Historical Novel Society, Part II

Lisa Yarde can write about Friday night (hey Lisa! hope you're feeling better) because I missed the entire thing.

The next panel was "Rewriting the Role of Women" with Suzanne Adair, Irene Burgess, Susanne Dunlap, Sandra Gulland, moderated by Mary Sharratt. Again, they mentioned this Red Tent by Anita Diamant that Irene mentioned--Irene recommended being like that author and going on a two-year promotional signing tour, something that shut the room up immediately because it's clearly not practical for most of us. Irene Burgess, a professor of women's studies, mentioned a lot of historical heroines who seem anachronistic to readers really aren't. A lot of this comes from a lack of understanding. In the 20thC we created a lot of behaviors that were already present in women for centuries. Sandra says she got a lot of her historical information from midwifery guides. Josephine went into early menopause and was crying all the time, had intense migraines. Oops, it appears I didn't take all that many notes during that panel. I had to run to the group book-signing where I purchased Jeanne Mackin's novel about Maggie Fox, the "founder" of modern Spiritualism. To me, that's the fun part of a group signing--purchasing the other author's books and talking to them. Diana Gabaldon and Bernard Cornwell signed the entire two hours, and had lines going around the pool.

That night was a delicious banquet--the "Feast" part of "Feast 'n' Fun"--Diana Gabaldon (the "'n Fun" part) said it was the best conference food she'd ever had. She told a story about her road to publication that I think left most of us functionally depressed. She was a mother of two working at a university, apparently the world's only expert at writing bird programs in FORTRAN (or something of that nature). She realized she was almost 35 so had better start on this novel she'd always wanted to do. She doesn't write in a linear fashion; apparently she writes in chunks and pieces them all together later like a puzzle (yes, she does wind up with chunks that won't fit, and those all go into a separate file). Someone in her compuserve group said he'd recommend her to his agent. A very short story ensued: the agent took her on and within three days had five offers. And the book wasn't even finished yet. The end. Imagine three hundred people gaping, slack-jawed, in awe and stupefaction.

Sunday morning the first panel was "Bringing Pirates to Life," with my pirate editor Cindy Vallar, and Jim Nelson. Jim believes it's OK to use secondary source material to get an overall idea of your big picture, but you must use primary sources for the details of what happens to one guy. He is amused at our fascination with pirates. It's as though in 2020 we will all dress up like gangbangers, because in the interim they've gained an aura of coolness. But pirates ran the show back then. They were mostly in warm areas because they could fall down, pass out drunk, and not die: that was good.

In the 16th and 17thC pirates all emerged from geopolitical struggles. In the early 1600s the French moved into Hispaniola (now Haiti). They were savage woodsmen. Smoking meat over a fire called a "boucan" led to their moniker of "buccaneers," a term you should never use for anyone other than Caribbean pirates of this era. Soldiers eradicated the buccaneers and drove them to Tortuga. Now they became a large cadre who hated the Spanish. Cindy discussed a lot of technical details I didn't take notes on, since it’s all fresh in my memory from having just written a pirate book. One thing I didn't know is they always wore striped stockings. She did mention she's not big on the nautical details, and was recently stumped working on some gal's big "storm at sea" scene since she didn't know 90% of the technical stuff. I'm going to get her for that. Later. Beforehand I made her promise not to call on me, but forgot to make her promise not to TALK about me.

Next up was the Sitting Room Only "Writing Love Scenes: How Much Sex is Too Much?" with Diana Gabaldon, Chris (C.C.) Humphreys, and Jade Lee. Diana said her books have been categorized as everything from horror to Gay/Lesbian. Jade Lee said being a romance writer, she's seen it all. She wanted people to remember that in romance, there are different ways of rating how sexy a book is. There are chili peppers, HOT/BURNING scales, etc. Homoerotic stuff is also very hot right now, even though she doesn't understand why. (I do.) Diana said the female idea of how two men are together isn't accurate. We make it all tender and kissy, and that's not how guys really do it. Diana read aloud a homoerotic scene from one of her Lord John books that concluded with a hearty, "Yes, I AM a nasty beast."

Jade mentioned how big Ellora's Cave is, for those not familiar with it. Some of those women make $10k per month, "IF you are able to do it." (I think I know what she meant--I am physically incapable of writing a pure erotica. I wish I could!) When she first started out, she received rejections for being "too hot." Nowadays, she has to take "erotic" out of her press literature because now, though she hasn't changed, her writing is relatively mild. Now she's only three chili peppers. Chris opined that he wants to see more thigh boots of the sort he uses in his Jack Absolute novels.

For Diana, a sex scene should show emotional intimacy between two people. People were appalled when, in her later books, she depicted people in their 50s having sex. "Oh my god!" But she wanted to tell a story about how to maintain a long-lasting close supportive marriage, the story of what makes two people stay married for fifty years. Sex is integral, it's a power issue in marriages; sex heals after stress and loss. Sex must further the plot. Chris thinks you should show something different in a sex scene that demonstrates a fresh aspect of a character. For instance, show the same soldier being tied up in the same way, but this time whipped by dwarves. In romance, said Jade, each sex scene is a plot point. The first plot point is the first kiss, then at least one sexus interruptus, and so on. Each publisher has different requirements. Once she was told by an editor not to stress the required three orgasm scenes, to just phone them in. Chris thinks men are more restrained when writing sex scenes, unless they're going for the "throbbing blue veiners." They’re more restrained for fear of offending. Then I had to leave because my feet were killing me. Another two years until the next HNS conference!

