Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    


Victoria Kincaid is her pen name. It is awfully good, isn't it?

I also want to get in a recommendation for how funny MR. DARCY CAME TO
DINNER is. If you've ever read or seen THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER, you might
have a good idea of what it's about.
  

    
Well, we were invited to come and ask questions no matter how
inexpert we are on the subject so here goes.

Looking at JAFF as a whole as well as this book in particular, how
much writing is devoted to either a) filling holes left by Jane
Austen (heaven forbid there should indeed be any!) or b) prequels
and sequels to JA’s novels? Or does the vast majority fall into the
category of reimagining her characters and taking them to new and
exciting places?
  

    
I'm curious if you ever thought of taking a swing through a
land-based story with Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin.
  

    

>52

hey Ian, thanks for the question!

I would not say Jane left "holes." But the act of telling a story
about a group of characters, by its very nature, involves deciding
what to tell and what to leave out. This is a matter of authorial
priorities.

For example, it wasn't important to Jane to tell us more about what
happened to Lydia and Wickham after they got married and went off to
Newcastle. But some of us might have wondered about it. So the
writer Catherine Curzon and the actor Adrian Lukis (who played
Wickham in the classic 1995 BBC/A&E adaptation of P&P) got together
and created a one-man show called BEING MR. WICKHAM, which premiered
in the late spring of 2020 at the Theatre Royal Bury St. Edmunds. It
was tremendous. I watched two livestreamed performances. He was so
perfect and the script itself was brilliant. Wickham is much more
interesting at age 60 than he was at 30.

Jane also made certain choices in telling the canonical story of
P&P, which is a great story. But naturally there is a lot of
curiosity about the various what-ifs, and books like mine exist to
satisfy that thirst for slight variations on the stories (I say
stories, plural, although the vast majority of JAFF relates to P&P).

One of the books I referenced above, SEASONS OF WAITING, takes off
from one pivotal moment near the end of P&P. In canon, Lady
Catherine goes to visit Elizabeth and investigate whether she is
engaged to Darcy (which she isn't, yet), and finding out that she is
not, to demand her promise that she never would accept him. She
refuses to make this commitment and Lady C goes back to London,
calls on Darcy in a huff, and tells him the story of her visit to
Elizabeth, expecting him to be outraged at Elizabeth's cheek in
refusing to forswear him. Instead, as he says to Elizabeth later,
"It taught me to hope" that perhaps she would say yes if he asked
her a second time. SEASONS OF WAITING takes off from that moment.
Lady Catherine lies to Darcy, and tells him that Elizabeth swore she
would never have him. Disheartened by this news, Darcy avoids
Hertfordshire for more than 20 years. He refuses to attend Bingley's
wedding to Elizabeth's sister Jane, and eventually marries his
cousin Anne (Lady C's daughter), as Lady C desired. It's a
remarkable book.

There are a lot of what-ifs. That's what the whole JAFF genre is
based on. 
  

    
>53

hi Elaine,

Here is where I confess that I have never read any of the
Aubrey/Maturin books. I have several friends who are devoted to
them, and I have had the first title downloaded to my Kindle for a
few years now, but I have never read it.

I know I should! 

Now a question for you: do you think that there are enough what-ifs
in MASTER AND COMMANDER and its sequels to create good fan fiction?
I checked out of curiosity; there are just under 500 stories on AO3,
and only 23 on fan fiction.net, compared with 5400 P&P stories on
AO3 and almost 1300 on fan fiction.net.

And beyond that, do you think there are enough readers who would
actually pay to read it?
  

    
Hey Vard,
P&P is a masterpiece, and I can easily see it spawing fan fiction.
(I got a Quora question from someone who shortens 'fan fiction'
right down to 'fic)

but I'm surprised that the JAFF would be so thoroughly devoted to
Pride and Prejudice.  Why? Or rather, why not the other works, too? 
  

    
Thanks Stephanie and I’ll line up just one more question; can you
tell us more about your writing process? Do you have a special place
where you go to write, do you reserve a special time of day to
write, how did you deal with writers block if you had any, did you
use a laptop or pen and paper, did you set out the whole book and
then write or just dove in and made it up as you went along, any
other tips and tricks for people who might be thinking about writing
a book?
  

    
>57

hey Ian,

that varies according to the circumstances and where I am. As you
know, I live in Portland, Oregon.

