by Roseanna White | Feb 22, 2012 | Remember When Wednesdays, Uncategorized
It happens to me all the time. (No, not that Shakespeare insults me . . .;-) I’m barreling full-steam through a heated scene on-page, when, wham. I come against a blinking cursor and don’t know what to type. Because one of my characters is insulting the other–and my vocabulary fails me.
Why? Because our favorite insults today don’t fly in a historical context. I can’t have Delia call Phin a jerk. He’s scowl and say, “I’m not tugging on you. What are you talking about?” He can’t call her a snob (see Monday’s post, wink, wink), or she’d say, “Whatever do you mean? I’m not pretending to my gentility, I was born to it, as you well know, you . . . you . . .”
Yeah. Back to square one. So I’m compiling a list of historical insults, and boy is it fun! From scalawag to rogue to jackanapes, from slimy toad to delightful imp, I’m trying to make sure I have all the fun ones–and the truly low-down ones–on my list. Without getting vulgar, of course.
by Roseanna White | Feb 20, 2012 | Word of the Week
There’s little I like more than realizing a word in common use today has come to mean the opposite of what it once did.
Snob is definitely one of those words.
It appeared in English from some mysterious place, and scholars aren’t sure of its origins–just that it made its debut round about 1781 with the meaning of “shoemaker.” That’s right–shoemaker. LOL. The boys at Cambridge University soon adopted it and applied it to anyone of the working class.
Fifty-ish years later the word took a turn and was used to mean someone of a lower class who “vulgarly apes his superiors.” Slowly, throughout the nineteenth century, it evolved into one who puts on airs . . . who insists upon his gentility . . . and finally, by 1911, someone who insists upon it to the point of looking down their nose at those who are inferior.
Quite the trek that word has taken, eh? Love this one!
by Roseanna White | Feb 16, 2012 | Thoughtful Thursdays, Uncategorized
I should probably have saved this topic for two weeks from now, when, if all goes well, I’ll reach the end of my manuscript. But I’d probably forget by then, so . . . 😉
I’m an optimist. I can find hope in anything. That’s probably why I love stories of romance–you just can’t beat a happily ever after. And, frankly, if a book doesn’t have one, chances are I’m not that crazy about it. Not to say I don’t approve of other endings, think they’re perfect–but rare is the book that makes it onto my favorites shelf with a less-than-blissful ending. It’s happened. But it takes one heck of an author.
And it’s also why so much of the Old Testament leaves me with an aching heart, especially reading the books about the kings of Israel and Judah. Going through all those chronicles with my daughter, she asks constantly as she’s trying to keep the names straight, “So which king was he? Did he love God?”
And so often my answer has to be, “No.” Or worse still, “He did when he was young, but then he caught up in his money and his glory and worshiped Baal. He forgot about God.”
Xoe, bless her sweet spirit, will always look up at me with those big blue eyes of her and ask, “But how could he forget God? God saved him!”
She’s so right. At six, she understands the simplicity of it and doesn’t see the complication. At six, she sees only the “happily” and not the “ever after.” And I wish, oh how I wish, I could toss a “The End” into some of those stories halfway through. Stop it where it’s still happy. Ignore the depressing epilogue.
But I can’t, because I have to teach my kids that getting to that one big moment isn’t enough in life. It doesn’t stop when we reach one goal, do one great thing for the Lord. We don’t have just one volume, with one climax. One neat resolution. No, we have to press ever onward. Because “the end” doesn’t come until the end.
I shake my head at the critics at romance who mock our beloved happily-ever-after because of these very reasons. And my head-shaking is valid. Because, hello, who wants to read a gazillion-page novel that tracks a person from birth to death? No thanks. I want my novels to entertain and inspire. And those stories, those endings, serve to get me from big moment to big moment in life. They help me remember what can happen. Over and again. Time after time. Volume after volume.
But so often, I think we pray for the short term. Just one good thing, Lord. Just send me one good thing. But as I reread those Old Testament stories, they’re making me look farther. Pray for good lives for my loved ones, not good turns. Good ends, with middles that lead them there. I’m praying, now, for endurance and fortitude.
Blessings come, and I praise the Lord for them. Crises come, and I pray to the Lord through them. But between climaxes, between resolutions, what am I doing? That, I think, is where those kings of old fell away. When they grew complacent. When they forgot who sent the rain, who delivered the army, who pulled away His protection and let the enemy come.
There are mountains in our life, in our faith. There are valleys.