Historical Novel Society Conference, Albany NY

Historical Novel Society Conference
Albany NY, June 8-10, 2007

Friday night there was a dinner banquet at the Desmond Hotel in Albany. Bernard Cornwell was the keynote speaker and unfortunately I didn't make it thanks to the evil incompetent sadists of O'Hare International Airport. Cornwell was eloquently hilarious, apparently.

So the first panel I dragged myself in to see Saturday morning was "Fictionalizing the Already Famous" with Jeanne Mackin and Brenda Rickman Vantrease. Jeanne said that bad fiction is telling the same story over and over, thus perpetuating myths and legends about a historical figure--for example, the myth that Marie Antoinette said "Let them eat cake." (She never said that.) If you're going to use what Irene Goodman calls a "marquee name" in your fiction, readers already have preconceived ideas, so you have to keep digging to find the fresh character.

Jeanne asked us to mention which historical figure we felt like at that very moment, and I thought "Timothy Leary" because I felt on drugs after no sleep for two days.

The already famous are emblems, so you need to keep building and refreshing them, not building up the same lies over and over again. Kosinski said "Only in fiction can we tell the whole truth."

Brenda said Michelangelo looked at a piece of marble and saw his character in the block. He merely chipped away at it until the person was freed. The drama is in the first cut, the first rough draft, and like Michelangelo you need to learn what to leave out. Someone asked how to interest readers who are not enthralled with your particular era or setting, and Brenda thinks you need to catch them off balance--you need to have a new approach, not the same old "let them eat cake."

Irene Goodman was the keynote speaker at the luncheon. They must not have set up 300 chairs because it was SRO—standing room only. Irene talked about being in second grade and students were asked to choose between two study subjects--animals or "the olden days." She was the only one who didn't choose animals. Her mother would yell at her to go outside and play, and she'd yell back, "But I'm already up here playing with my friends!" Her historical "olden days" friends.

When she went into publishing, there were a few anomalies like Jean Auel, Colleen McCullough, and John Jakes, but they were considered the exceptions to the rule--historical fiction was a dead zone. Now, Irene said, The floodgates are open! Now you have atrocious in-laws, jealousy, trophy wives, drop dead gorgeous women, and history is full of sex! The sky's the limit, as long as it's well told and has the necessary hook.

Now you have historical fiction shelves in bookstores in the nebulous section titled "Literature," which means anything from Mark Twain to Jackie Collins. There are sub-genres: historical thrillers, historical mysteries, historical romance (and some is quite good, she added--and like TV, some is bad). You just have to know where to look.

Some subjects seemed unmarketable until a writer broke the barrier. Australia was stupid until The Thornbirds came along. Right now England is the smart place to set a historical since the TV advent of "The Tudors," even though they changed France into Portugal for no good reason.

Next up: "Sharpe Practice: Writing a Historical Novel" by Bernard Cornwell. He said the entire panel would revolve around "All right, who has a question?" The first question was, "Why is it so difficult for an American author to get published or taken seriously in England?" Cornwell hated Cold Mountain. He said there is no way men talk to each other like that, so damned serious all the bloody time--men joke together. He wrote a Civil War series after he'd moved to the States, and we were so fond of pointing out "mistakes" that weren't, but nobody would listen to him because he was British.

He said we're writing historical entertainment--leave history to the historians. Write an exciting story, but write A STORY first and foremost. You read a history book and you don't say "Wait, I can't go to sleep, I've got to get to the end of Chapter Five!" But you do when you read a historical STORY. The worst thing you can do is to make it obvious that you copied facts down from notecards. We entertain. You have to chuck 95% of your research in order to TELL YOUR STORY.

Some Americans criticized one of his American stories by claiming "baseball wasn't invented yet," when he knew it was, but his hands were tied in refuting it, because he didn't want to get involved in all that bitchiness.

Someone asked what does he do when he has no inspiration. He laughed and said, Inspiration does not exist! You write by being a writer. You sit there, you write, and you stop in the evening. Writer's block doesn't exist! We all have bad days--that's not writer's block. You write through it, even though it might not be your best work. You don't hear a nurse claiming she has nurse's block, do you? 'I can't come into work today, I have nurse's block.' No one put a gun to your head, 'Be a writer now, dammit!' It's a job of privilege and we should be glad to have it. The dress code is pretty easy, too. Ben Franklin wrote naked. Cornwell encourages this habit, for some of us.

