Ask the Author: Nicola Griffith
Answered Questions (18)
Nicola Griffith
When it's done :) I'm working on it. If you happen to be at any of my paperback tour stops (see http://asknicola.blogspot.com/p/appea...) you might hear me read from the beginning of Hild II...
Nicola Griffith
That's kind of cool. It's not exactly how I see her, but still, kind of cool :)
Nicola Griffith
No. And yes. That is, I know where I'm going before I begin: I always know what the end will be and head towards it.
I have outlined but don't always. Outlining is necessary if you want to sell a novel before it's written: the publisher wants a rough idea of what they're paying for. But I don't do that anymore. I place a novel when it's done.
My outlines never took long. I tended to write them once I knew where I was going. I suspect, though, that if one uses an outline to figure out where one is going it could be a giant headache: thinking with your fingers at the keyboard has never worked well for me.
I have outlined but don't always. Outlining is necessary if you want to sell a novel before it's written: the publisher wants a rough idea of what they're paying for. But I don't do that anymore. I place a novel when it's done.
My outlines never took long. I tended to write them once I knew where I was going. I suspect, though, that if one uses an outline to figure out where one is going it could be a giant headache: thinking with your fingers at the keyboard has never worked well for me.
Nicola Griffith
No. As far as I know no one ever considered presenting HILD as YA.
She might be a child for some of the book, but she faces very hard choices, life and death choices, from the opening pages. There's a lot of death and sex and power and politics, too, handled--I like to think--in adult terms. That was challenge: to write in adult terms from the perspective of a young person.
It's a relief to now be doing with a wholly adult character...
She might be a child for some of the book, but she faces very hard choices, life and death choices, from the opening pages. There's a lot of death and sex and power and politics, too, handled--I like to think--in adult terms. That was challenge: to write in adult terms from the perspective of a young person.
It's a relief to now be doing with a wholly adult character...
Nicola Griffith
I'm interested in pretty much anything before there were Parliaments :)
The most fascinating period to me right now is HILD's time: early seventh-century Britain. Before the rule of law, when might was right, how did those who weren't strong, smart, healthy, wealthy, and well-connected get by?
I wrote a whole novel to find out...
The most fascinating period to me right now is HILD's time: early seventh-century Britain. Before the rule of law, when might was right, how did those who weren't strong, smart, healthy, wealthy, and well-connected get by?
I wrote a whole novel to find out...
Nicola Griffith
I think all fiction can explore identity. Science fiction has one advantage: it can make the metaphor concrete. It's disadvantage, of course, is that in the hands of lesser writers all the air is used in the effort of world-building.
The big challenge of HILD was writing A Novel set 1400 years ago: creating systems and world views utterly different from today while still leaving lots of space for other things. Difficult, but intensely rewarding.
The big challenge of HILD was writing A Novel set 1400 years ago: creating systems and world views utterly different from today while still leaving lots of space for other things. Difficult, but intensely rewarding.
Nicola Griffith
Aud isn't broken. She's been through grief--like all of us who are lucky enough to love hard enough and live long enough--but she is absolutely not broken. Aud, rhymes with bloody but unbowed.
However I do think that the further a person is from the perceived Norm (where I was growing up: straight, white, male, healthy, Protestant) the harder some of the ordinary things of life can be because you are Other and so the world is rather biased. If you're a dyke, things can be harder than for many straight people. Another way to look at it, particularly if you're a gamer , is that being a dyke means you start the game at a higher difficulty setting. (John Scalzi talks about this: http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15...)
But, again, Aud is not broken.
I don't think Lore (from SLOW RIVER) is broken, either, though she is certainly damaged--though that's because of child abuse, not being a dyke.
In my fiction, being a lesbian (or bi in Hild's case) is not an issue for any character. Ever. I write this way to do my part in the creation of the possibility of a better world.
