On war



A girl plays with a doll in Rhiems, 1917

All the photos in this post are contemporary. None have been colourised. They were taken in colour between 1915 and 1917.

So it turns out that my NaNo effort is mainly focussed on the war that I created for William to grow up in. When I originally concieved of it I had intended that war to play a relatively minor role in the plot. It was there, as in Hitler: the Rise of Evil to provide a backdrop to some minor characterisation and to provide a defeat for the country that William hails from. More to the point, I'm not a fan of novels about war.

No, wait, scratch that.

German soldiers in the ruins of a village in the Somme, 1916

Novels about war inevitably do one of two things, in general, they either romanticise the war involved (The Last Ace by Henry Ziebel, I'm looking at you; anything by Harold Coyle or Tom Clancy, you are as much at fault) or they harp on too much about the human nature of the soldiers involved to actually get to grips with their stories (the latter books of the Sharpe series by Bernard Cornwell, for example; or anything by Larry Bond). All of them look at men at war. All of them are men.

That said, I have read some other books that do a better job. One Spring in Picardy was such a book, as was The Middle Parts of Fortune. Both of these are First World War novels, the latter was written by someone who served in the First World War and the former by a man whose father served and whose uncles all served too. Basically, they knew their stuff. I get the impression that the other authors don't.

What makes me rant so? Simply put - I am a student of the First World War. It occurs to me that what I know of Hitler's experience in the First World War does not gel well with representations that I have seen on screen. Equally, the experiences in All Quiet on the Western Front and the various adaptations do not always fit with what I know from other sources. I remember reading Tony Ashworth's book on trench culture and the letters in books like War of Words and Somme and being completely bowled over by what people said at the time. Lyn MacDonald's excellent series of interviews, though heavily tainted by her own views and the established ideas of AJP Taylor, were magnificent for me as they contextualised a war primarily from the view of those that fought in it.

German soldiers in a well-revetted trench, 1915

As a consequence I have rejected both the poets' views and those of the historians who seek to generalise it or to find in it some exposition of human frailty and the futility of the war. I view the First World War as an aberration, but it was not futile. It cannot be futile. To say so would be to dismiss all those who took part and ignore the effects of what they did. Indeed, when I read All Quiet on the Home Front I discovered yet another angle on the stories from the time.


Rations in a French communication trench, 1917

All of this has clearly been brewing for much longer than I thought. Which was why, when the time came, I ended up writing over 40k words on the First World War analogue in my story. Because the record needed to be set straight. Because such a conflict deserved more than to be a vehicle for the rise of one character. Because wars are what they are and they need their own space to be fully appreciated for what they are. I did not want my novel to become a war novel. I have no direct experience of any such thing, nor can I piggy-back on anyone I know who does have experience. But, oddly, I could draw on my own experiences to write it.

This is strange, and I suppose connected to 'writing what you know', because I know nothing of war, but I am an outsider. I know little of relationships (my own experiences are quite limited) but much of awkwardness. I know nothing of fearing for one's life but much of adapting fear to fit the circumstances one finds oneself in.  I hope, therefore, that I am less of a Clancy and more of a MacDonald or even a Faulks (though his Birdsong was more a piece of erotica disguised as a novel about tunnelling in the First World War).

Which is why, when the time comes, my novel must be published under a female name. I want the novel to bring the war to life in the same way as these colour images do and to do so in a way that surprises people. So, no, I shan't be publishing under a male name to get readers. My concept is served best by publishing as a female.

Novelling

I have a confession to make.

I have never actually finished any writing of any length. I have countless short stories that I have finished but they were written between the ages of about ten and twenty. They are not the most edifying of things. After I finished my degree, well, I haven't really been in a place where writing short stories would work.  In that, well, those stories were... bad.

So, in 2006, after much fruitless furtling about trying to write an actual first draft of anything, I tried my hand at NaNo.  I wrote 85,000 words plus about 21,000 words that I deemed unfit to be in the final project. But it was not a novel. It was unfinished and I had no real idea where I was going with it all. Anastasia may or may not have had imaginary friends and may or may not have had her memories altered by some shadowy government agency (or not) for some reason. My plotting remained as amorphous as that. 8,000 words were devoted, in one instance, to her waking up routine.

In 2007 I tried again, but got about 12,000 words in before the lack of plot killed me and the lack of characters became a major issue. 2008 was two projects, both very boring with no plot and no real attempts at characterisation. In 2009 I actually wrote something that had been fulminating since 2007 and got about 26,000 words done. However, despite having a much more vibrant setting than I was used to and some actual real characters I still had no plot for them to live. As a consequence it remains totally unfinished because I have no clue what's supposed to happen there (that is, what I fill that vibrant setting with). In 2010 I tried the same setting. Again the lack of plot killed it at around 18,000 words. In 2011 real life prevented any writing at all for most of the year as I struggled with my day-job and the day-job won.

Now, this year is different. No, I haven't finished the novel at all. However, I know where it is going. I have a character and a plot that live and a setting, though not as vibrant and real as the one from 2009, that will stand the story I want to tell there. And I do want to tell that story. I am maybe half way through that story, I don't know (the war that takes up so much of this year's project was planned to be a short three or four vignettes, so about 4,000 words, and is currently about 38,000 words), but I feel happier with this than any of the rest of my projects.

Why the wall of text? I told my mother that I "won NaNo" and, after explaining it to her (again), she replied "Well, you never finish anything, do you?" Thanks, Mum. My father was interested until I explained that there was no judging and then sort of let it drop.

I have a reputation, you see. :)