Daisy Goodwin's Blog
October 7, 2014
Why handwriting matters
The summer that I was seventeen , the sweetest time of day was 9.15 am. I would listen for the metallic clang of the letterbox as the postman pushed the day’s mail through and the scratchy thud as it landed on the door mat. There would be a slew of manila envelopes addressed to my dad, a postcard or two, and if I was lucky a blue airmail envelope with my name and address written in spiky black ink, every A crossed at the back betraying the writer’s classical education. The man I loved was far away and so I waited every morning with all the intensity that a teenager raised on WB Yeats is capable of. I would take my time opening the letter, weighing it in my hand, examining the writing of the envelope for intelligence of the writer’s state of mind. Then I would take my father’s silver paper knife and slit open the envelope revealing the treasure within. The man in question was , I see now, probably better at a distance, but then I lived for his letters. Not just for the words, I adored his regular neat hand, the greek alphas , the curly E’s, and his glorious legibility. His writing filled the blue airmail paper precisely with an even margin all the way around and a space at the bottom for exactly seven kisses. His handwriting exactly matched the man I loved, classical by training, but always leaving enough room for emotion. He complained in his letters that he had difficult reading my writing, that it would start out legible but dwindle at the end to an indecipherable scrawl. But that was the difference between us – he was well spaced and consistent, I had a tendency to leave the important things till the end.
I don’t think you can ever really know someone until you have seen their handwriting. I remember the shock of getting my first letter from a writer I admired. The contents of the letter were everything I expected and desired, but his handwriting was cramped and costive, leaning sharply to the left as if blown by an east wind. At the time I couldn’t reconcile it to the expansive, gregarious funny man I knew, or thought I knew, but as time went on I realised that his handwriting was closer to the inner man than the face he presented to the world.
I am not a graphologist and I don’t think that reading handwriting is an exact science but I do think that it is a vital part of self expression. When I am thinking clearly my handwriting is neat and legible but when I have difficult working out what I really mean then my pen sputters across the page, losing its way, my words climbing on top of each other as if hiding from the truth. Most of the time, of course, I type, but if I have to write something from the heart – a letter of condolence, an expression of friendship or love I always take out a pen. Just as a poem cannot be really experienced until you have read it aloud, an email however full of emotion, cannot have the same resonance as a handwritten page. There is now a service that offers to turn your typed text into handwriting to offer that personal touch, which is a bizarre recognition of the power of the handwritten word even if it misunderstands the meaning.
I think we prefer to type rather than use a pen, just as we like to text rather than speak on the phone: we kid ourselves that we are saving time but actually we are protecting ourselves from exposure. A handwritten letter can be read on more than one level : not just the words but the shape of the letters, the colour of the ink, the clarity of the signature. An email is a record of your words, a letter is an expression of your state of mind.
I feel pity for my daughters who wait for the ping of an email or text with the same anticipation that I waited for the postman. They will perhaps never have that understanding of their beloved that comes when someone literally shows you their hand. So if you care about self expression or you want someone to know who you really are – take up your pen and write.
I don’t think you can ever really know someone until you have seen their handwriting. I remember the shock of getting my first letter from a writer I admired. The contents of the letter were everything I expected and desired, but his handwriting was cramped and costive, leaning sharply to the left as if blown by an east wind. At the time I couldn’t reconcile it to the expansive, gregarious funny man I knew, or thought I knew, but as time went on I realised that his handwriting was closer to the inner man than the face he presented to the world.
I am not a graphologist and I don’t think that reading handwriting is an exact science but I do think that it is a vital part of self expression. When I am thinking clearly my handwriting is neat and legible but when I have difficult working out what I really mean then my pen sputters across the page, losing its way, my words climbing on top of each other as if hiding from the truth. Most of the time, of course, I type, but if I have to write something from the heart – a letter of condolence, an expression of friendship or love I always take out a pen. Just as a poem cannot be really experienced until you have read it aloud, an email however full of emotion, cannot have the same resonance as a handwritten page. There is now a service that offers to turn your typed text into handwriting to offer that personal touch, which is a bizarre recognition of the power of the handwritten word even if it misunderstands the meaning.