However I do think that the further a person is from the perceived Norm (where I was growing up: straight, white, male, healthy, Protestant) the harder some of the ordinary things of life can be because you are Other and so the world is rather biased. If you're a dyke, things can be harder than for many straight people. Another way to look at it, particularly if you're a gamer , is that being a dyke means you start the game at a higher difficulty setting. (John Scalzi talks about this: http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15...)
But, again, Aud is not broken.
I don't think Lore (from SLOW RIVER) is broken, either, though she is certainly damaged--though that's because of child abuse, not being a dyke.
In my fiction, being a lesbian (or bi in Hild's case) is not an issue for any character. Ever. I write this way to do my part in the creation of the possibility of a better world.
Nicola Griffith
Thank you!
Hild isn't lesbian/homosexual. She's bisexual. I doubt they had such terms back then, though. I've seen no evidence that who you did or did not have sex with defined how women thought of themselves.
Actually, there's no evidence for anything, sexually, in early seventh-century northern Britain. Nothing. No material culture and no text.
I'm guessing that Roman Christians, being Pauline to the core, would have disapproved. Indeed, Breguswith says as much in the book: be careful around the priests. But that was as much about having sex with anyone as having sex with women. Monks and priests like Bede (if we go purely by written evidence) thought women were more holy if they didn't have sex at all; being a virgin was better than being married, for example.
The way I see it, at the time, before widespread conversion to Roman Christianity, no one much cared who you did and didn't have sex with. Sex wasn't a moral issue. All royal women before the founding of nunneries (I think--though I'm wary of the words 'always' and 'never' in any context, never mind a time we know so little about) got married, and that if they then wanted to have sex with other women no one would much care as long as they were discreet. After all, the point of marriage was alliance, household management, and the provision of heirs. Married girls loving other married girls wouldn't have any impact on any of these points.
I talk about that a bit here: http://gemaecca.blogspot.com/2008/08/...
There again, there's this incident from Ireland from the 8th century that makes sex between women sound rather jolly and uncomplicated:
http://gemaecca.blogspot.com/2008/08/...
Make of that what you will...
Hild isn't lesbian/homosexual. She's bisexual. I doubt they had such terms back then, though. I've seen no evidence that who you did or did not have sex with defined how women thought of themselves.
Actually, there's no evidence for anything, sexually, in early seventh-century northern Britain. Nothing. No material culture and no text.
I'm guessing that Roman Christians, being Pauline to the core, would have disapproved. Indeed, Breguswith says as much in the book: be careful around the priests. But that was as much about having sex with anyone as having sex with women. Monks and priests like Bede (if we go purely by written evidence) thought women were more holy if they didn't have sex at all; being a virgin was better than being married, for example.
The way I see it, at the time, before widespread conversion to Roman Christianity, no one much cared who you did and didn't have sex with. Sex wasn't a moral issue. All royal women before the founding of nunneries (I think--though I'm wary of the words 'always' and 'never' in any context, never mind a time we know so little about) got married, and that if they then wanted to have sex with other women no one would much care as long as they were discreet. After all, the point of marriage was alliance, household management, and the provision of heirs. Married girls loving other married girls wouldn't have any impact on any of these points.
I talk about that a bit here: http://gemaecca.blogspot.com/2008/08/...
There again, there's this incident from Ireland from the 8th century that makes sex between women sound rather jolly and uncomplicated:
http://gemaecca.blogspot.com/2008/08/...
Make of that what you will...
Nicola Griffith
Writing, that fall-own-the-hole moment, that go-to-another-time-and-place thing, the sense of flow. I love it.
I also love talking to readers, especially live and in person.
I also love talking to readers, especially live and in person.
Nicola Griffith
Every time I breathe I get an idea, every time I blink, every moment I think. Ideas are cheap.
But HILD grew in my brain for 25 years until the idea was so huge there was no way to think around it, only through it. Which meant I had to write a book (more than one, actually, though only one is finished and published).
I stumbled across Hild--the real person--in my early twenties. I tell the story here: http://asknicola.blogspot.com/2012/03...