But there are also plains. And the only way to trek across them without ending up in the land of Baal is to keep our eyes forever on the pillar of fire and smoke.
I love a good ending. But you only ever reach one in life when you realize it’s a looooong journey to get there.
by Roseanna White | Feb 15, 2012 | Remember When Wednesdays, Uncategorized
Monday, during my big writing day of the week, the unthinkable happened–I ran out plotted story! Agh! Which is to say, I’m not anywhere near done my MS (okay, nearish), but I’d only figured out in detail up to a certain turning point. Which I’d just finished. I then had to sit back and go, “Okay . . . now what?”
My particular method of writing historical romance is to take two plots and weave them together. The first is mine. My characters, their motivation, the events of their lives that have very little to do with anything but my own reality. But then my second is history. The actual people, places, and events that shape the world I put my characters into. When all goes well, that second plot is what fuels the first toward its resolution.
But as I sat there staring at my screen on Monday, plotting, I was at a total loss. My notes on the Civil War stared blankly back at me. See, I’m now in early October of 1861. During which nothing big enough happened to make the big time lines. So what in the world was supposed to anchor my story?? I had nothing, not a thing in my notes until February. February! What in the world happened until then??
Plenty, of course, just not on a grand scale, not the kinds of things that make the lists for general Civil War history. Luckily, I have a resource that gives me specifically Savannah’s history, which is what I need. Because there was an awful, awful lot going on in Savannah during those “empty” months on the time line.
Panic.
Vigilantes.
Islands on the coast falling to the Yankees.
General Lee’s arrival.
Statewide questioning about whether Savannah is worth fighting for–a question Savannahians didn’t much appreciate.
The blockade cinching tight.
And that’s not getting into the politics that had all of Georgia in an uproar. See, one of the BIG reasons for succession was Federal v. State Rights. Slavery laws were but one example of this, the fact that the southern states felt the north had no right to dictate to them what they could or couldn’t do, that the federal government shouldn’t have such power. But what was the Confederation doing? Dictating to them what they could and couldn’t do. Telling them they had to raise a certain number of troops, and that those troops weren’t to defend Georgia, they were to be sent to Virginia to fight on the front. And that their slaves had to be sent wherever the Confederacy needed them, to dig trenches.
And that, since there weren’t enough volunteers, they’d have to institute the first-ever draft on North American soil.
Can you imagine how those people felt? They’d declared a revolution to keep a centralized federal government from deciding what their states could do–only to create a new one that did the same thing, and in ways even the politicians in Washington hadn’t done. Was it any wonder the people were disillusioned? Panicked? And, where necessary, devious?
This first year of the war might have been relatively quiet compared to the rest . . . if you’re standing at a distance, looking at the divided nation as a fractured whole. But when you get up close, you see it was far from it.
There may not have been so many loud shouts, but there was a world of mumblings. What they lacked in cannon fire they made up for in quiet betrayals—betrayals that led directly to those louder months coming, when disillusioned rebels led the Yankees straight to the heart of Confederate fortifications.
Oh yeah–I’m having lots of fun with this “little” history. =)
by Roseanna White | Feb 13, 2012 | Word of the Week
You get two for the price of one today. =)
I can’t tell you how many times in historical writing I have the urge to use the word “finagle.” You know, like She finagled him up the aisle. Or He finagled his way out of it. Something to convey some tricky footwork, so to speak.
But I generally can’t, because finagle didn’t come about until 1926. Really late! And at the time, it meant to cheat at cards. One authority says it’s related to figgle, which is to fidget. Hmmm. Either way, it’s modern meaning of some fancy (and likely questionable) maneuvering is waaaaaay too new to use in any of my historicals.
So then I have to think of what word I can use, and I inevitably fall back on maneuver. Maneuver has been around since the 15th century with a meaning of “hand labor.” (Man meaning hand, that’s no surprise.) But in the mid-1700s, it was applied to military movements. And from there, it was a quick jump to “artful plan, adroit movement.” More what I’m usually looking for.
But wait! Interestingly, the noun came first. The verb was actually a back-formation and didn’t make its literary debut until 1777. Thus far safe for all my historicals, but if I ever write earlier than that, I’m going to have to keep that in mind!
So there you have it. Some interesting factoids to help you maneuver through your week. 😉
Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. Having successfully launched two homeschool grads, she now spends her time writing fiction, designing book covers, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna is the author of a slew of historical novels that span several continents and thousands of years, as well as a fantasy series and contemporary mysteries and romances. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary.