Eyre Affair. Within three weeks she had found a publisher willing to put it out, and one of the publisher's first questions for Fforde was, "Can you write a sequel?"

Besides talking about his experiences of breaking into the publishing industry, Fforde also gave some anecdotal tips on writing itself. Everyone, he says, has the ability to be a writer; writing is simply telling a story, and humans are natural born storytellers. It's all about practice, Fforde says, just like any other skill you want to master.

One of the ways that Fforde honed his writing skills was by coming up with a problematic plot situation--a "narrative black hole," as he called it--and then "writing his way out of it." He gave the example of a short story that he had written where a man wakes up and finds a gorilla in the tree in his front yard. That was the narrative black hole. The subsequent story he created sounded like a brilliant farce, and I wish I had a copy of it to read. Using his creative ingenuity, Fforde resolved the gorilla situation and took the reader for an interesting ride along the way.

Another plot problem he gave to himself was a man finding that he has turned into a banana--except that the author banned himself from using the word banana throughout the whole story. Fforde created a Bronte-esque short story with a Gothic flavor as he told this man's tale of woe. He hopes that the reader's response shortly after finishing the story would be to slap themselves on the forehead and think, "I get it! He was a banana!"

This delayed realization that leads to hilarity is a reaction that Fforde often tries to generate. Throughout the talk, he mentioned several places in his books where the readers will be "punned by stealth." For example, in one of the Thursday Next books, he has a character named Page Turner, except he never refers to the character by her first and last name together -- until the final chapter of the book. The readers, seeing the two names in conjunction after all this time, finally get the joke. They've been punned by stealth.

While fielding questions from the audience, Fforde talked about his writing timetable for the next four years. He plans to release a book a year: one standalone, and one from each of the three series he is working on. The one I'm most excited about is the next Shades of Grey installment. The first book in this series, The Road to High Saffron, could be described as a humorous version of Orwell's 1984 (if that's possible). Interestingly, Fforde says that the Shades of Grey books are the most difficult for him to write since he's not "mining" the collective work of previous literature as he does in the Nursery Crime series and the Thursday Next books, but instead, is developing all the characters and plot lines on his own.

Above you have a picture of what Jasper Fforde looks like (right before he signed my copy of The Road to High Saffron). But what the picture doesn't convey is how amusing Fforde is in person (not just in writing) and how delightful his Welsh accent is. Below is Jasper Fforde in an interview he did with AM Northwest on one of our local news stations. It gives a brief impression of his mellifluous voice, but doesn't really express his wit as well as his talk at the book signing.

Next time Jasper Fforde comes to town, you should come out to hear him talk! I can guarantee you won't be as bored as my little brother Zane was....

Mom throws Zane a bone by buying him the next book he needs in the Boxcar Children series.

Five Different Ways of Viewing the World

Would someone unfamiliar with the MA [Middle Ages] be repulsed by the description of a medieval execution, with its throngs of avid spectators and its raucous fair-like atmosphere? Shocked that Henry and Eleanor married their daughters off before they reached puberty? How far do you think historical novelists should go to make their books palatable to modern readers? Is it necessary to make the characters in a novel about the ante-Bellum South all secret abolitionists at heart in order to win reader sympathy? What of a family living in Nazi Germany?

Historical novelist Sharon Kay Penman asks these questions at the conclusion of a recent article entitled History vs. Fiction. Ms. Penman's stated goal for her fiction is "to make the MA [Middle Ages] come alive to readers in a way that makes them want to keep turning the pages." At the same time, she is a self-proclaimed fanatic about historical accuracy. So what does she do when her MA characters view the world in a way that she (and her audience) disagrees with?

Ms. Penman identifies five ways in which the modern mindset differs significantly from the medieval mindset: "the concept of religious tolerance, anti-Semitism, the conduct of war, the status of women, and the treatment of animals." She gives examples from her novels to show how she deals with these difficult issues, trying to fairly represent the medieval characters without anachronism, but striving not to alienate her readers who come from a world wholly different. One great annoyance to me is when historical fiction authors turn their protagonist into a mouthpiece for twenty-first century propaganda, and this article is a refreshing reminder to me to be careful how I craft my characters.

