tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1164684531570048336.post6886231247564649864..comments2023-10-09T04:28:16.384-07:00Comments on Writing about writing: ResearchTCWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13053437802878060775noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1164684531570048336.post-27478941512544944132017-11-30T02:12:38.683-08:002017-11-30T02:12:38.683-08:00Thank you.Thank you.TCWhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13053437802878060775noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1164684531570048336.post-2916851593546421102017-11-29T17:55:14.737-08:002017-11-29T17:55:14.737-08:00Absolutely fabulous post and written with such sim...Absolutely fabulous post and written with such simplicity andintelligence. Thanks, Tom. And I especially love the line 'I'm a novelist. I tell lies for a living. The best I can hope for is that the lies aren't too obvious.' Must share.Prue Battenhttp://www.pruebatten.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1164684531570048336.post-5532135369239281272015-04-13T11:17:48.345-07:002015-04-13T11:17:48.345-07:00I think the definition of a fact is quite interest...I think the definition of a fact is quite interesting. It is quite clear from looking at them that a panda is a bear and that glass is a solid. Middle class intellectuals enjoy making themselves sound more intelligent than you by pointing out, in a sort of smug way, the “facts” that pandas are in actually members of the racoon family and glass is, technically, a super cooled liquid. The only problem is that pandas ARE bears (or at the very least DNA testing has shown they’re not racoons), and glass IS a solid. <br /><br />A more relevant example would be the Union Jack, or should I say Union Flag, as everyone worth inviting to a dinner party knows that it’s only a jack when flown at sea? As it happens, the Lord Commissioners of the Admiralty issued an official notice in 1902 that they’d been calling it a jack for years and frankly couldn’t give a toss. However if you say jack in your novel, your smug middleclass intellectuals will scoff, and your lowly masses who have the impertinence to be right probably weren’t going to review your book at the Historical Novel Society anyway.<br /><br />Jim Bowie is known, by the kind of people who like to think they know such things, as a frontier knife fighter who designed, carried and popularised the bowie knife. Unfortunately, whilst the Bowie family did make wide bladed flat knives they weren’t bowie knives. Most people credit a different man entirely, James Black, with the creation of the original bowie (albeit, made to Jim Bowie’s specification according to the lore). Whilst a simple google image search will show there’s no universal consensus on what a bowie knife looks like, it’s likely the most popular examples weren’t the one’s carried by Bowie. There’s even debate about whether he really was a knife fighter in the way he’s portrayed. <br /><br />It’s true that the term bowie knife was coined in honour of him. So people weren’t calling wide flat knives bowies before the famous Sandbar fight of 1827. However, let’s face it, it’s not that unique of a design and Burke was probably using a wide bladed flat knife which people would now be happy to call a bowie.<br /><br />The point is that it would appear to be simultaneously a “fact” that bowie knives existed before 1820, only after 1827, only after 1836 (The Alamo), and that there’s no such thing. Rather depends who you ask I suppose, but whichever one you go with, a significant chunk of your readership will say you're wrong.<br />Mikehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12379174588560846224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1164684531570048336.post-57731462762873503752015-04-09T16:47:17.115-07:002015-04-09T16:47:17.115-07:00We probably all worry about what I always call &qu...We probably all worry about what I always call "the guitarist at the back of the bar" (sneering at the band on stage), but at the end of the day it's writing to the story that matters. Of course, I say this having never SOLD a novel (nor even gotten agented yet), so grains of salt all 'round. But I have a good novel, even if it's not a good product. And there's always the WIP ...DLMhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08768285199864217885noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1164684531570048336.post-76879177350054856732015-04-09T09:04:48.269-07:002015-04-09T09:04:48.269-07:00Great post. History is rewritten all the time - wh...Great post. History is rewritten all the time - whether for fact or fiction and as professional liars novelists shouldn't worry too much about bending fact to serve story - IMHO at any rate.Laura Wilkinsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05123567406016946332noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1164684531570048336.post-29364119072878132712015-04-08T05:22:02.512-07:002015-04-08T05:22:02.512-07:00Excellent post. Enjoy Saturday (wish I was nearer ...Excellent post. Enjoy Saturday (wish I was nearer London…)M Skeahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06773276114320929717noreply@blogger.com