Joy to the Person of My Love

How I came to write a historical novel: a story in itself.

Joy to the Person of My Love is the title of the historical novel I'm writing. It's taken from a 17th century Scottish ballad about unrequited love and I think it suits the novel. Euphemia Innes known as Effie is the protagonist in the story. I chose the name Euphemia because I came across several ancestors with this name and it seems to be peculiar to Scotland in earlier times. Little did I know at the time that Sir Walter Scott had a heroine called Effie in his novel, The Heart of Midlothian. So Effie seems to be a good name for a protagonist.

As mentioned in an earlier post, it began through my researching family history. What stories can we put together from the list of names on a census record or the stories of village life in a Kirk Session, a sort of ecclesiastical court in the Presbyterian church? The church was very prominent in the lives of the villagers with people, mostly women, being brought before the session to confess to having sexual relations outside of marriage.

A session helped clarify the parentage of one daughter in an ancestor's household. She was listed as a daughter in census records but I couldn't find her birth records. Through the kirk sessions I found she was actually the illegitimate daughter of my great great grandfather by another woman. The woman must have died, because the wife, Margaret Brown Mitchell, ended up raising her along with her 11 legitimate children. Usually an illegitimate child is brought up by the grandparents, so I don't know the reason why Isabella ended up in her father's household. In fact, not only did Margaret raise her husband's child, but also three illegitimate grandchildren. The two daughters went on to marry other men but, as seems to be the case at that time, the new husband did not want to raise another man's child. And this happened even a generation later, even for the son through a legal marriage whose father had died; no blended families in those days. 

Overlooking Pittenweem

I wondered what was it like to be illegitimate in a small community in the 1800s. Rather than fictionalize this history, I decided to set a fictionalized story in the village where my grandmother was born. And, of course, I dramatized things a lot more. But from research on the village, added the idea of a war conflict that would affect the protagonist after reading that John Paul Jones bombarded nearby Anstruther in 1779. (Pittenweem)  I needed one of the characters to be press ganged so chose the 1812 war with America because press gangs were more prevalent at that time and, in fact, were one of the reasons that America declared war on Britain. So the story grew from church records, the history of the village itself, and the history of the 1812 war. 

Superstition seems to be deeply ingrained in the Scottish psyche, especially in fishing villages where the men were subjected to dangers from the sea. My mother and grandmother were particularly superstitious about certain things: no white flowers in the house, stirring the porridge widdershins (anti-clockwise), etc. Pittenweem had several witch hunts over the years. The last witch, Jean Cornfoot, met a terrible death. So I brought in an element of superstition to add to Effie's burden of illegitimacy. I also included a little bit of the power of second sight; it seems to be quite common in Celtic lands though it was hard to convey that the protagonist didn't have strong psychic powers to turn the story into a fantasy; you know, just your normal premonitions.  

One thing that readers have a hard time with is the language. I chose to write in modified Scottish dialect, not too broad, but able to be understood easily. Since part of the story focused on the protagonist's becoming more educated, I wanted to have a difference in language between the common folk and the more educated. However, there were sometimes words that people had a hard time understanding. (I hope only at first!) Wynd is one example. It's a small alleyway that in Pittenweem goes from the High Street down to the harbor. Pittenweem and most of the Fife villages are built on slopes with everything converging onto the harbor. Wynd is not just a term used in the fishing villages of Fife but in other places such as Edinburgh. You'd think the alleyways would be winding, but they're not. There are also closes, little courtyards that can be glimpsed through tunnel-like passageways. 

  

Monastery ruins attacked by Vikings
 in 800 AD

Kirkhaven harbor

Isle of May from the boat

Ruined beacon; it was a lot taller

In writing a historical novel research gives you an "embarrassment of riches" so that it's hard not to "information dump" but to try to weave history seamlessly into the story. A couple of chapters is set on the Isle of May which has a rich history and I was tempted to information dump mostly because it's such a little known place. I spent a day roaming over the little island. It was out of season and there were only about six passengers on the boat from Anstruther so I was able to wander around on my own drinking up the atmosphere of the place. What lonely lives the lighthouse keepers led. I was hoping to see a puffin or two but they had already migrated as had most of the birds so it was quiet without the voices of seabirds and that added to the sense of isolation. There were some shags (cormorants) strung out on a rocky promontory and a flock of gannets flew over from Bass Rock. I did see a few seals but only from a distance. It's easy to research places because of Google Earth, but actually being on the island gave me a better sense of the smell and feel of the place. I would never have felt the spongy yet rocky pathways that must have come from hundreds of years of decaying vegetation.

The book needs some revisions but it's basically finished. I want to move on and start a sequel. There are still a few loose ends I need to tie up. And, because I've been so involved with Effie, Calum and Davy on and off for about four years but with full focus for about a year, it's hard to say goodbye to them.

In writing the novel, it really has given me new skills in writing the biographies, my original goal. But, I would never have thought that through this process I would actually finish a novel, start another one, and consider publication. And best of all, Serendipity: meeting new people, making new friends through critique groups and writing conferences. I thought, as I think most people think, that writing a novel is something that you do on your own---the artist in the attic---though there is an aspect of that, but really it's a community thing. I'm happy to see others in my critique groups succeed and help with critiquing their novels. And they encourage me more than they realize. Thanks: Daphne, Laura, Meg, Michelle B, Michelle S, and Mikki

-oOo-

If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn’t matter a damn how you write.
– Somerset Maugham