J D Davies - Historian and Author

The website and blog of naval historian and bestselling author J D Davies

Naval historical fiction

Keeping Up with the Joneses

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Just in case anybody didn’t know, I’m [a] Welsh, and [b] an author of naval historical fiction.

Now, the world contains quite a lot of Welsh people. The world also contains a lot of authors of naval historical fiction. But the number of current Welsh authors of NHF, as I’ll call it for the sake of brevity, can probably be counted on the fingers of one hand. Indeed, it’s possible that they can be counted on one finger, but I suspect I’m tempting fate by suggesting that – especially in an age when so many books are self-published exclusively in electronic format that it’s simply impossible to keep up with the origins of who’s written what. Indeed, for all I know there might well be an entire collective of NHF authors somewhere up in the Valleys, having violent arguments about the merits of Forester and O’Brian in the bar of The Admiral and Floozy at Aberflyarff. But assuming this isn’t actually the case, it’s clear that there have never been very many of us. I suppose one could count that outrageous old yarn-spinner Tristan Jones, but I’m not sure if someone who essentially fictionalised much of his own life qualifies. Wikipedia describes Showell Styles as a Welsh author, and he certainly wrote plenty of NHF, including the Midshipman Septimus Quinn series (which I’ve never read), the Lieutenant Michael Fitton books (ditto), and many individual titles including Admiral of England, about Sir Cloudesley Shovell, which does adorn my shelves. But Styles was Birmingham born and bred, so although he became an ‘adopted Welshman’, I’m not sure if he qualifies, either. On a similar basis, Patrick O’Brian lived in Wales – but only for four years, before moving to France because he couldn’t stand the weather.

Don’t worry, this post isn’t turning into a plea from a lonely lost soul for fellow practitioners to identify themselves so we can meet in the Admiral and Floozy to do what all Welsh people do all the time, namely to indulge in close harmony singing of cheery songs about rain and death. (TV and film stereotypes, passim – see the excellent Wales in the Movies channel on You Tube.) All of the foregoing is actually by way of introduction to the curious fact that one of the very first books that could be termed ‘naval historical fiction’ was written by a Welshman, with a Welsh central character – and what a character! The Legend of Captain Jones was written in 1631 by the somewhat unlikely figure of David Lloyd, an Oxford-educated clergyman, born at Llanidloes, who became Dean of Saint Asaph after the Restoration. This story of the mightily exaggerated adventures of a braggart Welsh sea-captain-cum-soldier was first published in 1636, had a second part added to it in the 1640s, and went through several editions thereafter; it seems to have been a popular children’s story after the Restoration, no doubt the Pirates of the Caribbean of its day (although with an infinitely more plausible hero…) To a considerable extent, it lampoons the great seamen, warriors and explorers of Queen Elizabeth’s time – Sir Walter Raleigh even turns up as a character, a la Blackadder – and some scholars have regarded it as a satire on Captain John Smith, of Pocahontas fame. (See, for example, the article by Alden T Vaughan in The William and Mary Quarterly, 45, 1988.)

Title page of the 1671 edition of The Legend of Captain Jones; Folger Shakespeare Library via Creative Commons
Title page of the 1671 edition of The Legend of Captain Jones; Folger Shakespeare Library via Creative Commons

The full text is freely available online, so I’m not going to quote from it at great length. (As I said to many of my students during my teaching career, ‘No, I’m not going to summarise it for you, go away and read the whole thing’. ‘Aww, sir, but it’ll be so much quicker if you summarise it…’) Although it’s not great poetry by any means, it’s certainly great fun, and actually pretty readable by the standards of some early seventeenth century literature. Try this, for instance:

‘Mongst all those Bluster’ng sirs that I have read

(whose greatest wonder is that they are dead)

there’s not any Knights, nor bold Achiever’s name,

So much as Jones’s in the Book of Fame.

They much of Greece’s Alexander brag,

He’d put ten Alexanders in a Bag.

Eleven fierce Kings, backt with two thousand Louts

Jones with a Ragged Troop beats all to Clouts.

