Wordcraft blog by Avi

Struggling

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[Photo credit: Adobe Stock]

I am working on a new book—and I am struggling. Given the fact that I’ve published some eighty books, it may surprise some that I am struggling. Let me suggest why.

  1. Every book is a new book, and the success of one, though presumably it gives confidence to write another, that is not necessarily so. A writer’s confidence is, at best, fragile. A nasty remark on Goodreads can kill a day’s work.
  2. One of the pitfalls of a new book is my contract—if I have one. A contract will specify the total word count—say sixty thousand words. But there on my screen, the PC is counting and it reads “2,465 words.” The psychological tendency, then, is to write more words than I need. That clogs up my writing, and makes it verbose. It feels as if I am writing badly. I am.
  3. I agreed to write such and such a book, with such and such a plot, and I made a good pitch. But a pitch is not a book. There is many a slip between pitch and book.
  4. Reminder: talk as little about my book as possible. It boxes me in. Silence is freedom.
  5. Sometimes as I write, I see a possibility for a shift in the story. But I promised something else. Reminder to self: go with the shift, with what feels right. The one person I should talk to is my editor.
  6. Reminder: Beware the book that is focused on place, rather than characters. Travel books are about places. Fiction is about characters.
  7. Reminder: Professional writers get paid for their work, and I depend on that income to live. Get it done! reverberates in my head. The rent is due. That creates another kind of pressure, one that may be real but that doesn’t help my writing.
  8. Reminder: Good writing is re-writing, endless re-writing. Patience is a key component of writing.
  9. Reminder: Never deny your deepest instincts about your own work.
  10. Reminder: Read good writing by others. Other writers will show the way.
  11. Reminder: Slowly (if not surely) it will get done.

Goodbye Christopher Robin

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Goodbye Christopher Robin

I recently watched (on TV) Goodbye Christopher Robin, which tells the life story of the boy so key to Winnie-the-Pooh, by A.A. Milne. According to the movie, Pooh is the “most loved children’s book of all time.”

The depicted story of the boy’s life is a painful one. A.A. Milne, (Christopher’s father) played by Domhnall Gleeso, was a veteran of World War One, and suffered from PTSD syndrome, which caused him—a very successful West End playwright—to suffer debilitating war-induced flashbacks—to have a repressed emotional life—and a hard time being an engaged father.

Christopher’s mother (played by Margot Robbie) is depicted as selfish, exploitative of her son’s fame, and a snobbish upper-class lady.

The most consistent love in Christopher’s life comes from his Irish nanny (played by Kelly Macdonald)—who is dismissed when she objects to the way Christopher is mistreated.

The very young Christopher Robin is played, charmingly, by Will Tilston.

The movie suggests that the Pooh stories came to life when Christopher and his father enjoy a rare time alone together in rural England. Mother has left for London to enjoy the high life, while the nanny has gone away to take care of her dying mother. In other words, get rid of the women, and creativity happens.

But the essential story revealed here is the deep resentment Christopher felt as to how he was exploited, and cheated of parental love. As depicted, he spent much of his young adult life trying to get away from his literary persona.

What does the film tell us about Winnie-the-Pooh? Very little except to suggest how some of the book’s charming points came from some of the rare moments when father and son enjoyed time together.

a scene from Goodbye Christopher Robin

Scene from Goodbye Christopher Robin [Fox Searchlight]

What does the film tell us about children’s literature, or the writing life? Nothing.

What does the film tell us about early 20th Century British parenting? That it was pretty pathetic.

At the end of the movie we are told (via subtitles) that Christopher refused to take a penny of the massive money engendered by Pooh, that he always remained in contact with his former nanny, and that he created and ran a bookstore.

I liked that part.

But it also suggests that a book—however dependent on the realities of an author’s life—that life has little to do with how readers enjoy it. It is fascinating to think how little a writer has to do with the published book once it is the hands of readers.

Indeed, when it comes to books, it’s the readers who matter most.

Fug

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Readers have asked me about my use of language in my historical novels, particularly words that themselves are part of the historical moment. Let it be said that, to begin with, I have a great fondness for words, and happily, the English language has an immense vocabulary. Also, I have access on my computer to the Oxford Unabridged Dictionary which has an historical thesaurus. I also own such books as Medieval Wordbook (Cosman) and Colonial American English (Lederer)

Medieval Wordbook; Colonial American EnglishHow can one resist such words as this 1774 word, mazy—winding—as in “Where the clear rivers pour their mazy tide.” Or, laverer, the medieval court servant “in charge of ceremonial hand washing with fragrant, spiced water.” One of my favorite words is the late 19th century word for sulk: pout-mouthed. That appears in my book, City of Orphans, set in that time.

Similarly, if you are writing a medieval historical novel, you won’t include a steel sword, because the metal didn’t really come into use until the 16th century.

A page from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Click for a larger, more readable version.

When I wrote my Newbery book, Crispin, I had another problem. The novel takes place at the end of the 14th century, when the English that was spoken was Middle English. You can get a taste of it by looking at Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, as he wrote it. When you hear it read aloud you can hear our modern English, but it is hard to recite. Need I say: I can’t write it, nor can I read it.

What did I do?

In preparation for the book I read the major English poets of the day, Chaucer, Gower, Langland. I realized they wrote their verse in iambic pentameter, “A line of verse with five metrical feet, each consisting of one short (or unstressed) syllable followed by one long (or stressed) syllable, for example Two households, both alike in dignity” which can be very close (but different) to today’s spoken English. So when I wrote Crispin I tried to write it in that verse pattern. How successful was I? I’m not even sure. But if you read the book aloud, you will (I hope) catch that rhythm, and it was, I think, enough to create, if you will, an “antique” sense of language.

Recently I was reading an historical novel (told in the first person) set in Tudor England. The author used the word “fug,” (“A thick, close, stuffy atmosphere, esp. that of a room overcrowded and with little or no ventilation.”) Liking the word’s sound, and guessing its meaning by context, but not knowing what it meant exactly, I looked it up in the OUD. I learned that the word fug wasn’t introduced into the English language until 1888.

Was it wrong to use Fug in a novel set in the 16th Century? I suppose from a purest point of view it is. But it sounded old, and it worked for me. Besides, I do think a writer is free to use any English word. You can even make them up. Shakespeare, it is claimed, invented some 1700 words, many of which we still use.

Or you could engage in Kenning: “The Anglo-Saxon and Old Germanic poetic technique of describing something without naming it, achieved by joining two or more of its major qualities; the ocean as “the whales’ road”, a high prowed sailing ship as “a foamy-necked floater”; a well-wrought sword as “Hammer leavings.”

As long as the word’s meaning is clear—not fug—I think any word you want is just fine.

Story Behind the Story #69:
The End of the World and Beyond

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From a writers’ point of view, I have been blessed insofar as I’ve never really been at a loss for ideas for my novels. That said, it has gotten me into trouble because, in truth, they are good but sometimes half-baked ideas. In my enthusiasm I pitch these ideas to publishers, who grab hold. Then I have to give good literary life to those ill-formed notions. So far, so good.

When I first suggested my idea for the story of Oliver Cromwell Pitts (at that point unnamed) to my editor at Algonquin, to the best of my recollection the basic idea was to tell the tale of a kid in early 18th Century England who gets caught up in Britain’s horrendous legal system and is transported (by way of punishment) to the American colonies. This was accepted, with the proposal that I write a TWO-book story. You may learn of the evolution of the book in the blog I posted here on February 27, 2018.

What I did not relate in that posting was a vital fact. Somewhere in the course of writing “Pitts 1,” as we came to call it, I got it into my head that this was to be a THREE book series. So, I sent in the first book, which ended (in that iteration) when Oliver discovers his beloved sister is a common pickpocket.

In turn, the editor kindly referred me to my contract, which I surely had read and signed, that stated quite clearly that this was to be a TWO-book project.

Did it matter? Well yes. Speaking for myself, having written for many years, I have developed an inner sense of how long a book needs to be, and thereby pace the text accordingly. I was brought up short that this book was, well, short. I needed it to be a fair bit longer. Moreover, at that point I had not fully thought out how this book should end.

Back to work.

To put it metaphorically, it was as if I had decided to climb a mountain, only to discover (as I hiked) that the mountain had two summits, the second one the real summit, and much higher. You get to the first summit, breathe a sigh of relief and relax. Then you notice you haven’t truly gotten to the top. That’s common enough here in the Rocky Mountains where I live, but not in my literary life, where I work.

The End of the World and BeyondI got back to the book. It proved to have one big advantage. I now needed to think firmly how the second book’s plot would evolve. In this fashion book one and two were effectively blended. I think one might read the two books back-to-back, and not miss a beat. In fact, if a writer’s view is to be considered, the full story of Oliver Cromwell Pitt’s life (The Unexpected life of Oliver Cromwell Pitts, and The End of the World and Beyond), is much more entertaining to read, if you read them one right after the other.

And I should read my publishing contracts—carefully.

Writing about the history
that hasn’t been written

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History, you’ve no doubt heard it said a million times, is written by the winners. But what if you could find out what happened to the losers?

If one is going to write historical fiction, it seems fair to assume one needs to read history. And if one does reads history—as I do—you wonder about the stories of the so-called underdogs, those small, and sometime very large tales which are shoved into the darkness by the bright light of triumphant torches.

Those stories are what interest me and what I’ve come to write about.

The Fighting Ground, Sophia's War, The Player King

Thus, The Fighting Ground, a momentary (but true) tale of the American Revolution, of little importance save to the people who lived and died in that small skirmish in New Jersey.

Thus, Sophia’s War, which in large part is about the plight of the huge numbers of American soldiers who, taken prisoner by the British, were most cruelly held and, in the main, forgotten. (Though there is a monument to the many who died, a monument championed into creation by Walt Whitman).

The Player King is about a 15th Century boy—about whom very little is known—who claimed the kingship of England against an oppressive monarchy and was actually crowned as such in Ireland, only to have his cause fall to pieces in The Battle of Trent. Another true tale.

a modern day tobacco field

a tobacco field

Then there are the 18th century colonies of Virginia and Maryland. This area, around Chesapeake Bay came to be known as the Tobacco Coast. It was where the American economy first became both successful and international. The point is, most of the labor who worked this tobacco economy were not free.

That was because in the early 17th century it was England’s transported felons and indentured servants who made up much of the labor force there. It continued into the 18th century and has come to be called white slavery. We are referencing about fifty thousand people, men, women, and children.

It soon shifted to Black slavery. Either way, it was slavery.

That is the essential narrative subject of The End of the World and Beyond. A white boy, Oliver Cromwell Pitts, is caught up by the British legal system, transported to America—to the Tobacco Coast—as a felon. How does he get there? He is bought, but by whom? How does he live? How does he interact with Black slavery? Does he, can he, will he escape, when the local community is well organized to track down any escaped slave, white or black?

Where do Oliver and his fellow African slave Bara flee? More about that anon, in another post. Do I have to tell you, there’s not a great deal written about that.

I’ve chosen to in The End of the World and Beyond.

The Second Book

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The Unexpected Life of Oliver Cromwell PittsIt’s wonderful to receive a review (The Unexpected Life of Oliver Cromwell Pitts) that reads: “Riveting…This first in a new series will capture the hearts and minds of readers and history buffs alike … Avi’s examination of the plight of the desperately poor is worthy of Dickens. Impossible to put down.”

But then, please note, I am already committed to writing a sequel! How am I ever going to match this?? Frankly, it’s daunting.

There are all kinds of things the writer must do to begin such a project. First, you have to create a veritable catalog of the facts about your characters (particularly your main characters), aspects with which you must now live (and use) as you go forward. Age. Height. Gender. Mannerisms. Clothing. Patterns of thinking. Culture. To cite a few. Then there are speech configurations. Perhaps certain speech quirks. Even particular words. Does your character say “Sure,” or “Okay,” or “Why not?” Or perhaps just shrugs. Then there are attitudes: does he like this person but not that one? Also, does do your characters evolve in the course of the book?

Now mind, I wasn’t particularly fussy how I laid these things down in the first book. Get it right, I’m mostly thinking. But as I go forward into the next book, I MUST make use of what I have done. Like it or not, you have created a template. And—let it be noted—that one of the reasons readers like sequels (and series) is because the character(s) is familiar.

The End of the World and BeyondI believe it was John D. MacDonald—of mystery writing fame—who suggested that if you are going to write a series—write the first three before you publish anything. Sometimes, if your timing is right—and it was here for me—you are working on the second book before the first book is set in stone. That is to say, it was only during the final phase of publishing the first Pitts book that I considered what would happen in the second Pitts book. I had a general sense, but hardly precise. I could, and did, make some adjustments

And oh, yes, having a good memory is vital. Let it also be said that a good editor and copy editor is crucial. You will get notes: “In book one, chapter seven, line twelve, you wrote….”

But now that the sequel—At the End of the World and Beyond—has been written and is about to be published, early reviews have come in:

“Told in appropriately 18th-century diction, Oliver’s picaresque is a harrowing page-turner that takes an unflinching look at what life was like for those living in servitude in the American Colonies. Oliver is quietly heroic but also realistic as he endures his fate. African Bara, though seen through white Oliver’s eyes, is given trope-defying agency, his intelligence and superior knowledge of the territory and customs putting him in the lead but never at Oliver’s service. Brief back matter gives historical context to this sequel. Action-packed and inspirational—another stunner.” (Kirkus)

Whew.

“No Taxation Without Representation”

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In the Thirteen American colonies, ten years prior to the Revolution, there was what was known as the Stamp Act crisis, which, in Boston in particular, brought forth that iconic cry.

By representation it was meant there was no American seated in the British Parliament.

“The Repeal or the Funeral of Miss Ame. -Stamp”

New Hampshire: Stamp Master in Effigy

“New Hampshire: Stamp Master in Effigy”

“But,” according to historian Brian Deming, “the idea never gained traction in Britain.” As one British critic of the time wrote: “Shall we live to see the spawn of our Transports occupy the highest seats in our Commonwealth? Degenerate Britons! How can ye entertain the humiliating thought!”

The key word here is “Transport.” It references the many thousands of transported felons who had been shipped to the colonies for forced labor by way of punishment in the 18th Century.

During the 18th Century, England became a center of great wealth and mass poverty. Crime against property became commonplace. In reaction, the British government enacted harsh laws to punish minor and major offenders—a collection of laws that collectively came to be known as “The Bloody Codes.” One major punishment was transportation, by which children, women, and men were sent to British American colonies and sold into forced labor.

At the time of the Revolution there was a colonial population of two million. Some fifty thousand were (or had been) these transported felons. (Hence the quote cited above.) It had become a business. It was 1619 when the first Africans were brought to America as slaves. There was a time when enslaved whites and blacks labored together.

The End of the World and BeyondThis is the context in which my newly published The End of the World and Beyond takes place. In book one (of this two part series) The Unexpected Life of Oliver Cromwell Pitts, my eponymous hero becomes entangled in crime and British Law. The sequel tells the story of what happened to Oliver when he was is transported to Maryland and sold.

