Looking forward

When Jephthah led Israel several of the neighbouring rulers claimed back land that the Israelites had captured three hundred years earlier and went to war to reclaim it. After some negotiation, the two went to war and the Israelites won. This sounds like a good historical tale but if we look at it in the way Ancient stories, like Aesop's fables are told there is a good deal more to be learned from the story. The lessons are usually from the losing side, so what does that tell us? The bordering kings had held a grudge for three hundred years and when they wanted it redressed, it reacted badly on them. They would have been better to accept the status quo and get on with life. That lesson applies to most human interaction, individuals, groups and even businesses. Remembering must be for the right reasons. We do not remember Auschwitz for what it did to the Jews, we remember it because all who were involved in it were human beings and it reminds us of the kind of things human beings can do to each other. Using up energy and resources to get back at a rival reduces the energy we have to improve ourselves. If we start from how things were a year ago, we will never progress tomorrow.  There is merit in analysing to prevent future mistakes but analysing the past to apportion blame only keeps opening the wound. There is merit in recalling success to motivate further improvement or mitigate gloom at some reverse, we can be that nation again as the Scots sing, but the starting point of tomorrow is today.

Add-ons of criticism

I went off for a wee break visiting the flower show in my old village and a bit of a think about getting into my character’s heads. It proved worthwhile and I got back to my old method of putting myself in the physical situation and looking round at what I see and what I am doing. In one instance my hero, Fergus Findlay from ‘Drover’, was in a Glasgow ballroom in 1820 with the elite of the city and I realised they would be merchants and people with factories. As the setting was the insurrection of that year it did more than give me the scene, it let me understand what the character would think of the gathering and that added a layer to the situation, which I hadn’t imagined. I was going to write ‘a layer I hadn’t thought of.’ but that would be ending a sentence with a preposition and ungrammatical and would have to have been ‘a situation of which I had not thought.’
The other incident is where one character takes a letter from a spy without knowing it. I had just assumed that when someone asked you to take a letter for them, you didn’t enquire into its contents or its reason, you just helped out but my mentor, Lorraine Mace, pointed out that in times of trouble you would certainly be suspicious and reluctant. I don’t entirely agree but it led to a nice way of exposing the spy and a little twist to the plot and a lifting of the tension.
What’s really annoying me is that I had thought the whole thing was fairly tight but Lorraine has seen gaps in the thinking and opened opportunities I didn’t see. Her comments have also turned a quasi history book into a human story that is beginning to fascinate me in a way the original didn’t. I think that is because what I now call the draft was falling between the stools (sorry about the cliche and I can’t get the little sign above the ‘e’) of historical accuracy and a good yarn.

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