These things are sent to try

Today I have a head cold and am feeling sorry for myself. Being over 65 and blessed with the NHS I have been inoculated against flu and pneumonia but I do have a head cold. You'd think I would have spent the day in bed writing, wouldn't you? - or at least researching. I haven't.

Which character should we love?

That was the question Feola asked at the Richmond Writer's Circle last night. It isn't the first time she's asked it either. Gerry said much the same a week ago. He wondered why I was 60,000 words into a story and still wasn't sure who my protagonist was. They have a point. My plan so far has been to get through the first draft - which in plot terms is mainly coming from my subconscious and then sort everything out with the re-writes as I've described before. This problem though, if it turns out to be a problem may take more to fix. So far I have been doing what I think of as ensemble writing. But having the gentlemen rankers and the Kensington Gore Croquet Club in the same story does make it a bit crowded, it is true. And is also true that agents and publishers do want to see a story with a clear protagonist. My plan is still to plunge on to the end though. That might be a mistake but if it is it will have to be one I learn from.

Feola gain read for me last night - brilliantly again. We had an influx of new people - in the case of the RWC three is an influx trust me. For the most part this is good, of course. When there are more than nine people reading though it is hard to do justice to everyone, Less than nine people on the other hand doesn't meet the rent. Writer's Circles are on a bit of a knife edge from that point of view. I'm glad Susan was back to relieve me of the moderators baton.

The Aether Guild of Writers on Steampunk Empire

This is the best place I've found to post for my type of writing

Here http:Aether Guild of Writers

I think I'll repost things from here to there

Writers' Circles a repost from the Aether Guild of Writers

Comment by Geoffrey Johns 1 minute ago

Delete Comment

Not strictly speaking Steampunk, so forgive me. Today I awoke full of the joys of what may, if we're lucky, eventually become spring in London (no smirking you Australians). Last night was the Richmond Writers' Circle. Everyone shone and my piece was brilliantly read for me by the lovely Feola, which meant that no one had to suffer my speech impediment. She made it sound so much better than I do. My point being that I strongly advise anyone who can to join a writer's circle, The two I have attended, now in Richmond and earlier in Rozelle, Sydney have been supportive and offered great feedback. James Murray earlier posted 'At least others have heard your work, mine is hiding on the hard drive :)'. Well, I'll bet there is a writers' circle not too far from you, You should give it a try. 

PS Or start one yourself. You'll get to meet some  great people

Getting the language right

I got to thinking about The Countess of Vintage's (From the Aether Guild of Writers on Steampunk Empire) comment about vocabulary. At first, I wasn't sure if she was talking about vocabulary in the usual sense or in the broader sense of 'memes'. Anyway, thinking at the moment of words, and bearing in mind that everything I suggest is only what I think works for my writing and need not necessarily for anyone else's, here are some thoughts.

First, people in the era in which I write - the Edwardian – talked much the same as we do. There are as many (or as few) differences as there are in British regional speech today. I try not to let words get in the way of the story. From time to time I might use a word (say 'golly' or 'gosh' that raises an eyebrow when I read at the Richmond Writers' Circle. For these though, even when I am right (both words could have been used in 1904), I have to consider making a change because, if the RWC are distracted from the story by a word, then everyone else might be too. It is possible perhaps to use a strange word with a footnote explaining it. George MacDonald Fraser does this quite often, especially with foreign words such as Indian words used frequently by British soldiers. In G MacD F's case, this is more justifiable, as he purports, in the story, to be the editor rather than author. (To digress a bit, nearly half the American reviewers of the book thought it was a genuine autobiography.)  So I try to only use unusual words where the reader can easily guess their meaning or if the meaning is known but the word rarely used. For example, my grandmother, born in that era, would use 'hark' more often than ‘listen’. Another example, again G MacD F, is his use of the term 'the earlies' to refer to the period around 1830. This is a rare term but, in context, easy to make sense of without breaking rhythm.  At one stage, I was thinking of using, for fun, some of the slang used by the upper reaches of British society in the late Victorian era. This was more or less a childhood invented language of the Wyndham sisters that spread, as they married into various families. It would have required footnotes on every page so I ditched the idea.  A more difficult case is that of words such as 'intrigue'.  This was raised at a recent presentation by Lynn Shepherd, D.E.Meredith and Essie Fox. They are published authors of Victorian thriller / crime novels.  Apparently, Intrigue in the sense of conspire was used in 1904 but not in the sense of 'create interest in'. I should never have known this and assume that there must be many other examples where I shall put my foot in it.  These three intelligent and articulate women were pretty clear that such mistakes are to be avoided. In similar way, one of them noted that if an author gets the hansom cab fare for a journey wrong, some reader somewhere will know this and write to them. I am not quite sure how much consternation this should cause me.  I think I would spend all my limited time researching rather than writing. I should be interested in what others think. Returning to writing authentic speech for the fin de siècle, I think it is more in tone than language itself. There is a touch more formality than we use today. This can be taken too far though.  As examples of the era where first party narrators chat to the reader in lively tones, much as we would now, consider: Allan Quatermain in the first few pages of King Solomon’s Mines, J in Three Men in a Boat or Rassendyll in The Prisoner of Zenda. From memory, there are no words used in these that are not common today.