 

Born in (yes, in) a Welsh mountain, Jones goes off to sea at eighteen. Among other exploits, he wrestles a bear, fights a lion, defeats eleven Native American kings and their armies, fights duels, defeats the Spanish (but is captured, made a galley slave, has a personal interview with King Philip II, and is finally ransomed), fights a giant, rejects marriage to the Queen of No-Land, and ends up single-handedly winning Queen Elizabeth’s war against the Irish Earl of Tyrone. At one point he goes back to his native land to recruit men, and the author has a field day at the expense of his countrymen’s foibles, for instance their apocryphal reputations for thieving and drinking, and their obsession with incredibly convoluted patronymics (one of my own ancestors, from exactly this period, is the spectacular Jenkin ap Harry ap Jenkin ap Harry Malephant):

 

 

Jones lost no time, goes in five days to Wales

Shewes his commission, tells them glorious tales;

He need not beat a drum, nor sound his trumpet,

His name’s enough to make these Britons jump at

This brave employment under such a Chief

Whose fame’s reserve enough for their relief.

Perplext he was in choosing his commanders,

For he still fancied best his old Highlanders;

But many worthies of the lower parts,

Offer to him their fortunes and their hearts.

But all respects put by, he inlisteth ten

Of his old gang, all hard bred mountain-men

For his Life-guard, Thomas Da Price a Pew,

Jenkin Da Prichard, Evan David Hugh,

John ap John Jenkin, Richard John dap Reese,

And Tom Dee Bacgh,a fierce Rat at green cheese,

Llewelling Reese ep David Watkin Jenkin,

With Howell Reese ap Robert, and young Philkin, 

These for his guard, his Officers in chief,

Lieutenant Colonel Craddock, a stout thief

With Major Howell ap Howell of Pen Crag

Well known for plundering many cow and nag

Captain Pen Vaare, a branch of Tom John Catty,1

Whose word in’s colours was, YE ROGUES HAVE AT YE.

Griffith ap Reefe ap Howel ap Coh ap Gwilin,

Reese David Shone ap Ruthero ap William,

With many more whose names ’twere long to write,

The rest their acts will get them names in fight.

We must conceive they all were men of fame

For here we see them all men of great name.

Jones with these blades advanceth to the Dale 2

There lines himself and them with noble Ale…

 

[1 – Twm Sion Cati, ‘the Welsh Robin Hood’

2 – Lloyd adds a marginal note here to point out that this is a village on Milford Haven! It would actually have been well known to 16th and 17th audiences as the place where King Henry VII, founder of the Tudor dynasty, landed in 1485.]

 

Finally, Jones retires back to Wales, and the staunchly Royalist Lloyd can’t resist a suggestion that if he had been born later, he would easily have won the Civil War for the Cavaliers. But Lloyd’s final epitaph for the larger-than-life hero also has a neat double entendre sting in the tail:

 

Tread softly (mortals) ore the bones

Of the world’s wonder, Captain Jones;

Who told his glorious deeds to many,

But never was believed of any:

Posterity let this suffice,

He swore all’s true, yet here he lyes.

 

So even if Welsh naval historical fiction is a pretty small and exclusive genre, I’m very happy to be in it alongside David Lloyd and his hero. You can forget Captain Jack Sparrow and Captain America – come on, Hollywood, give us a film of Captain Jones!

 

Laugh, Torquemada- Damn You, Laugh!

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I went to the Historical Novel Society conference in London on Saturday. This was a very jolly affair, for all sorts of reasons – it was good to see old friends and meet new ones, to have a delegate come up to me and launch into gushing praise of Gentleman Captain, and to attend some very enjoyable sessions, notably Conn Iggulden’s knockabout keynote talk and a hilarious panel debating whether ‘My Period is Better Than Yours’, a session punctuated by frequent references to Giles Kristian’s big axe. But all of that laughter conceals another side to the conference. Quite a lot of the questions, and many of the informal discussions between people during the breaks, were deadly serious, and there was a fair amount of earnestness, not to say angst, in certain quarters. Now, I won’t deny that there are certain topics about which authors of historical fiction ought to be very serious: getting published, for one; getting readers to read one’s books, for another; and, of course, getting one’s research right. But beyond that, it seems to me that some of my fellow authors tend to take the whole business rather too seriously for comfort, as if doing justice to the past, and proving oneself as a ‘proper writer’, means treating it all as though one is crossing a minefield while reciting the Lord’s Prayer. The consequence is that I’ve read quite a few historical novels which are meticulously researched, well written, set in an interesting period and dealing with what should be interesting people – but which end up being deadly dull, simply because the author has forgotten that people in the past actually had senses of humour. (As supporting witnesses for my assertion, I summon the likes of G. Chaucer and W. Shakespeare. I then rest my case, m’lud.) Consequently, pretty well all of my favourite historical fiction books have generous lashings of humour. It’s why I prefer Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey and Maturin over the distinctly more po-faced Horatio Hornblower, or why I’d go for Dorothy Dunnett’s (literally) weighty Lymond books over the equally shelf-straining tomes by Monaldi and Sorti. One of the great-granddaddies of the entire genre is Dumas’ The Three Musketeers, a book that contains plenty of good laughs – a lesson that Dumas forgot as he churned out the ever-darker sequels.

