Historical Fiction: Ways to keep your inner muse inspired

 by Deborah Swift

I have been writing for quite a number of years now and in that time the publishing landscape has changed enormously. I am now reliably informed by Google that there are 2,700 books published every single day, and against that tsunami of books, my sitting down at my desk every day to write another  can seem rather pointless. Why would anyone need even one more book?

When I first began writing, I was inspired by the whole craft of writing. I got myself a shelf full of books which told me about plot, structure, research, and other craft skills. Most of these books are now something I rarely look at as they offer the same old advice re-packaged. So where is a seasoned writer to find the inspiration to carry on writing?

Here are some online ideas I find really useful when I am particularly jaded. They are all free, and won't cost you a thing.

First up - there is always research. Research is my life blood and the interesting facts I discover whilst I'm doing it are not only what keeps me engaged, but also enables me to breathe a semblance of life into my books.

Visual Feasts - Go on a live tour.

There are online walking tours to just about everywhere now. How about one I've just enjoyed? It takes about 45 minutes and is an ideal visual orientation and overview of the subject I'm researching. You can tip the tour guide if you want but its not obligatory. Jewish History in Amsterdam

There are offerings on this site from every corner of the world -  London -Way of Death is about the execution sites and the Necropolis of Old London.

For a longer tour you could sample this from a different company, which has a different approach more like a lecture tour, and more in depth information - it lasts an hour and a half .

WWII and the Western Front.

Pin Back Your Ears - Listen to a podcast by another historical novelist

I love to hear other writers offer me their pearls of wisdom, and hearing someone else talk about their own difficulties helps me to feel I'm not alone in tackling my own big project.

Here are some good ones to get you started.

The Write Show - Writing Historical Fiction about a little known figure (Mary Magdalene) and how the writer handled contradictions in her sources.

Art in Fiction - Writers (most are historical novelists) talk about artists, writers and performers that feature in their books and how they brought them to life. 

Historical Fiction and the Perils of Family History - Emma Darwin unpacks how to fail writing about your famous family!

Historical Fiction Unpacked  - a regular selection of historical novelists talk about their process in creating their latest work.

Dig a bit Deeper - Fire up your brain 

The question most historical novelists are tired of answering gets a breath of fresh air in this 

 in-depth article in The Literary Hub by Caitlin Horrocks.

The anxiety of writing historical fiction  or this take on the old debate about accuracy from Hilary Mantel; Facts are not the Truth 

Or this one - Does Historical Fiction Distort the Truth?

Take a Tip from the Experts - You're never too old to learn

However expert you are, a novel is always a new journey. Of course there are many classes and courses that will take your money, but if you're just a bit jaded and need some free pep, then here at the National Centre for Writing, there are free soundbites, classes and courses including ones by Sarah Perry and Nicola Upson.  Want to write a convincing fight scene? Try these tips from the New York Editors Blog.

Mooch round a Museum - without leaving your chair

Tired of your view? How about visiting the Frick Collection in New York? Expect to see Old Masters, decorative arts, and European sculptures in this former residence turned art museum.

Or how about Blenheim Palace - wander three hundred years of history and the sumptuous gilded rooms with only a mouse. My personal favourite is the Rijksmuseum, home of Dutch Masters and a visually stunning website.

The Beauty of the Book - can't beat the real world

Of course one of the obvious and best ways to get inspired (and yes I deliberately left it until last) is to read. I love my local secondhand bookshop. In it I can browse openings of dozens of pre-read novels for a flavour of the writer.  Other writers' voices are not like mine, and I love to see what the differences are and how they construct their stories. There are also old books - the solid language of Victoriana, and the hip lingo of the 1970's.

As most of my life as a writer is conducted online or via the computer, it is great to get back to the real world of books. Weirdly, no matter how obscure my subject matter I can usually find something of interest in a second hand bookshop. It encourages the cross-fertilization of ideas because there are so many random books close to each other - many of which are not the bestsellers touted in every other bookshop. Nearly all my non-fiction research books are actual books rather than ebooks, and often second-hand. It is much easier to find stuff again in a real book, and I often read the book more than once and need to put post-its on them with my notes about why that extract is useful.

Struggling with a title? Your secondhand bookshop will provide lots of ideas. Need to think of a blurb? Again, the second-hand bookshop will give you back-cover ideas culled from the last fifty years at least.

Here's my local bookshop, Carnforth Books. I'm glad to give them a shout out with their thousands of second hand (and new) books,

Hope you found this post useful, and I'd be glad of any other ideas to keep my nose to the grindstone. And no, it's not procrastination, honest.

