It is some months now since I posted anything on this blog, not because I have given up on it, but because I have put it on the back burner for a while. I submitted extracts of my historical novel to a Fiction in Progress class at Edinburgh University, and received some encouraging feedback, but it also taught me things I still needed to work on. Part of that had to do with aspects of fiction technique, but also I felt I didn't have a clear narrative thrust. I had chapters that were more like jigsaw pieces in search of a bigger picture to fit into. Also, reading the 19th century novel of the period by James Grant gave me a feeling that I really didn't have his understanding of the period to persist without a great deal of further thought. I didn't want to replicate the ground he had already admirably covered. Historical fiction is not something to take on board lightly.
Instead, I did what some primers will tell you not to do: I had another idea for a quite different novel and I have been working on that over recent months. The primers say that if you start a second novel before finishing your first you will end up with two unfinished novels. That does not seem to be the case so far. In November last year I was going to be away from home for 3 weeks with only tenuous connection to a computer and would have time on my hands. I was intrigued by the American NaNoWriMo project (National Novel Writing Month). It was started about a decade ago by a group of Californians as a challenge to write a 50k novel in the 30 days of the 11th month of the year. Initially I thought it was a mad idea. However, I bought 3 A4 notebooks from Sainsbury's, in lime, purple and aqua, their seasonal colours, and decided to see if I could sketch out an idea for a novel over the month. I worked out that handwriting roughly 6 pages of those notebooks would amount to about 1000 words. I had a scenario and a bunch of characters but no plot. But character is plot, of course. By the end of the month I had about 30k words of a murder mystery story, pretty uncouth, sometimes quite silly, but when I looked over it I felt that I had something I could actually work on. So over succeeding months, despite a nasty bout of shingles, a fascinating two-week trip to China and 3 weeks of rather tedious SQA marking of English close-reading exams, I have now almost got a complete first draft, currently standing at just over 60k words. Only the final 3-4 chapters have to be completed. However bad or good this draft is, it certainly feels like an achievement. No one asked me to write this. No one is waiting to receive it or even wanting to read it. I don't know whether I can revise it into the sort of state that I could think might merit considering possibly - you see the hesitation here - thinking of approaching someone like a publisher, an agent or a more established writer in the same field for an opinion. But it's there. A Scottish murder mystery story set in the present day, but with a historical element - 18th century this time, an easier period to research and one that I knew more about before I started. Heigh ho.
Sunday, 22 July 2012
Monday, 20 February 2012
Between Fact and Fiction
I have been moving very slowly with this idea for a fiction and in fact have not added much in the past three months. Partly because I have been away for the best part of a month, partly because I have been unwell, partly because I got interested in another less challenging narrative, but mainly because I had got stuck. I had reached a stage where I had absorbed a great many facts about the period, but in relation to the fiction, while I had a small group of characters and ideas of what might happen to them, I had no narrative thrust. I saw them rather static in their respective sets of circumstances, rather than moving on. This is something I have to solve, how to clear the factual ground to allow the fiction plausibly to unfold.
Saturday, 7 January 2012
An Intriguing Find
In the process of reading a book called Cromwell's Scotch Campaigns by W. S. Douglas, a Victorian historian - my edition dated 1898, I came across a reference to a 19th century Scottish novelist I had never heard of before called James Grant. Douglas was querying the accuracy of details in a novel called Harry Ogilvie or The Black Dragoons. As I am as interested in fiction about this period as the historical facts I managed to secure a copy - a modestly priced first edition (I think) through Abe Books. Although a mite scuffed by time, it's a lovely object in itself, half red leather with marbled boards, broader and longer than a Blackberry, about an inch deep, 370 pp., published by G. Routledge & Co., London, 1856, and New York, 18 Beekman Street. The opening paragraph of Chapter I reads:
An hour before daylight, on a morning in December, in the year 1632, the bell at the gate of the University of Glasgow was rung furiously, and the despairing cry of a woman was heard echoing among the heavy balconies and dark quadrangles of the edifice; old Nehemiah Spreul, the porter, started in dismay from his box-bed, and undeterred by the energetic warnings of his cosy helpmate, Hannah, threw a plaid over his shoulders, snatched up a broadsword, for the times were perilous, and hastily opened the eyelet hole of the deeply-arched and richly-carved gate, which faces the High-street.
How could one not read on?