I think we prefer to type rather than use a pen, just as we like to text rather than speak on the phone: we kid ourselves that we are saving time but actually we are protecting ourselves from exposure. A handwritten letter can be read on more than one level : not just the words but the shape of the letters, the colour of the ink, the clarity of the signature. An email is a record of your words, a letter is an expression of your state of mind.
I feel pity for my daughters who wait for the ping of an email or text with the same anticipation that I waited for the postman. They will perhaps never have that understanding of their beloved that comes when someone literally shows you their hand. So if you care about self expression or you want someone to know who you really are – take up your pen and write.
May 11, 2014
Fact and Fiction
I have just published a historical novel called The Fortune Hunter in which the three main characters Elizabeth the empress of Austria, Bay Middleton and Charlotte Baird are all 'real' people. The story I tell about them is based loosely on actual events and I have peopled it liberally with historical characters like Queen Victoria, and Earl Spencer. But this is a novel not a text book, and I have taken considerable liberties with chronology - for instance I have condensed five years of hunting in the home counties to three months and I have sent Queen Victoria to a fictional exhibition ( although it was of a society of which she was the Patron), not to mention putting considerable flesh on the relationship between Sisi and Bay.
Do these liberties , or perhaps I should say lèse majesté, matter? Is the responsibility of a historical novelist to fact or to fiction?
As a historian by training I am scrupulous when it comes to things like language - I can't bear it in a novel set in the nineteenth century when people use anachronistic language like 'OK' , and I get ridiculously annoyed when writers confuse their baronets and barons. And I would refuse to read on if someone undid a zip before 1920.
And yet as a novelist I have happily invented a physical relationship between my two principal characters for which there is no hard evidence. Unless a cache of letters one day turns up in the Hapsburg archives there is nothing to suggest beyond contemporary supposition and rumour that anything compromising actually occurred between the Empress and her Pilot. But my reading of the Empress's character suggests that she was a woman who felt entitled to behave exactly as she wanted ( I think anyone who has been Empress since the age of 16 is likely to practise much self denial) and as recent events have shown rumours about royal women and cavalry captains have an uncanny way of turning out to be true.
Does a historical novelist bear more responsibility to the facts than, say, a Hollywood screenwriter. Am I more or less to blame for turning a rumour into a reality than
the writer of Braveheart for turning wishful thinking into a screenplay? Has Hilary Mantel done the public a disservice by turning Thomas Cromwell who was clearly a cruel man, into a vastly sympathetic character? It's a conundrum, imagine if in five hundred years time someone wrote a novel making Goebbels into a flawed but likeable hero? Mantel's research is impeccable and yet her portrayal of Cromwell is intensely subjective but I suspect it is the one that will now overlay all writing about him.
The paradox of writing about the past is that the most extraordinary things - the scenes or facts that people assume you have made up, are always real. Sisi really did cover her face in a layer of raw veal every night topped with a leather mask, and yet readers have assumed I have made this up. In my last book I drew upon contemporary accounts of Consuelo Vanderbilt's wedding for my description of her diamond studded gold suspenders, but was told that this was an invention too far.
My solution is an apologetic Author's Note which points where I have turned fact into fiction. I do, I admit, still feel guilty about sending the Prince of Wales to India in my last book in 1894 instead of 1895. But in my defines I think that all the liberties I have taken have made for a better story. Mea Culpa, and yet I am not really sorry.
Do these liberties , or perhaps I should say lèse majesté, matter? Is the responsibility of a historical novelist to fact or to fiction?
As a historian by training I am scrupulous when it comes to things like language - I can't bear it in a novel set in the nineteenth century when people use anachronistic language like 'OK' , and I get ridiculously annoyed when writers confuse their baronets and barons. And I would refuse to read on if someone undid a zip before 1920.
And yet as a novelist I have happily invented a physical relationship between my two principal characters for which there is no hard evidence. Unless a cache of letters one day turns up in the Hapsburg archives there is nothing to suggest beyond contemporary supposition and rumour that anything compromising actually occurred between the Empress and her Pilot. But my reading of the Empress's character suggests that she was a woman who felt entitled to behave exactly as she wanted ( I think anyone who has been Empress since the age of 16 is likely to practise much self denial) and as recent events have shown rumours about royal women and cavalry captains have an uncanny way of turning out to be true.