You can find my latest book, a biographical novel of Renaissance poisoner Giulia Tofana, here, and my website for more exploring here.

Chat with me on Twitter @swiftstory

History -- Off The Shelf -- by Sheena Wilkinson

Like most people, the history I studied at school was mostly about men and wars and politics. Public history, if you like.  I liked it better when we got occasional insights into the mundanities of everyday life. I didn’t always remember dates or get excited by laws and treaties, but I was forever putting my hand up to ask questions like, What did they wear? What were their bathrooms like? What did they eat? 

My personal history bookcase, built up over years, reflects this early preference.  There are a few worthy tomes on political history, mostly things I have bought with good intentions or inherited from my father (who almost certainly didn’t read them either). But mostly it’s social history. Private history, if you like. Books about how ordinary people – and some extraordinary people – lived and loved and looked after their families in earlier centuries. There are books about suffragettes and spinsters, the WI and the Girl Guides, sex and schooling. These books are well-read, often more than once. These books are where I go when I don’t feel like fiction. 

The bookcase has its own history of course. For a start, it was made by my late father. When I photographed it for this blog, I thought I should remove the clutter, but then I realised that these bits and pieces are part of my own history and my family’s. The carriage clock is hideous and doesn’t work, but it was presented to my grandfather on his retirement in 1977 and thus I can’t bear to throw it out. The tweed mouse, favourite toy of a long-dead cat, was made by my best friend from school, Elizabeth. And the little doll, a seventies favourite called Jenny-my-best-schoolfriend, was a Christmas present from my granny when I was eight. And history doesn't stop -- the suffragette doll was a present for my fiftieth birthday last year, and bought to mark my 2017 novel Star by Star. 

So, the history is in the books, but not only in the books. History is never only in the books. 

A Historical Fiction Writer's Reading Week

by Deborah Swift

Like most writers I'm a prolific reader. This week I took a look at my reading pattern to see what I read, and how much I read, and whether this has changed over the last few years.

When I had my first book published in 2010 nearly all my reading was in paperback or hardback. At the Historical Novelists Conference in that same year, someone showed me the Kindle. Fascinated, yet also baffled, by this new technology I bought one. I still have the same ancient model and do most of my digital reading on that machine. I often use it when travelling on public transport or when on holiday, and I use it to carry some research books I can't do without.

Digital -- Kindle

This week on the Kindle I have been reading a historical novel recommended to me by a friend of a friend. The book had been self-published for a short while but failed to find an audience, and the author had withdrawn it from sale. What did I think? Would I read it and give an opinion? My heart sank. I get many of these requests and although the friend said it was a 'brilliant' book, I'd been burnt by this before and found myself spending precious reading time wading through a book that should be confined to a bottom drawer.

But joy of joys! This was a gem. Well-written; unusual history, set in a little-known time and location. I found myself burning with enthusiasm for the book and wondering how on earth I could get it better known. Then realising; I can't even get my own books better known, let alone someone else's. Still, I'm working on it, and can at least send word out to everyone I know. The Lacemaker by Sukey Hughes, if anyone out there is listening.

Also read on the Kindle this week, 'The Illumination of Ursula Flight' by Anna-Marie Crowhurst. I'm writing a book about Mary Knepp, an actress in Restoration London, and this book sounded worryingly close to what I was writing. Curious, and slightly aggrieved at someone poaching my territory (I know, that's ridiculous) I dived in. Phew. Not like my book at all, but great to see the world I was writing about through another writer's eyes. I constantly find myself veering between wanting to read things set in 'my own era' and being terrified of being influenced by them. And I am constantly humbled by other people's writing skills. A highly recommended read.

The other book I've been reading on Kindle this week is my own. I often send my own books to Kindle as then I can spot errors more easily, and read it as a digital reader might. The book sits differently on the page in kindle format. I'm aware that many readers have abandoned paper altogether and read on their phones, but I'm not one of them. And this is something people often forget, that reading your own work takes just as long as reading someone else's  -- that as well as writing the darned things, we have to actually read them too. If I become engrossed in my own book and forget to take notes, then that's a good sign. Historical fiction never seems to be short, does it? All three of these books amounted to over 1000 pages!

