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.


Rowena House Author on Facebook

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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

Spooky Tales from Wales by Eloise Williams

In the lead up to Halloween I’m working away at a ghost story. 

I know, perfect timing, what with the storms every other day, the clocks going back, and the scary unknown faces at the window. Well, maybe not the last one.

Gaslight is out there in the world spreading its dark, gritty, little-bit-scary mystery and I am trying to come up with a design for my pumpkin lantern and a better costume than last year’s. Although I think you’ll agree it was quite a superb effort.

 

At this time of year, actually at every time of year, I like to curl up and read spooky stories.

There’s something so satisfying in feeling the hairs on the back of your neck prickling up, the uncertainty when you switch off the light, then switch it back on again, then off again with every determination of being a grown-up.

Then back on again TO READ.  

I thought I’d share some of my recent creepily brilliant favourites with you and also a few words from the authors on why they wrote these superlative spooky stories. So here they are – some spooky tales from Wales. Enjoy! 

  

The Boy who Drew the Future by Rhian Ivory 

"I wrote TBWDTF because I had a nightmare about a boy called Noah who could draw the future but he didn't view it as a gift, he saw it as curse. I was visited by the ghost of a boy and his dog while writing Noah's story. I decided to tell the ghost's story too, he became Blaze who also draws the future but in 1865 when it was much more dangerous to be caught predicting anything. During the writing process I randomly chose Sible Hedingham for my setting as the odd village name appealed to me. I later found out that Sible Hedingham is the last place in the UK to swim a witch. The man known as Dummy was taken down to the river and accused of being a witch because he'd been caught drawing pictures of women the village's fates and futures. Shudder? Yes, I did."

"Fate, destiny, the future, whatever you want to call it, unless you run fast, keep running and don't turn around to see who or what's behind you, it'll find you. It'll find you, catch you and trip you up until you stumble and fall."

Grace-Ella: Spells for Beginners by Sharon Marie Jones

As a child I believed in magic. I had a fairy door on the crab apple tree at the bottom of the garden; there was a wishing tree in a field where I would walk and of course, we all knew that a wicked witch lived in the small cottage by the river, with the overgrown garden and dirty, cracked windows.

Halloween was a dress-as-a-witch time, and a gathering of friends where ghost stories were shared in hushed whispers, eyes wide with excited fear. That imagination has never left me. It was no surprise to me that my first children’s book is about a young witch, her rather haughty black cat and a sprinkling of magical mayhem.

Children will always love magic, they’ll always listen with a fear-filled fascination to tales of ghosts and ghouls. And at Halloween, anything can happen…

'Vampire bats and witches’ hats, give us a howl and a scream.

Ghosts and ghouls come out to play, tonight on Halloween.’

The Jewelled Jaguar by Sharon Tregenza 

I do enjoy a bit of dark, dark, darkness so it’s no surprise that it seeps into my children’s books. A little scarifying is a delicious thing.  Of all things dark, I think the unknown is the most unsettling so I use it with glee.

In my latest book ‘The Jewelled Jaguar’ Griff and Cinnamon are lost in a labyrinth of underground tunnels. As if that isn’t scary enough their hearts stop beating when they hear something totally unexpected…

The plink, plink, plink of water echoed in the distance.

Cinnamon’s teeth chattered. ‘Shh,’ she said. Somewhere, in the darkness, deep in the tangle of tunnels and caves, we heard singing.

The House on March Lane by Michelle Briscombe

A few years ago I visited an old reclamation warehouse in Bridgend looking for wood block flooring, it was a fascinating place, a sprawling maze of the most incredible items, yet at the same time it was dark and slightly unnerving in some of the rooms I wandered through. Brimming with objects that had been removed from houses, pubs, Victorian hospitals and schools it started me thinking about the links those objects might have with people and events through time. The idea of a warehouse full of ghosts connected to items and two young detectives helping a girl from almost two hundred years ago bounded into view. 

My son was studying to be a zoologist at Bangor University and it was a visit to him in North Wales that prompted my story link to Darwin. I would have liked to have set the story in Wales but Darwin wasn’t a Welshman and therefore to be (roughly) correct geographically, that wasn’t possible.

I’m a great lover of supernatural tales, perhaps that’s a Welsh thing, we have a wealth of stories based on myths and legends, most of which I enjoyed as a child and then read to my own children.

‘Archie, it’s always drafty in here. Remember that time in the yard when the leaves started to fly around in the wind and came through the door and across the warehouse floor?’ She smiled trying to reassure him but she was starting to feel unsettled by his reaction. Archie was always brave, he had too much going on in his troubled life to be afraid of anything.

‘It wasn’t the wind,’ Archie said harshly and then he spoke so quietly that Flora had to crouch down to hear him. ‘Something…..whispered my name.’

Mr Mahli’s Shed by Laura Sheldon 

I wrote Mr Mahli’s Shed about the ghost of Dylan Thomas because I was teaching a wonderful bunch of Y4 children at the time, who were keen on building a shed in the school grounds, which they could go in to write. I got carried away with the idea of an ‘inspirational writing shed’ and began to imagine what it would be like to be a child who discovered that the shed was occupied by the spirit of a famous writer – dead, naturally – who could help little writers create masterpieces.

The story turned out very differently in the end, but the poet in the shed was too full of mischief to want to help anyone out with their writing ambitions!

It's not the spookiest of tales - the ghost is friendly (if a bit dramatic) but there is a creepy part when the daring duo of Tom and Alys first discover that the seemingly empty shed, isn't empty at all...

The air was cold inside the shed.  Alys and TB moved closer together as they felt shivers creep over their skin.  There was nothing in there.  Just as they'd seen from the outside, the shed was empty, yet they felt as though there was something.  In a strange way, something that could be felt but not seen was in the shed with them.  The door creaked in the wind and Alys jumped.

'I don't like it in here TB, it's spooky,'

'I know,' TB replied 'there's something well odd... why is it so cold?''Ooo yes, it is!  And it smells weird... like... cigarettes.'

'Cigars,' said a deep voice and the children screamed, leaped out of the shed as fast as they could and ran, leaving the shed door swinging in the breeze.

Blackfin Sky by Kat Ellis

Having grown up hearing the myths and legends of Wales - about monsters and dragons, witches and giants - I learned to look for the weird and spooky in the books I read and enjoyed. When it came to writing my own stories, bringing the creep-factor to the forefront felt like the natural thing to do!

'It's just this town, you know. All the staring, the whispering ... it's this Blackfin weirdness that gets into people's heads. There's nothing special about me, Sean.'

'Except you drowned, then came back.'

Alien Rain by Ruth Morgan 

I love contrasts and mash-ups of different genres, so a sci-fi story with added ghosts really appealed when I was coming up with the idea for Alien Rain.  The spooky action takes place in the National Museum, Cardiff and having known people who've worked there, who've told me real life ghost stories about the place, the setting put me in the right frame of mind for writing a chiller thriller.

 "I could not make out any shape in the chair and yet I knew someone had sat down on it and was sitting so close that I could have reached out and touched them...I was almost too scared to blink, in case in that shaved second the dark matter might suddenly coagulate into my nightmare."

Eloise Williams

www.eloisewilliams.com

@eloisejwilliams

By the pricking of my thumbs... Lynn Huggins-Cooper

I have been getting rather excited this week, since it's my favourite season - Halloween approaches! I may be 51 on Halloween this year, but I still feel a thrill when I drive past the pumpkin stall at the local farm, and 'Trick or Treat' goodies fill the shops. I was born just after midnight on All Hallow's Eve 1964, so I am definitely quite far into crone territory these days, but 'The Season of the Witch' excites me every bit as much today as it always did. All those years of parties!

I even got married at Halloween (in a black dress, with orange flowers, naturally!) - and then had a hand fasting to follow in a fabulous gothic library. I am Halloween Girl.

I have been thinking though - does 'The Halloween Effect' go even deeper than a love of candy corn and a penchant for all things pumpkin? It certainly seems to. It has affected my reading - I have a lifetime membership to 'Cemetery Dance' magazine and Ray Bradbury is my favourite author.

I'd say it affects my writing, certainly. I have written a significant number of supernatural and scary things, including series fiction about a haunted school - 'Too Ghoul for School' and 'Walking with Witches,' about girls haunted by the spirits of women from the witch trials in Newcastle in the 1600s. I have two writing projects currently; one is about a haunted metro station, and another is about a strange bat-like boy - so I think it is safe to say that Halloween is a rich thread running through my work!

I even make pumpkins and witches as part of my 'day job' - apart from writing, I teach craft classes in felting and creating altered books. The past few weeks have been all about Halloween! At Faerierealms, I have been making garden witches, pumpkin shaped altered books (from scruffy old books bound for the recycling bin) and tiny felted pumpkins. I'm even writing a craft book about how to make them. 

So hopefully this week will be a productive time for me, writing-wise, as a result of the smell of pumpkin spice and candle wax - and the visits from little Trick-or-Treaters. Look out for my spooky offerings, coming to a bookshop near you. Happy Halloween!