Got the buzz again.

[Susan Boulton]

For quite a while I haven't written anything new. Oh I have added chunks(and deleted) to previously written work, and worked on the edits of two of my novels, but actually having that butterfly feeling in my stomach, and the buzz in my brain-box with regards to a new idea has been seriously absent for a long time.

In fact I had begun to doubt that I would actually write anything new. Each time I tried it felt like work and not nice work at that. I began to avoid even trying. I thought that when I retired things might improve. They didn't, least not at first. Perhaps I had to come down from years of working and the personal upheaval of the last few years. Maybe that was it, I needed to get my life sorted, anyway, recently my desire and ability to write has been slowly coming back. I actually wrote two short stories on another forum for their monthly in house competitions.

Now, suddenly I have this first scene, buzzing in my brain. I am wanting to re-visit a set of characters I created in my novel, Hand of Glory. I have a new adventure for them. I want to re-capture the fun of having long conversations with and about them. When I wrote Hand of Glory, I felt there were more stories to tell. Yes, it is a very English provincial setting. Yes my characters are white. Yes, my female characters adhere to the behaviour of women of the time for the most part So do my male characters. (1923) Yes the novel is class-ridden, maybe even stereotype. (England 1923) Yes, my characters smoke, drink and are not politically correct in their behaviour and speech. (Rural England 1923.) They will make remarks, jokes and comments that might offend, so will some of the descriptive text. (Rural England, 1923, a world stuck between to major society changing world wars).

But I am tired of even thinking about writing to fit the so-called market and include characters or events that do not suit my setting, the things that blog post after blog post seem to bang on about at the moment. I am going to write this novel in the manner I did Hand of Glory. I am not going to modernise the speech patterns, or behaviour. I am not going to Americanise or apply the mid-Atlantic affect to appeal to a wider audience. It will be what it is, like Hand of Glory. Which did catch me an agent, (though we have since parted company) and had a number of full requests and near misses with publishers.

I am going to write what is buzzing in my head and not think about submitting or publication. maybe that was part of the problem. I had gotten too serious.

Time just to write for me again.

What do others think? Have you felt at times you are drowning in the rush to be published? To be on trend with your characters and setting? And this desire to include to the point of absurdity, and be politicly correct even when it goes against the nature of your story.

 

[Loren]

That should be the heart of anything you do.

Do what makes you passionate.

 

[Foxbat]

I only have one rule: I write what I like when I like and to Hell with the market. As Polonius said To thine own self be true

 

[Juliana]

Have you felt at times you are drowning in the rush to be published? To be on trend with your characters and setting?

Best way to kill the spark!

 

[The Judge]

I'm so glad you've found your writing mojo again.

I write what I want to write, but having read so many old SFs with few if any women in them, I am conscious of past under-representation in the genre. So in my SFs I made a point of trying to avoid everyone and everything being white and western and straight -- it's the future, things are bound to be multi-hued and -cultured. At the same time I tried to avoid coming over as tokenist, and goodness only knows if I managed that. Since my main female character is definitely white, and all my own reference points are white, probably not. In my renaissance fantasy I've deliberately written a black woman in a white society and the problems she faces, because that's the plot as it came to me, and in my current WiP I've mixed colours up a good deal, but it's the result of a long ago war which led to widespread movements of people across a continent.

So I have taken account of current moves to open up SFF, but without compromising the stories themselves, and I haven't done it for the sake of being published -- ie I didn't think if I made a character black it would help get me noticed.

If I were writing a story based in rural England pre 1945, then just as you've done I'd take account of the realities of the time and place, and the characters would have to fit that reality, both in their own characteristics and in their attitudes to things such as race, female equality, homosexuality etc. To do anything else is false. So write it as it has to be written.

Good luck with HoG mark 2!

 

[Gonk the Insane]

Glad you've found your writing mojo again. I understand why some folks strive to meet trends, be politically correct and so forth, but in my (rather simplistic view) if you love what you're writing, it will show through. And if you write well enough then it doesn't matter if you're not on trend; if a story's good enough then it speaks for itself.

 

[Toby Frost]

Just write whatever you want to write. A) if you don't the results probably won't be as convincing, either in terms of realism or quality; B) the internet is to a large extent an echo chamber and not a reflection of what people really want to read (generally, good books rather than ones that tick certain boxes). What probably matters now is writing and getting used to the feel of writing again.

 

[Susan Boulton]

I'm so glad you've found your writing mojo again.

So am I. I had seriously begun to think I had shot my bolt. That I had nothing else inside me to write.

If I were writing a story based in rural England pre 1945, then just as you've done I'd take account of the realities of the time and place, and the characters would have to fit that reality, both in their own characteristics and in their attitudes to things such as race, female equality, homosexuality etc. To do anything else is false. So write it as it has to be written.

Thank you for saying this, Judge. I think at the back of my mind I have been worrying that to write stories set in the time period I want to write in and to be true to those times and the people that lived then, I have to write things that to modern eyes will seem, to put it bluntly, "wrong," on many levels. I would have to dig deep into my memories and channel (in so many ways) the thoughts and opinions of my parents and grandparents generation. I want to be true to their world, not as we would like to see it. (That's what annoyed me so much about Downton Abbey. I gave up on it when it became plain they were going to give a modern take on things especially the relation of the classes to each other. Both my grandmothers were in service at that time, and it was nothing like.)

There is a subtext in Hand of Glory, about the plight of the working class, and the changing position of women in society, which might have people thinking I am old fashioned labour/working class. (I suppose this novel will have the same.) Which deep in my heart maybe I still am. Even though to my horror recently I was referred to as a middle-class woman who knew nothing of what it was like to be on the breadline. I was torn between laughter, and shouting them down. My childhood was anything but middle-class. In the end I closed my mouth. lol.

Good luck with HoG mark 2!

Thanks. Even after a day I still have the buzz.

Just write whatever you want to write. A) if you don't the results probably won't be as convincing, either in terms of realism or quality; B) the internet is to a large extent an echo chamber and not a reflection of what people really want to read (generally, good books rather than ones that tick certain boxes). What probably matters now is writing and getting used to the feel of writing again.

Very true.

 

[prizzley]

But I am tired of even thinking about writing to fit the so-called market and include characters or events that do not suit my setting, the things that blog post after blog post seem to bang on about at the moment. I am going to write this novel in the manner I did Hand of Glory. I am not going to modernise the speech patterns, or behaviour. I am not going to Americanise or apply the mid-Atlantic affect to appeal to a wider audience.

That's great, Susan. Stick with it.

I made a point of trying to avoid everyone and everything being white and western and straight -- it's the future, things are bound to be multi-hued and -cultured.

That's what the publishing industry wants, although the majority of the UK population is white, western, and straight.

 

[J Riff]

Great. If you chase the trend it's usually gone by the time you get there anywAy. ) Right on, and write on. *****