Digital -- The PC
I read a lot of research documents on the PC -- Gutenberg Library Texts, papers from various universities, and relevant passages from Google book searches. I can't pretend I don't use Wikipedia - it's excellent for getting a quick overview of what I need to know.  Last week I was reading Broken Boundaries; Women and Feminism in Restoration Drama from the University of Kentucky. I am a great Googler and search for relevant papers that might help my current novel - at the moment it's papers on Restoration Drama and The Fire of London; I'm researching these for the third in my trilogy about Pepys' Women.

Hardback
My research books are in hardback if I can get them. Here's the current pile of books I'm dipping in and out of.  Over the last few years in what I'm calling my 'Pepys Period' I've used them so much that most of them have been read cover to cover. Of course there are paperbacks in there too, but I hate research books on Kindle; they're just too difficult to bookmark or navigate, and real books are much easier to find on my desk. Also there's something very satisfying about research in solid form. I've read quite a few excerpts from these books in the past week whilst fact-checking my novel. I occasionally buy fiction in hardback, but only as a gift for someone else. My groaning shelves wouldn't support it! One of my most interesting research books this week was "And So To Bed" A Comedy by J B Fagan, a play first published in 1926 about Samuel Pepys and his wife, and featuring Charles II.  A very enjoyable light-hearted romp. My edition was from AbeBooks, who do out of print editions by post.

Paperback
I love Twitter and it has persuaded me to buy quite a few books, many by indie writers. Some authors I see frequently online are never in bookstores, and some authors I see frequently in bookstores have no online presence. I only have a few paperbacks by indie authors, because most I buy on Kindle. I still buy full-price paperback fiction from bookshops because I enjoy to browse there. The House Between Tides by Sarah Maine came from my local bookshop, Carnforth Books, and it attracted me because it's set in The Outer Hebrides in Scotland, a wild and nartural place, and the title appealed to me. It's a Victorian/present day dual narrative, and I'm nearly at the end of it, and really enjoying the atmosphere the writer creates. This has been my bedtime reading. I had never heard of the author, but I'm glad I took the risk as the book is gripping and well-written. The local bookshop does a good job of curating the stock so that there are big-name authors but also debut novelists on the shelves.

Coffee time reading
I love my Historical Novel Society Magazine and often read it cover to cover. Mine arrived a couple of days ago, and it helps to keep me in touch with the industry, with what other people are writing, and with what is 'hot' in historical fiction. I spotted a couple of books in there that will be on my reading list for the near future. I also get various other industry magazines such as The Society of Authors Magazine, and of course I read blog posts of authors who I know or have read, (like this blog) and articles from BBC History and Historia Magazines online.

Books and Time
When I added up my reading for this week, it seemed enormous. And this is a typical week. I read far more than I did before I was a writer, and I used to be a bookworm then. Whenever I'm not writing I seem to be reading, and now we are so wired up to our digital machines, I'm reading more or less constantly. The digital world has broadened my reading in one way, but also made some of my reading feel rushed. I try not to skim, but I'm aware that I often do, and that this doesn't give time and attention to the person who has devoted time to writing it. We are all drowning in content, but it is only really with a novel that I can savour the content and immerse myself in what I'm reading.

As a historical fiction writer I find I am actually spending far more time reading than actually writing. Reading used to be something where I had to set aside a quiet time and space and buy or borrow a physical book. Now I have several documents open on my PC all the time and can flip from one to the other. And it's delicious, to someone who loves reading, to have unlimited access to so much stuff -- and so much of it with free access. But I also feel its dangerous side, that it could become an addiction.

I remember complaining to my mother, 'I've nothing to read!' and having to save my pocket money for my next book. Those hard choices, are gone. Those spaces, where the mind is free of a book, are also precious. I'm learning to build those spaces in, to clear the palate.

How do you read? What do you read? Are you a Kindle fan or a paperback reader? How do you prioritise your reading time?

Do feel free to find me on Twitter @swiftstory or on my website www.deborahswift.com 

Everybody’s Scrap Book of Curious Facts – Michelle Lovric

 A recent gloriously sunny morning at the Columbia Road Flower Market yielded not blooms but a book. Forgive my unctuous and outdated verbosity. My prose style has been contaminated by a little red book I found at an antique stall among the flowers. Published in 1890, it’s called Everybody’s Scrap Book of Curious Facts – A BOOK FOR ODD MOMENTS. This afternoon I have spent some very odd moments indeed with its compiler, Don Lemon.

His argument on his book’s behalf is this: ‘I have often found that when the mind was so wearied that even a sensational novel failed to fix the attention, short paragraphs about unusual things in science, art, or literature, were interesting enough to divert my thoughts from cares of business.’

 Mr Lemon thus conveniently liberated himself from any editorial scruples or considerations other than shortness and diversion. His book is of its time. So to our time, it is imperialist, racist, sexist, credulous and rather humorous.

Here are a few things I learned from Mr Lemon:

The mostly costly leather in the world is known to the trade as piano leather. The secret of tanning piano leather is known only to a family of tanners in Thuringia, Germany.

Wednesday and Thursday are especially lucky for weddings in Bulgaria.

The well-proportioned woman wears a shoe one half the size of the glove her hand calls for.

The thin angular ear is said to denote bad temper and cruelty … Great philosophers and statesmen have been noticed to have large and sloping ears.

When to Pare the Finger Nails (not on Sunday)

In the Arctic region, a man who wants a divorce leaves home in anger and does not return for several days. The wife takes the hint and departs.

That the colon was introduced in about 1485 and the comma 35 years later

In the month of February 1866, there was no full moon.

The stork is partial to kittens as an article of food, and finds them an easy and wholesome prey; and the cats reciprocate by a love for young storks.

It may be consoling to red-headed people to read that out of 165 patients at the Kirkbride insane asylum only one has read hair.

Among Things that Never will be Settled: ‘whether a long screwdriver is better than a short one of the same family’.

Fair Rosamund was not poisoned by Queen Eleanor, but died in the odour of sanctity in the convent of Godstow.

 A centipede is afraid of a tarantula, and when he lies down to sleep he always takes the precaution to build a cactus fence about him. A tarantula will never crawl over cactus.

It has been estimate that we get a complete new outfit of brains about every two months.

The list of thing that can be eaten from the fingers is on the increase. It includes all bread, toast, tarts and small cakes, celery and asparagus.

 We must all make our apologies to the pig, who has been grossly maligned in regard to his food. Instead of being ready to eat anything, he turns out to be the most fastidious of animals.

Of all quarrels, the most senseless, the most bootless, the most worrying, is a quarrel with your circumstances.

The Guanches, the aboriginal inhabitants of the Canary Islands, rudely embalmed their corpses, drying the bodies in the air and covering them with varnish.

In 1695 Limerick and Tipperary, Ireland, had many showers of a soft, fatty substance resembling butter. It was of a dark yellow colour, and always fell at night. The people gathered it and use it as an ointment, reporting many astonishing cures.

The Fijian cannibals’ emotions have reference for the greater part to food, so he worships the god Matawaloo, who has eight stomachs and is always eating.

Australia is a country full of absurdities in animal, vegetable and human life.

 When I started to write this post, I typed in some of the ‘anthropology’ but found that I could not dare to propagate Mr Lemon’s observations of the Chinese, the Indo-Chinese, the Australian aborigine and the ‘Peruvian’.

Otherwise, I found the Scrapbook quite fascinating and fairly authoritative, and certainly an index of knowledge and attitudes if I need to set another book in the late Victorian era.

 Meanwhile, if anyone needs to know anything about anything – or feels an odd moment coming on -I am happy to lend out my Everybody’s Scrap Book of Curious Facts, for the price of postage.
Michelle Lovric's website

From Blog to Book - Lucy Inglis

Four years ago this month I started the Georgian London blog, to discuss the lesser known aspects of the eighteenth century city. The blog gained traction quickly as it explored immigration, disability, crime, sex and other subjects like retail culture and music.

In turn, that blog meant an agent found me, and almost a year after the blog’s first post I had signed a deal with Viking books (a Penguin imprint) to write Georgian London: Into The Streets. Although I had been working in the eighteenth century for a decade, there was still considerable specific research to be done on each area of London and how it evolved through the Georgian period. That research also fed the blog, but it was important to only blog the stuff that wasn’t going to make the final cut for the book. Sometimes it was hard to choose!

Any writer will tell you that time moves at a different pace in the publishing world. It is the complete opposite of blogging and social media, which are perfect for instant gratification. Publishers are used to taking their time to make sure that every element of the book is right, not just the text. For writers, sourcing maps and images, and securing permissions quite literally takes months. But there is little to compare with seeing and holding your finished book for the first time.

The book is out this coming Thursday, so I’m feeling like a nervous mother putting her only child into school for the first time. But the journey from blog to book has been a tremendous process in which I have learned so much. Not just about a subject I love, but about how books are made, the collaborations that are necessary between writers and editors, the teamwork involved in making books as beautiful and covetable as they are.

