What makes a normal kid want to write? I grew up reading fairy tales and
telling my own stories. I had no idea that what I found a natural and necessary
part of my life was a fundamental part of human experience. From earliest times,
humans have told their stories with drawings on cave walls, songs of heroism,
tales of struggle and adversity, sonnets of love.
As a child, I had stories roving around in my thoughts from my earliest
recollection. My experiences always form some part of my novels, not necessarily
in their exact context. Every writer makes use of material from their lives.
One of my lecturers once claimed that new writers too often write about the
one thing they know the least about: themselves. However, that is the primary
motivation for story-telling, to bring into focus and clarity our individual
perceptions of our world.
Many of us keep diaries, journals, personal web logs: what else is an Internet
based profile page but a public accounting of our lives and all too often our
interactions with others who may not want their personal experience exposed.
Some of these exposés have attained the status of literary efforts,
attracting readers and followers beyond their initial purpose, turned into
cults, transformed into another communication medium such as film and print.
With the advent of the digital age, there seems to be no barrier to what and
when or how a person can expose their innermost thoughts. The cacophony of
experience thus laid before us will be of vast importance to historians of the
future.
But I suspect most of what we currently call ‘being connected’ will be seen
in an entirely different light in future generations, just as we see the very
popular entertainment, tableaux, of the Regency and Edwardian periods
as archaic and quaint.
Without a doubt, we will still be telling our stories but the form these take
will be beyond our present imaginative capabilities.
All the same, we cannot tell our stories without a past upon which to base
them and they will have no meaning without the context of our era and our
experience of it. We invariably look to the past to inform our present and
future. Our natural curiosity compels us to look for meaning and motivation in
what we ourselves have seen and felt as well as how that plays out in the scheme
of all mankind.
One of my most important experiences was to collect the oral and written
histories of women during World War II. We know a good deal about what men
experience in war, but reading and hearing about women’s lives at this traumatic
time in our not-so-distant past helped me to realize a fundamental fact: we are
not so different in our wants and needs from any person who has ever lived upon
the earth.
What Joseph Campbell found true about the ancient hero odyssey is true in
every story written by modern writers. As Aristotle theorized, every story must
have the critical element of truth: not as fact but as interpreted by the
listener/reader. Every story is a journey of change: from unknown to known; from
apart to bonded; from static to dynamic and all the various ways in which the
human joins humanity.
I haven’t quite figured it all out yet, so I keep writing!
One of my recent works in progress is an historical romance set in New England during a turbulent period of American history.
In order to write any historical fiction, some semblance of having done one's research is critical. Last month, one of my colleagues had been asked to review a novel set in a period of history in which she is a known scholar. Her estimation of the novel was low because the historical facts were at variance with her knowledge. The author included actual historical figures who had not yet been born, wrote about events that had happened decades earlier than the era current with his story.
These, if aware of the period in question, can halt a reader in their tracks and send the book hurling across the room. But how precise do fiction writers need to be to give the impression of verisimilitude?
Another of my colleagues has studied the history of clothing and medicine. Fortunately, I haven't made serious mistakes in my historical novels set in Wales in the 9th and 10th centuries for her to rush at me screaming but I was dismayed that so much of what we assume to be authentic is, at best, a misunderstanding and, at worst, downright dishonest.
While undertaking research for my American historical, I've learned that the saying "History is written by the victors" is disturbingly true. History cannot be accepted without question. All history is subjective, in the hands of the person or persons doing the recording, for whatever their reasons for presenting 'facts' or presiding over the elimination of other, inconvenient, 'facts.'
The same colleague who screams when she finds errors in fashion or medical treatment, declared that there was only one 'right' side of any conflict involving mankind: the side perceived by historians to be morally correct. However, there is another saying worth remembering: "The first casualty of war is Truth."
I had the honor of editing two volumes of women's autobiographical essays of their experiences in Wales during World War II. While these were personal experiences and written in good faith, memory is always selective and sometimes faulty.
Any personal account of an historical event may also be self-serving or deliberately falsified in order to put the chronicler in a good light or on the politically acceptable side of history.
Surely, when we are hundreds of years distant from an historical event that shaped our lives, we owe it to ourselves to take a deeper look, to find the Truth hidden by the convenient facts. If we perpetuate untruths for lack of research, or will, we do ourselves and our readers a disservice.
Mistakes about who was born or what events were taking place are much lesser sins than deliberate distortion. There is one more saying that encourages us to seek answers: "The Truth shall set you free."
