Year of Anniversaries

This is a year of significant anniversaries in English history. In 1215 King John was presented with Magna Carta, or the Great Charter, by barons who were in rebellion against him. He repudiated it soon enough, claiming that his oaths were sworn under duress and therefore not binding. The barons were interested only in their own grievances, not those of the whole population, and it is debated whether the charter contained anything new, or was just a statement of what the barons believed to be established custom which the king was ignoring.

Nevertheless, Magna Carta has come to be seen as an important step in the evolution of the English, later British, constitution, and of limitation of the power of the monarchy. Its most famous clauses guaranteed free and fair access to justice for all free men:

'No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land. To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice.'

This year is also the 750th anniversary of Simon de Montfort summoning the knights of the shire and the burgesses of the towns to Parliament for the first time - the origin of the House of Commons. Again, de Montfort was a baron in rebellion against the king, then Henry III, and probably more interested in his own grievances than in long term constitutional reform. But like Magna Carta, de Montfort’s action has taken on a much greater significance than was intended at the time.

This year is the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt, in which a small English army led by Henry V defeated a much larger French force. Henry V’s position in France could not be maintained under Henry VI. The greatest long term consequences of the victory at Agincourt were the opportunity it provided for Shakespeare to write some rousing speeches and the marriage of Henry V to the French princess Catherine de Valois. Her second marriage produced the Tudor dynasty, which had such an impact on English history.

It is also the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo, which finally broke the power of Napoleon. Although it was not appreciated at the time, the battle ended the long series of wars between Britain and France.

These are the anniversaries surrounding which there are events, books and articles and television programmes. But they are not the only anniversaries this year which are worth noting.

In 1065, Edward the Confessor’s Abbey of St Peter’s at Thorney Island was consecrated - the West Minster.

1315 was the start of the Great Famine which continued into the 1320s. Climate change brought cold, wet summers and bad harvests causing high prices and food shortages.

In 1715 James Edward Stuart, the 'Old Pretender', led a rebellion aimed at deposing the Hanoverian George I and replacing the Stuarts on the throne.

In 1765, HMS Victory was launched at Chatham Dockyard.

Several significant events happened in 1865. Among others, Lord Palmerston, Prime Minister and former Foreign Secretary, died. He had dominated British foreign policy for more than thirty years. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson qualified as Britain’s first woman doctor. And Crossness Pumping Station opened. It was part of Joseph Bazalgette’s sewage system which had a major impact on the health of London.

In 1615 Pleasance Caporne, widow, of Brimpton in Berkshire, died. So did William Keate, a weaver of Newbury in Berkshire and Thomas Segrave, a yeoman of Helpringham in Lincolnshire. They are not famous. We do not know if they were exceptionally good or clever people or if they performed any heroic acts. But they lived and died and possibly have descendants who are alive today.

While it’s right to remember the great achievements, the events that had a national and long lasting impact, we should also remember the millions who have made their own contributions to their communities and to the life of the nation, over millennia.

New year, new writing

A time for a writer to take stock of achievements to date and plan the next stage of his or her writing career. For me, as well as being a new year, in a few days it will also be the anniversary of publication of my first Kindle novel. I now have three published. It's so far been a very positive, even (in a modest way) profitable, experience.

Independent e-publishing is a great time saver for an author. No need to research potential agents and publishers, put together submissions, wait for them to come back, then start the whole process again. Then, even if a deal is forthcoming, wait again for the book to be published.

For e-publishers, the big unknown going into the New Year is how sales will be affected by the new EU VAT regulations. The VATman will be taking a bigger share of the retail prices of e-books. (Print books are exempt from VAT.)  Independent authors, who set their own prices, have the choice of leaving them the same, and making less money per book sold, or increasing them, and possibly losing sales.

I didn't make as much progress with my next novel during the autumn as I'd hoped. I had a muscle injury which took a long time to clear up which prevented me from sitting comfortably at the computer for any length of time. It made me appreciate how incapacitating quite minor injuries could have been in the past, when so many people did manual work and small every day tasks required much more physical effort than they do to today. Making a hot drink could require pumping water and carrying coals, instead of turning on a tap and flicking the switch on the electric kettle.

The next novel I plan to publish is a crime story set in Victorian London. After that I hope there will be another story featuring the main characters from The Plantagenet Mystery.

At the back of my mind I have an idea for a historical mystery  with a different setting and central character. I'm a long way from being ready to write it, but from time to time I think about it and make a few notes. The character is in his thirties and happily married. In a historical setting, this would mean there would be children. I don't want the parents to ignore their children (and they are not of high enough status for the children to be spending all their time with nursemaids, governesses and tutors). But neither do I want the children to take over the story!

On an entirely unrelated subject, in the last couple of days I've tried to explore two different online archive catalogues. Neither has a browse function, only a search. I don't want to search for a specific item, I want to browse to look for anything that might be useful or interesting to me. One of these catalogues doesn't even have a brief outline of the structure and content of the archive. How is one supposed to search if one doesn't know what there is to search for?

Getting started

Advice for beginning writers often includes finding a photograph, maybe in a magazine, and writing a description of the person in it. The disadvantage of this is that one can end up with a list of facts but with very little insight into personality - what makes the person tick. 

Of course different approaches work for different people and everyone needs to try a variety of methods to find what works best for him or her. What follows is based on what I do at the very earliest stages of planning a novel.  

Do not sit down and stare at a computer screen or blank page of a notebook. 

Think of a character. Not too much detail at this stage. 

Male or female? 

Name? This can be changed later if it turns out not to suit him or her. For the purpose of this blog post only, let's say it's a woman called Mary. 

Approximate age?

Occupation?

Setting? If it's historical, the approximate year, and whether it takes place in London, in a big town or in the country. At some point you will need to narrow it down to time of year and specific part of the country. But there's no need to do this now.

Put Mary in a situation that requires her to take some action or make a decision. This could be a fairly minor, every day situation such as being delayed on a journey, or  a big life changing event. 

Go for a walk, do the ironing, weed the garden. Don't consciously try to think about Mary, but if she floats to the surface of your mind, give some thought to her and the situation you've placed her in. How will she react when she discovers it? What will she do about it?

This is actually a very important part of the process. An author might be at this stage for years before putting anything down on paper or on computer. But for the purposes of this exercise, give it from a few hours to a few days. 

Now sit down and write about the moment when Mary discovers the situation, showing how she reacts and what she decides to do.  You might only write a paragraph, you might write several pages. It doesn't matter; whichever you do, in  the end you'll have leaned something about yourself as a writer. 

At some point, Mary will need to talk to someone about what has happened. Who will she talk to? Parent? Sibling? Husband? Boyfriend? Child? Friend? Employer? Someone else? How does that person react? Is he or she sympathetic or hostile? How does Mary react to that?

After some more walking/ironing/gardening, sit down and write the conversation between Mary and the other person. 

Looking back over the two scenes you've written, as well as showing what the characters are doing and saying, have you shown what they're thinking and feeling? If writing a full length novel, this is something that might come at the editing stage, after the first draft was completed.

The way in which Mary dealt with the original situation, and the conversation she had about it, should have revealed something about her personality and her personal circumstances. What do you know about her now that you didn't know when you started? 

You could continue to develop these ideas. What happens as a consequence of the decision or action Mary took at the beginning? What are the repercussions of the conversation she had? 

Alternatively, start again with a new character and a new situation. 

The aim is to experiment and to find out what comes easily - plot development or character development, narrative or dialogue - and what type of character and setting you like to write about.  

Above all, the idea is to relax and let the ideas come to you!