I’m still very proud of the Georgian London blog and it is still the largest online collection of free material on its subject. People often ask me why I began writing ‘for free’, about such a niche subject. One Sunday, in the summer of 2009, I stood on the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral and listened as the bells called to worshippers and tourists alike. People loitered chatting, or climbed the steps and went inside. I imagined this clamour was almost exactly the same as it had been three centuries ago. I recorded it on my telephone and walked home.

For years I had dragged my husband to churchyards, houses, demolition sites, public monuments and hidden memorials, telling him the stories of people long dead: cabinetmakers, slaves, domestic servants, weavers, chimney sweeps and prostitutes. Back at home I played him the recording, my precious moment of shared experience with Londoners of the past. His dry recommendation was to start blogging the tales I had accumulated and what I believed about Georgian London. The blog’s instant and enduring popularity reassured me that there were people who were as interested in these stories as I was, and that interest sustained me through the long journey of writing the book. It is a tribute to the people of the eighteenth century city and testimony to the eternal feeling that if I could just run fast enough through London’s endless archives I will catch them, grasp their coat tails and make them tell me everything about being a Georgian Londoner. And that is why I blog for free, because the best blogs whether written by one person, or like this one, many, are the ones that are born out of a deep passion on a subject, any subject. The passion of the contributors is what makes them stand out from the millions of others out there and I'm proud to be a History Girl. So if you have something you love as much as we love history, get to it and start blogging, you never know where it might take you.

I hope my love of Georgian London is evident in the pages of my book. My book! Four years ago I hadn’t imagined I would ever say those words. Now I can. It’s been an incredible journey. And as of Thursday, a new one will begin.

New Libraries for Old? by Penny Dolan

Today I went to a meeting of the Friends of my local Library, one of the Carnegie buildings. We met in a small neat room in the basement, next to the children’s library. Back in the first half of the last century, the basement held a shooting range for local riflemen. 

 In the recent years of this century, through the National Lottery, the library was revamped and opened up to more daylight. Now it houses adaptable shelving and rows of well-used computers, although the reference library was lost in the alterations. 

The whole interior is painted in the airy lilac with purple accents that are the standard local authority library colours. It is a very pleasant library, yet I can’t help coming back from these meetings - aware of yet another “re-structuring” behind the scenes -  that this is an uncomfortable age for our national libraries.

True, this week, a new library was announced, courtesy of the Margaret Thatcher Trust, which may well be a subscribing or closed library. Somewhere else, no doubt, a free local authority library is closing or transforming into a community library. 

Although I welcome volunteers and a more open mood in libraries, I know the inspiring expertise - spread too thinly – will fade quickly. Rather like the respected collection of early Victorian children’s literature once held at my local library and now, apparently, lost in the counties archives. Last reported in a cardboard box, somewhere, but now untraceable. Gone with the fairies.

I do not feel the destruction of libraries can ever be a good sign. The ravage of the great libraries of the past - Alexandria, Lindisfarne, St David’s, Leuvain and more - was never the sign of greater tolerance. These libraries were destroyed dramatically with blood, fire and hatred, dramatically and awfully. They were true disasters.

But the current re-structuring and rationalisation of the library service feels like the pettiest, meanest-minded aspect of Englishness. It makes me feel ashamed, knowing that the poor, the old, the out-of work, the students and the immigrants who use the libraries that are most affected.   

It goes deeper. Behind the library lies the stock of books available. I enquired, recently, about an expensive academic book on children’s literature. My local library will help by arranging an out-of-county loan for twenty pounds.  

Will our library stock eventually only offer the light romances and whodunits once the core of the Boots subscription libraries? Will biographies of recent and current celebrities be the only lives available? More importantly, will more study be impossible unless one joins a major subscription library? Or signs up and pays for an academic course? Will history only be "now" and not "once" or "then"?

I have always loved being in libraries, in using libraries. My first library was one of those ornate late Victorian library that declared Here is Learning. That building, with its green copper dome, is long gone. The replacement, which I am sure is well used and excellent, is now contained within a big new shopping mall. Which, if times get even tougher, is a much simpler space to disappear. Rather like the use of the word “librarian”, that became “learning resources manager” in many local libraries and secondary schools. How convenient.

 

Excuse this gloomy History Girl post. I love my local library and the people there. But sitting in such a meeting, working out ways to raise money for a notice-board for the railings outside, set my history teeth jangling. Is what I feel the very faintest echo of how it was when only the priests and the rich had access to books? 

I also find it impossible to post about tomorrow’s event.

Penny Dolan

www.pennydolan.com

Penny Dolan is the author of A Boy Called Mouse. (Bloomsbury)