Political correctness

This is a line from my story (set in 1904). It is not an important line and could be cut but it did make me think a bit.

"An American Negress was leading a cakewalk chorus to the mechanical rhythms of a honky-tonk piano. The lyric told of a shooting by a woman of her lover. No one seemed too sad about it though, thought Gwendolyn." 

It isn't relevant to this post but I was thinking of Ma Rainey, pictured here.

I looked up the word Negress (to check if it should have a capital N) and the Wictionary definition said:

(dated, literary, now considered offensive or ethnic slur) A black female.

Now to me, age 65, Negro is a dictionary definition. I didn't know that it was offensive.

To digress here, it makes me remember that I was born a little more than four decades after the period that I'm writing about. Compare that to the six and a half decades that have elapsed since my birth. In terms of my formative years. I'm as close to then as I am to now.

Now, I would certainly not wish to cause gratuitous offence. George MacDonald Fraser's (one of my favourite authors) character: Harry Flashman, freely used the word "nigger". To write anything else would have been completely out of character and dishonest. Compare this to Allan Quatermain, as the first person narrator of "King Solomon's Mines", who in the first few pages muses over the word "nigger" and decides that it is an offensive term that he will not use. Rider Haggard published that in 1885 so that is what liberal people were thinking at the time. I have no doubt that some of the characters that I write would use the word but I haven't yet put them in a situation where they would and would avoid doing so or at least modify what they said. I think this is justifiable, Unlike Flashman they are by and large fairly decent people and I am wtiring an adventure not a social history.

To look at it from a slightly different angle; my story is written in the third person but not in the third person omniscient.

To digress again; this has made me think about the third person omniscient a bit. To be truly omniscient the voice needs to be outside time. We tend to assume we can do this by offering the voice of our time - the early 21st century.    The reader will accept this, of course but we need to have some care, I believe. 

For my purposes anyway my third person voice is not omniscient and is rooted in the early twentieth century. So I'm sticking with "Negress" (unless, for whatever reason, I cut the line altogether). I'll just hope I'm not causing offence to anyone.

JK Rowling, my hero!

I rarely mention JK Rowling to anyone without being told that she isn't a very good writer. Actually, the people who tell me that - the ones that write anyway - are hardly DH Lawrences themselves and I've yet to work out how giving reading pleasure to millions of people can come from  bad writing. But putting these things aside good writing is not the reason that Ms Rowling is my hero at the moment.

Here I am, retired mind you, moaning about how hard it is to find time to write so I can keep up my 2,000 words a week. (I.e. about as much as I can read at the Richmond Writers Circle without trying their patiences beyond reasonable endurance.) And I know that Ms Rowling would have no trouble in juggling her life to fit in that  paltry effort. Actually, I suspect that most women who can balance jobs home and family would do better than me.

So I'm just going to have to get better at snatching moments from the day and learning to be inspired to order. (End of self slap on wrist)