It's an adventure story, set in the turbulent times of the mid-17th century, which chronicles the early life of a foundling called Harry Ogilvie, adopted by the University principal, who, bored by student life, joins a regiment of the Black Dragoons in the Scots army at the time of Cromwell's invasion of Scotland in 1650. The main part of the novel describes Harry's involvement in the Scots army's vain attempt to repel the invaders. The hero is present at the defeats of Dunbar in 1650, Inverkeithing in 1651 and the sack of Dundee by troops under General Monk when Cromwell left Scotland to pursue Charles II to the Battle of Worcester. I do not have the expert historical knowledge to quibble about the accuracy of military details - the only definite inaccuracy I picked up was a statement saying that Charles II landed at Leith, which he did not - but all I can say is that the experience of reading the book feels authentic. From the opening chapter the author plunges you into another era. Harry's own story is one of finding the truth about his origins, not to mention true love and happiness, and if he survives all the trials and tribulations the author places in his path with almost superhuman implausibility, so be it. There is pathos, loss, betrayal and there is triumph. He portrays the grimness of a battlefield after a rout and in the later pages plague casts a shadow upon a friend. The denouement is perhaps rather hastily wrapped up against the background of the dreadful sack of Dundee, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. If it has none of Scott's philosophical analysis it has none of that writer's longeurs. There's plenty of action, evocative atmosphere, some memorable minor characters and vignettes of historical figures. The Earl of Argyle figures as the arch villain and the author, like his hero, has no time for the canting of the Covenanting ministers.
I think we should know more about James Grant.
Apparently Grant was a popular and prolific writer of historical novels with a military slant in his time, but is now quite obscure. His grandfather was apparently an Edinburgh advocate, his father was a military man and he himself served as a soldier for a few years before taking up writing as his profession. This novel was of particular interest to me because I have now done a fair bit of reading up of this period, but I still felt it held up as a historical novel of some more general interest.
An hour before daylight, on a morning in December, in the year 1632, the bell at the gate of the University of Glasgow was rung furiously, and the despairing cry of a woman was heard echoing among the heavy balconies and dark quadrangles of the edifice; old Nehemiah Spreul, the porter, started in dismay from his box-bed, and undeterred by the energetic warnings of his cosy helpmate, Hannah, threw a plaid over his shoulders, snatched up a broadsword, for the times were perilous, and hastily opened the eyelet hole of the deeply-arched and richly-carved gate, which faces the High-street.
How could one not read on?
It's an adventure story, set in the turbulent times of the mid-17th century, which chronicles the early life of a foundling called Harry Ogilvie, adopted by the University principal, who, bored by student life, joins a regiment of the Black Dragoons in the Scots army at the time of Cromwell's invasion of Scotland in 1650. The main part of the novel describes Harry's involvement in the Scots army's vain attempt to repel the invaders. The hero is present at the defeats of Dunbar in 1650, Inverkeithing in 1651 and the sack of Dundee by troops under General Monk when Cromwell left Scotland to pursue Charles II to the Battle of Worcester. I do not have the expert historical knowledge to quibble about the accuracy of military details - the only definite inaccuracy I picked up was a statement saying that Charles II landed at Leith, which he did not - but all I can say is that the experience of reading the book feels authentic. From the opening chapter the author plunges you into another era. Harry's own story is one of finding the truth about his origins, not to mention true love and happiness, and if he survives all the trials and tribulations the author places in his path with almost superhuman implausibility, so be it. There is pathos, loss, betrayal and there is triumph. He portrays the grimness of a battlefield after a rout and in the later pages plague casts a shadow upon a friend. The denouement is perhaps rather hastily wrapped up against the background of the dreadful sack of Dundee, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. If it has none of Scott's philosophical analysis it has none of that writer's longeurs. There's plenty of action, evocative atmosphere, some memorable minor characters and vignettes of historical figures. The Earl of Argyle figures as the arch villain and the author, like his hero, has no time for the canting of the Covenanting ministers.
I think we should know more about James Grant.
Apparently Grant was a popular and prolific writer of historical novels with a military slant in his time, but is now quite obscure. His grandfather was apparently an Edinburgh advocate, his father was a military man and he himself served as a soldier for a few years before taking up writing as his profession. This novel was of particular interest to me because I have now done a fair bit of reading up of this period, but I still felt it held up as a historical novel of some more general interest.
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