Warning: I don't edit blogs. As I think them, you get them.
Proceed at your own risk.
I love books. I love reading them. I love writing them. I love owning them. I love holding them in my hot little hands and anticipating where we will travel together.
To me, books are treasures.
I love words. Large, small, strong, gentle, meaningful, vague, it doesn't matter. The power of words, whether written or spoken, holds endless fascination.
Words are tools, and like all tools, serve their purpose best when used properly. No one uses a hammer to drive in a screw--unless they don't mind the curtains falling because the wallboard or plaster crumbled.
As I've perused various blogs, I realized most had a theme of some sort, something that drew people to them. Mine tends to be comprised of random bits of thought (I don't know that I've had a WHOLE thought in quite some time) rattling around looking for a place to light so the posts are, at best, disjointed and sporadic.
That's going to change.
Romancing History will do exactly as its name implies; it will provide information on books and words with historical significance.
Yes, historical novels will be mentioned here as will research materials dealing with various eras. There is such a wealth of information available these days, and many people are more than happy to bookmark 999 web pages, but some are like me and prefer a book they can mark (I use colored post-its--a different color for each work or, sometimes, character--with a word or two on them to tell me what's relevant on that page rather than mark in the books themselves) and have in hand when the need arises.
Etymology will also play a part, as will whatever I can find about strong verbs and other word choice topics. Why? Because in my WIP, I used a word in dialogue I felt certain fit my time period. However, being an anal sort, out came the etymology dictionary. It seems both my hero and heroine would have been dead for more than two centuries ere this "perfect" word hit the lexicon. (In case you're curious, the word in question is naysayer.)
Another word that I thought too modern wasn't (can't recall right off which word. Sorry.) and in yet another instance the word actually changed its meaning over time. So, while the word was in use, it didn't mean then what it does now. A modern reader would understand, true, and had the word been used in narrative, it might have stayed, but not in dialogue. Readers aren't dumb; someone would have called me on it.
My hope is to make Romancing History a viable tool for other writers so, when the reader closes the curtain on any historical work, the hardware holds, the walls stay solid, and everyone has a satisfying experience.
Assume nothing. Check everything.
Showing posts with label romance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label romance. Show all posts
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Bear with me
Hello,
Glad you stumbled in. I know you didn't intend to come here because this is a very new blog and a very new experience for me.
New experiences have been rife since my 2007 Golden Heart final, but the other finalists are such lovely ladies, they just keep herding me along into places I never thought I'd dare tread. Thus, the title for this first entry. I promise to get better once the scope of this new territory doesn't tie my belly into little tiny Gordian knots. Of course, after this comes the dreaded "web page," but not today. As Neil Armstrong said (with a bit of a paraphrase from me), "One small step for chicken kitty, one giant leap for scaredy-cats everywhere."
I called this blog Romancing History because, truth be told, history isn't, in and of itself, romantic. It's dirty, unsanitary, bloody, and a host of other unpalatable adjectives. Learning history in school required memorization of mind-numbing facts, dates, and names.
The names caught my attention.
People make history. Not dates, not battles, not rivers of slops flowing unfettered down horse manure festooned cobbled streets. People who laughed, cried, danced, bled, changed their babies, yelled at the dog. Biographies became my preferred reading.
I wrote my first romance--and I use the term loosely--sitting at a cafeteria table in junior high with a group of friends. I still remember the high-perch phaeton the hero swooped to a halt before my startled, and inappropriately named, heroine. We'd discovered Barbara Cartland, you see. It was all downhill from there---at least for me.
Writing historical romance requires research, and since learning about people still intrigues me, that's no hardship. I am, however, anal about facts. So many books have inaccuracies within that are, despite being SO wrong, accepted. Since when does accepted equate to correct?
I once entered my manuscript in a contest where the judge marked me down because I didn't call the heroine's home a "keep." Duh! Keep, as in fortified holding, donjon, castle, etc., is a Renaissance term and the Renaissance didn't come to England until the 1500s--more than a decade after my story takes place.