"How much research is too much? How do you know when it’s not enough?" Cornwell doesn't know where to draw the line. You copy from one book, that's plagiarism. You copy from forty books, that's research. Your first draft is like a huge mountain. When you get halfway up there, you look back and you see a better route to the top. The first draft is the biggest job, that's getting the story down right. Don't worry about style or length! He recommended typing out a few pages of your favorite book. In his case it was Forrester, some Horatio Hornblower thing. Put these pages in a drawer. When he went back to look at his pages, he was all, "Oh my god! What crap!" Then he realized, "Holy shit, that’s Forrester!" You can easily see how overly-critical you're being on yourself.

Is he a plotter? No. Someone once said, "There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately no one knows what they are." The joy for him is in finding out what happens, the process of discovery along the way. Seeing what his characters decide to do, since he is one of those who views them as living breathing people. He holds conversations with them. People often ask him why he feels the need to have a major woman character. Why not? 70% of his readers are women. The successful writer doesn't write for men! The three most popular subjects in the world are golf, cats, and Nazis, so someone wrote a book called "Golfing for Nazi Cats."

What sells? THE STORY. Tell a good story. Write the book YOU want to read. If you write to the market you're guaranteed to fail. You SHOULD be saying "Bernard Cornwell is no bloody good, I can do better than that!"

Drink Jameson Whiskey, though not until you're done with your day's work, or it's all downhill from there.

Here's how to trick an editor. Put in something stupid that you're completely prepared to give up, and defend it to the death. Let her have her way at the end. Then she'll be too tired to fight the other stuff.

Writing is intuitive. You either have a gift for storytelling, or you don't. Cornwell doesn’t believe in groups, creative writing classes, crit groups. You write alone. The only critics you have to please are #1 yourself, #2 your agent, #3 your publisher, and #4 your readers.

How does he go about writing battle scenes? He wrote a battle scene once that had three sides--it was just too bad not one of them was French. If your battle is famous, the reader already has the terrain fixed in his head. You have to find another reason to visit that place, and you're limited to what the hero can see and smell. He recommends reading John Keegan, The Face of Battle. In another battle scene there were two peaks to a mountain that only confused the issue, so he eliminated one of the peaks. Anything that helps your reader to visualize it clearly.

Part II from Karen on Tuesday!

Can I Quote You On That?

My latest WIP is set in Mongolia in 1873. You know what that means? Research! Hurray! (No, I’m not being sarcastic -- I really do love to do research, perhaps that's why I write historical romance and not Chick Lit.)

Going through my stacks and stacks of books and pawing through numerous Google searches, I came across the historical persona of Nikolai Mikhaylovich Przhevalsky, also spelled Przewalski and Prjevalsky, for those playing along at home. Colonel Przhevalsky was a Russian explorer and geographer in central and eastern Asia, and the man for whom an Asiatic wild horse was named after he discovered them in southern Mongolia. He continues to remain a fascinating figure to study, both in terms of what he discovered and his larger-than-life personality. But my interest wasn't in Przhevalsky himself, but rather, the land that he studied.

I was thrilled when I learned that he had written a book, which was later translated into English, in 1875, entitled Mongolia, the Tangut Country, which described his travels throughout the precise part of the world that I was writing about, and in almost the exact same year. I did the happy researcher dance, having hit the proverbial jackpot. A primary source! That has to be even better than reading modern books about Mongolian history, right? How much more accurate can you get?

With a cup of tea and a notebook (it was a library book that I'd checked out of my local university library), I settled in to be transported to Mongolia in the 1870s. I took copious notes. How did the Chinese traders who lived in Ulanbataar (then called Urga) travel? What was the layout of the city, since there were no permanent structures other than Buddhist temples? There was so much to learn.

But then a weird thing started to happen as I read. My first clue that something was awry was when I read about burial customs in Urga. It was a Mongolian belief (which I'd read about elsewhere), that bodies weren't interred but rather taken to the top of a mountain or a distant, isolated place, and left to the elements where they would return to nature. The practice was called "sky burial." This isn't a disputed fact. However, according to Przhevalsky, in Urga, bodies were thrown into a common area not far from the city, and that stray dogs fell upon the corpses and ate them within moments. He records being disgusted by the filth of the city, and the plague of dogs gnawing on human remains, or even beggars before they had died.

Uh...really?

I knew for certain that there were problems with Przhevalsky when he started to describe the customs of the Mongol nomads. I don't have the book in front of me (it's since been returned to the library), but I was flat out appalled when I read his accounts of the lack of chastity of Mongol women, the laziness and shiftlessness of the men, their careless work ethic. This was flat out wrong! Everything else I have read about the people of Mongolia suggested the complete opposite, including the strength of familial bonds and the hard but rewarding life of tending livestock on the open steppes.

I put Przhevalsky's book down and looked at my notes. Could I trust them now? How much of what he said was true, and how much was pure ethnic prejudice or even complete fabrication? There was no way to know. All the notes I had taken had to be put aside. I try very hard to be as accurate as I can in my work, and now everything that I had learned from the Russian explorer couldn’t be trusted. My primary source had failed me.

I did learn a valuable lesson with my experience with Przhevalsky. Personal bias or perception will always shape even the most mundane experiences. No matter how hard I or other authors try, there's simply no way for a book to be 100% truthful.