English Christmas through History

The Writing Life: A Passion for Christmas through History
posted by Donna Fletcher Crow

When asked to give advice for up-coming writers the first words out of my mouth are usually, "Write from your passion." Few things in my career give a better example of that than do my Christmas novels. 

I love Christmas! I love English history! I love novels! So what greater joy than to be able to combine these loves in telling stories that give us glimpses of English Christmases through the years and have allowed me to call on my own experiences in forming the stories, such as my first English Christmas in a Cotswold village in 2000.

Glastonbury, my epic of the Christian history of England, includes a Christmas story. After all, one could hardly tell 1500 years of history without including Christmas. As a matter of fact, the book opens with a druid on Glastonbury Tor observing the Star of Bethlehem.

It is in the section on Norman England, however, that we experience a full, Medieval Christmas when young Bors returns home to the manor house from schooling in the monastery. (Although not as young as my grandson when he slew his first dragon.) The full Twelve Days of Christmas are meticulously observed, complete with yule log, wassail, a roasted boar’s head, a Lord of Misrule, and mummers performing St. George and the Dragon.

Christmas celebrations in England became more subdued after the Reformation with suspicions that many of the former festivities were pagan. In 1647, Cromwell’s Puritan government actually canceled Christmas. Not only were traditional expressions of merriment strictly forbidden, but also shops were ordered to stay open, churches were closed and ministers arrested for preaching on Christmas day.

By the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries, although the traditions of a full-blown Dickensian Christmas had not yet been introduced (many of them started by German-born Prince Albert) festivities had been restored. My Where There is Love series encompasses six novels of love and faith—stories of real people and stirring historic events. Where Love Restores, book 4, recounts Granville Ryder’s struggle to find his place in his illustrious family, in God’s work and in Georgiana’s heart. The book takes the reader through the seasons of a late Regency year, including Christmas on an English country estate which included a fox hunt and hunt ball, constructing an English kissing ring, midnight Christmas Eve service, and alms-giving on Boxing Day. All as it was celebrated in Georgiana's home, Badminton House, which I had the delight of visiting many years ago.

For an out-of-the ordinary contemporary English Christmas I draw on the Christmas I spent in an English monastery “helping” my daughter prepare for her Epiphany wedding. Although, I hope I wasn’t quite as pushy as my heroine’s mother.

An All-Consuming Fire, book 5 in my Monastery Murders, finds Felicity and Antony happily planning a Christmas wedding in the monastery. It’s all idyllic until Felicity’s over-bearing mother arrives and tries to turn the whole event into a royal wedding. And Antony is drafted to narrate a television documentary on the English mystics. And then Felicity takes on the challenge of directing a Christmas pageant for Kirkthorpe’s troubled youth on a long-disused stage in an abandoned quarry at the back of the monastery grounds.

At least most of the vexing disruptions occurring on the filming locations are miles away from the Community of the Transfiguration. Until the threats move closer. Close enough to threaten the joy of Felicity and Antony's Christmas wedding.

I hope that one of my stories might help enrich your Christmas season with an understanding of past traditions and provide a few leisure hours spent reading by the light of your Christmas tree. I’d love to hear of some of your favorite traditions—whether from history or all-new.

See more at: https://www.donnafletchercrow.com/

Can doubt play a positive role in your writing life?

If you’re a writer, you’ll have doubt. We all do. It comes with the territory.

What amazes me is that even the most successful writers go through it. I was listening to the most recent NovelMarketing podcast and Jim Rubart made mention of the fact that his latest novel – his 10th – has been hard. He’s wondered if he can actually write and doubting if he’s up to it. Jim’s an amazing author with half-a-library’s worth of books with his name on them, but he’s still saying he experiences doubt.

I’m going through another phase of doubt too. I’ve just had the rush and enormous excitement of signing a contract and working on my debut novel with my publisher. The edits. The cover design. The marketing ideas. It’s been amazing, and a sense of achievement. Recognition. Validation that the doubt was wrong.

Then it came time to pitch some more ideas. The doubt returned quickly. Very quickly. My feeling of success was still warm but the icy hand of doubt came back.

I tried to shake off the doubt – we all do, don’t we? – but then I wondered if there was another way to think about it.

So I was thinking about the role of doubt in a writer’s life. It’s often spoken about as a negative, and there are a gazillion blog posts about overcoming it so I, in typical contrarian fashion, wondered what sort of positive role it might play.

I didn’t want to write another blog post about “tips on getting rid of doubt”, so I thought about how doubt might actually help me.

