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May 10, 2005

historians, grumbling, mythology

Every kind of scene has its own set of challenges, but for me the most difficult are scenes set in the middle of crowded public places with a lot going on. I've been working for days on a scene set in Congo Square in New Orleans in 1814, and while I feel like I've got the basics down, it's going to take a lot of rewriting until I'm happy with it.

In addition to describing the setting and the crowd (which required a lot of research), the music and the dancing (more research), it's necessary to keep track of the three or four main characters who are threaded throughout the place.

Other scenes like this that caused me a lot of heartache were: the fight between the butcher and the farmer in the Montreal market place (Distant Shore); Elizabeth's arrival at Good Pasture (Into the Wilderness); the Nut Island garrison departure (Fire Along the Sky); the parade in Manhattan (Lake in the Clouds).

So I've spent some time reading traveler's reports on New Orleans in the first quarter of the 19th century, which are usually hard to interpret, as they often contradict each other and sometimes are fraught with obvious overstatements. Then there's the problem of things people think they know about New Orleans which are partially or entirely factually suspect. There's a huge gulf between academic historians and what might be called folk historians. The latter group tend to romanticize the history of the quadroon balls, and the idea of placage -- where rich white men arranged a second, left-handed relationship with a beautiful young free woman of color, which required him to buy her a house, slaves, and a lavish lifestyle, as well as to support and educate children born of the relationship. Historians seem to think that an early traveler exaggerated grandly when reporting on all this, and that novelists took it from there. The result, of course, is that many people state with great certainty a lot of doubtful facts, and the poor historical novelist is left with a choice: go with the mythology, or try to forge new ground by using the work of the historians instead?

I'm trying to strike a middle ground -- that is, I have no wish to outrage those people who subscribe wholeheartedly to the mythology, but neither do I want to give the historians more to grumble about. So I'm avoiding using all the standard terminology, from placee to quadroon. I'm sure I'll catch hell from both sides, anyway.

08:50 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

contemplating contemplation

Over at Romancing the Blog, Sylvia Day has an interesting post on the why and wherefore of author weblogs. Why we (the authors) write them, why we (the readers) read them. What are author weblogs supposed to accomplish, and whether or not they are successful.

There are many comments in response to this post, all of them interesting, but mostly I am left wondering about my own motivations, goals, and idiosyncracies, and whether or not keeping this weblog promotes my work too much or too little or not at all. Or is that even the point? The subtitle of this post: it's all about me. Sorry.

A couple of things come to mind right away. First, I have conflicting urges. On the one hand I have a deep aversion to grandiosity (twelve years of Catholic education probably at the bottom of this, but also some family-related pathologies); I also have the strong sense that in these times when publishing houses spend less time and money on marketing novels, I have to take some responsibility for making potential readers aware of my work. Because hey, it's a job, too.

So I took what seemed like the middle path: I can talk about writing and process. That way I can answer questions people might have about (a) my books; and (b) the craft of writing and (c) the business of publishing and (d) storytelling in general, including stuff I'm reading and watching that might be of interest to others. Which makes this whole undertaking less exclusively self serving.

My sense is that most people who visit here regularly fall intwo one of two groups: those who were familiar with my novels and came looking for information; those who stumbled across the weblog because they are interesting in the writing process, and stuck around because they found something they like. The second group of people haven't necessarily read any of my published work. Maybe they never will. I find that I don't worry about it much.

So Sylvia Day raised a couple of issues for me: how much self promotion is too much? too little? Do I blather on about my own books to the point of boredom, or is it possible, reading this weblog, not to realize that I have a half dozen novels in print and/or forthcoming? Also, I try hard not to wander too far from the subject matter at hand. Specifically I try not to talk about the other parts of my life too much. Mostly I keep quiet about family, politics, and non-writing related activities. I think.

Perhaps this post should be filed under a new heading: the many faces of procrastination.

04:44 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack