Hunting the Generated Subject - by Rowena House

It’s the last lap, the final six weeks of a six-and-a-half year creative writing PhD, which, terrifyingly, has taken up (or, at least, often took over) one-tenth of my lifetime.

I’m line-editing and proof-reading at the moment, ten pages a day of an 80K manuscript, cut down from 87K at its longest. It’s mad to try to do both at the same time, but that’s how it’s turned out and by this stage I’m not questioning my process, just getting on with it.

Hopefully, I’ll have time to read it through again on the iPad in a different format as reformatting always seems to throw up those glaringly obvious typos that have slipped past me, oh, probably hundreds of times.

I’m getting all sorts of deja-vu with the comparable stage of editing The Goose Road, my debut for young readers. Like asking, where did I put that sentence I liked so much, and really worked? And, for goodness sake, what on earth were you on about there?

There’s also been a nice moment of circularity or closure this month. 

Right at the start of this project, when Arvon began online masterclasses during Covid lockdowns, I listened to author Hisham Matar recommending that we stay open creatively during our first drafts (which I’ve taken to mean over multiple drafts) so that we don’t get trapped by our original idea and fail to access our deeper level of intuitive invention.

That became a kind of mantra for this novel: stay open to whatever comes along. 

 

 

Then, on August 7th, an email came in from Writers.com, an American organisation which I often find useful and thank very much for all their inspiration. This email offered up a notion from poetry which struck a chord. The article is by Sean Glatch, whom I’ve quoted here before, and is titled, Writing Titles of Poetry: How to Title a Poem, which has a lovely internal rhythm, which I guess is the point.

Mr. Glatch quoted Richard Hugo’s The Triggering Town, which he called ‘a great grounding in the craft and mindset of poetry writing’. To quote him quoting Mr. Hugo:

To Hugo, all poems have two subjects:

· The Initiating Subject: the topic, idea, or thing that led you into writing a poem.

· The Generated Subject: the subject that the poem discovers or was actually, secretly, about the whole time.

I really like this idea. It makes a whole lot of sense. For the work-in-progress, a seventeenth-century witch trial was the initiating subject, and the importance of writing to critical thinking is the generated subject.

Looking back, I realise I spent a lot of time in the early years trying to think up a generated subject, to plan it, to plot it, to do exactly what Hisham Matar said you shouldn’t do. It’s the theme thing, innit. We’re supposed to know it, but if it’s the storytelling that generates it, how can one plan it?

They say that writing a novel is new each time around. If there is another one in me, I’ll try very hard to remember this lesson and stop hunting for a theme and let it wade out of the story sea in its own good time.

All the best, everyone. Nearly there. 

 

A witch subplot in hindsight – by Rowena House

One theme that seems to have been consistent in my ABBA posts over the past few years is how slow progress has been on Book 2, which are famously tough to write, my seventeenth-century witch trial work-in-progress proving that general point.

But...

As my characters and I approach the last two months of this being a PhD work-in-progress, I can also see how their stories came on in leaps and bounds in the past twelve months, including a scramble to finish Draft 3 of the main plot last month, hence the lack of an ABBA post from me in June. Apologies.

What changed? 

One simple answer is the end of the PhD. Who doesn’t work better with a deadline?

But the story hasn't simply ended; it has changed fundamentally from the first draft, completed in April last year when I thought the main plot was the entire story, just one with a massive hole in the middle where a woman’s story should have been, my main protagonist being a male pamphleteer. 

The feminist subplot told from a woman viewpoint arrived in a rush in June 2025 for reasons I’m analysing for the critical commentary on the novel at the moment. Some of these reasons have to do with grief, which I’m not ready to write about just yet, but as I analyse the process, I’m seeing parallels with The Goose Road, my children's debut, written with the massive benefit of the collective effort of Bath Spa’s MA in writing for young people, for which I still can’t thank everyone involved  enough. Doing this one without such support has definitely made it far harder.

The first big hurdle with The Goose Road that other people couldn't help me with was the enormity of the First World War as a subject and a feeling that I needed permission to write about it. With Book Two, the ‘witches’ story wasn’t mine to tell, either. 

Taking Wilfred Owen’s war poems with me to key WW1 locations in France gave me that sense of permission in 2014; I was honouring the past, not invading it.

Now, I wonder if it was the understanding that I think I've acquired from years of researching, writing, and thinking about witch trials that gave me permission to enter the witch suspects’ dungeon this time around.

 

 

For example, last year, when writing about finishing the first (partial) draft of Book Two, I noted:

‘The biggest creative eye-opener of finishing the full draft was an entirely unexpected release of pent-up creative thoughts which arrived in a rush AFTER I spent a week tweaking the resolution. Years of fiddling with single-sentence commercial pitches fell away, replaced by a solid plot one-liner (15 words). 

'More importantly, a character one-liner arrived out of the blue, too, which, with hindsight, I can see is the heart of the story, the universal wood hidden within the story trees. The specific character journey on which I had been fixated turned out to be a metaphor for something simpler.’

That one-liner: a young man overcomes group-think and regains his humanity. The driving force behind his change of heart: writing about flawed prosecutions forced him to think critically.

Really, that’s my story, too. 

Writing about a specific set of witch trials forced me to think critically about the how of witchcraft belief rather than dismiss it as archaic nonsense. Applying social psychology theories to my pamphleteer explained his belief system, to my satisfaction at least.

The link with the here and now therefore became the slender nature of the gap between seventeenth century mindsets and the irrationalities of our times, which seem to me to be no more than a variation on a theme. A notion which seems to have been the key to unlocking herstory (versus history). 

 

Next month, I’m booked into a remote Dartmoor inn for four nights to re-read her story to see if that creative rush still makes sense. I’m hoping her subplot won’t need more than a line edit/proof read. But then again, maybe I’m forcing myself into that position by not giving myself enough time to do much else with it. Like ruin it! We’ll see. I’ll be back from the moor in time for the next ABBA blog and will let you know how that plan worked out.


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More taxing times with ALCS by Steve Way

 

As, appropriately I suppose, the plot regarding repayment of tax paid by ALCS to HMRC thickens, and because many of you kindly read the post and/or commented on it, I thought I would explain the developments since last month’s post.

Firstly, thank you to all of you who commented on the post. Penny Dolan and Rowena House, I appreciated your supportive comments… and you’re right Rowena, if I owed HMRC 20% of something, the boot would definitely be on the other foot and communication between us would be far more rapid! As you mentioned Stroppy Author, it’s more effective to get letters posted to HMRC by family (or in my case friends) in the UK rather than from abroad, when they either seem to get ‘lost’ or considerably delayed. Thank you Nick Garlick for sharing your experiences, I had been considering approaching ALCS to support me in this matter and I’m sorry to hear that you got no help from them.

As I mentioned in last month’s blog, I sent my application form for repayment of tax paid to HMRC by ALCS in January. This was based on me being a taxpayer in France and therefore, under the ‘double tax’ treaty being theoretically eligible to reclaim that tax.

A while after posting the blog I did finally hear from HMRC! It is actually dated from before my last blog but arrived by what’s known around here as ‘snail mail’ a month later. However, to my surprise and frustration, they stated that, ‘We cannot deal with you claim because it is not on the appropriate Double Taxation claim form for France’.

Since I cannot for the life of me understand why the form I sent them is not the or an ‘appropriate’ form I am thinking about sending them the letter below. As fellow ABBA and Scattered Author friends I would be interested to know whether you think it would be a good idea to actually send the letter, or if you think by questioning them in the way I have that they may lock me in The Tower and throw away the key!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dear Sir or Madam,

I am writing with regard to the letter of 29^th April 2026, which I received from #### ##### stating that I had not sent you the appropriate Double Taxation claim form for France.

I am enquiring about this, not only on my own behalf but because I contribute to a blog (An Awfully Big Blog Adventure) produced and read by many authors, particularly children’s authors, and I am aware that there are other authors like me, living outside the UK, trying to reclaim tax paid to you by ALCS, based on the double tax agreement. I would therefore ask if you could kindly explain why the form I sent you is not the appropriate form as several factors seem to indicate that it should be.

The form I sent you is titled ‘Form DT-Individual’. I have assumed the acronym ‘DT’ refers to the Double Tax Treaty, or am I incorrect in doing so?

Further to this (in bold type) the sub heading of the first page of the form itself (copy enclosed) describes it as an ‘Application for relief at source from United Kingdom (UK) Income Tax and claim to repayment of UK Income Tax’. The form then goes on to state that it is, ‘For use by an individual resident of a country with which the UK has a double taxation treaty that provides for relief from UK Income Tax on… royalties arising in the UK’. I believe that France and many other countries in the UK have a double taxation treaty with the UK, which would seem to further imply that this is an appropriate form to use.

In addition to this, the accompanying notes (copy enclosed) state that one of the purposes of the DT-Individual forms is to apply for ‘relief at source from UK income tax on… royalties… paid from sources in the UK.’

Finally, which I am sure you can understand made me even more certain that I was sending you the appropriate form was that my local tax office in France kindly confirmed my status as a French taxpayer. I assumed that if the form was inappropriate, or unfamiliar to them, that my local tax office would not have ratified my form. As you can no doubt understand I am reticent to send them a second form to sign, having to explain to them also that the original form that seemingly purports to be the correct form is not in fact appropriate. Should it be that there is a special form to use unique to France, despite this not being stated on the one I sent you, surely the officials at my tax office would know this? If this is the case, it would be useful for authors based in other countries if this idiosyncrasy applies elsewhere.

If indeed, for some reason, which as you can see currently eludes me, the ‘Form DT-Individual’, despite apparently strong evidence to the contrary, is indeed incorrect, please could you explain to me which form is indeed the correct and how I access it – I don’t want to send you a second inappropriate form! Also, for the purposes of my fellow authors can you provide a clue as to how they distinguish between the appropriate and  inappropriate form? It would also be intriguing to know which applicants can actually use the form in order to reclaim royalties paid in the UK via the double tax agreement, if any.

I, and I suspect a number of my fellow authors, await your reply with interest.

Yours sincerely,

…

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Are any of you good at baking as well as having access to sturdy cake -sized metal files?

Chips away: the new metaphor – by Rowena House

For years now my favourite writing metaphor has been the sand castle one. Your pour your words into a sandbox called Draft Zero or just Draft if you’re feeling optimistic, and when the box is full of story, you start shaping it into a wondrous castle for however long it takes.

This month, though, I’ve met the marble block metaphor. The idea that a story is a thing waiting to be revealed as the writer chips away at it. My process has never felt like chiselling before. Nothing was found; it’s all been built.

Why the change? Feedback on the development edit AKA Draft Gazillion of the seventeenth-century witch trial work-in-progress which my supervisors read (it’s a creative writing PhD novel) for the first time in April. Amid kind words, they said (in subtext) that Act 2 Part 1 was a pup. 

‘One more run through ought to do it,’ they suggested.

Then I had a good close look at what I’d sent them.

How? After YEARS working on my wordsmithing, how can I have got it so wrong? I coined a new editing acronym for the margin: CUT. Complete and Utter Tosh. [Actually, it was CUS, but this is a family-friendly blog.] So, chisel out, spit on the hands, cut, cut, polish and cut in pursuit of Draft Gazillion + One AKA Development Edit Mark 2.

The sensible editor bit of the brain said I needed a Book Map (copyright The Golden Egg Academy) or similar (copyright Book Bound UK), charting the whole thing.

But you know how some writers hate writing synopses? It’s book mapping for me. However sensible it is, I loathe it. There are at least three versions of a map for this WIP languishing in various folders, to which I dutifully added another this month, then ignored it. 

What I did instead was analyse each CUT chapter to see for myself what ailed it. Result: I think it’s a combination of slow pace, unclear progressions, and hidden rising stakes. Which are all sort of saying the same thing. Tackling them individually seemed simpler, however,

Thus, 1.5K words are gone and I’m only half way through Act 2 Part 1. I also buffed up cliff-hanger chapter endings and changed chapter breaks so they could all end at a cliff-hanger.

It’s also been good to have a run through for micro-pacing, achieved by tightening sentences and making sure, e.g., that they end on the most powerful word.

For progressions, I’m trying a sentence-based system, too, copy-and-pasting key passages, with their respective page numbers, to track my protagonist’s state of mind and make sure it is progressing in a logical way. By shuffling back and forth between them, altering phrases subtly or wholesale as I go, I think I’ve now linked them together and arrived, ta-dah! at the turning point of Act 2 part 1. Which is the chapter I’m chipping away at now.

Raising stakes is proving trickier. For this WIP, I’ve used a hierarchy of needs system adapted from John Truby’s Anatomy of Story which in turn borrowed from Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. (I might have got Truby’s title wrong. Anatomy of Stories? The Story? Sorry, in a rush today.)

Tom, my protagonist, starts in survival mode, protecting his physiological needs: shelter & his livelihood. He then tries to catch a criminal, then faces incrementally-rising moral jeopardy until he finally challenges institutional corruption.

For me, the rising stakes are inherent in this pattern and therefore readable in the subtext. That’s where my instinct says they should stay. If the reader knows from Act 1 that Tom is out on his ear if he messes up the Inciting Incident task that’s been set him, why repeat it in Act 2? And isn’t moral jeopardy by definition a higher stake than keeping your job?

My very clever beta readers didn’t seem to think so. Thus, it’s hammer and chisel to the fore, hoping they’ll be able to see it once I’ve chipped away at more of the dross.

 

 

Rowena House Author on Facebook and Instagram for the WIP

Stuff about my debut, The Goose Road, at rowenahouse.wordpress.com  

Hurrah! A milestone passed - by Rowena House

Hurrah! On April 7th I got to type The End at the end of an 87k-word development edit of my witch trial work-in-progress. That is, a year and a day after I finished the first full draft and (whisper it) six years after starting this project.

Actually, it's cheating to say it’s done as the new subplot still needs developing, but it was a big enough milestone to warrant a series of pub dinners with my other half, culminating (tonight as I type this) in a family dinner in a local restaurant with fantastic views over the south Devon coast.

A huge thank you to my wonderful son and his lovely partner for arranging it.

So, what’s next?

A six-week cooling off period for the manuscript before the subplot development edit and whole manuscript line edit during which I’ll edit down nineteen thousand words of codswallop written last year and nominally entitled a PhD critical commentary on the novel.







Luckily, my faithful Elements of Reasoning, a gift from my dad in the 1980s, is already suggesting a logical structure to this commentary that might – might – help massage the codswallop into something less rambling. And it’s always better to edit than stare at a blank screen. Isn’t it?

Meanwhile, I treated myself to Richard Cohen's journey into writerly minds as an escape from depressing academic histories of witch trials. Happily, Cohen flagged up something I hadn’t realised: both plotlines for the WIP turned into ‘rebirth’ stories in Christopher Booker’s schema of seven basic plots.

I’ll have to re-read his tome – or rather, the relevant chapter/s – after being disappointed to find on first reading (in circa 2021) that I didn’t seem to be writing one of his universal stories. It’s comforting to think my witch suspects unconsciously wandered back into that fold as, tbh, I still find it difficult to be certain I’ve written a story, rather than storified history, albeit with extra bits of herstory.





Then in May, I’m off on an Arvon course at Lumb Bank about getting published in 2026 which I’m hoping will lift the gloom that squats over the whole business of querying and submissions etc. In my dreams, there’s a friendly little independent publisher somewhere that still does hardbacks.

Anyway, sorry this is another short diary entry. It’s laundry time if I’m going to have anything clean to wear tonight. And we’re out of bread and milk. And it turns out to be lunch time. Breakfast? Oh, well. 

Happy writing life, one and all.

I'm still raging over on Twitter @HouseRowena. As Rowena House Author, you'll find me playing with photos on Instagram and diarising the WIP on Facebook

Dear Diary - by Rowena House

It’s been full-on for the past week as I try my hardest to meet an academic deadline to get the development edit into my PhD supervisors by Easter, plus Draft 1 of a B-plot which, after five years of working on this one story, came to me last year.

My back can’t take much more sitting down, so here’s a selection of recent morning musings on my Facebook live diary about writing the seventeenth century witch trial work-in-progress.

Happy Spring Equinox to anyone else who’s always surprised when it’s not on the 21st.

March 20th. 05.58 approx. Today I'll attempt to pull together ideas for an All is Lost chapter for Tom's plotline out of the mess of multiple chapters I left as dross in Draft 1, with the new thoughts informed by my new fear that the Draft 1 ending is wrong. Not totally wrong. The basic idea is salvageable, I think, but it needs to be more nuanced if it's to be plausible. I'd like to type it, but I think that's just the urge to get it done. Rushing this won't solve the problem. My March ABBA post is due tomorrow so maybe I can think this problem through 'on paper' for that. Not yet six am.

March 19th. 06.58. A day of life jobs. I'll go back to Alys if I get a moment. Then I should write an ABBA post. Hmm. Not ideal if I'm still even vaguely thinking I might make the Mar 31 deadline, though the request was 'by Easter', so, what if I say Tom's development edit & Alys's Draft 1 will be done & dovetailed by the close of Easter Monday? Doable? Pic: yesterday's dog walk. Twas lovely. 

March 18th. 06.05. Woken to a desire to put the work-in-progress aside after yesterday's dismal discovery of yet more major revision being needed. After three months plus of solid concentration it felt like a kick in the teeth to find I'd left chapter after chapter essentially at the Draft Zero stage of meandering half-discovery with a veneer of nice writing that utterly fails to tell a story. I should have flagged it up as needing wholesale rethinking. Surely, I knew it did. That's the end-March deadline blown.

March 17th. 06.31. Waking up to a big question. Is this 'a' development edit or 'the' development edit? Unfortunately, the answer isn't the one I want it to be, nor the one my PhD timetable expects it to be. By definition, if I'm still writing Draft 1 for Alys (or horror of horrors, Draft Zero, fumbling more or less blindly towards her story) then this cannot be 'the' development edit, and whatever I deliver to my PhD supervisors will be preliminary.

Is that conclusion an opportunity to break free from the self-imposed pressure to get it 'right' right now or a threat of more (endless) procrastinating because I don't have a deadline? Is craft a strength (let's get this done) or a weakness (let's package Alys & Tom's stories into industrial-shaped containers)? I guess the answer is personal. The deadline is hugely motivating, but I am fumbling in the dark for the dovetailed ending, hoping my storytelling instincts are good enough. With The Goose Road the denouement was the thing that my editor said she bought the manuscript for. That's a truism for any book: it's only as good as its ending.

So, a lot to play for but how do I play it? Plough on or step back & plot? In other words, what have I learnt about myself as a writer since starting out seriously to write fiction in 2007?

March 16th. 06.55. NB, I need a table charting Tom's shifting opinion of the trials from brilliant examples of justice to fiascos by the time he meets Beth, and ultimately to examples of injustice by the end. I probably need to add an explicit statement about each change of heart to keep myself & the reader aligned with this arc [so that the Act 3 deviation between his beliefs and what he's writing is clearly shown, rather than the reader needing to be told].

NB 2, identify the exact point Tom's story enters its Act 3. There will be opportunities as well as constraints from Alys's story taking some of the weight of the James denouement. Keep an open mind where Tom act break might be [e.g. this chapter you're working on!!!] [NB it wasn’t. All is Lost & the Dark Night of the Soul chapters are still to come.]

