Inspiration – Page 3 – LOUISE PIEPER

A new year revolution

dandelion

The year has turned so it must be time to spin around, blow a dandelion clock and make a wish.

I’ve always preferred that kind of revolution to the other, and definitely favoured it above resolutions for this time of year. I like me. I’m not perfect, but just because it’s a new year doesn’t mean I need to create a new version of me.

But there’s definitely more than just dandelion seeds in the air. I’ve spent the last couple of days packing books. We have 30 shelves crammed to overflowing and I’ve never mastered the art of ruthless weeding. If I’m lucky I will whittle it down to 28 shelves worth of books that need to be moved.

Because it is time for a change.

I’m not particularly reliable in my migratory habits, but it’s been seven and a half years since we came back to Australia from our second Scottish amble, and I’m tired of being this close to the equator.

So, my first change for this lovely leap year of potential and promise is a southerly peregrination – from 28.0167° S to 35.3075° S. That might not sound like much of a difference, but I’ll be going up in the world as well – from around 13 metres to 580 metres above sea level.

The chances of snow improve dramatically, I assure you.

The clarion call to adventure, in this case, does not allow me to stride out of the cottage, sword in hand, to go where the road leads ever onwards. It will take four weeks of planning, packing, and cleaning, and devouring anti-histamines in the hope I can prevent my dust allergy from making my face fall off.

And I want to have my first draft of novel #3 finished by the end of January, too. To achieve that I’ll need to think of some way that neither the villain, nor an important secondary character, are required to do something stupid in the process of reaching their desired, mutually exclusive, outcomes.

Well, packing is just like playing Tetris, right? And plotting is really just puzzle-solving. It’s all the same skills, surely?

Hmm, I’ll let you know how that theory works out.

Tally-ho, and toodle-pip!

The satisfaction of revenge

Forgive and forget, or at least forgive and get over it, might be good advice for our souls/karma/general state of mental health. But, you know, there’s something so very satisfying about a great revenge story.

The Dressmaker by Rosalie Ham is one of my favourite books. I reviewed it enthusiastically five years ago, when I picked it for my library’s online book club read of the month. I was *super* excited when I heard it was being filmed.

Ah, and what a fantastic job they’ve done of making it into a film. I loved it! It looked perfect. I was completely emotionally engaged with it – laughing at the humour, recoiling from the revolting, gasping at the transformations worked by the amazing dresses. I wept buckets at the sad bits (in fact, I started crying before the sad bits because I knew they were coming). It was a fantastic two hours and I emerged from the cinema dehydrated and blinking at the reality of the world.

Which is pretty much the same effect the book has on me – the immersion just lasts a little longer.

I particularly love two things about this story. The first is that it doesn’t box itself into being just one thing. If you want a rom-com with a happy ever after – er, no. If you want a serious examination of the dark recesses of humanity – look out, Mad Molly’s made the hash brownies a little stronger this time. But it is romantic, and comedic, and tragic – sometimes at the same time. And that’s great storytelling.

The other is that Tilly’s sewing skills and eye for fashion can transform the way the women of the town look, but she can’t change what they are really like. A fabulous dress does not make you a nice person. Old secrets are raked up and resolved, but Tilly is not forgiven, and not accepted. Not because there’s something wrong with her, but because there is something wrong – something closed off and soured – about the people of Dungatar.

They forego their opportunity to transform. And so it’s up to Tilly to force that transformation in an incredibly satisfying revenge scene.

The director, Jocelyn Moorhouse is said to have decribed the movie as Clint Eastwood’s “Unforgiven with a sewing machine”, and that’s pretty much perfect.

So if you’re in the mood for a gunslinger in Dior, I highly recommend you go and see The Dressmaker. And, if you really want a treat, read the book too.

An enticing, genre-blending book

Once you start messing with your genres, things can get confusing.

You know what Dr Spengler said – “Don’t cross the streams.”

So should a writer stay well inside the lines, genre-wise? Well, you may also recall that, actually, crossing the streams worked out fine, and I like to think that genres are there to be played with. Still, it can be tricky knowing what to call your chosen genre once you’ve done a bit of blurring and blending.

That’s why my writing inspiration for today comes from Mary Robinette Kowal, whose Glamourist Histories are fabulous historical romance adventures with a dash of magic. Or to keep it simpler, urban historical fantasies. I like it!

I’ll be chairing a panel at GenreCon in Brisbane at the end of the month (you know you want to be there: go on, buy your ticket!) and this very talented author will be on that panel. So I thought I’d better catch up on the series. I had read Shades of Milk and Honey a couple of years ago, but the series is now up to its fourth, so it was time to get a reading wriggle on.

I’ve just finished the third, Without a Summer, and it was delightful. 1816 was called the year without a summer, because a massive volcanic explosion in Indonesia in the previous year continued to mess with global weather patterns, and caused widespread crop failures and heightened social unrest. It also caused bicycles to be invented and the guests at a house party on Lake Geneva to resort to telling each other ghost stories to pass the time, inadvertently creating a whole genre, but that’s another story.

Jane Austen’s books of the time give almost no acknowledgement of the political and social environment in which they occur. Although influenced by Austen, Without a Summer ties the story into the time in the best way, and seamlessly incorporates magic by having public blame for the bad weather fall on the coldmongers, who are able to manipulate folds of glamour to cool things – but not to the extent of ruining the weather.

It was an intelligent, well told story, with engaging, flawed and likable characters – as well as a wonderful villain. I very much enjoyed reading it, and I am looking forward to meeting Mary. In fact, the only flaw with the book was on the otherwise gorgeous cover:

Oh, dear. Enough to make an author weep.

Speaking about an author’s voice

Last week I was fortunate to have the opportunity to meet Annie Barrows, who was a co-author of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. Her new book, The Truth According to Us is set in 1938 in the fictional West Virginia town of Macedonia. It looks at how stories create different versions of the truth, and how the past is mostly stories that have been told over and over.
Annie talked about how, when she studied writing, there was a lot said about an author’s voice – on finding what it was about the way you told a story and the stories you chose to tell, that was unique.
Of course, she threw that out the window when she came to complete the story of Guernsey – she had to tell the story the way her aunt would have told it. As she’d grown up with her aunt and her mother telling her stories , that was something she could do, and do so seamlesly that readers can’t unpick where Mary Ann’s storytelling stopped and Annie’s began.
This got me thinking … you can read a lot about an author’s voice and the cultivation thereof. About how it needs to be originl and authentic. How it should have authority and a distinctive style.
But I think if I sat down at a keyboard to write, while consciously thinking about my voice, I would silence myself. Overanalysis would equal writer’s block. The books that I’ve read, the things that I’ve seen, the people that I’ve known – all of that influences the stories and the way that I tell those stories – but not consciously.
Could I tell someone else’s story their way?
It’s an interesting question. Annie’s experience of finishing her aunt’s book made me wonder if I’m close enough to anyone elses fictional heartland to write with their voice.
I don’t think I could, and that made me admire even more what Annie Barrows has achieved with her writing.

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