"Religious tolerance," according to Ms. Penman, "was as rare in the MA as the unicorn. All men--be they Christian, Jew, or Muslim--were convinced that theirs was the True Faith.... They can respect one another's courage, but neither side doubts that damnation awaits their foes." Instead of making her characters agnostic or doubters of their own religion (as Ken Follett repeatedly did in World Without End), Penman tries to make them true to life. "I have to care in my novels to acknowledge this bedrock belief, so alien to most of us today." 

As I evaluate my own writing, I can say that describing religious "intolerance" in my writing isn't really a problem. I share the bedrock belief with the denizens of the Middle Ages that there is only one way to heaven, that not all faiths are equal. In Road from the West, all of my characters (Muslim, Jew, Christian, and even the various sects within Christianity) are inflexibly sure of the truth of their own religion.

Ms. Penman's second point is that, "Anti-Semitism is the ugly underside of medieval life." Even though it still exists to this day, "the difference is that in the MA, the Church gave official sanction to it." How does she portray this in her novels? 

I try to stay true to the tenor of the times, so virtually all of my characters are infected to some degree. When I needed a character to voice doubts, I had to choose an outsider to make it believable, a character who was a natural rebel and therefore more likely to question even the teachings of the Church....

I have thought about the subject of Anti-Semitism a lot in my own research and writing. Ms. Penman's claim that "in the MA, the Church gave official sanction to it," is a prevalent notion, and is based on the previous concept of religious intolerance. The Church taught that the Jews were going to hell, therefore, the Church taught people to be Anti-Semitic.

But at the same time, when looking at the primary sources it is interesting to note that it is the laity, and particularly the money-hungry monarchs who take anti-Semitism to the extremes of torture and murder. It was King John who pulled out a Jew's teeth to force him to reveal where his fortune was hidden, not the Church. It was Edward I who issued the edict expelling all the Jews from England. During the First Crusade, when German adventurers decide that the "will of God" is to murder all the Jews in the Rhineland, it is the Christian bishops who hide the Jews in their churches and denounce the actions of these "Crusaders" as evil. This is an often forgotten episode in history that I plan to describe in Road from the West.

The third area where Ms. Penman sees radical difference is in the medieval attitude toward war.

During the MA, the Church attempted to shield noncombatants, too--women, children, priests, pilgrims, etc. But the nature of medieval warfare--laying waste the lands of one's enemies--all but guaranteed there would be civilian casualties. And kings, knights, and soldiers accepted this as inevitable.... There was a strain of pacifism in the MA; there were even a few to criticize the crusades. But we're talking of a small minority and their views never wielded any influence.... So to be true to the times, I cannot have my characters reacting to the destruction of a town or the raping of its women as if it were a war crime, the way we would characterize it today.

I am pleased to see that Ms. Penman acknowledges that there was a pacifistic strain in the MA. I think she marginalizes the pacifist segment a little too much, however. There were many times throughout the centuries when the Church tried to impose the "Truce of God" on bickering barons, forbidding them to fight except between Monday and Wednesday, and not at all on Church holy days. The Church was not exactly a "minority" in society.

Did all kings, knights, and soldiers accept the carnage as "inevitable"? Were they all murderous brutes like the characters in Michael Crichton's Timeline? In my research on Tancred for Road from the West, the primary sources display pieces of his character that seem bipolar in our modern age. Ralph of Caen writes about Tancred:

Over time, however, his prudent soul raised concerns that caused him anxiety. It seemed that his military life contradicted the Lord's command. The Lord had commanded that after one cheek had been struck the other was to be offered as well. But a secular military life did not even permit the sparing of a relative's blood. The Lord admonished that it is necessary to give over one's cloak, as well, to the one asking for a tunic. By contrast, the necessity of military life urges that once these two garments have been seized, the rest are to be taken as well. These two principles opposed one another and undermined the bravery of a man full of wisdom [Tancred], if, indeed, they ever permitted him to sleep. But when Pope Urban's decision granted a remission of all sins to all of the Christians setting forth to fight against the pagans, then finally it was as if the vitality of the previously sleeping man was revived, his powers were roused, his eyes were opened and his boldness set in motion.

At first, it seems that Tancred has a "pacifist streak" to him, but at the end of the paragraph we see that the way he intends to atone for his sins of warfare is by entering into more warfare against the pagans. Later on, we learn that Tancred has no such scruples about the warfare in the East; after killing 700 Turks in battle, Tancred sends Bishop Adhemar 70 heads as a "tithe" of his prowess. This seeming contradiction relates to the first concept of "religious intolerance," and adds a little more dimension to the kings, knights, and soldiers of this age. For many, killing Christians was unacceptable while killing infidels was praiseworthy.

The fourth subject Ms. Penman addresses is the status of women in the MA. A current trend in historical fiction is to have "strong women" be the protagonists, women who exemplify the twenty-first century feminist ideal. Ms. Penman denounces these sort of characters as unhistorical:

Yes, there were those rare rebels like Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Empress Maude, but they paid a great price for their independent spirits. It is obvious that both Eleanor and Maude chafed under their matrimonial bonds, wanting more freedom than their world was willing to allow. But there is no evidence that they viewed themselves as part of an oppressed sisterhood; they wanted power and autonomy for themselves, not for all members of their sex. So it would be unrealistic if I were to write of a female character resentful of male dominance, one eager to prove herself as capable as any man.

This point is one I especially appreciated. I have recently read three different novels by three different authors all of which featured the character Eleanor of Aquitaine. Two of the three tried to do the very thing that Ms. Penman deplores, making Eleanor the champion for the rights of womankind against a male-dominated society.

Ms. Penman's last point is about the treatment of animals in the MA. She acknowledges that while a few rich people did have pets, "when daily life is so hard, few can spare sympathy for hungry dogs. This is especially true in a world in which people believe that God has given them dominion over the earth and all in it." It is interesting to note that she traces harsh treatment of animals back to Church. If it is a result of Christianity, then it is a misapplication of it somehow since Proverbs teaches that "the righteous man regards the life of his animal."

I would contest that the medieval view toward animals is more derived from being an agricultural society. When you live on a farm, you don't cry if a sheep gets slaughtered. Your dog is there to hunt and protect the house, and while you may feel some affection for him, the reality of frequent mortality makes you less sentimental.

Sharon Kay Penman's post is an excellent reminder to historical fiction authors to consider well what ideas we are carrying in our pockets when we time travel. She clearly identifies the five different ways of viewing the world between our era and the Middle Ages and provides so much food for thought that I'll be munching on it for some time to come.

What's Grammar Good For?

I have always felt that a writer should know all the rules of grammar, not in order to slavishly follow them, but in order to recognize what purpose they serve and when it is effective to break them. Today I read a humorous article by Daniel Silliman entitled "The other thing grammar is good for" that reinforced my opinion ever so eloquently. 

Grammar didn’t come natural to me. The first time, when I learned there was such a thing as grammar, when we were introduced — like, “Daniel, meet grammar,” “Grammar, Daniel” — things did not go smoothly. It was more like sliding bare-bottomed down a sandpaper hill.

As soon as I read the simile in that last sentence, I knew that Silliman's essay was going to be a good one. He goes on to describe a childhood effort at story writing that came back with the teacher's blood red markings all over it, and the angry word "GRAMMAR" scrawled across the top. The next part of the essay is too delicious to paraphrase:

The whole idea that there were rules, out there somewhere, was a little disturbing. How was I supposed to know what they were? Who decided the rules were the rules? Also, they seemed kind of arbitrary.... Was I the only one who was starting sentences with conjunctions and I just never noticed that no one else did it?

This is a little like wondering if you are retarded, and everyone’s just been too nice to tell you. Or maybe they tried to tell you, and you were just too slow to actually get what they were saying.