Chausses. Ah, yes. Several times now I've read about naked heroes bounding from their beds to don their chausses. Must have hurt. And the succession? Forgeddaboudit. Chausses are made of small metal rings. Webster's defines them as medieval armor of mail for the legs and feet. Chausses were worn atop thick, quilted hose for obvious reasons.
Why am I telling you this? Because there is no way to ascertain exactly--especially in the areas of clothing, armor, and personal items--what things populate a specific segment of time within an era. Folks I know were sporting elephant bells and tie-dyed shirts from the seventies before current fashion went retro. By their very nature, some things overlap. However, if I were to make a glaring mistake, I'd want someone to tell me, or at least caution me to check it out. Thinking of my stories thrown against a wall or into the dust bin---which is where inaccuracies end up in my world---doesn't sit well.
So this is an invitation to gently (I hate qualifiers too, but you know how it goes) correct me if you find an inaccuracy in my work. I will, sometime in the future, post some bits from my current WIP and will welcome your feedback.
Glad you stumbled in. I know you didn't intend to come here because this is a very new blog and a very new experience for me.
New experiences have been rife since my 2007 Golden Heart final, but the other finalists are such lovely ladies, they just keep herding me along into places I never thought I'd dare tread. Thus, the title for this first entry. I promise to get better once the scope of this new territory doesn't tie my belly into little tiny Gordian knots. Of course, after this comes the dreaded "web page," but not today. As Neil Armstrong said (with a bit of a paraphrase from me), "One small step for chicken kitty, one giant leap for scaredy-cats everywhere."
I called this blog Romancing History because, truth be told, history isn't, in and of itself, romantic. It's dirty, unsanitary, bloody, and a host of other unpalatable adjectives. Learning history in school required memorization of mind-numbing facts, dates, and names.
The names caught my attention.
People make history. Not dates, not battles, not rivers of slops flowing unfettered down horse manure festooned cobbled streets. People who laughed, cried, danced, bled, changed their babies, yelled at the dog. Biographies became my preferred reading.
I wrote my first romance--and I use the term loosely--sitting at a cafeteria table in junior high with a group of friends. I still remember the high-perch phaeton the hero swooped to a halt before my startled, and inappropriately named, heroine. We'd discovered Barbara Cartland, you see. It was all downhill from there---at least for me.
Writing historical romance requires research, and since learning about people still intrigues me, that's no hardship. I am, however, anal about facts. So many books have inaccuracies within that are, despite being SO wrong, accepted. Since when does accepted equate to correct?
I once entered my manuscript in a contest where the judge marked me down because I didn't call the heroine's home a "keep." Duh! Keep, as in fortified holding, donjon, castle, etc., is a Renaissance term and the Renaissance didn't come to England until the 1500s--more than a decade after my story takes place.
Chausses. Ah, yes. Several times now I've read about naked heroes bounding from their beds to don their chausses. Must have hurt. And the succession? Forgeddaboudit. Chausses are made of small metal rings. Webster's defines them as medieval armor of mail for the legs and feet. Chausses were worn atop thick, quilted hose for obvious reasons.
Why am I telling you this? Because there is no way to ascertain exactly--especially in the areas of clothing, armor, and personal items--what things populate a specific segment of time within an era. Folks I know were sporting elephant bells and tie-dyed shirts from the seventies before current fashion went retro. By their very nature, some things overlap. However, if I were to make a glaring mistake, I'd want someone to tell me, or at least caution me to check it out. Thinking of my stories thrown against a wall or into the dust bin---which is where inaccuracies end up in my world---doesn't sit well.
So this is an invitation to gently (I hate qualifiers too, but you know how it goes) correct me if you find an inaccuracy in my work. I will, sometime in the future, post some bits from my current WIP and will welcome your feedback.
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