The Stan Too'er

Hmm, now that this place is running again, I guess I should tend to the beds a little.

I've long wanted to write something set in the Borders of England and Scotland at the time of the Reivers. Or, rather, a fictionalised version of that setting. Reading Gifts by Ursula le Guin recently, I was struck by how much her setting there mirrored my feelings about the Reivers. And how much of the story revolved around very human things. I loved it. It sparked my memories and made me want to write again.

Whilst trying to do a write-in, it's been since 2016 so I struggled, with a dear friend and proper writer (seriously, her novel carries so much power and journey just her telling me about it makes my head want to burst with the power of it) I ended up having an idea sleet and this was what popped forth - based loosely on an old exhibition in Carlisle's Tullie House on the Reivers, now long gone and forgotten. And, as ever, I barely stayed on the course I set for myself.

Once again, I use the amazing 750words.com to get some attempts at insight, they may help you decide whether or not to read on, I don't know.

Rating: PG (violence[?])

Feeling mostly anxious, and concerned mostly about family - this is nice, sort of what I was shooting for

Mindset: Extrovert - Negative - Certain - Feeling

Time: The Past; Primary Sense: Touch; Us and Them: Them

24 minutes at 44 words per minute

Seeing the End

Oh, well, here I am again. It's been a while. Today I was assaulted by my Prehistoric setting. You may recall, you may not, it was many years ago now, that I was unconvinced by the naming of the women characters in my story. Moon Dancer and Shadow of the Stag made sense to me, their names and the reasons for their names came easily. The coming of age for Moon Dancer natural and flowing as though it arrived in a dream and, very probably, it did. But the rest? The tribe were not real to me despite my best efforts, I brought them forth with effort as though passing something uncomfortable. I wanted to do right, I could manage the NSFW section - that came fully-formed one evening - but the important parts? No.

One of the aspects of this, it's always been there, is dissatisfaction with using English for the setting - it doesn't feel right. I am doing my best to restrict vocabulary, to carry that Prehistoric feeling and not diminish meaning, rather to force the reader to see the connections between things that the society I write about does in their language. I also very deliberately looked into Urdu for some of the words: mother, sister. Proto-Indo-European for blood. Variations for aunties (something missing in my first run through of attempting this side of things here).

Over the last few days I found myself dwelling on the coming of age for girls, the point at which everything shifts in perspective and the biology of that. And I thought about how our society forces fear and shame into proceedings, how that is reinforced in so many areas of the Patriarchy and also on the research that shows that the first calendars were created by and for women. The primacy of that power, for power it is, and the fear it evokes in the men. What if men were not in charge as they are not in my Prehistoric setting and, instead, a community of women devised ways of coming to terms with things?

My desire to turn this into more than a setting, to conjure forth a plot, remains however and so the scene is bent to the will of the direction. One thing is clear though, I have a better naming system, one that feels much more natural and realistic. One in which the fear of the Patriarchy may have sprung from, for men can destroy but only women can dabble in the forces of creation and death as easily as preparing food or hunting prey or gathering shelter.

Analysis once again provided by 750words.com that, if you haven't already, you should sign up for.

Rating: PG-13 (violence and sexual-content[?])

Feeling mostly upset, and concerned mostly about death - well, I'd quibble that, but I can see how it comes from the text, see what you think.

Mindset: Extrovert - Negative - Certain - Thinking

Time: The Past; Primary Sense: Touch; Us and Them: You - interesting!

46 minutes at 40 words per minute

It's Psychological

Back in the saddle again, and not even side-saddle, but a new edit of those first paragraphs of the nano attempt from last year. I'm hoping this will help me get started again. There aren't many huge changes but I hope it's easier to read, has less run on sentences and fewer repeated words.

Analysis is intriguing and is from 750words.com as ever.


Rating: PG-13 (swearing, sexual content[?] and violence[?])

Feeling mostly Affectionate[?], and concerned mostly about Home - intriguing.

Mindset: Extrovert - Negative - Certain - Feeling

Time: The Past; Primary Sense: Hearing; Us and Them: Them

40 minutes at 24 words per minute

Rabbit in the Rain

The Old Road when it was new. Looking North.

Another section of post-apocalyptica. I don't think this is going to turn into a project just yet, I have too much on, and I've got side-tracked (as I do) by language and how it would have changed since my imagined apocalypse without making it too difficult to follow and understand. Also, trying to remember slang from places of my youth actually proved more difficult than I thought it would be. If ever I do something with these sections then I suspect I may need to revisit the setting and maybe change the Old Road to a route that crosses the Pennines and ends up somewhere in Yorkshire.

Anyway, I tried to write a proper discussion and I'm reasonably pleased with how the rhythm works even if the exact wording is a bit clunky, it is a first draft with little in the way of revision written solely to keep my hand in whilst I wait to be allowed to continue marking. Oh, and it may even help to pass the Bechdel test while not being overtly 'breaking the mould' in a way that would put people off.