Does a historical novelist bear more responsibility to the facts than, say, a Hollywood screenwriter. Am I more or less to blame for turning a rumour into a reality than
the writer of Braveheart for turning wishful thinking into a screenplay? Has Hilary Mantel done the public a disservice by turning Thomas Cromwell who was clearly a cruel man, into a vastly sympathetic character? It's a conundrum, imagine if in five hundred years time someone wrote a novel making Goebbels into a flawed but likeable hero? Mantel's research is impeccable and yet her portrayal of Cromwell is intensely subjective but I suspect it is the one that will now overlay all writing about him.
The paradox of writing about the past is that the most extraordinary things - the scenes or facts that people assume you have made up, are always real. Sisi really did cover her face in a layer of raw veal every night topped with a leather mask, and yet readers have assumed I have made this up. In my last book I drew upon contemporary accounts of Consuelo Vanderbilt's wedding for my description of her diamond studded gold suspenders, but was told that this was an invention too far.
My solution is an apologetic Author's Note which points where I have turned fact into fiction. I do, I admit, still feel guilty about sending the Prince of Wales to India in my last book in 1894 instead of 1895. But in my defines I think that all the liberties I have taken have made for a better story. Mea Culpa, and yet I am not really sorry.
March 11, 2014
No pages to turn
Am in the middle of reading the Goldfinch. I started reading it on holiday so I downloaded it. But while I am enjoying the book, I am finding it difficult to finish. This is puzzling as I am an extremely fast reader and the novel has no lack of narrative pull. It is without question a page turner, and yet without any pages to turn I am finding it very hard to immerse myself in the story. It's partly that the device I am reading it on, an ipad, does so many other things. It is hard to suspend reality when the seductive ping of emails, tweets and other distraction are always there to feed the narcissist within. But I think is something else going on too, words I read on a screen simply do not have the same weight as their printed equivalent. I find one of the features of e readers - the font adjuster, verging on the disrespectful. I feel inhibited by the lack of pages. When I read a book I want to know where I am, a percentage is no substitute for the milestone of page 49. If a book hasnt' caught my attention by p.49 I stop reading...there is no equivalent percentage. I also like to look at the end of a book when I am about half way through - to prepare myself for the worst. This is impossible with an e book. You can only read in one direction.
But the real problem is that words on the screen are ephemeral in a way their printed equivalents are not. When I pick up the goldfinch I have real difficulty in remembering what happened, something that does not happen when I have a real book in my hands.
Perhaps it is just too late for me to adapt, but my 13 year old daughter is the same - she will always choose the physical book over its e equivalent.
' I like to feel how heavy it is, Mum.'Weight doesn't come from words alone
But the real problem is that words on the screen are ephemeral in a way their printed equivalents are not. When I pick up the goldfinch I have real difficulty in remembering what happened, something that does not happen when I have a real book in my hands.
Perhaps it is just too late for me to adapt, but my 13 year old daughter is the same - she will always choose the physical book over its e equivalent.
' I like to feel how heavy it is, Mum.'Weight doesn't come from words alone
March 1, 2014
Getting it Right
Have just finished correcting the page proofs of my new book The Fortune Hunter which is published in April. Having not looked at it for a while, it is quite strange to read your own work as if for the first time. There are whole passages that I don't remember writing at all - these are the bits I like best. The paragraphs I remember labouring over look forced now, and I find myself hacking away at adjectives and adverbs. The phrase that I was so pleased with six months ago, now seems like showing off. As every writer knows, no book is ever really finished, it's only those pesky publishers that stop a book finally reaching perfection with their insistence on deadlines.
Sending the proofs back feels like a wrench, but it's not my baby any more. When a book is published it is the property of the reader. Time to start all over again,
Sending the proofs back feels like a wrench, but it's not my baby any more. When a book is published it is the property of the reader. Time to start all over again,
