First reader and other fears

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The second draft of The Next Novel is being read right now by Dan Smetanka, a wonderful free lance editor in L.A. Am I nervous? You bet! This is its first public airing. In preparation for the next revision — the third draft — I'm rereading it myself. I've been dreading doing this, but now that I'm a good 100 pages in, I feel more at ease.

Not that there aren't problems, both big and small. I've a lot of work ahead. I marvel at the writers who are able to create a coherent novel in a year or two.

The small problems are almost amusing. Who was the author who advised his daughter, also a writer, to "always make sure that the moon is in the right place"? This is basically saying: attend to the details. I had to laugh: one scene opens in spring and in the course of a few hours moves into fall and then winter. It's a good thing Dan has a sense of humor.

Travel research tips for writers of historical fiction

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I recently received this e-mail from a reader: 

I am working on a manuscript of historical fiction and plan on traveling to the sites associated with my tale (Wales).  I was wondering if you had any advice you could share as to how you visit the places in your stories.  How do you absorb/experience them in a way that you take into your writing? Given your current travels in France, I thought this would be a particularly opportune time to ask.  

Because of the travel complications this spring (due to volcanic ash), I had to consider the possibility of finishing the novel I'm working on now without travel research. I'd done quite a bit of research on my last trip, and I thought it might be possible to manage, given how much is available on-line.

Wrong!

We'll be back home in Canada in a few days, and once my head clears, I'll dive into writing the third draft. I'm already dizzy with the realization of how much will need to be changed due to the "on-the-ground" research I've done.

When I started travel research for the first of the Josephine B. Trilogy, I was overcome with the feeling of presence. "Josephine walked here." Experiencing a character's tangible reality was important to me ... and it continues to be, for every book I write. Having a feel for a character's physical world gives me a certain authority when writing.

But also, for me, it's a lot about logistics: how did she get from here to there? What were the dimensions of her world?

In other words, facts of the type that are difficult to convey in print.

I also find that there can be wonderful books available in museums that are difficult to discover otherwise. I always check the children's section, as well. This trip, I found a wonderful illustrated children's book on the building of Versailles. Since Versailles was in the process of being built during the period I'm writing about, this was a find!

Practical tools

On the practical side, I find it important to wear a (not very flattering) "fanny pack" with all my tools easily at hand: camera (well charged), pencil, notepad, map, money, etc.

This trip I discovered that a recording device is indispensable. (Sometimes I'll have a camera in one hand, and the recording device in the other.)

I photograph display information that I can then put into Evernote (which then become searchable). I photograph street signs and spots on a map so that I know, once home, what the photographs following are of.

Creating a special map with Google map has been a very helpful on-line tool for keeping track of all the sites relevant to this novel.

I hope this helps! I'd love to hear from others about their travel research tips.

Forging historical fiction when facts differ — or are scarce

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In response to a question on a historical fiction list about forging fiction from little fact (or from differing "facts"), historical author Elizabeth Chadwick posted this wonderful answer:

You do as much background research as you can, both the narrow and the broad, into the person, their lifestyle, and the times in which they lived.

If there's not a lot available about them, then you research the people who interacted with them — their lifestyles, and the people who in turn interacted with them. 

You dig and then you dig some more. This way you build up the layers in the picture and get a feel for what's right and what's not. 

... If you do the research in enough depth, your story will have the integrity that does history, you, and the reader justice. 

How you utilize your research in the novel is down to your personal skills as a writer. Both story and history need to come alive for the reader and shine. No one can be 100% accurate and as writers our imagination is perhaps the most essential tool in our kit, but integrity matters I think.

If you are writing about someone who actually lived, then you keep as close to their personality as you can and portray their world as it actually was — or as close as you can get, and that includes attitudes as well as furniture. If your characters are imaginary then the same. That's my take on it anyway - for what it's worth :- )

(The emphasis is my own.)

I'm in Paris now, doing research. So much rewriting ahead! As always, I find on-the-ground research essential.

*****
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I get wonderful emails from readers, but this charming account especially moved me.

Dear Ms Gulland

Some people have said that I should not make the following admission but I
have, on a number of occasions, fallen foul of female acquaintances when I
have occasionally admitted that, as a male baby boomer privately educated in
the UK, I tend to overlook books by female authors. I can only be truthful,
and have always put it down to education and "conditioning" by the boys'
school I attended, along with its male-dominated reading lists.

On Friday last I found myself in the Sydney City Library and decided, on the
spur of the moment, to borrow the first book by a female author that my eye
landed on. It was "The Many Lives...." and I have not been able to put it
down over the weekend. It has turned out to be one of the most enjoyable
"penances" I have ever received.

You will probably be disappointed that I did not buy the book, but I do
intend to buy the sequels.

Thank you.

Stephen Baddeley

When asked permission to quote his letter on this blog, Stephen added:

My city library does have the balance of the trilogy on the shelf, but only the third book was available when I checked. It is ever thus with lending libraries, so I reserved the 2nd part of the trilogy and naturally took possession of the Last Great Dance ...

Last weekend I couldn't wait to follow the sequence and started the third book regardless. Apart from work and golf, I haven't put it down, and I have had to explain to fellow golfers why I have been reading these books at the club before each round, rather than gathering with them on the veranda for a drink before the round!

My imagined reader is a woman, but I like to think that my novels appeal to men, as well.

Thank you, Stephen!

Joyce Carol Oates on "biographically fueled fiction"

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Fact-based fiction? Biographical fiction? What does one call fiction that is based on the life of a historical character. I like Joyce Carol Oates' expression: "biographically fueled fiction."

Here's what she had to say about it in a review of a biographical novel about Emily Dickinson in the New York Review of Books:

In these exemplary works of biographically fueled fiction it's as if the postmodernist impulse to rewrite and revise the past has been balanced by a more Romantic wish to reenter, renew, and revitalize the past: not to suggest an ironic distance from its inhabitants but to honor them by granting them life again, including always the stumbling hesitations, misfires, and despair of actual life....

Just a snippet ... I'm packing for France: research with wine and cheese!