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Diary of a Writer – April Prompt
Today’s the day – publication day for the Ulverscroft edition of A Maid and a Man. It’s large print and principally intended for outlets such as libraries but anyone can buy it. If you don’t have an account with Ulvescroft you might try The Reading House.
So why is that a prompt? Nothing like a bit of visible success to spur one on.
A question authors, storytellers, writers, journalists are often asked is – “Where do you find your ideas?”
I don’t think that’s the knowledge that the question is seeking. We all find ourselves involved in stuff. Last weekend, for example, I was a delegate at the Scottish Association of Writers conference in the Westerwood Hotel. At around Midnight on Saturday, there was a small fire: in a laundry, we think. At any rate our taxi driver told us on Sunday that the Spa was closed because there were no towels!
The non-writer may log this information and carry on with their day. The writer’s brain, on the other hand, is in action. How useful to have collaboration like the information there were no towels.
Who benefits from that circumstance? Who loses out because of that circumstance? A fledgling Homewares’ Store might benefit. A wedding planner who has organised a Hen Party in the spa might lose out.
In addition, of course, there was the reaction of all of us guests turned out of our cozy beds for over two hours to stand around in the car park and then sit about in the public areas. And the performance of the local Fire Brigade and the hotel’s staff. It’s not the people watching I would have chosen but it was interesting and informative.
So, it’s not the having been there when it happened but the follow-up questions that give a storyteller their ideas. How did the person on the receiving end of the telephone call I partly heard react to being woken at 1.45 am to learn their caller was ‘fine’? Does that mark the end of a beautiful friendship – or the beginning of one?
(No one was injured and the fire was quickly brought under control.)
News recently in includes the sale of a summer story and a non-seasonal one – both to People’s Friend. Yay!
Also, work is underway on a projected Pocket Novel. It’s an Edinburgh set regency.
You may be interested, too, in the activities of my Capital Friends and can find out more about Kate, Jane, Jennifer and Sheila at capitalwriterscouk.wordpress.com
Anne
QUADRILLES – for the beginner
David, photograph above, is by no means the beginner in question – that would be me.
The regency novel often contains a ball scene and many of the people featured in Georgian and Regency novels spend a fair amount of their, admittedly plentiful, time learning to dance.
What Pride and Prejudice fan could fail to sympathise with Lizzie’s anguish when asked to dance by Mr Collins. If she accepts, she will face the mortification of having a partner who gets it all wrong. If she refuses, she can’t dance with anyone else that evening.
“Mr Collins…could not prevail with her to dance with him again, put it out of her power to dance with others.”
It was a big deal!
So, I took myself along to the French Institute on George IV Bridge where I spent six delightful evenings learning Mr Gow’s 2nd New Set of Quadrilles under the expert tuition of Talitha MacKenzie and in the company of some long-term devotees of historic dance.
Years and years of dancing Scottish Country Dances mean I struggled with the footwork but there are several great u-tube videos to help. I appreciated the ones from the Hampshire Regency Dancers.
What Olga, seen ablove on David’s arm, and I agreed on, was that we couldn’t work out how anyone had the breath for all those conversations we see in TV adaptations.
I hadn’t attended any of the Baroque classes but in a small company when the instructions were called, I think I managed. I did leave the party evening feeling that I could see the connections between the historic dances and the patterns of Scottish Country Dancing.
That understanding – what the patterns were and how they were danced – is going to help me understand how the characters in my novels achieved their romantic aims through dance. Maybe the carefully scripted lines beloved of historic drama ween’t a reality but the flirting through meaningful looks, squeezed hands, regretful backward glances… a term well spent.
There’s an upcoming evening at the French Institute on Parliament Square/George IV Bridge.
Baroque Dance Concert Saturday 13th April at 7pm.
Tickets on sale at https://sonas-multimedia-uk.myshopify.com
£15 / £10 (for EQS & IFE Members) + £1 booking fee
So, dear writers, what skills have you felt moved to improve or pick up in the cause of veracity?
Courting the Countess, set in Edinburgh 1819, is available on kindle or in a library. Mariah’s Marriage and Daisy’s Dilemma also from the library.
Anne
Round Robin – Research
Skye has asked us to discuss: Research for your Novel – Love it or hate it? How important is it for your writing?
