Elisabeth Grace Foley

Historical Fiction Author

Be Yourself, Quoth the Poet

by 2 Comments

back-light-1145034_640Just before Christmas I read An Essay On Criticism by Alexander Pope. I’d just glanced over it years ago, since it’s in the wonderful poetry volume Anne’s Anthology that we own, but after reading a very interesting guide to English literature this winter that put Pope and several other poets on my list of authors to try, I decided to sit down and read it in earnest. It turned out to be doubly enjoyable for me, since it is in fact all about literature. It starts out, as the title implies, discussing literary critics, but eventually segues into observations on the literature they critique—both pointing out the faults of the critics and suggesting ways authors can avoid laying themselves open to criticism.
There are some marvelous gems of observation on writing here, and the forthright style in which they’re presented is refreshing. How curious, incidentally, that I, much more at home in the prose and history of the 19th and 20th centuries, should find an 18th-century satirist one of the most kindred-spirit poets I’ve encountered so far. Here’s a few choice samples from An Essay On Criticism:

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learned to dance.

Isn’t this true? Though we are always learning, I personally feel that many things I can do easily now were gained during an apprenticeship of sorts, my early days of writing in which I wrote many things not fit for publication, but learned through practice the most effective ways to use words and phrases, to shape paragraphs and scenes and dialogue.

Be sure yourself and your own reach to know
How far your genius, taste and learning go.
Launch not beyond your depth, but be discreet
And mark that point where sense and dullness meet.

I like this. Know your own powers, he’s saying: be aware of what you can do best and make the most of it, instead of striving for a second-rate imitation of something that’s beyond your knowledge or your skill, at least for the present.

But in such lays as neither ebb nor flow,
Correctly cold and regularly low
That, shunning faults, one quiet tenor keep;
We cannot blame indeed—but we may sleep.

This one troubles me a bit, because I see faults of my own in it. Too often I’ve shrunk back and chosen the safest, easiest and most unremarkable way to write something, because I was simply too shy to take a risk with a bolder style or statement. This is something I’m consciously trying to improve this year.

True wit is nature to advantage dressed;
What oft was thought, but ne’er so well expressed.

So many others have said this, though seldom so elegantly as Pope (which proves his point right there). It reminds me a bit of what I said about instinct in my post on the three I’s of being a writer. Perhaps one may have an instinctive wit, and must learn how to give it expression; or one has a knack for expressing things that others will instantly recognize but might not have been able to express themselves.

And these excerpts just scratch the surface. There’s many more thought-provoking musings on similar subjects—language, style, content, dullness—in An Essay on Criticism, which I’d encourage anyone in the business of literature, whether writers or critics/reviewers, to seek out and enjoy for themselves.

Left-Hand Kelly: A Long, Long Trail

by Leave a Comment

The release of my next book, Left-Hand Kelly, is fast approaching. A cover is in the works, and most of the other prep work is already complete—basically just final proofreads remain.

This has been one slow-cooked little novella. Though shy of 40,000 words, it has taken several years from initial idea to completion. But I had no idea just how long it had been in the works until the other day, when I got out my old journals and began flipping back through them, looking for the earliest entries relating to Left-Hand Kelly. The more pages I turned back, amazement began to dawn on me. Wait, when was this? Mentions of Left-Hand Kelly as an incomplete project were sandwiched in among notes about working on the earliest stories for The Ranch Next Door and Other Stories. Way back before I’d decided to collect them, in fact, and was still unsuccessfully trying to find professional short story markets. A reference to “the first three chapters” of Left-Hand Kelly having been written some time ago predates my first published story “Disturbing the Peace” placing in a contest in December of 2010. Shortly before that is a big gap in my journal entries—I was not a good diarist back then—so I couldn’t find a mention of beginning the book, but I did have my dated first-draft manuscript in a notebook. I pulled it out and looked at it.

June 19th, 2010.

Four years ago! Almost exactly four years from first draft to publication.

It goes without saying that I was not working on it continuously all that time. I’d write a few chapters, get stuck, put it away for months, and then come back to it later. It held enough interest and promise for me that I did keep coming back. “It appeals to me because there’s a tremendous amount of emotion packed into a pretty brief plot,” I wrote in that earliest journal entry. As near as I can figure, from margin dates and journal entries, I wrote the first three chapters in the summer of 2010, chapter four and part of chapter five that December, the rest of five through seven in April and May 2012, and then finally picked it up again in late January 2013 and finished the eight remaining chapters in February. Various rounds of edits have taken place since then.

What amazes me is that around the same time I was writing those first three chapters, I was also turning out some horribly amateurish stuff that will probably never see the light of day. Yet the beginning of Left-Hand Kelly, with only reasonable editing, was good enough to keep me coming back to it and blends well with the later parts of the book. Don’t ask me how that came about. All I know is, it makes me feel a lot better about the sheaf of unfinished projects that I still believe hold promise. It may take years, but one day they’ll get there.

What Have We Learned?

by 2 Comments

With indie publishing, the process of launching each new book into the world is a learning experience in itself. This can sometimes be slightly harrowing, when you discover in mid-publication things that you ought to have known and must master on the run. But it’s also very satisfying, if you like learning new things and how to apply them. In my own modest career as an indie publisher, I have been both harrowed and made happy on each go-round, but I can always say for sure that there will be more for me to learn next time.

So what have we learned from our latest adventure in publishing?

  • We have unfortunately confirmed our tendency to do things in the wrong order. In the future we shall have our cover and interior files finished and tested long before we even begin to consider possible release dates.

  • We love Rafflecopter. The site is so fun and easy to use and it makes giveaways a breeze.

  • We must write longer books, if only to avoid issues with design for thin book spines.

  • Running headers give us headaches, but after wrestling with them on two books, we think we may have got the hang of it and will be able to handle them more assuredly next time.

  • We have an extremely patient and resourceful cover designer, as well as patient and supportive blogging friends who kindly put up with our publicity skills being a work in progress—for all of whom we are deeply thankful.

  • And if you’re not tired of multiple first-person by this time, we recommend P.G. Wodehouse’s Uncle Fred in the Springtime, which contains the hilarious scene that inspired us to write in it.