Two steps forward, one plotline back - by Rowena House

Two steps forward this past month with – potentially – big implications for the seventeenth century work-in-progress.

One step was serendipitous, the other came during to a two-hour Zoom discussion with a great writing friend about Maggie O’Farrell’s prize-winning and best-selling Hamnet, a story inspired by the childhood death of Shakespeare’s son.

Naturally, with Hamnet, we talked about the story as readers first, sharing our favourite bits and which scenes we found to be less successful. The breakthrough came after we analysed Chapter 2 as writers: what had the author done with this text; how did she do it, and what could we learn from it as historical fiction writers?

I’ll add two caveats here: a) I haven’t yet finished the book, though my friend has, and b) we’re going to continue our discussion, analysing a favourite scene each, therefore these observations are both broad and tentative.

Please do add your comments; it would be lovely to widen the discussion.

Anyway. Our first big takeaway was is how light Hamnet is on historical context compared with (for want of a better term) mainstream historical fiction. 

 

In not naming William Shakespeare, who is variously ‘the husband’, ‘the father’ or ‘the Latin tutor’ etc., O’Farrell boldly and explicitly puts his wife, whom she calls Agnes, centre stage.

This is a domestic story about complex family relationships, rich in history but not the familiar sort about events, particularly events that involve kings and queens, battles and dates.

Apparently, O’Farrell never even names the location of the story as Stratford, though she names streets and describes Shakespeare’s house in great detail. The historical event at its heart is a private tragedy: devastating yet commonplace.

The boldness of this exclusive, penetrating focus on the personal felt remarkable as I re-read Chapter 2 with an analytical, writerly hat on.

As a technique, it is effective and genre-bending. Indeed, reading the whole opening again reminded me of the first time I came across Gabriel Garcia Marquez: a slow burn, then boom! And I got it.

It may be that this sense of surprise reflects a dearth of recent historical fiction reading, which has suffered from the amount of non-fiction research I’ve done in the past few years, plus life’s demands in general.

If anyone can point out contemporary examples of novels like Hamnet, I’d love to hear about them.

The other big thing that struck me from the Zoom discussion was the ease with which my friend accepted Agnes’s powers of fortune telling and mind reading as a natural part of her character, without seeing them necessarily as magical.

Like Hilary Mantel’s ghosts, O’Farrell’s use of the supernatural seems to glide by reviewers and readers alike. [I accept this is a huge generalisation, but these are preliminary thoughts yet to be tested.]

Both these observations have relevance to my tale about a witch trial.

First, how much ‘history’ do I include beyond the immediate events of the story?

For example, I have been trying to develop a secondary plot which is heavy on historical context, with a viewpoint character who spans the social divide from my protagonist, a courtroom clerk, all the way to the Courts of James I and VI and his Queen Consort, Anne of Denmark.

I’ve grown very fond of this viewpoint character, Lady Beth Knyvet, in the year or so I have spent researching her life, and plotting her goals and motivation etc. But I have a horrible feeling she is tangential to the core story, so [deep breath] I have decided [for now at least] to ditch her storyline.

Bloomin heck.

The second point about Hamnet relates to my ghost. I haven’t begun to write her yet but I know she’s got to be there.

Whether she is an actual ghost or the projection of a disturbed mind remains moot. Maybe it will remain moot in the story. I don’t yet know. But Hamnet and the Cromwell trilogy, among others, suggest that historical fiction readers are willing to accept a certain amount of magic if it is done in the right way.

Fingers crossed.

So what about serendipity?

Before I had set Beth Knyvet’s story aside, a root around the National Archives, as part of an online training course run by archivists and historians at the Public Records Office, threw up a few tantalizing glimpses into the life of another character in the WIP: the judge at the witch trial.

It then turned out that the judge’s wife was a much more interesting woman than I had imagined her to be. Hurrah! As one door closes, a new one opens.

Where it will lead, I have no clue. But instinct and inclination agree that there should be a role in this tale for a powerful, intelligent woman, one who isn't a victim.

Meanwhile, a wholesale edit of the various synopses and texts beckons, with my protagonist morphing from an empathetic young man into a more jaded, worldly, nuanced and less likeable character.

Without wishing to jinx the whole thing, I’ll admit to feeling a bit more optimistic about this project than I have for a while. Happy writing!