How important? Of prime importance. Do I love it? Yes. Do I hate it? Yes – sometimes, maybe…
Research is the foundation of all my novel writing. There’s no difference between historical and contemporary when it comes to getting the facts right.
I can’t believe that you need me to tell you about books, online sources, libraries, oral histories, phoning folk and institutions, newspapers, museums, paintings. You know that’s what writers and researchers do.
We call it work.
LOVE IT
So, what does research mean for my novel – or serial? Writing the most recent serial for DC Thomson’s People’s Friend, I wanted to show a character’s nervousness. I had her twiddle the button on her cardigan. I thought that was unassailable. Wrong. No pictures from the 1880s of women wearing cardigans popped into my head as I typed. Why? The humble cardigan hadn’t been invented is why. Two minutes research in Google and the cardigan had to come out and be replaced by the button on her skirt. Skirts had been invented by the 1880s!
What benefit does the author get from knowing that cardigans weren’t an option? The cardigan stays on the upper body and, if the buttons are closed, keeps one’s front warm as well as one’s back. Not having the cardigan option means the character needs a shawl and that’s a different set of physical behaviours. Shawls slip off the shoulders if not fastened in front or to an undergarment by a brooch or pins. A short shawl would perhaps leave the waist area exposed and chilled but a long one might tangle with one’s skirt and affect one’s gait. It could be slackened and used to cover the head in wind or rain. It could be used to make a bundle and carry stuff.
OF PRIME IMPORTANCE
In short, knowing is an integral part of understanding how the character lived. That’s what is of prime importance – How did the character live? How did they think? How did they speak – and to whom?
Research shows us the obvious, eg it took longer to get from Britain to Australia when the Suez Canal didn’t exist. And it shows us the subtle, eg with no public transport and limited access to private vehicles, most of the early nineteenth century population didn’t leave their birth area. One of the writing foibles I know I exhibit is wanting the characters to have a surname appropriate to their birth area or the birth area of their forbears. Hence the presence on my reference shelf of George Black’s erudite tome.
HATE IT?
There are the moments when you discover that a whole paragraph or even chapter is based on a mistaken idea or belief. That’s not good. It’s also the case that research is an endless field of rabbit holes and sliding into them for an hour or so is is beyond easy…
Do visit the blogs listed below to discover what my fellow robins think.
What areas of research do you, as a reader, regard as the most important for an author to have covered?
Anne
Victoria Chatham http://www.victoriachatham.com
Diane Bator https://escapewithawriter.wordpress.com/
Anne Stenhouse https://annestenhousenovelist.wordpress.com
Dr. Bob Rich https://wp.me/p3Xihq-398
Connie Vines http://mizging.blogspot.com/
Helena Fairfax http://www.helenafairfax.com/blog
Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea
International Women’s Day
Throughout the world in 2024 there are many disenfranchised people. It’s likely that over half of them will be women.
One of the over-arching themes of my writing is women’s path into education and greater enfranchisement.
I’ve written about women struggling to get to the local primary school – Moving On, Staying Put for DC Thomson’s People’s Friend. About women struggling to avoid a being a wife should be enough existence – Mariah’s Marriage for MuseItUp. About women fighting to attend chemistry classes and thereafter qualify as doctors – A Class of their Own for DC Thomson again. About a woman struggling to recover from injury and avoid the marriage that would rob her of her inheritance – Courting the Countess – Joffe Books.
I hope much of it with humour, drama and great dialogue (cue references to te influence of Georgette Heyer) but of course that’s for the reader to decide. I was very touched by a private messagr during the publication of Moving On, Staying Put to tell me how much it was being enjoyed as a story about where we lived. It’s lovely to hear from readers.
How does your work address an issue that is relevant on International Women’s Day?
Anne
Diary of a Writer – March Prompt
TABBY ROYCE has been trained as an apothecary by her late papa. On Papa’s death, her brother and his new wife, turn her off and she has to find any work to survive. This in due course leads her to Edinburgh where she becomes embroiled in the activities of a medical household where the master and his steward, CAL MORRISON, are anatomists.
So, what greater prompt can there be than one of Ulverscroft’s fabulous covers. This is from the library edition of A Maid and a Man which is published on 1st April and I’d be hugely pleased if you were to pop into your local library and place an order.