1. Doubt makes me challenge what I write. Let’s face it, I’m the worst person to evaluate one of my own ideas – either in a positive or negative light. For me, when I doubt my story because I wonder if that plotline is derivative or just lame, it forces me to rethink it, and strengthen it. I doubt a character is likeable, so I examine him. It drives me to work harder to make him quirkier, more engaging and memorable.
2. Doubt helps me check my research and presentation – research or grammar. I doubt I’m right about the details, so I check the Chicago Manual of Style (my marketplace is in the US), and I get it right. I don’t presume, and therefore make silly mistakes. 
3. Doubt is a part of the fun. I don’t know if this idea is going to get over the line or not. It’s exciting while waiting (he says, knowing he often thinks otherwise in the middle of the wait). 
4. Doubt keeps me reliant on God. This is a big one when you’ve just had a success. When well-meaning people (who are clueless about the writing journey, let's be honest) start to tell you that you’ll retire on your “author money” in the next five minutes, that doubt over your next idea – and the thought that my first novel was just lightning in a bottle – keeps me leaning into God for whatever happens next. 

So that’s what I’ve learned about doubt and me. What role does doubt play in your writing life?

Being a Prolific Writer

The word 'prolific' is one I'd love to be labelled with... Oh look, she's turned out another bestseller book! What a prolific writer she is...

I've aimed at ridiculous wordcounts per day, I've pantsed and plotted and settled into a happy combination of both. I've changed my sleeping habits, tried NaNoWriMo, read a ton of blogs from writers I love and respect and so on and so on. 

The sad, dismal truth fact I'm currently facing, is that if you give me an hour a day, or a few uninterrupted hours in a day, my output will probably be about the same.

Maybe that will change, I live in hope.

In the meantime, I'm borrowing a lesson from my middle child's induction ceremony into High School a few years back. They start the event with a single torch burning on stage. All the new Grade 8's lead in in the dark. As you can see from the gallery above, the prefects start by lighting their candles and passing on the flame. The transition from a deeply dark hall to one lit by many individual lights was moving to say the least. The message was clear - your individual contribution counts.

How does that make me a more prolific writer? It doesn't. But what it does do, is make me value each word that willingly joins the ranks of the little army of words that make up my story. I only need 75 000 of them to show up at the the right time, and I'm done. 

Do I cringe at 500 word days? Nope. Do I cringe at the 23 words I manage to string together before I'm called to go see my 10's handstand against the cupboard / latest cartwheel / back bend  - AGAIN? Not any more.

All that matters is that I'm adding words. I will not waste energy on beating myself up for not being prolific. Maybe, just maybe... prolificacy (yes, I did just make that up) will creep up on me as I quietly grow my word count. Until then, I'll soldier on, adding each precious word as it shows up.

If you have found any magic formula for upping your daily count, I'd love to hear about it. It probably won't work on me, but go ahead and share anyway!

Dianne J. Wilson writes novels from her hometown in East London, South Africa, where she lives with her husband and three daughters. She is writing a three book YA series, Spirit Walker, with Pelican / Harbourlight. Affinity (book 1), releases on the 8th of June 2018.

Finding Mia is available from Amazon, Pelican / Harbourlight, Barnes & Noble and other bookstores.

Shackles is available as a free ebook from Amazon & Smashwords.

Find her on Facebook, Twitter and her sporadic blog Doodles.

Behind the Scenes by Janice L. Dick

Before I became a writer, I thought real writers sat in their ergonomic chairs and wrote every day on their top-of-the-line computers in their creatively designed offices. Then I joined a group of professional Christian writers and found out that life interrupts even the most dedicated. None of us lives outside the interruptions of illness, family dysfunction, financial stress, and so many other things that are common to those of us who live on this planet.

Everyone finds trials difficult. Our responses show what we’re made of. They reveal what’s most important to us.

For example, one writer I know wrote a young adult novel—about a teenage girl whose mother was dying of cancer—while sitting in the hospital with her husband who was dying of the same disease.

Another writer spent his time in the emergency room trying to imprint on his brain what he was going through so he could use it in his writing.

Many writers use personal crises as fodder for their stories.

I’m facing my own personal test right now. My mom, who came to live with us seven months ago, suffered a heart attack recently and has been fading ever since. As I write these words, I’m sitting beside her bed in the Palliative Care room of our local hospital. My routine has been completely derailed. My brain is mush. I almost missed this deadline. I know I could have asked someone else to step into this spot for me, but I thought there might be something I could share that would encourage you either as a reader or as a writer.

