Women's Work

A century ago, life was not easy for the average women.  For those of the Siberian village of Unkuda, as their callused hands and bent backs proved, it was even harder, .

Plowing the Fields

One of my favorite scenes in Banners: For God, Tsar and Russia is where Kataya and Ultia prepare the ground for spring planting.  Since Ukurda was too poor to afford a horse, women pulled the plow.  My grandmother on my mother's side was from Slovakia and she thrilled her nearly forty grandchildren with stories of the old county.  Her most memorable the tale told of her uncle hitching her and the other women to a plow.  She said it wouldn't have been too bad if her uncle would not have whipped them when he thought they slowed down.

Women plowing the fields

In Banners,  I teamed Kataya and the elderly Ultia at the plow's lead.  Kataya, being young and brash, made the plowing into a contest of wills.  Despite her small statue, she was determined to show the men her mettle.  Ultia, hardened by years of labor, sought to slow the pace and lighten the load.  The action and dialogue between the two allowed me to develop a story line leading to their mutual respect.

Milk Maids

Akulina Borsikova was a white widow, one of hundreds of thousands of Russian women whose husbands were in the military or in America.  But, as the village harpies oft told her, she was a fortunate among the unfortunate.  They jealously pointed out Akulina had a father and two sons to help, plus a husband who sent American dollars to buy her a Kholmogory, the best milk cow in the village.

Akulina's milk cow, Belyanka

I used Akulina and Belyanka in many scenes where I wanted to show Akulina's thoughts.  Instead of "she thought" or italicized print, I had Akulina carry on a conversation with her cow.  She bared her soul on many occasions and even once got caught doing so by Commissar Bogdanov leading to a poignant scene.

Churning butter

Akulina used her cow to produce milk and cheese.  Her butter was the best in the village and the source of her pride--her very being.  One of the lowest points in her life came when the state confiscated Belyanka, stripping Akulina not only of her income, but her pride.

Akulina's dairy products came with a steep price.  Not only did she have to milk Belyanka, she had to churn the milk into butter and make cheese for sale and barter.  This was in addition to her normal chores: cooking, planting, weeding, making flax into cheesecloth, washing clothes in the river, harvesting plants for medicine, mucking out the stalls, and keeping her two sons in line.

Though I was very familiar with most of Akulina's chores, I had never milked a cow or washed clothes in a river.  Fortunately our county park system has places where you can experience rural life from hundreds of years ago.  Through them I was able to enhance my writing by learning how to milk a cow, churn butter, make cheese and weave cloth. The park's hands-on demonstrations, however, fell short of having me pull a plow.

Old is New Again

Slogans: Our Children, Our Future takes place a century ago during one of the more turbulent times in our country's history.  My research into life in the United States during this period was like looking into a mirror reflecting the present.  I believe my grandfather, Massey, would be quite confused picking up today's newspaper and scanning the political cartoons.  "Did one hundred years really pass?" he would ask.  "It looks like nothing's changed."

Terror

Fear of Foreigners - 2016

Fear of  Foreigners - 1916

Massey would relate the fear of terrorism washing over the United States in 2016.  Back in 1916, every Russian immigrant was seen as a bomb wielding Bolshevik intent on the destruction of American civilization.  Immigration quotas were in the works and America was determined to deport and exclude all undesirables.  Massey would have sympathized with the family portrayed in this 2016 cartoon.

Immigrant Families

Families being separated in 2016

In 1916 Massey's wife and children were still in Russia and he hoped to bring them to America.  But regulations described in his local newspaper's cartoons caused him justifiable concern.  Would Akulina and boys be ever admitted to America under new quotas and rules?

Quotas --1916

A wall is not a new idea

Congress designed the quota system and sets of new requirements to stop the flow of immigrants into America.  The irony of the rules is they were written by men only a few generations removed from being immigrants themselves. 

1916 cartoon lampooning the barring of Eastern European immigrants

 

Hyphenated Americans

A current term that may have caused Massey confusion is the use of African-American to describe black Americans.  In 1916, blacks were simply Americans.  Even the KKK had to list them as a separate category from the clan's "born-in-America" requirement.  The only hyphenated Americans Massey knew were foreign born.

Women's Votes

Another of today's issues Massey might have identified with was politicians actively soliciting women's votes.  As seen in this 1920 cartoon, things haven't changed that much.

The Next Century

I wonder what the United States would be like if I were to return in 100 years?  Maybe this old cartoon will be correct.

In another 100 years?

The Right Word

Based on current estimates, there are over a million words in the English language.  These words come in very handy if you are writing a novel and trying to express your thoughts in the most concise manner possible.  But, from these million words, how do you pick out just the right one?

Suppose I want to convey my character leaving a bar.  I could say, "Sam walked out of the bar." But walk is not the word I want.  I can see my character and he is not walking.  The correct word is on the tip of my tongue, niggling my memory, daring me to grasp it.  But I can't.  What does walk tell my reader?  Only that Sam left by his own power.  But I know Sam had a few too many drinks?  Is there a way I could describe his current condition in one word?  Maybe use a dictionary?

The Dictionary

My $5.00 dictionary (1984)

Definition of walk

According to my dictionary, walk can mean any of many different things, only one of which can be used to come out of a bar--to advance or travel on foot at a moderate pace.  Yes, Sam is doing that, but it doesn't tell the story.  The dictionary gives me as definition, but not connotation.  Where is the right word?

TheThesaurus. 

My handy thesaurus

I want to portray Sam as not doing so well moving from point A to B.  So using a thesaurus there are several verbs describing this action: undulating, waving, rocking, reeling, etc.  Surely Sam is not vibrating or swinging, and reeling makes it sound like he got punched.  I know I'm getting closer, but I'm still not there.

Walking unsteadily

The Word Guide

The Comprehensive Word Guide by Norman Lewis

My go-to source for synonyms is Norman Lewis's Comprehensive Word Guide.  The renowned fiction writer, Rik Newman, introduced me the Guide at our writers' group meeting back in 2010.  Though the Word Guide was written in the '50s, it's still pertinent today.  It is set up similar to a thesaurus, but contains the nuances of a word that makes it suitable for the scene.  Instead of many words meaning to walk, the guide presents words by description.  So when I wanted movement while leaving a bar, the Word Guide offered several choices for clumsy motion. 

Words describing clumsy motion

The word I want jumps out at me.  It's staggered.  Sam staggered from the bar.  The reader can now safely infer from my one word, a verb, that Sam had too much to drink.  Dictionaries are great for definitions and a thesaurus lists tons of synonyms, but to find just the right word, The Concise Word Guide  by Norman Lewis works best.

Writing Software

I began writing the Ikons trilogy in the stone age of the home computer.  The following thirty-plus years took me through a series of general word processors beginning with Texas Instruments' TI-Writer and ending with Microsoft's Word, and using dedicated authoring software, such as yWriter and SmartEdit.

TI-Writer

While the TI-99/4A word processing ability is laughable by today's home computer standards, it represented a giant step for aspiring authors in the1980's.  Gone were the days of strike-overs, erasures and white-outs.  A writer could now make corrections, replace or move whole paragraphs or sections, highlight and bold text before printing your masterpiece.  Add in a clunky dot matrix printer and you're ready for almost big time publishing. 

Bill Cosby was spokesman for the TI-99A

Then came the dark cloud.  Texas Instruments discontinued making their home system leaving me and other users orphans of advancing technology.  Fortunately, that same technology offered a solution.  Thanks to the invention of the optical character reader, I transferred my dot-matrix printouts to rtf files and plowed ahead with Word. 
Side note: Using the OCR was not as easy as I thought.  My poor spelling plus the resolution of the dot matrix printer made for some very unusual words and many hours of corrections.  Often it would have been faster to rewrite an entire chapter.

Microsoft Word

Word was a massive improvement over TI Writer, especially for the spelling deficient.

With the addition of spellcheck, syntax correction, and automatic formatting, Word was my go-to processor of choice.  However, constructing a 90,000 word document was cumbersome.  Although the program does feature the ability to break a novel into chapters, it did not have a way to retrieve old versions, keep track of characters, and record helpful notes.  Thus entered software dedicated novel writing.

yWriter

yWriter is a free software available from a company called SpaceJock.  Simon Haynes developed the program based on his experiences writing SciFi novels.  yWriter is technically not a word processor,  but rather a tool to write your novel by building scenes and chapters. 

SpaceJocks by yWriter is a very helpful and free tool

I used yWriter to write my latest novel, Slogans.  The beauty of the program is it allowed me, or maybe even forced me, to keep track of characters, POV, goals, time, and word usage and count.  The program was easy to master and once I started, I kept discovering new capabilities it offered.  In fact I might even credit yWriter with giving me the impetus to finish my project.

Often I found myself disheartened at my progress.  But, since I faithfully added descriptions to each scene, yWriter created a really nice summary of the novel.  I then printed the yWriter summary and amazed myself with my progress and storytelling ability.  Thus fortified, I soldiered on to completion.

SmartEdit

While yWriter was very useful for managing the novel, my version did not have a spell check.  It did show repeated word usage, but not in an easily correctable format. Then I found a gem of a program which together with yWriter really improved, I hope, my writing style.  Enter SmartEdit.

Free and very helpful

I used SmartEdit to clean up Slogans scenes and chapters.  It's amazing how many errors and pseudo-errors I missed, no matter how many times I went through my work.  SmartEdit excelled at finding misused words, and trite and repeated phrases.  It finds them by the ton, but it still requires the author to determine what should and should not be deleted or rewritten.

So what began on with a pencil and a notepad, evolved into the futuristic world of computer aided writing.  But there still was room for the printed page, as I will discuss in my next and eagerly awaited installment.