I am so relieved to have completed the re-hoover of my 165,000-word typescript in six working days — approximately a fifth of the time my disastrous ‘final’ hoover took (see ‘O, fallacem hominum spem!’ of 27 July). I must say, closely re-reading the last three chapters (i.e. 1914-50) in one day was a rather adult experience.
As I read the typescript, I highlighted more or less at random forty points where I might have transcribed manuscripts inaccurately, misquoted, written the wrong date, and so on. I’m glad to say that it turned out I had made only one, minor and insignificant, error in that set. This is quite hopeful. I will do some more random checks at a future date, but I can now install the 1000+ changes that these two hooverings have produced. This will surely take me two days, and after that I would normally go straight into writing the Afterword…
But I haven’t done anything to the Introduction since my very experienced biographer friend gave version 6 his treatment!
Well, like Eeyore I have taken out the tatters a few times, contemplated them, stared into space and put them back, but I have had very few ideas about where I take the Introduction from here. A complete rewrite looms.
Suddenly, however, I realise that I am ready to go straight into the Afterword because the whole book is still fresh from this last reading, I have my notes already, and I have relatively little relevant recent literature to read for it. And then the penny drops: I have always agreed with people who say that the Introduction should be the last thing you write, so I will write the Afterword first, then go back to the Introduction. Problem solved!
Actually, I do have a hunch this is best and could work. Even so, I place on record that unfortunately I have always been worst at writing introductions. It is probably because you can’t really write them ‘freely’, so much in them has to be dictated by ‘market forces’, the ‘needs’ of imaginary readers, publishers, etc etc etc. In other words, you have to write them under a form of censorship. For instance, my friend tells me perfectly reasonably: ‘The start of an introduction needs to be striking or seductive, or both, but in any case BOLD. You’ve got to grab attention straight away.’ I have always known this was the conventional wisdom, so I started with:
The Edwardians have had a bad press since the Great War in whose centenary I find myself writing. Even Downton Abbey hardly improved their image. We don’t, basically, like them.
This, my friend tells me, is ‘unhappy’ and ‘jars’. Er…no, it’s me that’s unhappy, because I never wanted to write this kind of naffery in the first place! As long-term followers will recall, I planned the whole Introduction around what six ‘normal’ readers told me should go into it. This seemed the right ‘market-oriented’ approach, but perhaps it was a mistake? Perhaps, after writing the Afterword, which I really do want to write, I shall find an Introduction that I also positively want to write, in a way that I personally choose.
The Afterword is currently subtitled ‘Who George Calderon Was’. It will look briefly at his complicated, very chiaroscuro character; why after his death journalists and others began to call him ‘a genius’; why he was then consigned to our ‘Edwardian past’; and what indeed makes him an Edwardian genius, of whom there are very few. It will also have to look at who Kittie was, as the two of them were such a synergy. Was she just a conventional, dutiful, anti-feminist, ‘career-less’ upper class Edwardian wife?
I hope to raise some of these issues on the blog.
Related
George Calderon c.1901
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
K.N. Das Gupta and Margaret Mitchell in an Indian Dramatic Society production of The Maharani of Arakan, 1913?
George Calderon, 1912
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
Captain of the 11
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
‘Solved!’
I am so relieved to have completed the re-hoover of my 165,000-word typescript in six working days — approximately a fifth of the time my disastrous ‘final’ hoover took (see ‘O, fallacem hominum spem!’ of 27 July). I must say, closely re-reading the last three chapters (i.e. 1914-50) in one day was a rather adult experience.
As I read the typescript, I highlighted more or less at random forty points where I might have transcribed manuscripts inaccurately, misquoted, written the wrong date, and so on. I’m glad to say that it turned out I had made only one, minor and insignificant, error in that set. This is quite hopeful. I will do some more random checks at a future date, but I can now install the 1000+ changes that these two hooverings have produced. This will surely take me two days, and after that I would normally go straight into writing the Afterword…
But I haven’t done anything to the Introduction since my very experienced biographer friend gave version 6 his treatment!
Well, like Eeyore I have taken out the tatters a few times, contemplated them, stared into space and put them back, but I have had very few ideas about where I take the Introduction from here. A complete rewrite looms.
Suddenly, however, I realise that I am ready to go straight into the Afterword because the whole book is still fresh from this last reading, I have my notes already, and I have relatively little relevant recent literature to read for it. And then the penny drops: I have always agreed with people who say that the Introduction should be the last thing you write, so I will write the Afterword first, then go back to the Introduction. Problem solved!
Actually, I do have a hunch this is best and could work. Even so, I place on record that unfortunately I have always been worst at writing introductions. It is probably because you can’t really write them ‘freely’, so much in them has to be dictated by ‘market forces’, the ‘needs’ of imaginary readers, publishers, etc etc etc. In other words, you have to write them under a form of censorship. For instance, my friend tells me perfectly reasonably: ‘The start of an introduction needs to be striking or seductive, or both, but in any case BOLD. You’ve got to grab attention straight away.’ I have always known this was the conventional wisdom, so I started with:
This, my friend tells me, is ‘unhappy’ and ‘jars’. Er…no, it’s me that’s unhappy, because I never wanted to write this kind of naffery in the first place! As long-term followers will recall, I planned the whole Introduction around what six ‘normal’ readers told me should go into it. This seemed the right ‘market-oriented’ approach, but perhaps it was a mistake? Perhaps, after writing the Afterword, which I really do want to write, I shall find an Introduction that I also positively want to write, in a way that I personally choose.
The Afterword is currently subtitled ‘Who George Calderon Was’. It will look briefly at his complicated, very chiaroscuro character; why after his death journalists and others began to call him ‘a genius’; why he was then consigned to our ‘Edwardian past’; and what indeed makes him an Edwardian genius, of whom there are very few. It will also have to look at who Kittie was, as the two of them were such a synergy. Was she just a conventional, dutiful, anti-feminist, ‘career-less’ upper class Edwardian wife?
I hope to raise some of these issues on the blog.
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