open letter

[swan_tower]

Dear Gods of Overachieving Authors,

If I promise to do suitable penance and grovel a bit, will you promise that I never have to study seventeenth-century English politics again? Pretty please?

'Cause I'm increasingly convinced this flaming ball of contradictory disaster they called their government is the real reason nobody wants to write fiction about the period.


Pleadingly,
An Author Who Still Loves Her Book, But Wants to Light the Period Politics On Fire

Comments

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

Isn't that what you're *doing* at the end?

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, no. It may be petty after-the-fact revenge, but the stuff I want to just die already is all happening in the vicinity of 1642-1648 (and probably a bit later).

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry. Does it help that it *is* dead already? Or would you rather orchestrate the downfall of politics incarnate, perhaps involving weasels?

[anghara.livejournal.com]

...and now you know what it feels like. I went through the exact same thing when I was writing "Embers of heaven", except that my bugaboo was teh Chinese Cultural Revolution and not the safely-dead-and-gone 17th century.

Having fun yet?... [grin]

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Safely-dead-and-gone is not a word I would apply when this book will also be published in Britain.

[anghara.livejournal.com]

Yes, but at least there will not be anyone alive who might read your book who has lived through or who has living relatives who might have lived through the period you are writing about. Sure, people can get cranky about historical faux pas whatever the period of history you're writing about - but when you're writing about something that's still in living memory (like the Cultural Revolution) things acquire... a whole new dimension.

Having said that, though, and having been to England and its weight of history, I do know where you're coming from here...

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

This is true, and it's one reason why I'm not at all sure I should try to tackle a Blitz book.

[fenrah.livejournal.com]

Poor you.

I want to write historical fiction about Rupert, but the magnitude of the required knowledge is a major deterrent. The politics of England and the Continent. All the stuff in Germany. It is so messy and so foreign.

So I just keep collecting books.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

It requires not only knowledge, but masochism.

[fjm.livejournal.com]

I remember distinctly being asked to write an essay on the exclusion crisis and bursting in to tears in my tutor's office, because I couldn't find the crisis.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Thank God this book stops before I get there. I've already bitten off plenty.

[auriaephiala.livejournal.com]

I love this period in history -- partly because it's so complicated & there are no obvious heroes (except Lilburne and a few others like him).

Don't get discouraged: a lot of people who lived through this time were undoubtedly confused too.

I'm looking forward to your book.