But HILD grew in my brain for 25 years until the idea was so huge there was no way to think around it, only through it. Which meant I had to write a book (more than one, actually, though only one is finished and published).
I stumbled across Hild--the real person--in my early twenties. I tell the story here: http://asknicola.blogspot.com/2012/03...
Nicola Griffith
More Hild--the second book in the sequence. I think there will be three...
Nicola Griffith
Writers are shamen: we travel to unknown places and bring back maps. I write to find out and then to share what I've learnt.
So HILD is my answer to a question: how, fourteen hundred years ago, in a time when might was right--a culture of illiterate, petty warlords--did the second daughter of a widow, hunted and homeless, become the towering figure we know today as St Hilda of Whitby? How did she midwife English literature, train five bishops, and host and facilitate the Synod that changed the course of history?
Essentially, it's my response to the ridiculous assertion (unstated but nonetheless usually obvious and woven into the deepest fabric of our culture) that women are less than human, that in times past we allowed ourselves to be subservient chattel, or that women only make their mark through sex.
Hild never uses sex as a weapon or means of persuasion. She is extraordinary, yes, but extraordinary within the constraints of her time (or, should I say, the constraints suggested by current interpretations of what we like to call history). But she does not--nor does any person or event in the book--contravene what is known to be known. Young Hild has no special powers, she doesn't use a sword or perform miracles.
So my inspiration is changing the world: rewriting the past in order to recast the present and steer the future.
So HILD is my answer to a question: how, fourteen hundred years ago, in a time when might was right--a culture of illiterate, petty warlords--did the second daughter of a widow, hunted and homeless, become the towering figure we know today as St Hilda of Whitby? How did she midwife English literature, train five bishops, and host and facilitate the Synod that changed the course of history?
Essentially, it's my response to the ridiculous assertion (unstated but nonetheless usually obvious and woven into the deepest fabric of our culture) that women are less than human, that in times past we allowed ourselves to be subservient chattel, or that women only make their mark through sex.
Hild never uses sex as a weapon or means of persuasion. She is extraordinary, yes, but extraordinary within the constraints of her time (or, should I say, the constraints suggested by current interpretations of what we like to call history). But she does not--nor does any person or event in the book--contravene what is known to be known. Young Hild has no special powers, she doesn't use a sword or perform miracles.
So my inspiration is changing the world: rewriting the past in order to recast the present and steer the future.
Nicola Griffith
Write. I expand on this in a 30-minute Q&A session filmed late last year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sixUh...
If you have written you're a writer. It's pretty simple. But being a writer and being an author are two different things.
If you're an aspiring author, then you've written and you want to be published. Then you need to ask yourself: How do I want to be published? Do you want a long career in which writing is your main source of income? Do you want awards? Do you want others to handle the business side or are you willing to do it yourself?
It's a whole set of decisions based on something only you, as a writer, can speak to: what do you want?
When you know that, you'll have a better idea of how to proceed. Or at least I'll have a better idea of how to answer...
If you have written you're a writer. It's pretty simple. But being a writer and being an author are two different things.
If you're an aspiring author, then you've written and you want to be published. Then you need to ask yourself: How do I want to be published? Do you want a long career in which writing is your main source of income? Do you want awards? Do you want others to handle the business side or are you willing to do it yourself?
It's a whole set of decisions based on something only you, as a writer, can speak to: what do you want?
When you know that, you'll have a better idea of how to proceed. Or at least I'll have a better idea of how to answer...
Nicola Griffith
I've never had writer's block. Not in the how-it-looks-in-the-movies sense. Sometimes I get stuck on a project and that means I've done something wrong upstream. So I go back through what I've done and read carefully and the minute I feel that something's a bit off, and go back a bit more: that's usually where the problem lies.
My general rule of thumb: if a scene isn't working, the entrance is wrong.
My general rule of thumb: if a scene isn't working, the entrance is wrong.