During this challenging time, I have kept up the bare minimum of blogging for my website, because I made a commitment to myself and to my readers to do so. Other than that, I am taking a sabbatical from my writing to care for Mom.

Writers are real people who face daily challenges like everyone else. We differ in personality, commitment, values, energy level. We must all respond as we can in the situations that come our way, and I do not judge anyone for the decisions they make. I didn’t expect to be sitting in the hospital with a loved one. I certainly didn’t think I had the strength or cared enough to write this blog at this time.

We often don’t know ourselves until we are faced with the test. The most important thing to remember is that you are not alone. Our God is a great God and He gives grace as we need it.

Has your life been interrupted?

Deadlines looming? No sleep ahead for you? Read this.

 

If you are a writer with a day job, a family, a life (or any combination of the three) you will find that deadlines have a way of ganging up on you. For those times when you’re faced with multiple due dates in the same week and feel no sleep is the only answer, here are some tips to get through with your sanity and relationships intact.

Before: Prepare

1. Recruit your support team.

Or at the very least, warn those at home! The people you live with are the ones who will be seeing less of you, picking up the slack on the jobs you normally do and putting up with your sleep-deprived mood-swings. If you can, give them a start and finish date so that they know for how long life will be weird. Plan a special catch up treat for all of you on the other side. Help them understand why meeting these deadlines will not only be good for you, but for them too.

2. Postpone and plan.

Put off anything that is not essential until after you’ve met the crunch. Make a list of all the things you won’t be getting to and keep it in a safe place. This is an important step! Use this time to get to know your natural rhythms. What time of day are you most productive? When does your energy lag? Pay close attention, and learn the patterns so that you can make the most of them while clobbering your deadlines.

3. Organize your environment.

Now is a good time to throw out unnecessary clutter, tidy your desk drawers, and pack away anything that you won’t need. A cluttered work area can be overwhelming when you are tired, but keeping your space tidy during your deadline crunch will help your mind to feel ordered and function more efficiently.

It is a proven fact that our brains don’t operate at 100% when we haven’t had sufficient sleep, but there are ways to work around this. Build in backup plans. An easy example is to have a specific place to always hang your car keys. This will save you hours of frustrated searching when your fuzzy brain can’t quite remember. If you are normally a messy person, train yourself to live tidily. It may seem like a small thing, but the point is to make your life as simple as possible while you focus on your deadlines. Living tidily means being able to find your stuff without spending precious working time hunting through piles of clutter.

During: Persevere

A single all-nighter is a sprint, but an extended period of sleep-deprivation is a marathon and needs to be handled differently. Pace yourself, listen to your body, and split up your work into smaller, manageable sections. You will achieve more in short, focused sessions, with breaks in between, than longer sessions that cause you to fall asleep sitting up, drooling on your keyboard. Pay attention to the following.

1. Refuel your body.

Just as your car won’t run on water, your body needs proper fuel. Avoid junk food: chips, sweets, and energy drinks. Instead, opt for healthy options: seeds & nuts, fresh fruit and vegetables, and healthy, light, regular meals. Choose water over fizzy drinks.

2. No sleep? Take naps instead.

If you can’t afford a full night’s sleep, never underestimate the power of the humble nap. Your productivity will suffer if you keep working for too long without any sleep at all. If you struggle to wake up afterwards, take a quick shower, walk outside in the fresh air, and splash your face with some water; you’ll soon get to know what works best for you.

3. Get up and move.

Stretch to de-tangle your muscles and ease stiffness from sitting in the same position for hours. Get your heart rate up by running in place, skipping or doing jumping jacks. This gets the blood flowing to deliver fresh oxygen to your whole body and mind. If it makes you feel daft, don’t worry—we all feel silly leaping around by ourselves at three in the morning. Ignore your ego; your body will love you for it, and it will bring you closer to conquering your deadlines.

4. Include motivators.

What makes your brain buzz? Play music that gets your feet tapping, or let your favorite tv show run in the background. If that is too distracting, line up the (healthy!) rewards at the end of each section. Find those things that switch you on and shamelessly bribe yourself.

5. Avoid driving.

Any pill that makes you drowsy comes with a warning for you not to drive or operate dangerous machinery while you are under the influence of that medication. Deadline crunching on no sleep can be just as lethal. Organize a carpool, or take the bus or a train. You might even be able to sneak in some z's while travelling—bliss!

After: Recover

1. Take time off.

Schedule time off to find yourself again. Get some decent sleep, and reward yourself for your hard work. Give your brain time to recuperate. Don’t be shocked if you find yourself feeling completely demotivated, directionless or even slightly depressed. Be gentle on yourself as you recover; give yourself plenty space to regroup and recharge. Beating yourself up will only delay your recovery. It won’t take long to find your groove again.

