May 2015 – LOUISE PIEPER

Historical fashion faux pas

1830 fashion plate History is full of fashion that clashes horrifically with current aesthetics.

I’m fairly certain that one of the reasons for the popularity of Regency-era historical fiction is that the women’s fashions were, for a brief period there, relatively simple. They look a lot better, to our modern eyes, because of it.

My WIP is set in 1832 and by then women’s fashions had swung away from the simplicity of the Empire style to something a little more atrocious. OK, a lot further along the ugly scale than most of us are comfortable with. The ideal female silhouette had wide, wide skirts, a tiny little waist, sloping shoulders, leg of mutton sleeves and hair bunched over the ears so that one looked like a spaniel.

But, as you might imagine given that my working title is “This Unnatural Masquerade”, there is some gender obfuscation going on. And in this respect, the 1830s are the perfect time for a young woman to pass herself off as a man, as you can tell from the fashion plate to the left.

Is he not the last word in manliness?

Sew ready for stories?

I love knowing the names for things.

If you’ve read The Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin you will already know that, of course, the true names for things have power. Sometimes, all those names, all those lovely words, can be overwhelming….

Fowler’s Cut is a short story (under 3000 words) that takes place in an archaic city where magic and trade and crime converge.

I submitted it (unsuccessfully) to the Small Owl Workshop’s Lane of Unusual Traders world building project. What a lovely thing it is that they are making! I’ve edited my story to remove the identifiers that placed it in their world.

It’s immersive. I got carried away with words – with the names of colours and fabric, just as I get carried away with the tactile enjoyment of sewing something like the patchwork throw in the picture.

And, fair warning, there’s dialect. Sorry. I won’t do it again, I promise.

The fourth is strong in this one

Greetings fellow nerds and sci-fi fans and happy Star Wars Day.

What I like about Yoda, well, what’s not to like about Yoda? But what I particularly like about Yoda is that his distinctive syntax makes him an even more memorable and amazing character than he would otherwise be.

So simply done, and so effective.

I have been assured that I cannot, should not and must not use dialect in my story – “ee, by gum, an’ it were so grand!” But distinctive syntax is fine. So Yoda is my writing insiration for this week.

Letting the wins fill my sails

I’ve always written. But I rarely used to finish what I started writing.

I decided to change that, 18 months ago, when I won a local short story writing competition and determined to put the money that I won towards attending a 5 day writing masterclass. This time last week I was pitching my manuscript to Anna, HarperCollins fiction publisher, at Fiona McIntosh’s commercial fiction masterclass.

It was a fantastic experience. If going from a dreamer, who has stories to tell, to a published author can be called the writer’s journey, the 5 days of masterclass were like catching a lift on the inter-city express bullet train. Absolutely life-changing.

Now I’m a lot further down the road, or the tracks, which is odd when I started this post with a boat metaphor. Anyway, I have attached my short story, which needed to be a maximum of 1500 words on the Gold Coast having both the hinterland forests and the beaches to enjoy.

I hope you enjoy reading: Bonogin Dusk, Burleigh Dawn

Playing in the graveyard

I spent a lot of time in graveyards when I was a child.

Well, I guess it wasn’t a lot of time, but my mum had a thing about stopping at old cemeteries and walking along reading the headstones out loud to us, with suitable asides about the names, the dates and the mundane tragedy of death as experienced by complete strangers a century before.

So there are graveyards in the story I’m writing, and I added in another one when I was writing a scene today. Despite working on historical fiction, I was aided by Google maps – I knew exactly where I wanted the event to take place, around 300 years ago. I had a look at the street view of Duns to get a sense of the layout, and there directly across the road is a fabulous old cemetery, raised up above the road. What a perfect stage for a dramatic declaration.

Stuck for an elegant simile

Where’s the perfect simile when you want it?

You know, you can stand around all day here, waiting for a metaphor, and then three of them arrive at once!

Actually, I was thinking about how I suck in and pour out stories and I decided I was a story silo. But, no. Because the grain that goes in is the same grain that comes out. There’s no sense of the process of absorbing stories and creating new ones, inspired by what’s been absorbed.

None of which is helping the two things I am working on tonight:

The first is a title for my book to include in the synopsis. IMPOSSIBLE!

The second is beginning to build an online presence of myself as an author.

So the blog post is productive writing. Pondering whether I’m a silo is not.