The Old Road heading south when new, from the air.

As ever, analysis supplied by the brilliant www.750words.com


Rating: PG (violence[?])

Feeling mostly Affectionate, and concerned mostly about Eating and drinking - well, obviously.

Mindset: Extrovert - Positive - Uncertain - Thinking

Time: The Past; Primary Sense: Touch; Us and Them: Them

29 minutes at 38 words per minute

So NSFW it's untrue

I recommend that you don't read this at all if you are in a place that would track your internet usage. I haven't written for a while, work stuff, and I wanted to get back into the swing of things. I also wanted to get back to St Avril and, obviously, that didn't happen. Since when do I write what I actually set out to write? Instead I ended up thinking of the Prehistoric setting and trying again to get into the head of my female protagonist. I think I have Moon Dancer now and I think I know how he works and what I would like to do with his part of the story, at least insofar as I understand what the story is.

No, with the females I am less convinced. So... I wrote my very first sex scene. Well, no, not quite. I wrote one at the age of 16, when on exchange in Germany, and as angsty teen it was was unrealistic and ended in a murder. The woman kills the man, just because. I never did work out why, it was brutal and angsty and... well, I was a teen. Anyway, it turns out to be really difficult to write feelings in sex in actual words. I did my best.

Rating: R (sexual content, violence[?] and swearing[?]) The first I get, the rest I don't.

Feeling mostly upset(?) in a dead heat with happy, and concerned mostly about religion

Mindset: Extrovert - Positive - Uncertain - Thinking

Time: The Past; Primary Sense: Touch; Us and Them: Them

37 minutes at 44 words per minute

Group Dynamic

Well, despite having some big discussions with some friends in real life concerning the non-existence of left and right in aboriginal tribes; the harmonics of circular breathing when playing the saxophone and Turkish having two past tenses for events seen by oneself and events that were not, I ended up writing the next section of St Avril.

In my original story there was a single protagonist. However, one of the main issues that story always had was the boredom in the beginning despite the threat. For reasons that will become patently obvious, the threat could never be too close, and so a sense of urgency was lost. The mystery was not enough to carry the early scenes on its own either. Also, I once ran the story as a form of role playing game with some friends, who theoretically gave me more characters to play with. In the spirit of using my writing time to play with things a little more I decided to expand the character list for this piece and came up with this. It follows on from this post.

I have no idea if I have managed to maintain that post's strength of voice.

Analysis courtesy of 750words.com.

Rating: PG (sexual content) - well, probably yes.

Feeling mostly upset and concerned mostly about success - interesting.

Mindset: Extrovert - Negative - Uncertain - Thinking (but only just in each case, apart from thinking)

Time: The Past; Primary Sense: Touch (no option for smell then); Us and Them: Them

41 minutes (39 actually typing) at 39 words per minute

First Draft: An Attack

I was feeling a bit dry tonight for my nightly attempt to write. So, I started up some Shamen and East 17 (yes, so sue me) and tried to write what came to me. The strange wolf-suited people came back and... well, let's just say that this is probably my worst writing yet on this project. I think I have a handle on the relationship between my female protagonist and her companion better now, but trying to avoid cliche and the modern trappings of gender roles was... more difficult than I thought.

Really struggling with names too. I don't want 'feminine' names per se but I also want to stress the differences in roles within the group. We know that my males have a coming of age where they choose a new name, what about females? I suspect that 'first blood' would be the coming of age... I think I need to write one of those and see what happens actually...

It's been relatively easy to write a more sensitive male character - I just go through ideals - but writing female characters that have agency in the midst of an attack is hard without making the female characters fit tropes for male characters. The little I've read of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has warned me off that as a means of writing 'real' females. Equally, in avoiding fighting and showing awe and fear at the command of fire in this scene, it seemed as though I was writing women that needed saving - which was not the point.

Why is this so hard?

Analysis courtesy of 750words.com - who probably deserve a bit of money from me by now...

Rating: PG - violence (check)

Feeling mostly upset, with anxious following, and concerned mostly about relationships

Mindset: Introvert - Negative - Uncertain - Thinking
I think if the last one had been Feeling I would have nailed this

Time: The Past; Primary Sense: Hearing; Us and Them: Them

29 minutes at 37 words per minute.

Secrets that men keep

Tonight I fill in a section. I realised today that Moon Dancer doesn't eat or drink on his quest for about four days. Okay, that's fine, I guess, but there's no way he can't drink in that time. He'd be mad with thirst, something I haven't even mentioned. Okay, the lack of hunger is fine, I guess, but the lack of thirst? Unforgivable!

So, tonight I thought to simply edit that section a little and then move onto new stuff. Instead we have an additional discussion in which I learned more about how males operate in this society I am creating. Also, a little about how the sexes are viewed by men, I hope that came out right. Anyway, another conversation that I hope retains enough of the poetry of previous entries to stand with them.

Analysis from 750words.com as always:

Rating: PG (sexual content) - not sure where that is. I guess one of them is naked?