PLR payments will be made in March and may I also thank all the lovely library borrowers who’ve made mine worth receiving. I notice that of my four books currently in the system, Courting the Countess was the most popular. Maybe I’ll get into the Edinburgh regency sitting in my files and finish it!
As some of you will know the PLR site was compromised, so I’m not able to add either Christmas at Maldington or A Maid and a Man at the moment. Even so, if you do borrow or reserve either, I hope you’ll enjoy.
Meantime I’ve sent off a summer short story, a non-seasonal short story and I’m working on a Christmas one. At least I don’t have to hire in a snow blower/maker.
Literary trivia for March: On a walking tour of Exeter many years ago, I picked up a meaning of ‘Living on a shoestring’. People incarcerated in the local debtors’ prison would tie their shoelaces together and lower them from their cell bars. Outside family or friends would tie bundles of food and other necessities to the shoestrings. The felon would haul them up.
Anne
Round Robin – Goals Motivation and Conflicts
Goal, Motivation, and Conflict – The difference between inner conflict and outer conflict and how it keeps the reader glued to your story.
Or:
Goal – what does your protagonist want?
This question is exercising me more than a little at present. I have a lovely female character whose story I’m desperate to explore, but what is her problem? Yes, she wants to make a success of her business. Yes, she wants to see her family happily settled. Is it enough – NO!
I need to dig a little in her past. Why would her business not be a success, I might ask myself. Has there been a public or hidden attack on it in the past? Is she beginning to understand why a particular assignment went so horribly wrong? Is the person who featured in her life then, still in her life today? Hmn! I’m beginning to find a little enlightenment here.
Why does your protagonist want it?
Moving into middle-age, as my character is, she’s spent a lot of years fulfilling joint objectives like being a good child, a helpful wife, a supportive mother. They were relevant objectives, but they are over now. She wants to make her business succeed in order to have something of her own. Also on a practical level, she needs the money to live and to support staff.
What is preventing your protagonist achieving it?
Herein lies the heart of every story. Conflict. How easy would it be for my character to put her own business on the back-burner while she assists a child/sibling/friend? That’s inner conflict. As a person used to the back-up role, she finds it very difficult indeed to keep puting her own needs first.
Overt Conflict is where the antagonist or circumstances or even the weather comes into play. An antagonist might be motivated by greed – they have a similar business and don’t want to relinquish any of the potential market. By spite – they’re just plain nasty. By love – they’re wrong-headed and think ‘the little woman’ shouldn’t have to stir in the working world.
Circumstances affect us all. Britain has just officially gone into a recession – people might regard the service she offers as wrong for this moment. Her premises might be condemned – woodworm, rising damp, loose slates.
The weather. So her transport might be off the road because of snow or flooding. Roads might be blocked because trees have come down in high winds. It might be too hot for her staff to work outside.
TENSION is part of what keeps a reader reading. If you’ve created a likeable character, the reader wants them to succeed. Conflict creates tension.
Inner: So, drop clues. Let the reader in on a conversation between the character and a relative or friend when she is on the point of offering help that will prevent her taking up that breakthrough opportunity. Leave the final decision hanging for a bit.
Outer: Let the reader hear that protagonist telling another character how he was in the area at the time your character’s business had its major meltdown – but keep it hidden from the character – till a crucial moment of revelation.
Mingled: Weather, house repairs etc are useful here. Let your character discover them and chart their apparently inexorable progress. Reader and protagonist are sharing the pain. And, of course, the joy when it resolves.
Did I mention I’m attempting to learn how to dance quadrilles? Goal – I want to know how it’s done. Motivation – I’ll have a better understaning of what I’m expecting my characters to do. Conflict – muscle memory is getting between me and any respectable performance of the steps! Even so, it’s good fun.
Fellow robins have also taken time to tell us how they do it. Check out the links below.
Anne
Dr. Bob Rich https://wp.me/p3Xihq-37G
Victoria Chatham http://www.victoriachatham.com
Connie Vines http://mizging.blogspot.com/
Helena Fairfax http://www.helenafairfax.com/blog
Diane Bator https://escapewithawriter.wordpress.com/Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea
Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea
Just Check
Okay, so you’ve thought up the most delicious name for the firm that your heroine runs and you’re congratulating yourself for being so clever.
Huh!