2. Prioritize time with loved ones.

Make reconnecting with your support crew your chief priority. Spend time catching up on all the tiny details that you may have missed. Give them your focused attention. Turn off your cell phone, and leave the laptop shut. Go for long walks, cook meals together, do all the things that you said no to while meeting your deadlines.

3. Take out your “postponed” list.

With a brain that is still in recovery, you will be grateful that you made a list of all the things that you postponed. By now, some of them will need your attention. As you feel up to it, find your list and work your way through it one item at a time. Having a list in hand will help you get out of the post-deadline-slump in small, easy steps.

Does your family still love you? Did you meet your deadlines? Congratulations! You successfully faked it 'til you made it while running on no sleep!

Dianne J. Wilson writes novels from her hometown in East London, South Africa, where she lives with her husband and three daughters. She has just signed a three book contract for a YA series, Spirit Walker, with Pelican / Watershed.

Finding Mia is available from Amazon, Pelican / Harbourlight, Barnes & Noble and other bookstores.

Shackles is available as a free ebook from Amazon & Smashwords.

Find her on Facebook, Twitter and her sporadic blog Doodles.

A Letter from Beyond the Grave

The written word can be a scary thing. When you send a book out into the world you never know where it will wind up or how it will affect people. 

I was reminded of this recently as I am preparing a new edition of the 2011 release of To Dust You Shall Return, book 3 in my Lord Danvers Investigates series. This is a Victorian true-crime series with each book featuring an actual mid-Victorian murder with a fictional one wove around it.

The true crime I recount in this book is the brutal murder of frail, 80-year-old Catherine Bacon in Chatham, near Canterbury. The 2011 book was itself a re-release of the 1995 original edition. Imagine my surprise when I received, nearly a year later, a letter from the great, great, great granddaughter of Catherine Bacon.

Jane, the descendent of my murder victim, was seeking information that would help her locate her ancestor’s grave. Unfortunately, I was unable to help her, as I had researched no further than accounts of the murder itself and the subsequent trial.

Jane, however, was able to fill in several holes in my research, especially the fact that Catherine Bacon and her husband had four sons. Jane was descended from the second son.

In an interview for my blog, I asked Jane how she felt about reading of her ancestress’s murder in a novel. She replied: Had I not been aware of Catherine's murder, I suspect that I would have been mildly irritated that the name of an ancestress of mine had been used as the victim of what appeared to be a fictional crime! However, as I had read nearly one hundred newspaper articles about the crime and trial, I was simply eager to see if the author's research added anything to the knowledge I had already gained.

Jane also said that she appreciated the opportunity to share on my blog because it gave her a chance to share with you my thoughts about the case and a platform to put right some of the incorrect information that appears on the internet. Only too frequently, supposition is placed online and then treated as fact. In these times when amateur genealogy is such a popular pastime and the internet is so often used as a primary source, mistakes are made and perpetuated.

An example of an oft-repeated mistake that she was able to correct was the idea of Charles Dickens family living in my great-great-great-grandmother's house. She explained that, indeed, Dickens had lived in Ordnance Terrace, a had Catherine Bacon, but the house numbers had changed since that time. Fortunately, I had not made that mistake in my book.

One I had made, though, was the identity of Catherine Bacon’s husband. I had mistakenly identified her as the Catherine Bacon married to Colonel Bacon, a hero of The Battle of Waterloo. Jane Explained that there were two other ladies named Catherine Bacon in that area at that time. The one married to an army officer was part of the Unitarian Gaskell family (into which the authoress Mrs Gaskell married) who are ancestors of my husband's family!). However, my Catherine was married to an Engineer who when younger had been personal private assistant to Sir Marc Brunel (you may well know him to be the father of the more famous Isambard K Brunel).

How wonderful to find my character connected, even tangentially, to such luminaries. You can be quite certain I have corrected my error in the up-coming new edition.

In all this I am reminded of the Biblical injunction in Ecclesiastes to “Cast your bread upon the waters, for you will find it after many days.” That is certainly what happened in my account of the Catherine Bacon story. And how wonderful that, through the wonders of electronic publication, I now have the opportunity to correct my earlier mistake.

You can read the entire interview here where Jane also recounts the fascinating story of how she was contacted by a descendant of her great, great, great, grandmother’s murderer.

And see the newly released first book in the series here.

Donna Fletcher Crow is the author of 3 mystery series. You can read more about them and see pictures from her research trips here

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