But wait — I wasn’t the only one who started sentences with “but” or “and.” The Bible has sentences that stat with “but” and “and,” which meant that my grammar was like the same as God’s.

I tried that defense with Miss Lane, but she said I was still wrong. She didn’t say so, but apparently she would’ve marked up God’s writing too.

Silliman uses this anecdote to explain why many people have negative perceptions of grammar. It's just a bunch of rules that they don't understand and that teachers mark them down for breaking. To Silliman, however, the "rules" of grammar are more like Newton's "Laws." They describe the way things generally work. "[G]rammar is not, for me, about being right, but about breaking down the language and taking it apart, so that one can know how it works and can make it work most effectively." To explain the importance of learning grammar, Silliman uses the analogy of auto mechanics: the best way to find out how the engine works is to take it apart.

The ability to analyze how sentences fit together gives a writer the ability to control those sentences. That is a claim commonly made when defending the study of grammar. Interestingly, Silliman goes a step beyond this and claims that knowledge of grammar gives readers a better ability to understand what they are reading. He looks at various writings, both prose and poetry and shows how the reader can better connect with the author's intention by analyzing the sentence structures involved.

Silliman sums up his essay with these two insightful paragraphs:

For most of us, I think, grammar is a brutal, brutal thing.... We’re afraid of grammar because “grammar” means making stupid mistakes — there, their or they’re, or something like that — and we imagine stupid mistakes being taken as evidence of our real intelligence and value. That’s too bad, though, because it doesn’t have to be that way.

Grammar can be empowering. It can be about being a better writer and a better reader. It was, eventually, for me. I now know that it can be about knowing how the language works, instead of just driving along, listening to the rattle and choke under the hood, waiting, clenched up tense inside and waiting, until the whole thing breaks down.

Who's Counting, Anyway?

In the past several months I've discovered the inestimable value of counting. After the birth of the twins, I was afraid that my writing would suffer a severe setback. To forestall this, I set myself a weekly goal of 2500 words. I also created a way to track how well I was meeting that goal, designing a daily spreadsheet to log my progress. So far, all this counting has been a smashing success. For each of the last three weeks I have been able to meet or exceed my goal, and if I can keep it up, I should be finished with the rough draft of Road from the West sometime in April.

Since keeping count has helped so much with my writing, I've decided to try something similar with my reading. For 2011 I've joined two historical fiction reading challenges. The first one is hosted by Historical Tapestry. The rules of the game are these:

• Read any kind of historical fiction book during 2011 (HF Fantasy, HF Young Adult, etc.)
• Post a review about it on your blog.
• Add the link to your review on the Historical Tapestry website.

The categories for entry are:

1. Severe Bookaholism: 20 books
2. Undoubtedly Obsessed: 15 books
3. Struggling the Addiction: 10 books
4. Daring & Curious: 5 books
5. Out of My Comfort Zone: 2 books

I'm shooting for number one, Severe Bookaholism. I'll be posting my reviews on Read Room, my book review website.

In addition to this challenge, I've also joined another one hosted by Holly at Bippity Boppity Book. It's called the Chivalrous Deeds: Historical Fiction Challenge, and is similar to the Historical Tapestry challenge, but with a little bit of a twist.

The object of the challenge is to "visit as many courts as possible," which basically means that your historical fiction choices have to have royalty in them. As with most challenges, you must post a review to your blog and post a link back on Bippity Boppity Book. There are two prizes for this challenge, to the person who reads the most books and to the person who visits the most different courts.

I've decided from experience that the most successful resolutions are those that can be tracked and quantified. Last year my resolve was to read the Bible in a year, and it was only by adhering to a strict schedule (and meeting with my Bible Study prayer and accountability group) that I was able to succeed.

Read more and write more--those are two of my New Year's resolutions for 2011.

Who's counting, anyway? I am.

