The Story Behind the Story with Author Jill Maclean of Nova Scotia, Canada

 

One of my favourite storytellers is our guest this week.

Jill has been a guest with us before, a little over a year ago. 

If you missed it, please go HERE and discover the novel that precedes the one we are talking about today.

 

Please note the Jill’s second medieval novel, The Arrows of Fealty, will be launched on Sunday September 21^st at the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia, 1113 Marginal Road, Halifax, NS, from 3:30 until 5:00. Bookmark will be on hand selling copies.

The book will also be available on all the usual online channels.

I’ve been a writer for a long time. Writing genre fiction taught me the basics of story-telling. Mentorships with two excellent poets, one in Winnipeg and one in Halifax, honed a love of language and a respect for the power of words. My poetry collection was shortlisted for two awards, my three middle-grade and two young adult novels garnered various nominations and awards and I began to think that maybe, just maybe I wasn’t wasting my time – I have a rampant inner critic and am all-too frequently assailed by self-doubt. Perhaps these two characteristics lead to my compulsion for revising? Is the opposite of self-doubt the conviction that each sentence as it’s first tapped on the screen is perfection itself?

Did I think, when I delved into researching the 14^th century ten years ago, that I would write two novels about serfs living in a small village in southwestern England who become embroiled in war, plague and rebellion? The short answer? No. Would I have kept going, had I known? Oh yes! The medieval period fascinates me, the characters have become part of me, writing – it’s very clear – is what I want to do, along with striving, always, to make the next book better than its predecessor. I hope you’ll read The Arrows of Fealty and judge for yourself.

I live in Bedford, Nova Scotia, and love gardening, walking (stirs the brain cells), canoeing and reading. Four of my current favourite novels are Pat Barker’s trilogy about the women of Troy, and Percival Everett’s James, based on the journey by Huck Finn and Jim down the Mississippi River, but brilliantly retold from the point of view of Jim, the slave on the run. Also, I’m delighted to have discovered Sarah Dunant’s historical novels, set in Renaissance Italy.

 

Title: The Arrows of Fealty

 

Synopsis:

The protagonist of The Arrows of Mercy, my first medieval novel, is Edmund of Flintbourne. The Arrows of Fealty tells the story of Haukyn, Edmund’s second son. As a serf, Haukyn owes fealty to the lord of the manor and his life is tied to the soil, yet he craves adventure beyond the boundary stones of his village. In 1373, he leaves for John of Gaunt’s campaign in France. There, during five months of combat and loss, futility and atonement, he learns how armour-clad knights can be brought as low as any serf.

Home again, he is caught between two women, pretty Annabel and Ilotte of the sloe-black eyes. Neither marriage nor fatherhood tames his restless spirit. When a knight who was his sworn enemy in France becomes the new lord of the manor, Haukyn leads his neighbours in rebellion against ancient custom and unjust taxation.

England’s southern counties march in open revolt to London, where Haukyn witnesses the king grant freedom to every serf in the country. Unimaginable freedom. A freedom that will bring consequences.

 

The Story Behind the Story:  

When I enter what I call the “brooding” phase of a new novel, which entails walking the neighbourhood with a notebook in my pocket, staring vacantly at the sky then madly scribbling something down, I don’t have a theme in mind, nor do I have an argument I want to get across or a lesson I want you to learn. Far from it. I begin with character and scene, listening and watching, hoping for scraps of dialogue, for an inkling of conflict and action, for the yearning that can so easily engulf each one of us. Henry James wrote, ”What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?” The two enmeshed, inseparable. This does, however, tend to slide over an important facet of historical novels, in which entire populations can be caught up in history – a war, a famine, a plague, a rebellion – events imposed upon them from outside. When the story describes how they react and their struggles to survive, then incident and character resurface.

I’m often the last person to know the themes that lie behind what I’ve written.  After my third middle-grade novel was published in 2013, someone said to me, “This book is about loneliness,” and I thought, shocked, you’re right, of course it is, and I never realized it. Instead, unknowingly, I must have trusted that by digging deeply enough into my characters’ lives and whatever was impinging on them, the theme or themes would emerge.

 

 

 

Jills website – please go HERE.

Buy the book HERE.

Scribbler: Tell us about your writing habits. Morning, late night, anytime? Music or solitude? What is your beverage of choice while writing?

Jill: No music. Silence, please. No company. I’m an introvert and someone leaning over my shoulder in the study would finish me off. Beverage? Water. Snack? Dark chocolate. Could I write without it? Doubtful.

I’m a morning person – don’t ever expect even minimal intelligence from me past nine o’clock at night. Consequently, I sit down at the laptop immediately after breakfast five days a week, and put in three or four hours of concentrated writing. Some days it goes well, others not…if I had to choose whether talent, inspiration or perseverance is the most important attribute for a writer, I’d probably choose perseverance. A morning person, indeed: when I’m working on a book, I often wake at 2 a.m. with Edmund crumbling soil between his fingers, Haukyn cursing the ragwort in the fields, Ilotte in the stocks railing at her tormentors. I grab the notebook by the side of the bed and write all this down, and sometimes in the morning it’s legible, and sometimes it even ends up on the screen. Oh, and every morning I start by revising what I wrote the day before: a good way to get back into the story. In the big picture, I write the first scene and keep going until I reach what feels like the end, not by any means following an outline, but usually with some sense of the arc of the story.

Revision is my middle name. When the manuscript is as polished as I can make it, and I’m so close to it that it could be full of holes and I wouldn’t see a single one of them, I send it to my trusted UK editor at The Literary Consultancy in London for substantive editing (one of my weak points). Almost all his suggestions are incorporated, alongside my own copy editing. This can take weeks or, more often, months.

For me, the ending is hugely important. I can’t tell you how many times I rewrote the last six or seven pages of The Arrows of Mercy.

Knowing when to stop revising is also hugely important. The original manuscript of The Arrows of Mercy was over 150,000 words, which I pared down to 113,000. Revision as subtraction. I was so intent on not repeating this mistake that The Arrows of Fealty was too sparsely written and the UK editor said things like, “Jill, this scene needs fleshing out. Jill, this character isn’t developed enough.” Revision as addition. Supposedly – if I write a trilogy – the first draft of the third novel won’t need any revision. Right? Don’t bet on it!


My warm thanks to Allan Hudson for his ongoing support of local authors.

You are most welcome, Jill. 

I’m looking forward to reading the story. 

Thanks for being my guest this week and I wish you continued success with your writing.

A HUGE thank you to all our visitors and readers.