Tag Archives: Novel writing

Only in the Past

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(A/N: Post title is taken from the song of the same name by The Be Good Tanyas.)

What exactly is historical fiction, anyway?

I’ve been actively writing it for five months now, and thought about writing it for at least two years prior to that.  But it’s only in the past two months that I’ve actually stopped to ponder what historical fiction is really all about as a category of novels.

I have a blogger that I follow to thank for this period of reflection.  Over at the blog entitled On Becoming a Wordsmith, historical fiction writer Elaine Cougler has been generating good discussion on this topic, starting with this post and continuing with this one.

According to Elaine (quoting Wikipedia), at its simplest, historical fiction is defined as follows:

Historical fiction tells a story that is set in the past. That setting is usually real and drawn from history, and often contains actual historical persons, but the main characters tend to be fictional. Writers of stories in this genre, while penning fiction, attempt to capture the manners and social conditions of the persons or time(s) presented in the story, with due attention paid to period detail and fidelity.

From what I gather from the discussion over at Elaine’s blog, the historical fiction genre (and I use the term “genre” very loosely here, as the second post I’ve linked above raises the issue of whether historical fiction is truly a genre at all), can be further divided into two broad subcategories:

a) Stories that contain actual historical personages and historically accurate events.

b) Stories in which the era and location they’re set in is historically accurate, but the characters (and perhaps even the events as well) are fictitious.

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Building a History

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(A/N: Post title is a play on the song Building a Mystery by Sarah McLachlan.)

I never planned to become a writer of historical fiction.

Cooking and feasting – The Bayeux Tapestry, circa 1070, England

From what I gather from various authorities on the matter, no sane person ever would.

When I first started taking myself seriously as a writer and writing with a view to someday attempt getting my work published, fantasy was my genre of choice.

Fantasy, after all, was the genre unbounded by the rules of the modern world, and even the natural world.  It was the genre in which anything could happen so long as it was properly motivated and followed some manner of internal consistency.

It was the genre in which you could make your own rules.

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My Writing Journey – finale

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Continued from Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4:

England’s Parliament building and Big Ben shot from the London Eye, in the rain (Photo: J. Noelle).

I told myself it would be best to take a short break from writing – just until I’d had a chance to settle into my new job and home, and establish myself socially.

That “break” lasted six years.

They say that love is blind.  I’d like to submit my own saying: love can make you stop writing.  Especially when it is unrequited love.  For my time away from writing my novel did indeed involve unrequited love, as well as obsession of an entirely different sort, rivalry, a joking/not joking threat of getting shoved off a boardwalk, and is practically a novel in its own right.

I’m not going to discuss it in any detail, for though it was a significant experience in my life that would go on to shape many things to come and perhaps even still does, it’s not a part of my “story” that I wish to continue living and carrying around with me.

I will concede that it was a time that allowed me to develop other interests, skills, and facets of my personality.  Yet my pursuit of all that stuff (not to mention “the guy”) was no less balanced than when I was deep in the throes of Obsessive Writer’s Disorder – writing nonstop during meals and when I should have been sleeping.

All that’s in the past.

This is the future.

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The Answer to an Even Bigger Question

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Rule of Engagement 3.2

I love numbers.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not some sort of mathematician.  I’m not even all that adept at numerical manipulation: in restaurants, like many, I struggle to calculate my portion of a group bill, and to also figure out an appropriate gratuity, and somewhat typical of my generation, I generally can’t perform long division in my head unlike the many people of my parents’ generation who can.

Still, though, numbers hold a place in my heart, or at least, the idea of numbers does, as does what they represent.  For in numbers, I see a concrete means of comparing two or more different states of being: how something is to how it could or should be; how something is to how it was previously; where something started and where it ends.

In short, numbers can be used to monitor change and – more importantly – progress.

And what writer isn’t interested in that?

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The Answer to the Big Question

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Rule of Engagement 3.1

Back in 2002, I decided to take a much more serious approach to my writing and the pursuit of publication than I had to date.  I then began searching for a way to convey this change of status to others in a manner that was both concise and wouldn’t misrepresent the true extent of my skills and achievements.

In short, I wanted to know if it was okay to start calling myself a “writer”.

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My Writing Journey, pt. 3

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Continued from Part 1 and Part 2:

In late 2004, I had a revelation about the 900-page fantasy novel I’d been working on the past three years – the following two thoughts, in the following order: “I don’t think I achieved good integration of all the characters’ individual plots” and “This novel is getting to be awfully long”.

My first novel was a mess.

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My Writing Journey, pt. 2

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Continued from Part 1:

In early 2002, a professional editor of a fantasy magazine told me my writing was good.  I would have married the guy if I could.

No nuptials were forthcoming.  However with that compliment ringing in my mind, along with the one from my writing teacher back in 1996, plus a growing dissatisfaction with writing short fiction, I felt braced up enough to try my hand at writing a full-length novel.

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