Back Cover Blurbs

My husband and I have lately been introduced to Dominion, a strategy game where you build up a deck of action and treasure cards to gain victory points. (As an aside, this is a great Christmas present for the game-lovers in your family.) The manufacturer's description of the game reads like this:

You are a monarch, like your parents before you, a ruler of a small pleasant kingdom of rivers and evergreens. Unlike your parents, however, you have hopes and dreams! You want a bigger and more pleasant kingdom, with more rivers and a wider variety of trees. You want a Dominion! In all directions lie fiefs, freeholds, and feodums. All are small bits of land, controlled by petty lords and verging on anarchy. You will bring civilization to these people, uniting them under your banner. But wait! It must be something in the air; several other monarchs have had the exact same idea. You must race to get as much of the unclaimed land as possible, fending them off along the way. To do this you will hire minions, construct buildings, spruce up your castle, and fill the coffers of your treasury. Your parents wouldn't be proud, but your grandparents would be delighted.

It is interesting how many strategy games nowadays tap into the "medieval" world to draw a crowd. It is also interesting how the "storyline" behind this game has almost nothing to do with the game itself. I almost laugh every time I read the part about wanting a more pleasant kingdom "with more rivers and a wider variety of trees."The game has little to do with any of those elements. Relying solely on this description, those who have never played Dominion would probably think that it is a board game like Risk or maybe even like Settlers of Catan.

The back of a book cover can often act the same way as this game description.The author (or publisher) tries to highlight the most interesting--or sensational--parts of the story to capture the attention of prospective readers. Sometimes the information on the back cover bares scant resemblance to the story inside.

Having written the back cover for I Serve, I know how hard it can be condense a 100,000 word novel into a 200 word blurb. For me, it was a necessary exercise, however, since I had no publisher or publicist to write it for me. It was also a valuable exercise and one that I will be glad to do again when my next book is finished. Who should know the book better than the author? If the author herself cannot explain the plot and themes in a half page of prose, then it seems likely that the plot of the novel is rambling and the themes are unclear. If the author cannot make herself interesting in 200 words, then it seems likely that 100,000 words on the same subject will prove more than a little tedious.

Erratic Muse October Giveaway

Miss Pickwickian over at the Erratic Muse is doing another book giveaway! For the rest of the month of October you can enter to win one of three books:

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life, by Donald Miller

On Writing Well: A Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction, by William Zinsser

Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl: Wide Eyed Wonder at God's Spoken World, by N. D. Wilson

I haven't read anything by William Zinsser, but the other two authors are definitely worth the read. Donald Miller is a Portland, OR resident most famous for his spiritual autobiography Blue Like Jazz. N. D. Wilson has earned lots of acclaim in the last few years for his juvenile fiction Leepike Ridge and the 100 Cupboards trilogy.

You can enter this giveaway by commenting on Miss Pickwickian's post, becoming a follower of her blog, or posting about it on your own blog. The giveaway winner(s) will be drawn November 1 and will receive the book of their choice.

How Many Words a Day?

Today I perused an interesting article by James Thayer in Author Magazine entitled "How Many Words a Day?" The question posed, discussed, and answered by Mr. Thayer regards how many words each day on average an author should attempt to move from his brain onto the blank page. The article provides many amusing anecdotes about famous authors and their work habits.

English writer, Charles Hamilton—who used twenty-five pseudonyms, the most famous being Frank Richards—was so prolific that George Orwell accused him of being a team of writers.  Hamilton responded, “In the presence of such authority, I speak with diffidence; and can only say that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, I am only one person, and have never been two or three.”  He wrote a million and a half words a year, or about twenty pages each working day (assuming 250 working days in a year).

Prolixity of this magnitude is astonishing to say the least! Mr. Thayer goes on to talk about other writers who produced prose at a slower rate.

J.R.R. Tolkien wrote The Lord of the Rings as one novel, which contains about 670,000 words.  It took him eleven years, which is 245 words each working day, or a little less than a typed page. 

Some writers manage their time by devoting certain hours of the day to authorial pursuits. T.S. Eliot had a full time job at the bank, so he made time to write by rising "two hours earlier than was strictly necessary." Rudyard Kipling had his own daily pattern of writing "in the middle of the day, from ten to four." Stephen King writes only in the mornings and reserves the rest of the day for other tasks. Detective fiction author Anne Perry writes "eight or nine hours a day, six days a week."