Booklist reviewed the book thus: “Though darker than its predecessor, this sequel is equally fine. The plotting is altogether laudable, the setting beautifully realized, and the characters highly empathetic. Especially good is the voice Avi has conjured for Oliver, just antique enough to evoke eighteenth century diction and syntax. One thing is certain: it may be the end of the world but there is no end to the pleasure Avi’s latest evokes.”

The End of the World and Beyond

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The End of the World and BeyondAs you may know, there is no more frequently asked question of writers than, “Where do you get your ideas?”

There are some of my books for which I can be specific. Thus, I can tell you place, time, circumstance, for the creation of The Fighting Ground. I can do as much for Poppy.

For my two-volume story—The Unexpected Life of Oliver Cromwell Pitts—and the soon-to-be-published sequel, The End of the World and Beyond—the origins are much more convoluted.

As a matter of personal pleasure and interest I read American and British history. Consider; from 1497, when John Cabot, the Venetian navigator and explorer, touched the coast of Newfoundland and claimed North America for England (and King Henry VII) our two national histories were intertwined.

In 18th Century England, as today, crime—or what was/is defined as crime—was rampant as masses of poor people grew poorer, and the relatively few wealthy folks, grew richer. Part of the pushback was on the other side. Thus, Johnathan Wilde became a master criminal.

In response, the British government created “The Bloody Codes,” draconian legal measures to deal with criminals. Hanging in London, or transportation to the colonies for enforced labor, was part of the response.

The Unexpected Life of Oliver Cromwell PittsIn the early days of our written history the number of transported felons was claimed to be few. “Five thousand,” said Thomas Jefferson. More recent historians have proved otherwise. Indeed, something more than fifty thousand were shipped to the Americas. Among those sent over were children, (boys and girls) who were treated as common criminals when they broke the law. They too were transported. Large numbers were sent to the Caribbean Islands. Even more were sent to Maryland and Virginia, which came to be known as “The Tobacco Coast,” tobacco being the first successful economic staple of the southern colonies.

The plight of transported felons, as I learned, was also deeply entwined with Afro-American slavery, and all the cruelties involved, and the way so many slaves sought to free themselves in remarkable ways.

I have also long been a reader, with pleasure, of Eighteenth Century British literature, Defoe, Fielding, Sterne, and Smollett.

Put all these elements together, and it’s almost easy to see how the lives, voices, and plots of The Unexpected Life of Oliver Cromwell Pitts—and The End of the World and Beyond—came into my head. There is something from all of the above in these books.

That said, I came to the creation of the story backward. My initial goal was to write about young transported felons. That led to my asking who might be such English persons? How did they become caught up by the English law? In what condition would they have been transported? And, of course, what would be their fate in America? Did any of them regain their freedom?

The history of white slaves in America—which is what the transported English, Irish, and Scotch felons truly were—is not usually a given part of American history. It should be. It’s awful. It’s also quite extraordinary.

While The Unexpected Life of Oliver Cromwell Pitts—and the newly published continuation, The End of the World and Beyond—will give you an inkling of generally unknown history, my goal has been, as always, to write page-turning adventures. Let me assure you, Oliver Cromwell Pitts is a different kind of American hero.

First Lines

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“Marley was dead, to begin with.”

That’s the opening words of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, and they are, in my judgement, as remarkable as they are memorable. Indeed, the first words of any piece of writing are crucial, being as they are, the window, the door, the invitation, the inducement, call it what you will, to keep reading. A weak opening is not helpful. A good one is crucial. A fine opening is often the key that opens the book, and over time, keeps it open.

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

Thus, Jane Austen, for Pride and Prejudice

“Call me Ishmael.” Moby Dick

“Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures of conversations in it, “and what is the use of a book,” thought Alice, “without pictures or conversations?”

Alice in Wonderland

“In the beginning, God created the Heaven and the earth.” King James’ version of The Bible.

“In my younger and more vulnerable years, my father gave me some advice that’s I’ve been turning over in mind ever since.”

Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby

Many years ago, I read a piece by a writer who wrote formulae fiction—the Hardy Boys, in fact. He wrote the bulk of the books easily, quickly. But the first page, he said, he rewrote many, many times. It made a deep impression on me, and over the years, I have labored many an hour over the first page. It’s worth it.

The True Confessions of Charlotte DoyleFor a fair number of my readers I suspect the opening sentence of The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle is a favorite. But it did not come easily. I don’t put in the same league as the samples above, but it seems to have stayed in reader’s minds. For reasons I don’t recall, I saved the evolution of that sentence. The writing went like this:

  1. Many years ago, I was accused of murder.
  2. It’s hard to believe that I was once accused of murder.
  3. No one believes me when I say I was once accused of murder.
  4. Looking back, it’s hard to believe I had anything to do with murder.
  5. How many girls are ever accused of murder?
  6. How could I, a girl, have anything to do with murder?
  7. Not many girls are accused of murder and found guilty at a trial.
  8. Few girls of thirteen are accused of murder let alone found guilty.
  9. Not every thirteen-year-old girl is accused of murder, brought to trial and found guilty.

Did those famous first lines I first cited above require the same kind of evolution? I have no idea. It’s fun to speculate. Perhaps genius, is just that, genius.

But to close, here’s a notion: Readers, share what your favorite opening words might be.

Repeating Myself by not Repeating Myself

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Series books, sequels, are perhaps more complex to write than readers think. Yes, certain things are given. For example, if you’ve established that your continuing protagonist has blue eyes, they are going to remain blue in subsequent books. But the fact that there are things that must remain consistent demands that things also be different, otherwise why write a sequel? In other words, certain things must be a given, even as other things must not be a given.

PoppyAt the moment I am writing a new Poppy book. There are already six in print, and the current project is not really a sequel. Rather, it fills a gap in the overall arch of Poppy’s story. It will indeed become Book Two in the overall sequence, revealing how Ragweed and Poppy met. But then the books were not written in sequence to begin with. Poppy, the book, was written first, with no intention of doing a series. The first in the series (as it stands now) is Ragweed, and it was written a good while after Poppy.

I sent a draft of the new book to Brian Floca, my esteemed illustrator/colleague. He is also a writer, a good one, and our process of collaboration has always been to share my text for his input. Along with some specific, productive suggestions for changes, his response was encouraging:

I don’t know if you had to work to find those voices again—Poppy’s, and Ragweed’s, and Lungwort’s, etc.—or if they seemed just to be there waiting there for you.

In fact, for the Poppy books I have been lucky. Over the years the Poppy books have been written (almost twenty-five years!) I’ve always been exceedingly fond of the characters. Being fond of your characters can mean you know them, hear them, which makes the writing so much easier. It’s like visiting an old friend—I’m sure you have had the experience—you may not have seen them for years but you just jump right in with the friendship, the talk, the fondness.

Murder at MidnightAll the same, when I took up this narrative—how Ragweed met Poppy—I had no preconceived notions as to how it all happened. I had to find my way. But knowing the characters so well suggested ways of telling the story, their story, as it were.

As noted above, I am working on another sequel, an extension of Murder at Midnight and Midnight Magic. Even here, the chronological order of the books was reversed. Murder at Midnight was a prequel to Midnight Magic. The current book is proving harder to write, as it has taken time to get into the characters without simply repeating the earlier books. Here, so to speak, I’ve had to struggle to renew the friendships. I am making progress, slowly.

Crispin: Cross of LeadWriting the Crispin series was a different experience, insofar, as when I first thought of the story of Crispin, I contemplated a multi-volume tale. From the beginning I sensed what I was going to do.

That said, the fourth and final volume, has never been written.

In summary then, the writing of a series, can, on the surface, seem relatively simple. In fact, it’s a complex process. My guess is that if you have been successful in creating full characters, you do best when you let them tell the ongoing story. I just watch and record.

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