NB 3. Don't get frustrated. Tom's story has changed a lot because of the introduction of Alys's plot. Don't expect it to be simple to dovetail the two.

Re the development edit in general, it's interesting that I remembered the current London sequence as being aligned with the Draft 1 denouement, but yesterday I found a whole chapter that make absolutely no sense. From memory, I'd layered into this chapter Tom's evolving thought process about the past, having not known what it needed to be in Draft Zero, the very first full draft in which I was working out what the story might be.

Basically, the story was more evolved in my head than on the page.

I'll have to be meticulous about expunging this old story DNA from the development edit lest it damages the beast that is 'becoming' on the page. It will almost certainly take a fast read through of a printed version to see if I have made this arc clear. But that will have to wait till after I've dropped this version into the PhD system.

Re writing in general, this story needed to be edited at speed to establish coherence. Hopefully, being forced to draft Alys's story at speed will limit its incoherence. Overall lesson about discovering a stream-of-poo when you thought you were almost 'there'? Don't be fooled into thinking any of this is easy.



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On dinosaurs and castles - Rowena House

 

Joan Lennon’s February post [link below] gave me a lot of comfort.

For a dinosaur like me, raised on traditional books – and still forlornly wedded to outdated notions about traditional publishing – it’s clear from commentaries such as hers that self-publishing is a rational and respectable choice for authors of repute and a solid backlist, and thus for someone like me with just one novel and a short story out there, it would be no shame at all. 

Thank you, Joan. Your post got me out of bed this morning.

That sense of relief follows two bruising encounters with reality this past month, both of which occurred during a research trip to locations where my seventeenth century witch trial work-in-progress is set. 

 

Touching the stones that imprisoned the people I’m writing about is depressing. I’ve been to Lancaster Castle three times now, and it is both extraordinarily useful inspiration but also a sobering reminder that real people suffered real horror there.

I’m co-opting their lives for my fiction in the hope that my serious intent justifies that decision. It’s a subject I’ll write about more another time, but mid-development edit, I found those sanitised glimpses of their reality demotivating.

It didn’t help that just before a tour of the former prison within the castle I had tea in the castle’s swanky modern café with its smooth music and yuppy feel to the clientele. It was jarring. The tone of the tour jarred, too, with the guide making light of ‘my’ prisoners, who as ‘witches’ belong to everyone.

Could they conceive of being tourist attractions?

Or characters in novels?

The second unpleasant encounter was with an old version of myself at a book launch event.

The event itself was lovely. Held in Heptonstall, Yorkshire, a large and friendly crowd gathered to celebrate Liz Flanagan’s adult historical novel, When We Were Divided, set in Heptonstall during the civil war. It’s compulsive reading & beautifully written. Congratulations again, Liz. 

Amid all the positivity and fantastic cake, I briefly met Liz’s publisher, and a former self – the pushy woman who got The Goose Road out there – materialised in the space where I’d been standing a second before, all forced smiles and anxiously friendly.

It felt horrible and fake and rammed home this truth: I don’t want to be a needy writer stereotype again. It was unpleasant enough last time around, when I was highly motivated to get published. It would be painfully shabby now. My apologies to the publisher who no doubt spotted the type straight away.

For the time being I’ve retreated to my comfort zone of writing and editing to a deadline. As a pledge that something will happen next, I’ve signed up for an Arvon short course about publication in May and vaguely started looking around at small independent publisher, the whole getting-another-agent thing being way too dismal to think about after mine retired.

Meanwhile, posts like Joan’s and others in the ABBA community have lit a torch in the dark cave of the future. There is another way. Sincere best wishes to everyone battling to get their beautifully crafted words seen.

Good luck and go get ’em.

Link to Joan's post: 

https://awfullybigblogadventure.blogspot.com/2026/02/a-funny-old-journey-in-childrens.html

Wouldn't you know it. Google automatically hyperlinked a bunch of words in this post, but the link I want to be live, Joan's post, no chance. Google also refused to let me upload a photo of Liz's book cover. It might be my browser. Like I said, dinosaur. 

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