Creativity Friday: Inspiring a Novel*, part 2 ~ and book giveaway winner!

First off, congratulations to Jana! You’ve won the DAUGHTERS OF THE WITCHING HILL book giveaway. I know you’ll enjoy this wonderful novel by Mary Sharratt — I adored it. I’ve contacted you by e-mail with instructions on how to claim it. If you don’t receive the e-mail, please leave me a comment on this post.

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It’s been about a month since my last The Novel update. Right now, I’m up to just past 90,000 words. That sounds like a lot, but only about 65,000 of them are “set”, meaning that they actually make sense within the context of the book; the other 25,000 are akin to loose sketches for scenes that may or may not end up included. To be honest, I’m not sure how The Novel may end — I ratchet back and forth between two endings, uncertain which fate feels more satisfying or appropriate for my heroine. It’s also become complicated since my characters have taken on a mind of their own. But, on a more definitive note, I finally have a title that I’m happy with which I’ll reveal in my next newsletter.

Previously I had written about two inspirations which have found their way into The Novel. The first was the paintings of John William Waterhouse— one character is based very loosely on Waterhouse and Whistler. My second inspiration post was about Schubert’s last string quintet, D. 956 which is performed during an important scene.

Here’s a third inspiration:

This drawing of the Lady of Shalott is a woodcut from the Moxon Tennyson, which featured the work of several prominent PreRaphaelite artists including Holman Hunt (above), Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and John Millais. The history of the Moxon Tennyson is an interesting one. Tennyson was reluctant to allow his poems to be published with illustrations. However, publisher Edward Moxon won the poet over by enlisting the talents of the PreRaphaelites for this uber-deluxe and expensive edition. He also arranged for the book’s illustrations to be prepared for publication by the Dalziel Brothers, perhaps the best engravers of their day.

Regardless, the book was a financial failure, though it’s now considered one of the most important illustrated books of the Victorian era. An English friend informed me that sometimes you can find illustrated pages from the Moxon Tennyson for sale in used book and print stores. He was kind enough to gift me with two of them, one which is of Rossetti’s version of the Lady of Shalott. I treasure them both.

Here’s my description of the Moxon Tennyson from The Novel:

I picked up the Moxon, opened to the Holman Hunt — a slice of paper fell out to indicate the illustration, annotated in pencil. “Note the supernatural elements,” he wrote.

The woodcut was a strange fey thing… Imagine, if you will, a tall woman standing as bent over as a Celtic tree, with huge piles of her dark hair floating above her, as if her tresses were held aloft by a hurricane force wind. Though she could be called beautiful, the gaze on her determined face was both intense and frightening. She stood inside a circle-shaped loom, which was set ankle-height — even I knew it was impractically close to the floor for any real weaver to use. The loom looked as though it had been transformed into a web, within which the Lady of Shalott was trapped like a fly.”

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* This is part of an ongoing occasional series of posts about inspiration for the two books I’m working on right now. The first is a novel set in Victorian England during the Aesthetics Movement. The second book is a follow up to DOOMED QUEENS.

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