A Successful Submission

Hi Everyone

A couple of weeks ago, I appeared on a panel for the Melbourne Chapter of the Historical Novel Society of Australasia(HNSA), as part of its 2018 Event series.  The event, held at the Prahran Mechanics Institute, was entitled ‘Evaluating a Successful Submission’ and explored the topic of what publishers, editors and competition judges might consider would be a successful manuscript. My other panellists were Chris Bell, Lindy Cameron and we were ably marshalled by Elizabeth Jane Corbett. The event was a great success, with we panellists providing insights into their various specialities and fielding a variety of interesting and stimulating questions from the eager audience.

Elizabeth Corbett, Lindy Cameron, Me, Chris Bell (Photo by Geoff Stuart)

Part of the success of the session was our chair’s excellent preparation. Elizabeth sent each of us a set of questions that, in my case I’m sure, helped me focus on the best advice I could give to those attending. Although I prepared a set of answers, I didn’t actually read them out during the panel, just referred to them every now and then.

The format of the session was for each panellist to read some of their work, answer questions related to it, then deal with questions related to their industry expertise, after which the conversation was opened up to the audience. I read an extract from the second chapter of my work-in-progress, currently entitled The Song of Keeping. 

So, for the interest of completeness and because I’m sure others may be interested in the details, I’ve included my prepared answers below. Another perspective of the event, by the organiser, Chris Foley, can be read here.

Tell us about your initial inspiration? Where are you currently at with the project?

I have had a long-held interest in the Celtic world and its mythology and in what has been termed The Matter of Britain. However, I’ve been more intrigued by Merlin than by Arthur and a specific trigger for this project was Nikolai Tolstoy’s book The Quest for Merlin. What intrigues me most was the idea there was an historical person who formed the basis of the Merlin created by Geoffrey of Monmouth. I wanted to write that person’s story.

As for the stage of the project, I am in what I call the Interdraft stage before the actual writing of the fourth draft. I’m doing a structural and conceptual edit of the manuscript, to deal with identified gaps, plot and character problems, and the underlying theological issues of the struggle between Christianity and Celtic paganism.

Who do you see as your main readership?

People interested in The Matter of Britain, the conflict between religions, and the pagan worldview. In a recent USA survey, up to 0.4% of respondents identified as ‘pagan’ or ‘wiccan’. There are about 336 million people who speak English as their first language, so 0.4% would represent 1.3 million potential readers. Then there are all those other readers who are interested in ‘pagan material’, about 10 million alone in the USA (said an executive from Barnes & Noble some years ago). So, a big market.

And finally, because I just have to ask, are those Middle Welsh words?

Many of the personal names in the novel I’ve taken from the Welsh Classical Dictionary. I’ve tried to stick to Old Welsh and Middle Welsh, but I have also derived personal and deity names and religious terms from Proto-Celtic and Indo-European, even Basque.

(Photo by Geoff Stuart)

How do you go about assessing a manuscript?

I look at craft issues and story issues, content and structure, what is told, how it is told:

1. Can the author write a grammatical sentence, then another, and arrange them in a way that keeps me reading, or does the bad writing—grammar, spelling and punctuation lapses, non-sequiturs in sentence construction, too many sentence fragments, etc.—frustrate me, annoy me, bore me?
2. Does the style of the narration fit the content?
3. What is the balance of showing and telling? Does it work?
4. Does the author know the genre in which she/he is working?
5. Does the story engage me? Does it have traction? Do I want to know what happens next or why things have happened? Am I thrilled by elegant language usage or by insights into character or by the late-at-night-urge to keep turning pages?
6. Are the events in the story logically presented and arranged in a logical sequence?
7. Do scenes work to advance the story or are just filler? That is, if they give backstory or reveal something about a character, do they do double-duty and also push the story forward?
8. Are characters consistent in their actions and behaviour?
9. Is the storyworld adequately established for and during the unfolding story?
10. Are there continuity problems in descriptions, time usages and intervals, etc.?

What are the common mistakes that writers make? 

1. First of all, lack of reading. Writers need to read more, and not just in their chosen genre. Some manuscripts are just rehashes of favourite movies and TV shows. Or are thinly disguised autobiographies that assume the writer’s life is interesting to other people just because it’s been traumatic to themselves.
2. Which leads to the second issue. Story and character arcs. Something needs to change and if you’re trying to write in a commercial genre, you need to be aware of the conventions and obligatory scenes of that genre, find ways to refresh the tropes you’re dealing with, and remember that story structure is not a formula but a form that has existed for millennia because it works.
3. And, as I’ve said, there’s the matter of genre. What do audiences expect from the genre and are you giving it to them?
4. Some stories start with long explanations of the history of the world but nothing about the current situation that is prompting the story. That is, the Inciting Incident is delayed far too long. Or isn’t clear. Such instances are authors indulging in the results of their research and/or worldbuilding and, basically, showing off.
5. Or an author has too many characters and none of them astutely rendered.
6. There is no story question, or it isn’t obvious, or it hasn’t been explored properly.
7. Theme hasn’t been identified.
8. Then there are the usual craft issues, as I indicated before: poor grammar, bad sentence and paragraph construction, weak scene construction, as well as improper manuscript layout, not knowing your audience, not knowing your genre through and through.
9. Writers who think redrafting is just doing a copyedit pass through their manuscripts.
10. To bring everything back to my reading comment: the more you read, inside and outside your genre, the more you understand what things have worked, how other writers have refreshed tropes, how language and story works, and what ideas and techniques you might be able to bring into your own genre from other ones. 

How has editing, assessing and mentoring helped inform your own writing process?

Everything I do—teaching, mentoring, assessing, editing—makes me more aware of the mistakes I myself make; how much is still to be learnt about story and writing, craft and content, the what and the how; and how hard it is to fight against resistance and the ‘it’s good enough’ syndrome. I realise how far I’ve come but how far I still have to go. I have learnt to stand back from my own work and analyse it more objectively than I could in the past. I’ve also learnt that at times one has to be stubborn and follow one’s vision for the work even in the face of self-doubt and of the advice from others.

Are you in a writing group?

• Not at the moment, but I have been in the past. Several.
• I have a writing buddy group that meets weekly.
•  I also have some trusted beta readers, including my wife, Jo, who reads everything I write. 

What do you do when you lose direction?

• If you’re talking about a story, I regroup by looking at the macro picture—intentions, structure, story arc—then go back to the micro. Hence my Interdraft work at the moment.
• If you mean the writing life as a whole, same sort of thing: look at my intentions as well as my motivations, my habits, my commitments and obligations, my distractions, simplify what I can (for example, social media and TV), and then throw myself back into following my bliss as much as I can. 

What about on those days when you struggle to get words on the page? 

•  Put anything down.
• Start something else, even if just notes to a poem or story.
• Go for a walk or spend time sitting in the garden. 

How do you pick yourself up after setbacks? 

• Mope around for a few days.
• Write about it in my journal.
• Examine my intentions, my life, the piece itself.
• Look for more appropriate outlets for the piece, if need be.
• Send the piece out again.
• Start something new.
• Do more research.
• Forget about outcomes and enjoy the process of writing, the excitement, again.

(Photo by Geoff Stuart)

If you are interested in Historical Fiction, check out HNSA here. For news about upcoming panel discussions, see here.

Thanks for reading. As always, I welcome your comments. 

Best Wishes

Earl

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Gwaith 23 (Catch Up): Rain-affected Site-Seeing

Hi Everyone

After visiting Clochmabenstane, as recorded in an earlier posting (here), I travelled to my next base, The Bonnington in Moffat. I’ve talked before about my time in Moffat (here), so I won’t go into any details, other than to say I was once again warmly welcomed by the proprietors, Lesley and Paul, who greeted me with banana cake and a cup of tea. As with my previous stays there, they were always extremely helpful and hospitable.

Mine hosts: Paul and Lesley

The next day I left The Bonnington and made my way to the parking place near the trail to Hart Fell. As Nikolai Tolstoy states in his book The Quest for Merlin, if there ever is a sacred place in Britain, it is here, where it is said Myrddin (the historical character that Merlin is based on) escaped to after the battle of Arfderydd, in which he went mad. I have visited Hart Fell Spar twice before and drunk of its waters and honoured the presence of Myrddin/Merlin.

Hart Fell Spar. Note the ram's skull above the entrance.

Signage at the spar.

On my first visit, I climbed to a plateau just above the spar in the mistaken belief that this was Hart Fell itself. It wasn’t. As those of you who have followed my blog about my previous trips would know, I tend to climb first and check maps, etc., afterwards. So, on my next visit, I knew where I had to go, but heavy rain defeated my trudging from crest to crest towards the ever-receding summit that kept disappearing into mist.

View of area above Hart Fell Spar (2013).

On the way to the top of Hart Fell, before the rain really set in (2015).

I was determined this time to make it, but half way to the spar, the weather defeated me yet again—mist became a drizzle then a steady rain. My new hiking boots became waterlogged, even though they had been ‘proofed’, as did my jacket and my new waterproof overpants. I was starting to think that the spirits of the place had in it for me, or at least were testing me as if they were Threshold Guardians like those in Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey. I returned to my car and, after picking up maps and directions from my room, I headed out to sites I hadn’t expected to be visiting for a couple of days.

Signage at Castle Loch

I travelled down to Lochmaben, a small town about fifteen miles (30 minutes) south from Moffat. Nearby is Castle Loch, on the shores of which is Lochmaben Castle, the home of Robert the Bruce when he was Lord of Annandale. I had been to the loch and the castle area before, as I was using the setting for a major druid location. This time, I wanted to check out the area in a different season to those other visits. By the time I got there, the rain had stopped, but the temperature was still so cold my breath plumed in front of me.

Woods of Lochmaben

Sky above Lochmaben 

I spent an hour or so wandering the paths around the site and through the surrounding wood, accompanied by the constant drip of water from the rowans, hawthorn, beech, oak, and sycamore, like someone’s footsteps in the undergrowth, and by the calls of robins, thrushes, tits, and jackdaws and the flashes of colour as they darted through the trees. Two crows complained to each other about the weather. Out on the loch, two swans upended themselves as they fed, a line of ducks cruised across the dimpled water, and noisy geese passed overhead.

Swans swimming in one of the bays of Castle Loch

Line of ducks across the middle of the loch

Behind the castle ruins, to the west, is a low mound on which are perched six massive, gnarled beech trees, their trunks moss-wrapped near the roots. When I wrote the first draft of my novel, I described a mound that was used for the meeting of the druid community. I had been to Lochmaben before writing this, but I don’t remember noticing the actual mound that time. Some sort of synchronicity, perhaps? This time, I mapped out the mound, its guardian trees, and the flat amphitheatre area in front of it.

The mound behind the castle

Path to the mound from the castle area

One of the beech trees on the perimeter of the mound

I then travelled to Rockcliffe to climb The Mote of Mark, an Iron Age hillfort that seems to have been a centre for metalwork, which is how I am using it in the novel. My hero travels there as a test on his decision to become a druid. Brambles, beech, sycamore oak and rowan trees line the nearby stream, some of them with vines hanging down from their branches. Around the base are hawthorn and apple trees, wreathed in moss. The mound itself is quite sparse, with grass, bracken, gorse and tufts of spinifex, though there are some oak saplings in the hollow where I imagine the master metalworker had his dwellings and smithy. Moss covers some vitrified rocks that may have belonged to the original stone walls surrounding the dwellings on top of the summit.

Signage at the Mote of Mark, which overlooks the Urr estuary

The Mote of Mark

Moss-covered hawthorn tree

The mound has a great view of the bay to the south and the hills and valleys on the other sides. On the mudflats, oystercatchers called to each other as they searched for food. At one point, they were in a line, like advancing warriors, but most of the time they were scattered around, like fighters in their individual single combats. A flock of sparrows darted above the broad flat space between the north side of the mound and the next hill. When the chill breeze from the across the bay dropped, I could hear people talking on properties a quarter of a mile and more away.

The summit

Artistic rendition of the layout of the settlement on top of the mound

Possible vitrified fortifications

The mudflats south of the mound

View to the north of the mound

After more photos and measurements, I headed back to The Bonnington for a meal from The Moffat Chippy and a relaxing evening writing up my notes, planning my next day’s research, and purchasing train tickets for my upcoming trip to Germany.

I hope you enjoyed this post. As always, I welcome your comments and will answer any questions you have about these Iron Age sites.

Best wishes
Earl

Gwaith 19: Arrival in Scotland (Monday, 1 Oct 2016)

Whenever I drive to Scotland, my first stop in the country is Clochmabenstane, a megalith standing in a field of Old Graitney farm, near Gretna. Along with a smaller stone set into a nearby hedge, Clochmabenstane is all that is left of a stone circle dated back to around 3000 BC.

The main stone, which is also called the Lochmaben Stone, is weathered granite, weighs about ten tons and is seven feet high and about 18 feet around. As for the etymology of Clochmabenstane, 'cloch' seems to suggest the modern Gaelic 'clach', meaning stone; 'maben' is related to Mabon (also known as Maponus), the Celtic God Mabon map Modron, Son of the Mother ; and 'stane' is a Scottish word for 'stone'. One suggested meaning for the name is the 'stone or burial place of Mabon'.

I first found out about the stone in Nikolai Tolstoy's The Quest for Merlin, where he suggests that the stone was the site of ceremonies for the cult of Maponus/Mabon and that Merlin may have been the chief druid in charge of them. I have used some elements of his suggestion in my novel, which is why I like to visit the megalith and get a sense of the stone itself and the surrounding area.

The Clochmabenstane is reached from a carpark near the farm, on the Solway Firth, with a walk across the boggy shoreline of the estuary, a climb over a wire fence, and a stroll up the mild slope alongside a hawthorn hedge. As I walked along the shore, with bramble bushes next to the property line, a rabbit popped out of one gorse bush, looped down the path and dashed into the hollow at the bottom of another bush. When I got nearer to the stone, masses of geese rose from a nearby field, milled around, then headed west.

Below are some photos of my visit:

The tide was slowing retreating as I walked to the stone

Milling geese making a racket

The Clochmabenstane surrounded by round haylage bales, which my father once called dongels,
though I haven't found that usage mentioned anyway else.

The east weathered and yellow-lichened face of the stone

The south face/edge of the stone

The west face of the stone, with its suggestion of a nose

The north face of the stone

The smaller stone, which has been set into the hawthorn hedge

The shoreline with the tide moving out

Another of my dramatic cloud photos

View across the Solway Firth that, in ancient times, could be forded when the tide is fully out by crossing mudflats
and wading across a narrow stretch of water

Another view of the firth

Once I finished my survey of the stone and sat with it for a while, I headed back to my car and drive on to my destination in Moffat (more in another post).

I hope you enjoyed this post. I am slowly catching up with my travel reports during my time during the two residencies at Stiwdio Maelor and I appreciate your patience.

Cofion Cynnes

Earl