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la_marquise) wrote2025-02-18 02:55 pm
la_marquise) wrote2025-02-18 02:55 pm
Entry tags:
Things I said I'd never do.
Once upon a time, I made a mental list of things I wouldn't write. This was a while ago -- some point in the 90s -- and mostly a response to what I saw going on in sff. 'Celtic' fantasy, I was told, was over. So was Arthuriana, and nothing I might have to write could possibly improve or add to what was already out there.
I'm mostly Welsh. My entire academic career focused on the history of the Celtic and Gaelic speaking peoples. That's it's own set of issues -- I was born in Coventry, I don't speak Welsh fluently (I used to be better, but I'm out of practice). I don't hit the benchmarks that are imposed on Welshness (and if you think this doesn;t matter, let me introduce you to some of the things that were said to and about my scholarship based on my perceived Englishness.)
I wasn't Welsh enough to be a 'proper' expert in my own field.
I was too Welsh to be allowed a place at the Celtic fantasy table.
I had no agency over either of these.
So I opted out. No fiction rooted in the history and culture of in which I am expert. No incursions into my heritage, because other people -- none of them actually of this culture -- said no. I think I even stopped thinking about it, after a while. The silencing, the rule, was ingrained. I am, after all, a Professional Good Girl. Oh, hints of my background and academic interests crept into Living With Ghosts -- the Lunedithin, with their clans and different social structures -- but it was a cut-down version from a previous book that was itself a descendant of something I was trying to write at 17 and 18, based on the ballad the Marriage of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell, and using ideas from my reading about mediaeval European cultures before 1100 C.E.
I didn't even consider infringing on this until around 2009, when my then agent asked me if I thought I could write a historical crime novel. (The answer to this question is yes, ish, but apparently I can't finish it, because historian brain and writer brain fight over accuracy.) I had perpetrated Arthuriana, waaay back before I was published as a novelist, with no intention of ever trying to sell any off it. Those two novellas were pure self-indulgence, and they lived for 2 decades in a drawer. They only resurfaced because Ian Whates needed a novella urgently to fill a schedule gap, and Phil told him about them. Ian took them for NewCon Press, and then asked for more, and, after those 20 years, I finally carried out my original plan for 4 linked novellas, and, well, that's The Book of Gaheris.
I really enjoyed writing those novellas. They spoke to something I'd thought I'd lost, to that part of me that yearns for the Romantic (in the Romantic Movement sense, not the Mills and Boon one), the ancient, the strange. That's the part of me that loves the writing of Tanith Lee and Evangeline Walton and Freda Warrington, that devoured Norse sagas and mediaeval prose tales as an undergraduate. It's the part of me that likes unravelling the layers of mediaeval chronicle texts and looking for the unexpected connections between people and kin groups and polities. A lot of that had been eclipsed by the sheer appallingness of my final academic job. The rest had gradually eroded as writing became more and more difficult.
Phil once said that I have a gift for taking something I enjoy and turning it into a duty. I love being a published writer. But, it turns out, writing fiction to a deadline breaks something. (I have no problem with non-fiction -- it's a different process entirely.) Living With Ghosts was fun to write. I fell into that world, those characters, and explored. The Grass King's Concubine... There's a lot I love in that book. It's a better book than LWG, at least in my opinion. I really really like the world in there. But: writing it was not easy and not fun, and that's on me. For some reason I can no longer remember, I decided to structure it as a formal, braided narrative, after the model of The Prose Tristan (and I can blame the Gaheris novellas for finding that). That structure fought back: it imposed a cerebral layer on a project that was about interstices and alternativities and the unknowable. There was supposed to be a third book in that world. I have 6 different drafts and none of them work, because I am in my own way and I can't find the exit. I'm scared of that book. I know what it wants to be. I know I can't write it.
Which brings me back to Arthuriana. A long time ago, even before I became the girl who loves the Musketeers, I loved the Arthurian legends. I loved the weirdness and the codes of honour and the whole brotherhood bit -- which latter two it shares with the Musketeers. As a historian, one of my interests is feuds. The stories about the Orkney family are full of feuds and ideas about loyalty and Honour. That first novel, the one I never finished, at 18, was about feuds and family breakdown. That's a theme in Book of Gaheris, too. And I love the characters in that book. When I finished the last novella, I missed them. So, just before Christmas 2002, I started writing another story about them, set this time in a contemporary context. It was meant to be a piece of fluff, simply to amuse myself and a friend. I was imagining something around 5k words, and then I would go back to the Hell Novel and stop myself writing again.
It's now 114k, and in the revision stage. It's Arthuriana (sort of) and it's very Welsh-history-inflected. And there are dragons and witches -- and I don't write dragons or witches, because they have been Done and the good girls know their place. It's spun off 53 vignettes, which I've put up under the Arthurian tag on An Archive of Our Own, because they are just side stories, fan fic of my own invention. Heaven only knows what I'll do with it when it's revised, because, well, publishing is complicated.
But I love this book, I love these characters. I'm having fun even though I've broken all my own rules.
Maybe that's what we all need to do, at least sometimes.
Skirt of the day: basic blue.
I'm mostly Welsh. My entire academic career focused on the history of the Celtic and Gaelic speaking peoples. That's it's own set of issues -- I was born in Coventry, I don't speak Welsh fluently (I used to be better, but I'm out of practice). I don't hit the benchmarks that are imposed on Welshness (and if you think this doesn;t matter, let me introduce you to some of the things that were said to and about my scholarship based on my perceived Englishness.)
I wasn't Welsh enough to be a 'proper' expert in my own field.
I was too Welsh to be allowed a place at the Celtic fantasy table.
I had no agency over either of these.