Nicola Griffith
It was a visit to the ruins of Whitby Abbey in my early 20s.
I've always loved history--particularly the kind before Parliaments--always loved wandering round ruins and imagining what it was like back then. But Whitby (which appears as the Bay of the Beacon in the novel) changed my life. When I stepped over the threshold of that ruin I felt as though history fisted up through the turf and through me. It turned me inside out like a sock. My epiphany? That history was made by real people, people just like me (or you). People with their own dreams and disappointments and dailyness.
So then I was interested: who founded the abbey? Why? What happened there. And I discovered it was founded in the mid-7th century by a woman called Hild, and that the Synod of Whitby (a meeting that she hosted and, I'm guessing, facilitated) changed the course of English history.
So then I was wild to know about Hild. Only there wasn't anything but a few (mostly standard hagiographical) mentions in Bede's HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH CHURCH AND PEOPLE. And he most definitely had an agenda. (He was, of course, a monk. Just about all the written material we have of the period--though we have nothing contemporary with Hild's early life, nothing at all--was, as you say, written by religious.)
I couldn't find anything of substance about Hild. There *isn't* anything. So instead I learnt about the time and the place. I devoted most of my attention to material culture: archaeological finds. Some of the interpretations of those seemed ridiculous to me, so I dug deeper, into research on flora and fauna and weather and language, and gradually built my own picture of the seventh century.
Basically I built a world then put Hild inside it as a child watched, fascinated, as she grew and acted up (and was acted up by) that world.
If you want to do that for yourself I can recommend reading as much Anglo-Saxon poetry (and riddles) as you can. But also read stuff like Y Gododdin. You'll definitely get a sense of the heroic mindset. But then read non-fiction such as Robin Fleming's BRITAIN AFTER ROME and Max Adams' THE KING IN THE NORTH.
As for fiction, well, honestly I'm drawing a blank. Sorry! Perhaps readers will have some suggestions...
I've always loved history--particularly the kind before Parliaments--always loved wandering round ruins and imagining what it was like back then. But Whitby (which appears as the Bay of the Beacon in the novel) changed my life. When I stepped over the threshold of that ruin I felt as though history fisted up through the turf and through me. It turned me inside out like a sock. My epiphany? That history was made by real people, people just like me (or you). People with their own dreams and disappointments and dailyness.
So then I was interested: who founded the abbey? Why? What happened there. And I discovered it was founded in the mid-7th century by a woman called Hild, and that the Synod of Whitby (a meeting that she hosted and, I'm guessing, facilitated) changed the course of English history.
So then I was wild to know about Hild. Only there wasn't anything but a few (mostly standard hagiographical) mentions in Bede's HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH CHURCH AND PEOPLE. And he most definitely had an agenda. (He was, of course, a monk. Just about all the written material we have of the period--though we have nothing contemporary with Hild's early life, nothing at all--was, as you say, written by religious.)
I couldn't find anything of substance about Hild. There *isn't* anything. So instead I learnt about the time and the place. I devoted most of my attention to material culture: archaeological finds. Some of the interpretations of those seemed ridiculous to me, so I dug deeper, into research on flora and fauna and weather and language, and gradually built my own picture of the seventh century.
Basically I built a world then put Hild inside it as a child watched, fascinated, as she grew and acted up (and was acted up by) that world.
If you want to do that for yourself I can recommend reading as much Anglo-Saxon poetry (and riddles) as you can. But also read stuff like Y Gododdin. You'll definitely get a sense of the heroic mindset. But then read non-fiction such as Robin Fleming's BRITAIN AFTER ROME and Max Adams' THE KING IN THE NORTH.
As for fiction, well, honestly I'm drawing a blank. Sorry! Perhaps readers will have some suggestions...
Nicola Griffith
I did a lot of research and talked to academics directly. From what I can gather, warbands varied hugely in size, from 30 to several hundred. Warbands were utterly professional, skilled individual warriors more than grunts, but also well-practiced in working together. (If you want more info, a good place to start is Richard Underwood's Anglo-Saxon Weapons & Warfare.)
