Gisborne . . .
‘Vasey and Gisborne arrived in Nottingham together, with papers from Prince John purportedly in the name of King Richard.
‘Vasey and Gisborne arrived in Nottingham together, with papers from Prince John purportedly in the name of King Richard.
The abbey’s soaring barrel-vaulted roof and its handsome wooden pews should have sustained me but as I knelt for what seemed hours, my hands knotted together, no vestige of relief came. Only a biting cold that soon had me shivering. As well that I shiver, I thought. It approximated the incipient fear that was beginning to stir. How dangerous it would be to work in a house that would entertain the high-born of far and wide. Prudence, you place yourself in peril.
Recently my friend Lua, from Bowl of Oranges, did the most extraordinary interview on her blog between herself and one of her characters. I thought it would be a really hard thing to do and wanted to have a go. The difficulty is that with the book Paperweights/Glass Flowers at the submission stage, I had to be careful just how much of the story and the character was revealed, which makes an interview really hard. In this instance however I was really lucky because Finnian is like a closed shop.
I washed, mended and folded not just his clothes but all those of the senior household members and at night was so exhausted, I could barely find a bed. I removed myself as far from others as I could and found a warm corner in a stall in the stables. I pilfered one of the heavy caparisons and wrapped myself in it for warmth and to protect my body from the scratching straw. But in truth I was so tired it wouldn’t have mattered if I had slept naked in a field of stubble.
Recently on Rachelle Gardner’s blog, she talked about a visit to her local bookstore, and which became a real learning experience. She said:‘ What a great way to expand our reading horizons! It’s best if there is comfortable seating. I collect a stack of books, then go sit in the cafe and open them up. Often I’ll get so engrossed that I’ll read two or three chapters just sitting there! Then I know I want the book. Sometimes I read enough that I feel I don’t need to buy it after all.’
I find it amazing that the Masked Ball fantasy flash-fiction, now over a month old, which used Richard Armitage’s Guy of Gisborne as the basis for the character of Niccolo de Fleury, is still getting views. For those who want to read the whole story, click on the chapters below, read and dream on!
Recently Rachelle Gardner (http://cba-ramblings.blogspot.com) talked about writing and being a writer. She said: “It’s a lifestyle. It permeates your life, even if your life is already full with a career and a family and whatever else you do. Authors need to educate themselves about publishing (by reading agent blogs, following Twitter, reading books about the industry) because today, it requires that kind of savvy. It also helps if you network with other writers, because it puts you in touch with others going through the same frustrations, people who understand what every little victory means in a way that a non-writer simply can’t. There’s so much to learn about writing great books and crafting effective queries and marketing yourself via the Internet.”
And I reflected on how much my own life is dominated by writing. Firstly it is something I think on constantly. Whether I am in the bath, cooking meals, doing housewifely things, I am thinking about the next stage in the WIP (The Shifu Cloth).
The only time I don’t think about it is when I am walking the dogs (I am very much in the moment then), when I am gardening (ditto) or generally in the outdoors. Husband and self have a farm and when we are busy with stock, fencing or whatever, my mind is a long way from the WIP, which is just as well as accidents do happen.
The promotion of current publications has, as Rachelle also says, taken masses of my time. Facebook, Twitter, blogging. A blog event recently swallowed me whole!
Then there is reading. I love to read. I enjoy detailed historical fiction, even though I am a fantasy writer. I read a number of books on the craft of writing but I don’t read as much as I would like. At the close of a day I am tired, any spare moment is used to sculpt and create my own work and when I crawl into bed, I can barely read two lines let alone two chapters.
When I do have time in the ‘office’, I do any number of things. Perhaps I read what I have written. Perhaps I edit a manuscript that is in the process of assessment in London (A Thousand Glass Flowers). Perhaps I note down more in my file on the world of Eirie, the fantasy world I have created. Perhaps I add to my character files. The best days are the days I just write free-form. Letting the WIP move on toward a conclusion. Inevitably the week is over and being a writer HAS dominated my life. I think it, breathe it. Gad, I even sweat it . . . so much sweating. Hoping, praying, waiting . . . so much waiting!
Rachelle finished her blog by saying . . . ‘the fact is, the way to succeed as an author is to make it part of your daily life, part of who you are. It really does take that kind of mindset.’ Well I have certainly made it a part of my daily life. But success is a whole other issue and perhaps success is a relative term anyway.
This is the first chapter of my W.I.P. It is unedited and raw and I offer it up for any comment. It takes place in the secretive Han province in the fantasy world of Eirie. Prue Batten © 2010
Chapter One
I am trying so hard to motivate self to click on my writing file and begin to re-read as much as I have written of The Shifu Cloth. The trouble is that I have a velvety voice in my ear right now. He’s telling me the story of Venetia and I am hard-put to think that reading my own un-edited prose would be better.
The idea of holding a blog event would have sounded quite odd to me twelve months ago. That long ago I was only just coming to terms with Facebook and LinkedIn, followed by the dreaded 140 characters of Twitter. But on the lookout for ways in which to reach a readership, I came across ‘how to make a book-trailer’ on Nathan Bransford’s blog. Of course I couldn’t on my own, because technology and I don’t speak in the same language and so my brother (who runs a production house) did it to my brief. After that I felt ‘challenge’ biting at my heels and on reading all my favourite historical fiction blogs, came across the amaaaaazzzing vvb32 who seems to run brilliant events on a weekly basis.