The Curse of Presentism - today's eBook Festival post.

Cover by textile artist Alison Bell

All this week, I'm resident on this year's Edinburgh eBook Festival where I'm blogging about historical fiction. Here's an extract from today's post - but do visit the festival site here, to read the rest of this post. There are four more to follow about aspects of historical fiction -  and a great many good things besides for the whole month of August, including free books and insights from an excellent cross section of writers.

Thanks to Valerie Laws of Authors Electric for helping me out with the term presentism. I wasn’t aware of it, but it neatly encapsulates a point I want to make – and it seems like as good a beginning as any to this residency. Here’s a useful Wikipedia definition: Presentism is a mode of literary or historical analysis in which present-day ideas and perspectives are anachronistically introduced into depictions or interpretations of the past. 

A quick scan online will reveal plenty of blog posts and other pieces pontificating (with some justification) about anachronisms in historical fiction as well as in film and television programmes. Sometimes they can be deliberate. The judicious use of anachronism in movies like A Knight’s Tale where the fuss and adoration surrounding participants in these Mediaeval tournaments is beautifully paralleled by that accorded to gladiatorial athletes like Ice Hockey players, manages to be both accurate and illustrative of a genuine truth about the times. 

We recognise the parallel and extrapolate from it. It’s also enjoyable and entertaining. There are novels as well as movies where these deliberate anachronisms are used to illuminate some kind of parallel between past and present culture and society. In many ways they involve the opposite of presentism, using present day ideas and preoccupations to elucidate the past.

Casual anachronisms do cause problems for various reasons, the main ones being that they look like mistakes, they look like inadequate research and they can pull readers right out of their willing suspension of disbelief in the world of the book. The trouble is that we come across rather a lot of pieces of historical fiction where the author has been meticulous in excluding all possible anachronisms – and we still don’t believe a word of them. We don’t believe in the world of the book. And that is always going to be a problem for readers, arguably an even bigger problem than the occasional inadvertent anachronism.

You can read the rest of today's post on the Edinburgh eBook Festival site.

For this week as well, there will be a couple of special offers on two of my own historical novels: The Amber Heart, set in mid nineteenth century Poland, and Bird of Passage, in which the story spans the years from the 1950s to the present day. Does this qualify as historical? I think so, since some of the issues explored in the book have a very definite historical dimension. Do feel free to argue with me if you disagree - and if you download the novels, you can decide whether or not I follow my own advice! 

AUGUST WAS A VERY BUSY MONTH!

Carving by Alan Lees

For all kinds of reasons, August was such a busy month for me that I've been neglecting my blog. I found myself blogging about being a mid-list writer for the astonishingly varied and informative Edinburgh eBook Festival, attending the excellent and entertaining Inverness Book Festival with Lin Anderson and Sara Sheridan, to speak about indie publishing and promotion, while a week later, I was on a Society of Authors panel at the Edinburgh International Book Festival talking about 'Being a Writer in the Digital Age.' This was a bit contentious, but only insofar as one of the speakers found himself playing devil's advocate - and to be honest, I'm glad he did. Nothing like a little grit in the oyster to produce a few pearls of wisdom, and as one member of the audience commented afterwards 'It wasn't totally one sided, which proved to be a very good thing.' I agree. There is a debate to be had, and we should be having it - courteously and productively.

 I heard later that one of the panel had to put up with a certain amount of online abuse and I'm sorry about that. We need to be able to talk frankly about writing and publishing. We need to be able to talk about the challenges facing all of us. If we can talk about collaboration and making the best of things for all of us, so much the better.

Edinburgh is a blast at Festival time. We managed to see The Tobacco Merchant's Lawyer, by Iain Heggie, with John Bett as the redoubtable Enoch Dalmellington. This is a marvellous piece of theatre - funny and satirical and wholly entertaining and I'm so glad to have seen it at last. Every time I see a play as good as this one, I have a terrible longing to get back to writing for the stage - and yet taking anything at all from page to production these days is fraught with so many problems that - after all these years and with a good track record - I do, kind of, find myself running out of steam with that particular aspect of my creativity! I had this conversation with somebody only a few weeks ago who told me that the only way was to 'get a group of people together and do it yourself' and I thought - yes. You're right. It's the only way. But do I have that kind of energy now? All these years after my first play was staged?  I don't think so. Besides, I have so many other fish to fry, you wouldn't believe.

Meanwhile, enough of the excitement. (And believe me, there has been a LOT of excitement of which more in due course) I really need to quit monkeying around and get some writing done - fiction, that is.

PS We also spent an hour in the company of the Amazing Bubble Man. You can watch him on YouTube here. Wonderful stuff.