So I opted out. No fiction rooted in the history and culture of in which I am expert. No incursions into my heritage, because other people -- none of them actually of this culture -- said no. I think I even stopped thinking about it, after a while. The silencing, the rule, was ingrained. I am, after all, a Professional Good Girl. Oh, hints of my background and academic interests crept into Living With Ghosts -- the Lunedithin, with their clans and different social structures -- but it was a cut-down version from a previous book that was itself a descendant of something I was trying to write at 17 and 18, based on the ballad the Marriage of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell, and using ideas from my reading about mediaeval European cultures before 1100 C.E.
I didn't even consider infringing on this until around 2009, when my then agent asked me if I thought I could write a historical crime novel. (The answer to this question is yes, ish, but apparently I can't finish it, because historian brain and writer brain fight over accuracy.) I had perpetrated Arthuriana, waaay back before I was published as a novelist, with no intention of ever trying to sell any off it. Those two novellas were pure self-indulgence, and they lived for 2 decades in a drawer. They only resurfaced because Ian Whates needed a novella urgently to fill a schedule gap, and Phil told him about them. Ian took them for NewCon Press, and then asked for more, and, after those 20 years, I finally carried out my original plan for 4 linked novellas, and, well, that's The Book of Gaheris.
I really enjoyed writing those novellas. They spoke to something I'd thought I'd lost, to that part of me that yearns for the Romantic (in the Romantic Movement sense, not the Mills and Boon one), the ancient, the strange. That's the part of me that loves the writing of Tanith Lee and Evangeline Walton and Freda Warrington, that devoured Norse sagas and mediaeval prose tales as an undergraduate. It's the part of me that likes unravelling the layers of mediaeval chronicle texts and looking for the unexpected connections between people and kin groups and polities. A lot of that had been eclipsed by the sheer appallingness of my final academic job. The rest had gradually eroded as writing became more and more difficult.
Phil once said that I have a gift for taking something I enjoy and turning it into a duty. I love being a published writer. But, it turns out, writing fiction to a deadline breaks something. (I have no problem with non-fiction -- it's a different process entirely.) Living With Ghosts was fun to write. I fell into that world, those characters, and explored. The Grass King's Concubine... There's a lot I love in that book. It's a better book than LWG, at least in my opinion. I really really like the world in there. But: writing it was not easy and not fun, and that's on me. For some reason I can no longer remember, I decided to structure it as a formal, braided narrative, after the model of The Prose Tristan (and I can blame the Gaheris novellas for finding that). That structure fought back: it imposed a cerebral layer on a project that was about interstices and alternativities and the unknowable. There was supposed to be a third book in that world. I have 6 different drafts and none of them work, because I am in my own way and I can't find the exit. I'm scared of that book. I know what it wants to be. I know I can't write it.
Which brings me back to Arthuriana. A long time ago, even before I became the girl who loves the Musketeers, I loved the Arthurian legends. I loved the weirdness and the codes of honour and the whole brotherhood bit -- which latter two it shares with the Musketeers. As a historian, one of my interests is feuds. The stories about the Orkney family are full of feuds and ideas about loyalty and Honour. That first novel, the one I never finished, at 18, was about feuds and family breakdown. That's a theme in Book of Gaheris, too. And I love the characters in that book. When I finished the last novella, I missed them. So, just before Christmas 2002, I started writing another story about them, set this time in a contemporary context. It was meant to be a piece of fluff, simply to amuse myself and a friend. I was imagining something around 5k words, and then I would go back to the Hell Novel and stop myself writing again.
It's now 114k, and in the revision stage. It's Arthuriana (sort of) and it's very Welsh-history-inflected. And there are dragons and witches -- and I don't write dragons or witches, because they have been Done and the good girls know their place. It's spun off 53 vignettes, which I've put up under the Arthurian tag on An Archive of Our Own, because they are just side stories, fan fic of my own invention. Heaven only knows what I'll do with it when it's revised, because, well, publishing is complicated.
But I love this book, I love these characters. I'm having fun even though I've broken all my own rules.
Maybe that's what we all need to do, at least sometimes.
Skirt of the day: basic blue.
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I also remember being told that 'Celtic' fantasy was over. I'm not actually Welsh, though I've lived in Wales all my adult life and speak and use Welsh daily. If it were possible to take Welsh citizenship, I'd jump at it like a shot. But I was told that, despite living in the country, speaking the language and immersing myself in the folklore and legends, no one was interested in my take on Welsh fantasy because it had been "done" already by American writers.
However, since giving up on the idea of professional publication, I'm now finishing the novels that have lain unfinished for decades simply for my own amusement. Some of the stories are set in an alternate Wales and others will be real present day Wales but with magic.
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I also do not write hard magic systems. It's definitely a Thing for some readers.
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What's your AO3 name?
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I'm Aramise on AO3. https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aramise/series
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I've not done much that professionals or people with big opinions have criticized, but I've certainly gotten in my own way of doing things I am passionate about (my standards for myself are impossible, basically).
It would be so nice to see you here more often. I felt a rush of nostalgia for the skirt of the day!
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There are so many threads in Arthur that connect into our culture and history.
I've only recently come to realise fairly recently how much Arthur intertwined in the Victorian era with things like the Arts and Crafts movement, and gothic architecture, etc.
"I wasn't Welsh enough to be a 'proper' expert in my own field.
I was too Welsh to be allowed a place at the Celtic fantasy table.
I had no agency over either of these."
Absolutely sucks. I'm glad you've decided to go ahead and do what you love.
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I'm just about to introduce my granddaughter to Arthur (she's 10) which made me aware of how little her parents know. Just the very, very basic tales.
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