An Unfortunate Tweet

Camp Nano has been one heck of a journey for me this year. Normally, my editing takes the process of reading my book, assembling it in the correct order, and editing page by page from there. However, when I was working with my new editor on my last book, I found a new way. I went over the book and wrote what each chapter was, put them on post-it notes and stuck them inside my notebook while I played around with it. It helped me to really see where I was missing plot points and make sweeping changes if needed from a top-down approach that my old way of working wouldn't have allowed. I decided to see if it helped me with editing this next book. 

I should start by saying I knew it had problems. I was expecting a lot of rewrites. However, I was not expecting this method to show me that my entire plot was wrong and needed to be rewritten essentially. And I'm only exaggerating a little when I say that. I just finished the top-down overview and I have 17 chapters that are listed as "rewrite from scratch"... there could be more by the end of this pass, but that's what I'm working with now. 

Despite that daunting number, I'm actually pretty hopeful. Fox's Facade was a really difficult book to write in the first place. It was going a few different places, but at the time, I don't think I was a good enough writer to anticipate what exactly it would need. Regardless of the actual reason, I think the way I have restructured the plot will work a lot better now. I began rewrites a few days ago. Hopefully, it won't take me too long to do them. I'd like to have the edits out to my beta readers by September, if possible, though I'll have to see how my editing is going before I set that as the goal. 

That finished, I'd like to talk about a tweet that was posted earlier this week. 

This tweet from @dntmakeitworse to be exact. If you've read my blog for any amount of time, I'm sure you know how false this is. Yes, women tend to be overlooked in publishing. I'm not saying that isn't a problem. I've read the story all too many times about fans walking up to female authors and thanking them for writing under a pseudonym or their initials. "I never would have picked up your book if I'd known a woman wrote it" is something that all too many have heard. 

That said, while I think this was what the tweeter was trying to convey, they are horribly wrong. Even leaving aside solid staples such as Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, Anne McCaffery, and Agatha Christie, there are hundreds of others. Margaret Atwood, Harper Lee, Ursula K. LeGuin, Baroness Orczy... this isn't even counting that the first novel in the world was written by a woman; my personal hero of Murasaki Shikibu, the lady-in-waiting who wrote The Tale of Genji. 

If you think women haven't always been there, doing the same things men were, you are sorely mistaken. Our tale often isn't told; the women warriors of Shaka Zulu's armies, the female samurai of Japan, the women of Scotland trained to defend the homestead when the men were away. 

And that I think is where I'll end it today. Let me know who your favorite female author as a kid was. Personally, I will also hold a place in my heart for Anne McCaffery. I loved her story of psychics, dragons, and cats. 

Deep Dive on Historic Women: Murasaki Shikibu

I shared a news article on my FB page a day or so ago about the discovery that the novel, Tale of Genji, has 4 newly discovered chapters to add to its length. Already 50 chapters long, this 54 chapter version is the longest ever found. This book is important, not only because it is considered our world's first full-length novel, but also because it is considered the greatest work of Japanese literature.

However, as awesome as the book detailing the exploits of Genji Hikaru is, it pales in comparison to the life of its author. Murasaki Shikibu was her pen name, and there is some evidence to suggest that her given name was Fujiwara no Kaoruko, since it's known from her journals that she became an imperial lady-in-waiting for the emperor's consort, Shoshi, after the death of her husband and that she was from a distant branch of the Fujiwara line. Raised mostly by her father after her mother's untimely death, she learned many of the so-called "manly" studies of the time. She excelled in Chinese literature and moved around the country with her father, which at the time was unheard of for a young aristocratic woman. 

Also unheard of was her romantic life. While most of Murasaki's peers were getting married in their early teens, it is known that Murasaki herself didn't marry until her twenties and that her nuptials only lasted two years, at that. It is believed that she began writing the Tale of Genji at this time. 

This picture is one I created for Murasaki. While we don't know what 

she would have looked like, we do know how nobility looked in the 

Heian Era. This is close to how they would have looked. I have lowered the

eyebrows from where they would have been drawn to make it look a 

little closer to our current day standards of beauty. Any mistakes are my

own and no one else's.

Afterward, Murasaki chose to remain her own woman and not remarry and was eventually called to become a Chinese tutor to the young Empress and, of course, to become her resident writer. She may have also received the job due to a brief affair she may have had with the consort Shoshi's father, Michinaga, a statesman of some renown at the time, although this connection is tenuous at best. She is known to have exchanged poetry with Michinaga though, which at the time was considered an essential part of seduction at the time. 

There is some discussion about when she died, some saying that she died 1014, but some say that she was seen attending official ceremonies with Shoshi for another 10 years after that.

I have decided to read Liza Dalby's novel, The Tale of Murasaki: a novel and then follow it up with more of the dry research about her life as well as an official reading of the Tale of Genji, eventually.

Have you read any of these books? Would any of you be interested in reading Liza Dalby's novel and discussing it, bookclub style? Let me know and if there is enough interest, I'll create an FB page for it.