Twitter: @HouseRowena

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Website: rowenahouse.com

In Praise of the Pram in the Hall – Anna Wilson

Last Thursday, a fellow Bath author, Clare Furniss, launched her first novel for teens, The Year of the Rat, at Mr B’s. The little shop was heaving with friends, family and well-wishers as Clare talked about how she had come to write the book, before reading a tantalizing extract, which now has me itching to read my copy.

There was a lot of buzz surrounding the novel as it has already received high praise, and was also announced as one of Radio 2’s Book Club choices the very day of the launch.

Almost more remarkable, some might comment, is the fact that Clare wrote this book whilst looking after two pre-school children. Almost as if to illustrate the enormity of this task, her two young sons were at Mr B’s with her, clambering over her while she spoke, evidently keen to share the limelight. Clare did a fantastic job in delivering a speech while encumbered in this way, and it led her to make a passing comment on ‘the pram in the hall’; a phrase which, more often than not, is used negatively as a metaphor for how motherhood can prevent women from reaching their full potential in their careers. However, as Clare said, for her, ‘the pram in the hall’ actively helped her to achieve her dream of writing a novel, as it meant she had to concentrate her efforts into the small amount of free time she had available.

‘I worked while the boys were sleeping, or while my parents took them off me for short periods; I wrote late into the night – I took any and every opportunity I could to sit and write,’ she said.

This resonated strongly with me, for I share Clare’s conviction that if it were not for that pram in the hall, I too would not have found the drive necessary to get on with it and become a writer.

When my son was born and my daughter was just two years old, my husband’s career took us to France. I had been working in London and had to give up my job to go with him. I found myself thinking I should use my enforced career break to finally do something about being the writer I knew, deep down, I had always wanted to be.

It was tough. I was exhausted a lot of the time and had no friends or family to call on. My husband worked long hours and often travelled, leaving me with the kids for days and nights at a time. Although my daughter went to a little garderie des enfants a couple of times a week, I still had a newborn baby to look after. 

I decided that the only way to get anything done was to use the children’s rest times to my advantage. Luckily my son was a good sleeper, so while his sister was out, I would feed him, put him in his car seat and rock it gently with my foot while I sat at my computer. He would eventually drop off to sleep while I tapped away at the keyboard.

Recently Maggie O’Farrell wrote an article in the Guardian on how she combines motherhood with her working day:

‘How to write looking after a very young baby: get a sling . . . Walk to your desk, averting your eyes from the heaps of laundry on the stairs, the drifts of cat hair on the carpets, the flotsam of toys in every doorway . . . Do not check your email, do not click on your favourites . . . do not be tempted to see how your eBay auctions are faring: go to work, go directly to work . . . Write. The clickety-clackety of the keyboard will soothe [the baby] and you. Write without looking back, write without rereading . . . Write until you feel her twisting her head from side to side, until you lift her out and into your arms. You might be in the middle of a sentence, but no matter. Type “HERE” in capitals and then push yourself away from the desk, carrying her out of the room, shutting the door until next time.’

I am sure many mothers will recognize this description of making the most of the free time they can grab for themselves. O’Farrell’s experience mirrors my own: this is pretty much how I wrote my first picture book, my first short stories and it is how I began to see myself as a writer rather than a mother taking a break from work. The added bonus of motherhood was that it actively contributed to my writing life: I was seeing the world through my children’s eyes on a daily basis, and realizing that was how I wanted to write it.

The kids are teens now, so I have a lot more time to myself than I did when they were babies. The demands are different and sometimes writing time is still broken up, particularly in the school holidays when I am asked to drive them here and there and everywhere. And of course I still have to walk past the laundry, the drifts of cat hair, the piles of washing up . . .

It hasn’t always been an easy ride, mixing writing with motherhood, and I am certain I would not want to go back to those sleep-deprived days, those snatched half hours of writing time interspersed with breast-feeding, nappy-changing and Lego-building. Yet there is no doubt that having only tiny amounts of time to write did focus the mind and keep me keen, not to mention giving me valuable material. I agree with Clare Furniss: in the end, it was the pram in the hall that set me on the road to being the writer I had always wanted to be.

So if you want to write, but think, ‘I haven't got the time’, draw strength from the fact that it can be done, how ever little time you have. I have learnt that one concentrated hour (or even thirty minutes) is a golden opportunity, not to be wasted; and all thanks to the pram in the hall.

Anna Wilson

www.annawilson.co.uk
www.acwilsonwriter.wordpress.com