Of course, there are some things that probably shouldn’t be the subject of humour in fiction. For instance, I take the writing of my battle scenes very seriously indeed, and certainly wouldn’t make a joke of someone’s death; as I’ve said before in this blog, I’m often writing about real battles in which real people died, and they deserve exactly the same degree of respect currently being accorded to the casualties of World War I. On the other hand, perceptions of what might or might not be considered suitable subjects for humour in historical fiction clearly change over time, and topics that were once taboo are now fair game. Who’d have thought in 1945 that one day, we’d get Springtime for Hitler, and very few people would ever have expected the Spanish Inquisition… (And if you’re not a fan of the Pythons, maybe this remarkably authentic footage of the activities of the Inquisition will be more to your taste.) Last night, we went to see the acclaimed new play, King Charles III, in the West End. This is a very well constructed and well written piece (in iambic pentameter, no less!), with plenty of deliberate echoes of Shakespeare, some more or less plausible than others – Charles as a King Lear figure, William as a Henry IV, Kate Middleton as Lady Macbeth (!), even the ghost of Princess Diana. But it also contained plenty of humour, much of that provided by the kebabs-at-dawn character of Prince Harry, and proved the point that even the most serious themes – in this case, issues of where constitutional power truly lies, the power of the press, and the dysfunctional recent history of the royal family – are best treated by leavening them with a laugh or ten. (A digression: I had to watch the second half standing at the back of the auditorium, due to the crippling lack of leg room. Let’s face it, London theatres, if you were airlines, you’d never be allowed to fly…)

My point is that, for all of the reasons outlined above, the Quinton Journals have always contained quite a lot of humour. This is also partly a consequence of personal inclination – I actually wrote quite a lot of satire at one point, notably at college – but is also simply a reflection of the times I’m writing about. After all, this was the age of Restoration comedy and the court wits (Rochester makes an appearance as a major character in the latest book, The Battle of All The Ages), and having Samuel Pepys as a recurring character pretty well guarantees that there’ll be a few laughs along the way. The same will be true of the next novel, which will have an even greater amount of humour than usual, principally because –

Ah, but that’s a blog for another day, when I reveal all about the very, very different story that will be ‘Quinton 6′!

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There won’t be a post next week as I’ll be in Scotland, taking in the final days of the referendum campaign and the result itself. I’ve always had a deep love of the country and a strong interest in its history, as witnessed by the fact that I spent ten years researching and writing a book on an aspect of it, so I felt I simply had to be there for what will be a remarkably historic occasion, regardless of the result. So in a couple of weeks’ time, I’ll blog my first-hand impressions of what might or might not be the end of the United Kingdom as we know it.

 

 

Criticism of Naval Historical Fiction: a Guide for New Authors

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A very quick posting this week, as unforeseen domestic circumstances have knocked my work schedule for six (apologies to my American readers for that impenetrable cricket reference)… Because of this, and various trips that were already on the agenda for the next few weeks, there’s likely to be a 3-4 week hiatus on this blog. I’ll try and post if and when I can, though, but in the meantime, a recent email exchange with ‘the usual suspects’ of the 17th century naval history field got me thinking about the new world where, quite literally, everyone’s a critic…

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New authors of naval historical fiction will quickly start to garner reviews on Amazon, Goodreads, blogs, and so forth. With a few honourable exceptions, these reviews tend to be pretty stereotypical, and having recently published my fifth novel in the genre, I think I’m now sufficiently qualified to be able to provide a guide to them, so that newcomers will be able to take all such criticisms in their stride. Believe me, I’ve had some or all of the following applied to my work – sometimes about the same book, sometimes even in the same review, for goodness sake.

1/ There’s too much technical nautical language – the principal charge levelled at Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin series by those who can’t stand it. Can’t tell your futtock from your cro’jack? You’re toasted cheese.

2/ There’s too little technical nautical language – the principal charge levelled at every other series by those who loved Patrick O’Brian. No mention of futtocks and cro’jacks? Yep, Welsh rarebit time.

3/ There’s too much action – Sorry, this is naval historical fiction. To be true to the reality, you have to include battles. In some cases, very, very long battles, which are bound to take up a great many pages (e.g. in my latest book, which features a battle that lasted for four days).

4/ There’s too little action – Sorry, this is naval historical fiction. To be true to the reality, you have to include long periods in which very little happens. (And even if you haven’t ploughed through literally hundreds of ships’ log books of the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, which prove the point in spades, read O’Brian again – and let’s be honest here, folks, for a lot of the time during that outstanding series, nothing much happens.)

5/ Too much of the plot is set ashore – Scenes on shore add variety, especially if you’re in exotic locations (as in my latest book, where I have several chapters set in mysterious, umm, Plymouth), and depending on the period and the theme you’re writing about, you might well need to set quite a lot of the action ashore. On the other hand, if the entire book is set ashore, you’ve probably strayed into writing in a completely different genre without realising it.

6/ Too little of the plot is set ashore – Scenes at sea add variety… OK, you get the idea.

7/ There’s too much soppy romantic stuff – Guess which demographic principally levels this charge at you?

8/ There’s too little soppy romantic stuff – Ditto. (Good morning, dear.)

9/ There’s too much random mindless violence – I refer you back to point 3. The battles of the period I write about were quite astonishingly bloody, and to play that down would be to give the reader a false, sanitised image, and – equally important in my opinion – it wouldn’t do justice to the remarkable bravery and resilience of those who fought through such horrors.

10/ There’s too little random mindless violence – I worry about you. I really do.

But finally, the key to reacting to criticism is to paraphrase the words of that well known vampire hunter, Abraham Lincoln: ‘You can please some of your readers all of the time, and all of your readers some of the time, but you can’t please all of your readers all of the time. I’m still bitter about whoever gave the Gettysburg Address a one star review on Amazon’.

 

Kernow bys vyken!

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Cornwall has had something of a mixed week.

On the plus side, there was the government’s decision to grant it national minority status. Now, whatever the legalistic merits or demerits of such status, there’s no doubt that Cornwall is, and always has been, a very different place. That was immediately apparent to me after I moved down there in 1979 to begin my first teaching job, at a school in Newquay. (We had a high truancy rate during the summer, but at least we know where everyone was: they’d be surfing on Fistral Beach. And that was just the senior management team.) As I wrote in a previous post, if my three years there taught me anything (apart from the fact that a pint of Guinness and Lucozade is a viable drink), it’s just how ferociously independent the Cornish are; a Cornwall vs Gloucestershire rugby match at, say, Camborne’s tightly packed old ground, is treated essentially as an international, with black and white St Piran’s flags waving everywhere and the strains of the ‘national anthem’, Trelawny, echoing from the terraces. There was the language, too, still all pervasive in place names and surnames (as my first class registers quickly demonstrated). Much of the language was actually quite familiar, as Cornish is very similar to Welsh, and I swiftly learned the single most important Cornish phrase of all – ‘non emmett’, literally ‘not an ant’, intended as ‘I’m not a tourist’ or, more pointedly, ‘Not English’. As readers of the Quinton Journals will probably know, I provided Matthew Quinton with a somewhat obstreporous Cornish crew in part as a tribute to the time I spent living west of the Tamar, and the names of several of them were drawn from former students, colleagues or acquaintances. I’ve also tried to work in snippets of the Cornish language from time to time – the latest book, The Battle of All The Ages, includes the first lines of the Lord’s Prayer in Cornish – while Gentleman Captain has a poignant funeral scene which culminates in the singing of the lovely old Cornish song, The White Rose.

Charlestown, Cornwall - my kind of harbour
Charlestown, Cornwall – my kind of harbour

But then, on the minus side, there was the BBC’s adaptation of Jamaica Inn. Auntie must have thought that this would tick all the boxes for prime time Easter viewing. Excellent cast acting their socks off? Check. Former Downton Abbey star? Check. Glorious scenery on Bodmin Moor? Check. Strong story by a bankable name, i.e. Daphne du Maurier? Check. And then it all went terribly wrong, with a torrent of complaints from viewers who simply couldn’t understand what the cast were saying. The Beeb grovelled, assuring the world that it was a problem with sound levels and not that the actors were mumbling. So the ‘sound levels’ were adjusted…and the complaints continued. But let’s be honest, shall we, all you Disgusteds of Tunbridge Wells who complained to the BBC about the ‘sound levels’ on Jamaica Inn? Yes, some of the cast were mumbling, and no doubt the Beeb finds it easier to blame anonymous backroom techies than highly paid, precious luvvies delivering ‘naturalistic’ (aka unintelligible) performances. But on the whole, it seemed to me that there was nothing seriously wrong with the sound levels, or even with much of the delivery. Isn’t it more likely that many of you simply couldn’t understand the ‘Cornish’ / generic Mummerzetshire accents that the cast had adopted, but were too polite or nervous to say so? After all, these days complaining about ‘unintelligible’ accents is akin to being labelled a racist: and as a Welshman who still has to smile tolerantly at people’s ‘witty’ stabs at cod Welsh accents, which invariably come out as more akin to Bangalore than Bangor, I’d respectfully contend that I know what I’m talking about.

Before one could eat a pasty or a cream tea, the critics of mumbling had been joined by the historical accuracy brigade. Aargh, it’s the wrong type of plough / coach / hymn! They’re not reloading their pistols before firing them again!! It was interesting that these criticisms focused overwhelmingly on the terrestrial aspects: perhaps it’s a sign of Britain’s apparent ‘sea-blindness’ these days that few people seem to have picked up on the rather more fundamental plot holes in the maritime aspects of the story, e.g. how a crewman of a sailing ship in 1821 could guarantee that his vessel would depart exactly at a given time on a given day, or why wreckers would choose to operate in broad daylight, for goodness sake. Those who actually know the geography of Cornwall might also have boggled at some of the journey times implicit in the story: Jamaica Inn to the coast = short stroll over adjacent hill, rather than the actual distance, namely six or seven miles; getting from Launceston Gaol to Roughtor = quarter of an hour, tops (good luck with that one in a Formula One car, let alone on horseback). Of course, the BBC will respond by pleading dramatic licence, and I’ve used enough of that myself to sympathise, but there’s a very fine line between dramatic licence and laughably implausible, which itself is merely a fine line away from just plain wrong.

But all of this is really a very long-winded preamble to a plug for my appearance at the Penzance Literary Festival in July – to be precise, at 11.00 on Friday 18 July. I’m talking on Cornwall in naval history and naval fiction, so will be touching on the stories of the likes of Sir Richard Grenville and the Pellew brothers, as well as fictitious characters like Alexander Kent’s Bolitho and, yes, Matthew Quinton’s Cornish crew. It should be great fun, and if any of you are going to be in the area and fancy coming along, it would be terrific to meet you. While I’m down there, I’ll also look forward to a rare chance to revisit some of my old stomping grounds – maybe even ordering a pint of Guinness and Lucozade in the Jamaica Inn itself, and acknowledging receipt of same with a cheery ‘Proper job, me ‘ansum!’.

(And for those who don’t know, ‘Kernow bys vyken’ means ‘Cornwall for ever’. Matthew Quinton’s men shout it as a battle cry in The Blast That Tears The Skies, and will do so again!)

Cover Story

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Battle for All 1I’m delighted to be able to headline this week’s post by revealing the cover of the new Quinton novel, The Battle of All The Ages, which is number five in the series and is due to be published in the UK in June. Thanks to my publishers, Old Street, for doing such a tremendous job, and to Conn Iggulden for providing such a generous blurb. Our original contact was entirely unsolicited, as it turns out he’s a big fan of the series!

The cover art is Abraham Storck’s painting of the Four Days Battle of 1666, which forms the centrepiece of the book. Storck’s painting is held at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, and full details of it can be found on the museum’s website. The section shown on the cover shows De Zeven Provincien, the flagship of the great Dutch admiral, Michiel Adrianszoon De Ruyter, and the Royal Prince, flagship of Admiral Sir George Ayscue. The latter is aground on the Galloper Sand and will soon surrender; Ayscue remains the only British flag-officer to surrender in battle, and the loss of the Prince caused a sense of national shock that has been compared to the loss of HMS Hood in 1941.

The Four Days Battle followed a controversial decision to divide the British fleet. As I wrote in Pepys’s Navy:

In January 1666 France…declared war to fulfil long-avoided treaty obligations to the Dutch. The command of the British fleet for the 1666 campaign was given jointly to Prince Rupert and George Monck, Duke of Albemarle, but at the end of May they divided their fleet, with Rupert sailing off to the west to intercept a French fleet that was believed to be approaching British waters. The intelligence proved false, and on 1 June Albemarle found himself with 56 ships, facing the Dutch fleet of 86 under the brilliant Michiel De Ruyter off the North Foreland. The ‘Four Days’ Battle’ that followed was one of the great epics of the age of sail. Rupert rejoined on the third day with 25 ships, but after another day of fighting, the British fleet was forced to retire, having lost three admirals captured or killed…several thousand men, and ten ships, including the great Royal Prince.

Matthew Quinton and his ship are at the heart of the action, and as well as dealing with a superior Dutch enemy, he has to contend with problems among his own crew – notably the tensions between the seamen and the newly created Marine Regiment (the precursors of the Royal Marines), and the presence of an eccentric and unpredictable character with a special connection to the King. During four days of ferocious fighting, Matthew and his friends – the likes of Lieutenant Kit Farrell, the Reverend Francis Gale and Phineas Musk – are tested to their utmost limits.

In the second part of the book, Matthew is sent by the King on a dangerous mission to discover the truth about why the fleet was divided; was it treachery, incompetence or simple bad luck? In doing so, he finds himself regarded as an enemy in his own land, in a place with strong residual loyalties to the fallen Commonwealth; is forced to denounce a friend; and battles a mysterious enemy, the so-called Hell Hound. All the while, his thoughts are torn between these immediate dangers and developments far away, notably his wife’s sickness and the frantic efforts to repair the fleet so it can sail out again to gain revenge on the Dutch. The book culminates in the second great sea-battle of the summer of 1666, the St James Day fight, before Matthew finally confronts the real and unsettling truths about the division of the fleet.

As usual, The Battle of All The Ages is based closely on real events, particularly during the battle scenes, and a host of real historical characters make an appearance. These include King Charles II, Prince Rupert of the Rhine, General George Monck, the famous Dutch admirals De Ruyter and Evertsen, their British counterparts Sir Christopher Myngs and Sir Robert Holmes, and the notorious Restoration rake, the Earl of Rochester. Action at sea, intrigue, Restoration poetry, and a foul-tempered monkey – what’s not to like? And if you fancy a sneak preview, the first chapter will be available on my website in the near future!

Going Dark

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This will be the last post for a few weeks, unless [a] I get particularly worked up about some idiocy or other and decide to rant about it, [b] something really interesting emerges from my research, or [c] some of my potential guest bloggers send in contributions. Regular readers will know that I did this last summer, when I was finishing off ‘Quinton 5’, The Battle of All The Ages (now available for pre-order, incidentally), and that I provided a list of the things that I expected to come along and distract me from the task – which, of course, they duly did. For various reasons, I’ve juggled around my work schedule for this year, so that I’ll now aim to finish my next non-fiction book – about the fascinating and distinctly eccentric Stepney baronets of Llanelly House – in the summer and autumn, meaning that it’s time to get started on ‘Quinton 6’, for which both the name and story outline are under Star Wars-like wraps at the moment. Suffice to say that it’s very different to all the books that have gone before, and will be much more complicated to write, so I need to concentrate completely on it, at least in the early stages.

It’s at this sort of time, too, that I need to get back into the habit of writing fiction, which means reminding myself of the basics of how I actually do the job. I know there are all sorts of blogs and websites out there where authors provide their advice to aspiring writers on how to write a book, and I’ve always largely eschewed the temptation to do this – partly because I suppose I think I’m still learning how to do it myself! But for what it’s worth, here are a few things that work for me.