Just check and there it is – already in use in the real world.
Drat!
Thinking cap on – the model’s, above, is very fetching. New name created and – just checked – no firm already in existence.
Yay! Back on track.
Anne
Diary of a Writer – February Post
And it’s February when many publications will be running Valentine’s Day stories. This elaborate pigeon-hole set was part of the furniture in a small guest house I stayed in on Coorsica. It occurred to me then that it offered multiple opportunities for anyone with a story-telling inclination. It still does.
Where is the expected Valentne card? Can it be seen through the wrong grille? Was it always inteneded for the daughter/son of that household?
How much provocation is enough provocation to burst the lock of a neighbour’s box?
Likewise with other annual events. Some could be more pedestrian – the milk bill. Some could be financially disasterous – the time critical tax demand.
Has it turned a cog or two for you?
Moving On, Staying Put, my 1880s serial for The People’s Friend has now reached Instalment 6 and the resolutions are in sight for Mamie, Lydia and Ellen.
Fancy something longer Courting the Countess is a snip for your kindle at £2.99. Melissa Pateley finds herself in an Edinburgh household where her heart may be under threat.
Did you know that that annoying.99p habit started life as a means of ensuring the shop assistant’s honesty. As a penny change was needed, the till had to be opened. It rang a bell and the shop owner – maybe working elsewhere on the premises – could hear and know the payment was going into the till and not the assistant’s pocket. Hearsay? Fact? Undoubtedly interesting.
Enjoy February. The garden is beginning to show aconites and snowdrops. The tubs – little irises.
Anne
Diary of a Writer – January 1st 2024
Happy New Year, dear readers.
It’s cold in Edinburgh although that doesn’t represent the kind of cold many people experience. My husband and I aren’t big Hogmanay enthusiasts so life is quietening down after a happy and enjoyable Christmas break. We saw family and friends and were introduced to several new faces.
On Christmas day, the capon cooked beautifully, the starter and the alternative pudding arrived on schedule and the tree didn’t fallen over. On Boxing Day, we met other members of the family and attended the one drinks’ party we’ve been invited to this year.
Are drinks’ parties out-of-fashion? Are we just becoming too old to be expected to stand for any length of time?
We held our usual family cards’ party, however, and a great time was had by all. There are leftovers. Yay! Regular readers know how devoted my catering is to the creative re-imagining of the leftover.
Tonight I’ll be cooking a trout caught by my son-in-law. Baked in butter with copious amounts of garlic and toasted flaked almonds to garnish – what could be better?
Following two+ weeks without heating, I’ll be doing some more charity knitting in 2024. Being cold is no fun.
Anne
Diary of a Writer – Christmas Story – A STABLE REFUGE
A STABLE REFUGE
By
ANNE STENHOUSE
Cold seeped through the soles of Aline’s slippers and crawled up her legs. It circled her knees, and she knew they’d be bright pink. No-one could see that, though, as the onesie she wore covered everything. Covered everything and protected nothing.
Her body was so cold, she thought it wouldn’t be long before it went into shock.
“Hey, Missus,” the elderly shopkeeper said as she staggered a little under the weight of her basket. “Let me help with that.”
Gratefully, Aline released the basket to the man.
“I missed the chance to book a supermarket delivery,” she said without making eye contact. Who on earth would believe that?
“That’s to my advantage then,” the man said. “Husband outside in the car?”
“No, no. I’ve only two hundred yards or so to walk.”
“In this weather! Want me to phone him?”
“Goodness, no,” Aline said and even to her own ears panic laced her voice. She did look up then and saw the woman standing in the storeroom doorway. She wasn’t fooled. Aline knew that disconcerting calm marked a professional.
The man checked out her Christmas shop and if he wondered why a household living two hundred yards down this middle-class suburban street was going to dine on tinned soups and packet ham, he was too polite to say anything.
She hauled the notes Brian had give her out of her pocket and was relieved to see they were enough. The man rang them up and handed her twenty-two pence change.
“What do you want for Christmas, then,” he asked as he carried the bulging shoppers across the shop to the outer door.
“Shoes,” she said without thinking, “Size six, lacing.”
The woman was beside her holding a thick cardigan. Breathing in her clean soapy smell made Aline’s eyes fill. Her mum would smell like that after her shower. The wave of longing meant Aline’s attention wasn’t on the woman and she allowed her arms to be eased into the cardigan.
“We really are open twenty-four hours,” the woman said quietly, “For those in need.”
“I can’t take this,” Aline screamed the words, clawing ineffectually at the sleeves of the cardigan. The woolly pile clung like Velcro to the pile of her velour onesie. “My husband provides for us.”
“Does he?” the woman said. “Well, that’s good, but remember, Liz and Mike are open 24/7.”
Aline grabbed her bags from Mike and slopped home through the driving rain. Brian would be waiting, stopwatch in his hand.
“Hmff!” he said as he clicked her in. “What’s that?”
Aline didn’t pretend ignorance.
“The cardigan?” she said trying to keep mounting hysteria at bay. If that Liz was a professional, she should have known giving her the cardigan would only ramp up Brian’s grievances. “I was shivering, and the shopkeeper’s wife insisted. I’m to take it back soon as.”
“Right on, you are. They think I don’t look after you? What were you telling them, Aline?” Brian drew out the vowels of her name in a parody of the way her dad had talked to her. Her dad meant it as a sign of affection. Brian as a sign of mockery.
“Nothing, Brian. I did the shopping from your list and handed over the money.” She searched in her pocket for the change and set it down on the corner of the hall table. “I’ll put the stuff away so the milk doesn’t go off.”
There was little difference between the temperature of the house and the temperature of the fridge, but she pretended.
Ivy and Luke slid into the hall and gazed longingly at the shopping but there was nothing in there to cheer them up. Nothing at all.
Christmas morning in Brian’s house, as Aline had come to think of it, was possibly the worst morning of the year. When they gathered in the living-room for video calls with his mum and dad, the floor was strewn with Christmas wrap and bits of string. The tree lights were on. Everyone was dressed – properly dressed – with underwear and tee-shirts and trousers and jumpers with silly reindeer on them. Silly but warm.
The children’s presents from Santa sat in a neat pile on the edge of the broad arm of the settee. None of them had the cellophane torn, though. Aline had wondered once why her mother-in-law didn’t ask about that, but now she thought she knew. Brian had to be born in a mould of some sort.
She let her gaze stray to Luke where he sat at his dad’s feet. At ten he was small for his age and there were still one or two accidents in the night. Accidents that allowed Brian his favourite type of moment. The moment when he could accuse her of mollycoddling and lack of discipline. The moment when he could…
“Aline,” Brian’s pretend jocularity speared her straying thoughts, “Aline, Dad wants to know what you got from Santa.”
She peered into the phone. The older man was studying her as closely as the instrument allowed.
“Santa?” she said. “We’re going shopping day after tomorrow. Brian saw a lovely dress he thought would suit and it’s just above budget, but it’ll come down in the sales.”
No phone call to her family. Presents packed into the carriers ready to be returned for a refund. Ham sandwiches made. Brian heated two tins of tomato soup but took her by the arm and pushed her out into the back garden. She heard the lock click. She heard Ivy and Luke crying in protest.
Cold seeped through her slippers. She’d had no shoes for nearly two years now. Brian knew she couldn’t go far in her slippers.
At around three o’clock, Aline heard the window of the bathroom on their half-landing creak open. She looked up and watched as Ivy tumbled through onto the flat roof clutching her one and only dolly. Luke’s head appeared behind her and then he thrust a bag out. It dropped to the ground beside Aline’s feet.
She helped the children slither off the roof and brush themselves down.
“The bag, Mummy,” Luke whispered. “He’d just fallen asleep when I saw a lady in the front garden.”
Aline shook out the shoes. Size six, lacing.
“Let’s go,” she said. “I know a stable refuge that’s open.”
THE END
© Anne Stenhouse
No part of the above story, A Stable Refuge, may be reproduced without written permission from the author.
Below are some of the Robins I share the monthly Round Robin blog with throughout the year. Their stories are available to read from Saturday 16th December.
Dr. Bob Rich https://wp.me/p3Xihq-35i
Connie Vines http://mizging.blogspot.com/
Diane Bator https://dbator.blogspot.com/
Judith Copek http://lynx-sis.blogspot.com/
Helena Fairfax http://www.helenafairfax.com/blog
Victoria Chatham http://www.victoriachatham.com
Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea
Novels Now 