Most of the fighting would have been warband vs. warband. But every now again there would have been what Hild calls real war: the mobilisation of every man who could/would carry anything with an edge. (Perhaps to fight off a known invasion, for example.)
But in writerly terms, specificity is our friend. Given that such numbers aren't really available, I made them up :)
Most of the fighting would have been warband vs. warband. But every now again there would have been what Hild calls real war: the mobilisation of every man who could/would carry anything with an edge. (Perhaps to fight off a known invasion, for example.)
But in writerly terms, specificity is our friend. Given that such numbers aren't really available, I made them up :)
Nicola Griffith
That by one estimate women in early 7th-C Britain spent 65% of their time on the production of textiles. Think about: that's more than childcare and food preparation put together! It completely changed my approach to the book.
Verbs like weave and sow and harvest and rett and scutch and beat and spin and dye, not to mention comb and sew and shear and cut and clean and full took over my world. And made me reimagine the cultural institutions of the time. I mean, if you're spending two-thirds of your life on something, it will be woven into every aspect of your community. (It changed my metaphors, too...)
If you want to know more, see this blog post:
http://asknicola.blogspot.com/2012/06...
Or read this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Clothing-Anglo-...
Verbs like weave and sow and harvest and rett and scutch and beat and spin and dye, not to mention comb and sew and shear and cut and clean and full took over my world. And made me reimagine the cultural institutions of the time. I mean, if you're spending two-thirds of your life on something, it will be woven into every aspect of your community. (It changed my metaphors, too...)
If you want to know more, see this blog post:
http://asknicola.blogspot.com/2012/06...
Or read this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Clothing-Anglo-...
Nicola Griffith
I made it up.
All we know of Hild is the tiny bit Bede wrote 50 years after her death which isn't much. The first half of her life can be summed up in one short paragraph. She is born circa 614 CE, after her mother, Breguswith, has a dream about her unborn child being a jewel that brings light to the land. Hild's father, Hereric, of the royal house of Deira, was poisoned while in exile at the court of Ceredig, king of Elmet. Her older sister, Hereswith, marries a nephew of Rædwald, king of East Anglia. Hild, along with many of Edwin's household, is baptised by Paulinus c. 627 in York. She then disappears from the record until 647 when she reappears in East Anglia about to take ship for Gaul to join her sister—at which point she is recruited to the church by bishop Aidan.
We don't know where Hild was born exactly and when her father died—or her mother. We have no idea what she looked like, what she was good at, whether she married or had children. But she had to have been smart, blindingly smart, to survive so long and so well in what was essentially a time of warlords.
One of the things I guessed she was good at was out-thinking others--in other words, she could predict what they would do. So I gave her that skill. Then I just how to work out how she did it. Given the centrality of the natural world, I chose that.
All we know of Hild is the tiny bit Bede wrote 50 years after her death which isn't much. The first half of her life can be summed up in one short paragraph. She is born circa 614 CE, after her mother, Breguswith, has a dream about her unborn child being a jewel that brings light to the land. Hild's father, Hereric, of the royal house of Deira, was poisoned while in exile at the court of Ceredig, king of Elmet. Her older sister, Hereswith, marries a nephew of Rædwald, king of East Anglia. Hild, along with many of Edwin's household, is baptised by Paulinus c. 627 in York. She then disappears from the record until 647 when she reappears in East Anglia about to take ship for Gaul to join her sister—at which point she is recruited to the church by bishop Aidan.
We don't know where Hild was born exactly and when her father died—or her mother. We have no idea what she looked like, what she was good at, whether she married or had children. But she had to have been smart, blindingly smart, to survive so long and so well in what was essentially a time of warlords.
One of the things I guessed she was good at was out-thinking others--in other words, she could predict what they would do. So I gave her that skill. Then I just how to work out how she did it. Given the centrality of the natural world, I chose that.
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