What a summer, hey? Hot, long, and creatively a season of two halves, the first full of despondency, the second far more rewarding.
With hindsight, I can see that the despondency stemmed from events linked to, but essentially outside the writing process. That is, after finishing Draft 1 of the C17th work-in-progress in April, I set it aside to ‘compost’ for at least six weeks while I began the PhD’s critical commentary.
That commentary required me to re-read five years’ worth of research and creative notebooks to re-discover what I’d forgotten along the way.
Instead of inspiration, however, the 2020 and 2021 notebooks triggered memories about family deaths and associated crises during those years which I thought I’d dealt with, but which exploded afresh, leaving everything else in ruins. Inevitably, it took time to pick up the pieces.
Fortunately, research came to the rescue in the form of a deep dive into legal history, a nice, solid and simple thing to do. Or so I thought. In fact, the bigotry of the seventeenth century drove me mad which turned out to be jolly useful, as I’ll explain below. Meanwhile, jangled nerves were soothed by a meeting with fellow writer friends at an academic conference.
The subject of the conference also proved instructive. It was about the discipline of creative criticism, something I’d not heard of before, but turned out to be what I was doing! That is, the WIP responds creatively to another writer’s work, in my case that of a pamphleteer. Who knew?
I think that conference might have been a turning point in terms of getting back on track with the development edit, but it didn’t feel it at the time. Rather, I felt dumb for not knowing that’s what my story was about. Hey ho.
Anyhow, summertime offered opportunities for the familiar pick-me-up of physical research trips. I went to a restored Norman keep, similar to the one where the witch trials took place and wandered around it for hours, and later to the location of the witch trials on the same days they took place. Well, almost the same days as I failed to account for the shift from the Julian to Gregorian calendars.
Despite the eleven-day discrepancy, places and times that had, up till then, been purely imaginary became real: the slant of the sun on a window, landscapes my characters would have lived in, plants they would have seen. Wandering through France had been a big part of researching The Goose Road and making WW1 feel real; I knew it would help this time. (Why I put it off for so long is probably worth exploring, but not now.)
Anyhow, back in June, while still feeling miserable, a brief one-to-one with an editor had convinced me to revisit the feminist B-plot which I’d put on hold in 2024 after failing for years to come up with a convincing and relevant female character and plot.
Having re-committed to this idea, the anger I felt over the irrational bigotry of powerful seventeenth-century men regarding the (im)possibility of witchcraft super-charged something in my subconscious, which promptly delivered both a character and the bones of her plot within hours of making that decision.
It happened on retreat at Casa Ana in the Sierra Nevada, Spain, a break from home which I’d hoped would end the blues but turned into a disaster for the aforesaid reasons about triggered memories. But perhaps the emotional extremity of that period was one of the drivers behind that sudden creative moment.
So, ta, patriarchal bigots, then and now. You’re seriously worth fighting against.
Since then, her story has developed in leaps and bounds, fed by years of research and guided by trusted plotting systems like John Truby’s seven story steps and Story Grid’s foolscap templates, along with the ‘backroom girls’ of the unconscious who’ve come up trumps repeatedly when set story problems to solve.
It feels good to have a woman’s viewpoint interrupting my male protagonist’s story. She’s not an obvious heroine. Not a victim. Not a witch. Just a woman in and of her time who can speak to us (I hope).
Thanks to her and another retreat at the ever-brilliant Chez Castillon this month, I now have the first quarter of their combined manuscript on file, with the development edited A-plot braided with Draft 1 of her B-plot, plus a head buzzing with ideas. Phew.
PS Daily writing updates over on Facebook at Rowena House Author. Would be lovely to chat there.
Not on X or Instagram much.
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