Why I've been silent...
I'm back from Sydney, where I had a lovely time with many, many writers of historical fiction. I got to test all my research and teach it to writers. Apparently it's a quite different learning experience being taught by a theorist/critic who publishes fiction than being taught by theorist/critics who don't: this may not be a better or worse thing - it certainly means the writers take different lessons away from the different teachers. Also, apparently I was most useful.
I've maintained for a long time that research into how narratives work can help novelists and my claim was really put to the test over the weekend. I worked with seven authors, quite closely. How I knew they were enjoying the sessions was when I forgot to look at my clock and somehow the session ending before lunch didn't quite end when it should. I had a fifteen minute lunch! It's a good sign when students don't want to stop learning.
Historical fiction is quite different from speculative fiction in some ways I didn't expect, and working with these writers illuminated this. It also possesses some interesting overlap. Finding what writers were actually putting into their first drafts and and having to limit my advice to six topics (for we didn't have that much time) was rather wonderful.
People keep asking me how it went and I keep saying "I enjoyed it." I hope all seven writers enjoyed it and got a bunch of useful stuff out of it. I know that I did.
I had several nice breakthroughs, too. I've sorted out how to do interfaces, for instance: I am much clearer on ways of delivering what writers need and how to connect them with theory. I can teach other writers how to plug into the precise scholarship they need for the precise novel they're writing for a whole range of genres and how to handle the shifts in language and concept. This is quite probably something everyone else can already do (and that I could already do, to be honest, just not as profoundly), but I was coming at it backwards, for I didn't intend to do that, what I intended to do was simply work with the writers to improve their work and to check on my own understanding of how writers handle new ideas and research and history and my jokes (for one should never sit back and take these things for granted). Also, I was thinking of my dream project and how to bring writers further into that discourse (which is a matter for another day).
I took lots of notes to nuance my own research, and I took lots of notes for other teaching, and I took lots of notes for... almost everything except this blog, in fact. Which means that I have nothing to tell you except that Felicity Pulman is both an awesome human being and a dream host, that the HNSA in Australasia is off to a fabulous start for it was a truly gorgeous conference, that I want Kate Forsyth to tell us all bedtime stories EVERY NIGHT (she told us one at the conference dinner), that Balmain Town Hall is a lovely building (and I taught in its nooks and crannies, so I know this for a fact) and that the State Library of NSW is a surprisingly good venue for a debate. Also, that the only person worried that the smoke and etc over the last month has blown me into an entirely round ball and that I look as if I'll roll away in all the conference photos is me. Everyone else was far more concerned with talking to me. Lovely people, every one. Although it was a bit disconcerting to discover that this person went to the next school along for mine, and that person was best friends with my aunt and... there were a dangerous number of coincidences, largely brought about by the significant Melbourne contingent. There were quite a few New Zealanders, too, and the historical fiction are much politer than my usual spec fic mob and did not take gross advantage of this to test jokes out on innocents. And (the big 'And') so many people want the Beast out, now. All those people who kicked to get the Beast happening have a reason to be smug.
Me, I have a reason to be asleep. It's late and it's been a long four days. A brilliant four days, but I'm more than a bit tired.
I'll catch you up on Women's History Month over the next few days. You're not going to lose posts. They were merely delayed while I gallivanted.
The next HNSA conference will be in Melbourne in two years time. Two years seems an awful long wait.
I've maintained for a long time that research into how narratives work can help novelists and my claim was really put to the test over the weekend. I worked with seven authors, quite closely. How I knew they were enjoying the sessions was when I forgot to look at my clock and somehow the session ending before lunch didn't quite end when it should. I had a fifteen minute lunch! It's a good sign when students don't want to stop learning.
Historical fiction is quite different from speculative fiction in some ways I didn't expect, and working with these writers illuminated this. It also possesses some interesting overlap. Finding what writers were actually putting into their first drafts and and having to limit my advice to six topics (for we didn't have that much time) was rather wonderful.
People keep asking me how it went and I keep saying "I enjoyed it." I hope all seven writers enjoyed it and got a bunch of useful stuff out of it. I know that I did.
I had several nice breakthroughs, too. I've sorted out how to do interfaces, for instance: I am much clearer on ways of delivering what writers need and how to connect them with theory. I can teach other writers how to plug into the precise scholarship they need for the precise novel they're writing for a whole range of genres and how to handle the shifts in language and concept. This is quite probably something everyone else can already do (and that I could already do, to be honest, just not as profoundly), but I was coming at it backwards, for I didn't intend to do that, what I intended to do was simply work with the writers to improve their work and to check on my own understanding of how writers handle new ideas and research and history and my jokes (for one should never sit back and take these things for granted). Also, I was thinking of my dream project and how to bring writers further into that discourse (which is a matter for another day).
I took lots of notes to nuance my own research, and I took lots of notes for other teaching, and I took lots of notes for... almost everything except this blog, in fact. Which means that I have nothing to tell you except that Felicity Pulman is both an awesome human being and a dream host, that the HNSA in Australasia is off to a fabulous start for it was a truly gorgeous conference, that I want Kate Forsyth to tell us all bedtime stories EVERY NIGHT (she told us one at the conference dinner), that Balmain Town Hall is a lovely building (and I taught in its nooks and crannies, so I know this for a fact) and that the State Library of NSW is a surprisingly good venue for a debate. Also, that the only person worried that the smoke and etc over the last month has blown me into an entirely round ball and that I look as if I'll roll away in all the conference photos is me. Everyone else was far more concerned with talking to me. Lovely people, every one. Although it was a bit disconcerting to discover that this person went to the next school along for mine, and that person was best friends with my aunt and... there were a dangerous number of coincidences, largely brought about by the significant Melbourne contingent. There were quite a few New Zealanders, too, and the historical fiction are much politer than my usual spec fic mob and did not take gross advantage of this to test jokes out on innocents. And (the big 'And') so many people want the Beast out, now. All those people who kicked to get the Beast happening have a reason to be smug.
Me, I have a reason to be asleep. It's late and it's been a long four days. A brilliant four days, but I'm more than a bit tired.
I'll catch you up on Women's History Month over the next few days. You're not going to lose posts. They were merely delayed while I gallivanted.
The next HNSA conference will be in Melbourne in two years time. Two years seems an awful long wait.
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