As some around these parts will know, I am an avid writer. I’ve been writing creatively ever since I learned how to spell. I always felt the compunction to express myself by creating stories. My main motive in writing is the enjoyment I get out of it, but my end goal is to become published. It’s an extremely difficult thing to do–the selection process is extremely rigorous and has as much to do with luck as with skill. Still, I believe my work is good enough to be published, especially considering some of the crap that gets published.
I’m part of a creative writing message board, particularly the “historical writing” corner of it. Generally, I like it there; I’ve learned a ton from reading the posts, asking questions, and posting my work for critique. Like with all things, you have to balance all the critiques.
But right now, I’m extremely irritated about a series of posts. I posted a few hundred words for some critique. The first few posters did a line-by-line and were very helpful. Then someone posted that they didn’t think the voice was authentic for my time and place. I rolled my eyes. What the hell does this person know about it? So I posted a polite reply.
I know the time period while she, by her own admission, didn’t. She asked what time it was, but came up with approximately the right time period anyway. I have researched that time period. I have read plenty of the words spoken (actually WRITTEN–there’s a big difference between what people write and what they would say) directly by these people, even some of the words spoken by this exact person. My main character was a real person and she left some of her own voice in the form of trial briefs. The problem is that these were written by a lawyer, so her voice is diluted. Further complicating things, everyone in my story would have spoken in French. I have to approximate what they said in English.
I did this in several ways. Nicole was a relatively uneducated young woman, impetuous and flippant. She believes herself to be rather dumb though she isn’t. She was also a prostitute. I’ve read the trial briefs and tried to decipher how much of it was Nicole and how much of it was her lawyer. The result is a relatively simple cadence and diction. Of course the people critting my work haven’t read all of it, but other characters speak in very different voices.
It seems that because she doesn’t speak like a Victorian lady, her voice is not authentic and “too 21st-century”. What the hell? No one in the 21st century speaks like she does, not even me, and I’m weird! By the way, I’m the same age now that she was in the story (and in reality) in 1784.
I can be right all I want, but it doesn’t matter if people perceive it as wrong. Well, only this one person, as far as I can tell, has this opinion. A few other people posted “helpful suggestions” like “Read Dickens”, but they were just jumping on the bandwagon. I’ve read plenty of Victorian literature (though, oddly enough, no Dickens) and can approximate a fair facsimile of their speech. In fact, when writing this story from other perspectives, I used very strong voices with very strongly Victorian cadences. But this is not Nicole’s world and not her manner of speech. I made a decision on how her voice would sound, and it’s a simple, decidedly NOT Victorian voice, as it should not be.
I’ve found before that on this board, the historical people, while generally very kind and helpful, love to peck at you. They pick out one thing from whatever work you post and tell you how wrong and misguided it is, generally on the premise that it isn’t historical. This without–generally–knowing too much about the period but believeing that they do. With other iterations of my particular work, I’ve been taken to task for things they pooh-poohed as unhistorical–but those things were lifted right out of the first-hand account of the character in question!
I can’t believe every reader is like that. I attempt to be extremely accurate and I don’t appreciate people proving how damn smart they are by pointing out anything they believe might be WRONG OH MY GOD! Most readers don’t have the ability or the desire to call me out. Hopefully they’ll give me the benefit of the doubt because I do know what I’m writing about.