  • Always write something, even if it’s rubbish – This invariably appears high up any ‘how to do it’ advice list, but it took me a long time to take this on board. I would wait for The Elusive Muse to come along, only to realise eventually that muses operate like London buses – it’s a miracle if one turns up at all, but if it does, you can guarantee there’ll be another three close behind. So yes, write something. Even if inspiration is non-existent, if there’s no sign at all of the Number Seven Muse, just put something down. Who knows, somewhere within the turgid 500 words that emerged from the depths of a hangover might lurk the germ of an idea that will make all the difference to your story in the long run. Alternatively, though, if your mind really is a complete blank and not even the turgid rubbish will come, then…
  • Get out – Change the scene. Go for a walk. Have a cup of tea. At some point during the day, do these sorts of things anyway – they keep you normal, and they keep you fit. (Well, as fit as anyone who sits around hitting a keyboard all day can be, at any rate.) It’s amazing how often ideas come to me when I’m out for an afternoon constitutional. And as I’ve mentioned before in this blog, when I first start thinking about a new book, I’ll go away for a few days or a week to brainstorm the major elements of the plot outline: it’s essentially the same principle as corporate awaydays, i.e. that a change of scene is remarkably conducive to ‘blue skies thinking’.
  • To plot or not to plot – Some authors construct incredibly elaborate plot structures in advance; some seem to keep it all in their heads and just let it flow. (I was fascinated by a fairly recent TV documentary about the great Scottish crime writer Ian Rankin, who evidently makes up much of what he does as he goes along.) I’m probably somewhere in the middle: yes, I have a fairly detailed plot outline in advance, but it’s still loose enough to allow the characters to go off in their own directions. The classic example of this was the character of Phineas Musk, the long-serving Quinton family retainer who becomes Matthew Quinton’s nominal captain’s clerk, somewhat erratic moral compass, court jester and guardian angel rolled into one. Musk was originally going to be a very minor character whose principal role was to deliver a letter to Matthew at the start of Gentleman Captain, but from pretty much the first lines I wrote for him, it was as though he was metaphorically slapping me about the head to demand a bigger part. Which he duly got…
  • To target or not to target – Similarly, I know quite a few authors who set themselves a target number of words each day and stick rigidly to that. I don’t, partly because I’ve always been able to write pretty quickly. So 2,000 or thereabouts is usually par for the course, although on days where the muses have all turned up in a row and are queuing to get into the bus stop, I’ve been known to get up to 5,000 or so. The record is 8,000 words in a day, but this had the unfortunate side effect that, on the following morning, I woke up with a swollen and painful hand which took a week to recover. So never again!
  • Show, Don’t Tell? Forget it –  When I first started out as a writer of fiction, I started to hear the mantra ‘Show, don’t tell’ trotted out by editors and the like; it’s also one of the standard dicta in the creative writing courses. On one level, this is perfectly good and sensible advice – of course it’s better to show characters’ feelings and personality traits through word-pictures, dialogue, and so forth. But it quickly seemed to me that ‘Show, don’t tell’ was a blunt instrument which was positively misleading for writers of historical fiction. After all, when did you last hear an author of historical fiction described as a ‘story shower’? History, both fiction and non-fiction, demands that a story be told – and let’s face it, trying to write, say, a book about the Four Days Battle of 1666 primarily by ‘showing’ would lead to a tome so long that it would make Gone With The Wind look like a series of tweets. So I came to the conclusion that the balance between ‘show’ and ‘tell’ varies significantly between genres – for example, a tight psychological drama taking place within a narrow timeframe should certainly ‘show’ far more than ‘tell’, but a historical epic covering anything up to several years should do the opposite. It also took me a little while to realise that I’d experienced the whole ‘show/tell’ business before, during my previous life as a teacher. We were trained to let students find things out for themselves, not to hand down words of wisdom from on high as ‘priest teachers’, as the lecturer on my training course put it (I remember us all sitting in the pub afterwards, confessing one by one that we actually quite liked the sound of being ‘priest teachers’.) Like ‘Show and Tell’, it’s another of those situations where there’s an ideal, and then there’s the real world. Of course students should, ideally, find things out for themselves, with the teacher acting merely as a facilitator. But then there’s the reality of it being a wet Friday afternoon, the students having a vital exam in two weeks, and whether you like it or not, folks, you’re getting dictated notes on Metternich and the Holy Alliance from your friendly neighbourhood ‘priest teacher’. (Remind me one day to do a blog about ‘the most boring topics I’ve ever taught’. The Holy Alliance would be right up there, and it’s definitely best not to get me started on Italian Unification; think The Incredible Hulk grunting ‘Risorgimento! Cavour! Garibaldi!’ as he smashes up New York.)

Anyway, I think I can spot a muse in the distance, chugging its way slowly toward my door. Au revoir for now!