In January 2014 my husband Mike joined the Obama administration and
moved from our house in Portland to Alexandria, Virginia, where he
remained through July 2019 (due in part to the incompetence of the
next guy, who didn't get around to firing Mike's boss until the
spring of that year). Mike tended to spend most of August of each
year with me in Portland, but at other times I was home alone, or
would sometimes go and stay with him for three or four weeks at a
time. I have my own law practice and I teach in the University of
Oregon's business school during the fall term each year. So
depending upon how busy I was with my practice and also whether I
was teaching, I would have various amounts of time available for
creative writing from day to day.

I'm not as disciplined as I should be. Because it's not my principal
profession, I don't make a big point of writing every day, and there
are whole weeks when I don't. But I have three or four books going
at any one time, so if I hit a wall with one of them (and I often
do), I can usually make progress on one or more of the others at any
time when I feel I can sit down and write.

I write on a laptop. To write TCB, I sat down with just an idea
(literally, the idea of the colonel's brother showing up and liking
Elizabeth before needing to leave for some reason) and let the story
take me where it wanted to go. (This is called pantsing in writing
lingo, as in "making decisions by the seat of my pants.") 

With the other books I am working on, I have done more outlining and
planning. I think it will be helpful as I work my way through them.
I've also done some writing workshops to try to get better at story
structure. I am pretty good at writing scenes, but weaker on the
connective tissue / structure that holds stories together, and I
have made a point of seeking help for that. Just a few weeks ago I
took a ten hour workshop with the "Save the Cat!" organization,
which originated in screenwriting but offers help with all kinds of
creative writing. The schtick of "Save the Cat!" is that most great
stories contain the same 15 tentpoles/pivot points, called "beats,"
in their three act structure, and so one of the things I do now is
try to nail down in advance what the various plot beats are for each
story before I get too far into writing it. 

This has helped me a lot, especially with the non-JAFF thing I'm
working on, since I don't have Jane's story structure to lean on. I
had bought a book called SAVE THE CAT! WRITES A NOVEL, and that was
good, but I found that the workshop (with actual live teaching and
feedback) was far more useful for me.

I would say, if you are thinking about writing a book, don't let the
idea of WRITING A BOOK intimidate you or put you off. If you can
make an outline, that's great. Do it. If you are not ready to make
an outline, make a folder (real or virtual) and just write down each
scene or idea for a scene or bit of dialogue that comes to you. Keep
them all together. When you create a new one, reread the others,
just to keep them fresh in your mind. Take a moment to think about
how they might work together. Make a note about that too.

I mostly write in MS Word. I do own Scrivener, and after a few years
of being hopelessly stymied by it I did figure it out, and it has a
lot of advantages. But I still mostly write in Word. You can use
Scrivener to organize your outline / beats and figure out where each
scene goes.  Even if you write the scenes in Word you can copy/paste
them into Scrivener.

AND HAVE GOOD BACKUPS! If you write in longhand, scan or use your
phone camera to snap every page, in case you lose your notebook.
Otherwise, just use computer backup tools. I keep everything in
Dropbox so I can retrieve it from anywhere and work from anywhere.
  

    
>56

I think this is mostly about Darcy, to be honest.

There is something about him that makes him an extremely compelling
romantic hero, and there is something about Elizabeth that makes her
an extremely engaging heroine. 

Some of it is about the 1995 BBC/A&E miniseries adaptation, which
made Colin Firth into a huge star and introduced P&P to a new
generation of readers (and future writers). In some cases it was the
2005 movie of P&P that made the difference. I can tell, often,
reading JAFF, which version the writer is carrying around in their
head. (It does not seem too many people were inspired by the 1940
motion picture starring Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson, which is
hilariously bad.)

There are some very good mashups. I really enjoyed one called
SNOWBOUND AT HARTFIELD, which brings the Darcys together with the
Knightleys, the Elliots, and some other beloved Austen characters. 

And I've read fan fiction based on EMMA and SENSE AND SENSIBILITY
and even NORTHANGER ABBEY too, and enjoyed some of it a lot. So it's
out there, but Darcy is definitely the man JAFF readers want to read
about.
  

    
Thanks again!
  

    
Yes, thanks.

Here's a question: how about a book based in baseball?
  

    
How are JAFF books generally available? If I wanted to read SEASONS OF
WAITING, for example, would my library be able to get it?

As for Georgette Heyer, she's not Jane Austen, but she was an amazing
researcher of the Regency period, so much so that some "Regency
Romances" appear to be full of undigested hunks of her research,
particularly when it comes to clothing. GH spent time studying the
fashion periodicals of the day, whereas most later writers appear to
have spent time studying GH instead. Her book about Waterloo, has been
claimed to be "one of the most historically accurate and vividly
narrated descriptions of the Battle".

As someone who read a lot of GH as a kid, I was amazed to find homage
to her work (lightly disguised) in some of the science fiction of
Lois McMaster Bujold -- who's a fan.

Enough of GH -- I have not yet gotten my hands on TCB. About to sen
email. I can't wait.
  

    
>62

I have heard several people praise Heyer for her research and level
of authenticity. I will take another whack at her.

Some JAFF is commercially published. Sourcebooks used to publish a
lot of it. These days most JAFF is self-published via Kindle Direct
Publishing; it's almost all available in paperback, in addition to
Kindle purchases and Kindle Unlimited. Already I can see that the
majority of my royalties are coming from Kindle Unlimited. Amazon
gives KDP authors a ton of data, and so for example I know that as
of this moment TCB has achieved just over 320,000 pages read since
publication.

Having said all that, I just checked Amazon and SEASONS OF WAITING
is available only as an e-book. If your library acquires KDP
e-books, you can get it from them. If they don't, you will have to
read the e-book, and Amazon is, I believe, the only place you can
get it. I will send Christina Morland a note and ask her if she ever
intends to publish a paper version, and I'll let you know what she
says. I will just say that you won't regret reading it. It's so well
done.
  

    
>61

I think I have read at least one JAFF with a baseball setting, but
there's no reason I couldn't write another one. I don't remember any
of the details but I could swear I have read one.

I already have several ideas for how it could work. I will dedicate
it to you, <paulbel>, if I ever write it!
  

    
<3  Can't wait.

but I wasn't just thinking of a JAFF baseball book. I was wondering
if you'd write any book on baseball - non-fiction or fic.
  

    
Let me know if you want any GH recommendations -- some are more
potboilery than others.

But back to Jane Austen and Stephanie Vale! I will surely have more
to say once I get my hands on TCB...

Did you have difficulty getting the voice you wanted?
  

    
>65

Hmmm. Does the world need another baseball book?

People sometimes ask me if I am going to write a memoir and I really
struggle with the idea. It seems presumptuous to me. I know other
people, some much younger than I am, do write them, but I can't get
there. The closest I ever get is telling war stories at legal
conferences. 

My profession is a big part of the challenge -- lawyers have a
profound duty to protect the confidential information of their
clients! I'm not sure I could write a book about baseball or any
other part of my career without skating too close to that. I promise
you I have some stories that would curl your hair. And to the extent
they do not involve client information, someday I might tell them
more widely. 

But I don't feel attracted to writing that kind of book.

I *am* kicking around an idea for a novel that takes place inside
the headquarters of the world's biggest fictional brand of running
shoes. A comic novel, I think. We'll see.
  

    
That sounds promising!
  

    
Oooh, you mean Samothrace Footwear? Cool!
  

    
>66

That's a great question.

I have worked very hard to achieve the voice I wanted. Reading a lot
of Jane, rereading P&P specifically, then reading some JAFF I
admire, to get the right words and tone ricocheting around in my
head -- that all helped, I think. I think of it as creating the
proper wallpaper for my virtual writing room!

Hiring an editor who is very experienced in Austenesque fiction was
also WAY helpful, because she was able to give me a lot of comments
that got me thinking in a different way about what I was doing with
language.

Reading aloud is good too. It is an entirely different experience
than reading silently, and is good for figuring out issues with the
voice you're using. Even just the 9 or 10 minutes we read aloud on
the monthly JAFF Zooms is helpful because you are reading to some
people who are just steeped in the genre and who are also very kind
and helpful with their comments. (Reading aloud is also great for
finding certain kinds of typos and other mistakes.)
  

    

>69

Something along those lines. But not Samothrace. Something a little
more subtle than that, I hope.
  

    
Wingz, then.

:-)
  

    

I have something much better than that in mind.

Pithy and graphically interesting.

And I have a few bits of plot floating around in the back of my
mind.
  

    
Ooooh. Just write it.
  

    
  On Patrick O'Brian, I think anything written with the characters
on the sea would sell very well, but would be quite difficult to
write with the technical/historical knowledge involve.  That's
probably the reason why fan fic has not proliferated.

On land, the problem is a little simpler.  Jack Aubrey is completely
in command of his element in a ship; much less so on land, where he
is hopelessly naive. There are some gaps in the series where the
story could be amplified - the death of Nelson, for instance.  And
some characters on land that beg for more page space:  Louisa Wogan,
for example.