After discussing the writing habits of many famous authors, Mr. Thayer suggests his own answer to the question: how many words a day? "Writing your novel will be easier if you draft a schedule," he says. "A plan...will organize and prod you, and it will increase the odds you complete the novel." Here is the schedule he proposes:

Initial plotting: one or two weeks.
Research and further plotting: four to six weeks.
Drafting outline: two to three weeks.
Writing the novel: one page (300 words) a day. Finish the novel one year after starting the first manuscript word. If you work full time, 300 words a day is a reasonable goal.
Editing the completed manuscript: about one month.

I could not read Mr. Thayer's proposed schedule without immediately wondering: how does my writing measure up to this? Whenever I spend time writing my novel, I generally get anywhere from 500-1000 words on the page. Unlike Anne Perry and other disciplined writers, however, I most definitely do not write six days a week. Usually, it's more like one to three days a week. Crunching the numbers, it seems that I am a little slower than he recommends, and it will probably take me longer than a year to write my current novel, Road from the West.

Would setting a stricter writing schedule increase my speed? Not necessarily. Mr. Thayer himself remarks that for some people, "a detailed plan is too easy to fall behind, and then discard in frustration." A strict schedule may inspire some authors to keep going with their writing, but for me, it's something else entirely. I have the special motivation of having a husband who asks me about my progress almost every day, who reminds me that I should be writing whenever I complain that I have nothing to do, and who eagerly anticipates the completion of my next book so that he can launch it into the marketplace of publishers. I don't need a schedule; I have David. Which reminds me...I need to stop blogging and get back to working on that novel in case he asks me about it when he gets home tonight.

Archaic vs. Accessible

Carla Nayland, author of Paths of Exile and Ingeld's Daughter, has an excellent essay entitled "Archaic Terminology in Historical Fiction." First, she notes the pluses of using "archaic" words to create atmosphere within a historical novel:

On the one hand, period terminology can evoke a sense of entering a different world. If one opens a novel and encounters...a fyrdman carrying a seax or a musician playing a rebec, it’s immediately apparent that the story is set in a world that is not the same as the modern world, where people dress and act and perhaps think differently.

 Then she offers the corollary caution:

On the other hand, archaic terms can act as a barrier. Too many words that are too unfamiliar can create the impression that this world is not so much different as incomprehensible. 

There are two ditches here that the historical fiction author must scrupulously avoid. Overburdening your novel with archaic (but accurate) words might make it cumbersome and confusing to the average reader. And yet modernizing all terms can destroy the atmosphere of the world you are trying to create. What's an author to do? Nayland gives her solution:

I prefer to err on the side of accessibility, given a choice.... For me, too many archaic terms have the effect of distancing me from the story. I like to ‘translate’ archaic terminology into a modern or near-modern equivalent whenever I can, in the hope that this makes it easier for a reader to conjure up the intended mental image.

How does this philosophy work itself out in her writing? Nayland gives some examples from her novels which are set during the Anglo-Saxon period. Instead of using the Anglo-Saxon word "Witan" for the assembly of nobles who advised the king and chose his successor, she chooses to use the more accessible word "Council." Instead of using the technical name "seax" for the Anglo-Saxon weapon, she uses a simple phrase like "fighting knife." Sometimes, if she feels that the word has no acceptable modern equivalent, she will use it as-is, though making sure to define it by explanation or context.

I am curious what historical fiction readers think of Ms. Nayland's approach to archaic terminology. Patrick O'Brian, in his 19th century naval series starting with Master and Commander, uses a plethora of unfamiliar nautical terms (so many that Dean King has published a Lexicon for readers to use as they are reading O'Brian's books). And yet, Patrick O'Brian's series, which immerses you in the atmosphere of the Napoleonic era, is immensely popular.

How accessible should a book be? Do you, as a reader, want to be stretched by having to deduce what certain archaic/unfamiliar terms mean? Or will you give up on the book if you encounter anything in unfamiliar language? Examples?