Feeling mostly self expressive and concerned mostly with religion

Mindset: Introvert - Positive - Uncertain - Thinking (very male?)

Time: the Future; Primary Sense: Sight (damn); Us and Them: You

22 minutes at 36 words per minute

Shadow of the Stag

So, apparently I am attacked once again by the Prehistoric thing. And tonight I was shown how a boy becomes a man. I was also shown a little bit of the nomenclature that I had been so missing. Up until tonight I had no concept of the naming of people. I now have some knowledge of naming and how it is going to go, some idea of how the society works and, apparently, two ways in which the males of this setting can be aligned. It follows on from this post.

There is a poetry in this section, I hope, certainly I felt it as I wrote. I was writing mainly to the tune of Victoria Lucas by Moby, and that may show through too. For at work today I had a moment alone with no one else around and I danced in a way that I haven't for a good few years. It felt good to dance. It felt good and probably looked terrible. But it felt good. That may have influenced what I wrote tonight.

Analysis, as ever, from 750words.com who are brilliant. If sometimes a little strange in their analysis.

Rating: PG-13 for swearing, sexual content and violence (I'm going to go ahead and say here that I see none of that in what I wrote).

Feeling mostly self expressive (with upset as a side-order) and concerned mostly with religion (with leisure as a side order)

Mindset: Extrovert - Positive - Certain - Thinking

Time: The Past; Primary Sense: Hearing; Us and Them: You (with a side order of them)

36 minutes at 43 words per minute.

St Avril: A Sci Fi interlude?

Well, for one reason or another, the Prehistoric stuff isn't flowing and, instead, I was set upon by a rewriting of an introduction to a sci-fi story I once wrote. Back in 2001 I had a very vivid dream about a psychic who wakes up without knowledge of what is going on. Of course, I wrote it down and reworked it over the next six years into a finished novella-style piece about 45k words in length. And there it has lain ever since.

Tonight, the opening attacked me in first person. So I wrote it.

Analysis courtesy of 750words.com, please support what they do, because it is awesome.

Rating: PG-13 for sexual content (bu-wha?) and violence (again, bu-wha?)

Feeling mostly upset (apparently) and concerned mostly with money (huh?) or eating and drinking(?)

Mindset: Introvert - Positive - Certain - Thinking

Time: The Past; Primary Sense: Hearing (hmm); Us and Them: Them (surprising, it's in first person)

27 minutes at 54 words per minute

Giving Birth

This is probably the closest I can ever come to articulating birth in a way that actually makes any sense and draws on the experience of a home birth with the Boy. It is not perfect, one of the greatest issues I had with this little exercise was just how much of birth is communicated through sound effects and feelings that have no words. It really showed the limitations of modern English in describing such an experience. Sadly I lack the knowledge to know if this is different in other linguistic traditions or if older languages were better at it, but it did bring home the problems that I am going to have with a Prehistoric setting.

Namely, the idea that I am trying to put across here is a society that is very alien to our own. There are aspects of that society that I confess I feel are superior to our own and there are aspects that I feel are not. I want it to be a balanced experience for the reader. It is not a preachy thing that I wish to create but something sufficiently different that it becomes curious.

In many ways it has commonalities with the work that I did creating Socialist Britain for Regarding Bakunin in that I want to present a generally positive alternative without it being so uselessly utopian that it can be dismissed. I want to create a realistic world where I am not blinded by my own bias and prejudices but, instead, am free to explore those differences and those positives that I feel are there in a way that other people can make their own mind up. I am fully prepared, for example, in good science fiction to take a positive and paint it negative or vice versa - as it should be - and I want readers to feel the same way with my work. I should not be telling them what to think, merely providing the scenes and the story so that they can decide for themselves.

Analysis courtesy of 750words.com - if you are a writer and not using this site then what are you doing?

Rating: PG-13 for sexual content (maybe) and violence (no, really not seeing this)

Feeling mostly happy (a first) and concerned mostly with eating and drinking (ah ha ha)

Mindset: Extrovert - Positive (75%+) - Certain - Feeling (50%+)

Time: Past (60%) and future (30%); Primary Sense: Touch; Us and Them: Them

36 minutes at 33 words per minute.

I still have no idea how I'm going to name these people or what to do with the dialogue. You'll see what I mean if you read on!

Prehistoric stuff part 2

I still don't have a title for any of this, much less an idea where it is going. I think that someone has to die and then we have a murder mystery style plot going on, but I really have no idea. Also, I don't really want him to be the main character if I can help it. Him going off and doing a murder mystery plot would be... well, a bit patriarchal, no?

Again some stats for you, courtesy of 750words.com:

Rating: PG-13 - sexual content and violence (still not seeing the violence)

Feeling mostly affectionate and concerned mostly about religion (but only just)

Mindset: Extrovert - Positive - Certain - Feeling

Time: Past; Primary Sense: Touch; Us and them: Them

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.