I met someone this weekend who introduced themselves (with good reason!) as a 'writer'. It got me thinking about what it is that I actually do in my working life. I usually say I'm a historian, because I spend most of my days reading, researching, talking and writing history. And I work more than I get paid, so it's more than just employment. (I still find it amazing that I get paid at all to read and write - luxury!)
But recently I have been consciously trying to expand my writing horizons - writing some reviews of popular fiction, resurrecting an old fiction project of my own - and it has struck me that I would probably write better if I understood this as an important part of my historical craft. I could describe myself in 'slashie' terms as a writer/historian! Switching my focus to the writing itself - not just the reading, thinking, researching that precedes it - would probably encourage me to write more imaginatively, creatively, clearly. Something that is perhaps not valued or modelled enough in much historical writing!
2 comments:
interesting you say that - there has been a massive push at USyd over the last year or so to get postgrads to think about wrintig more. The history department figures (probably rightly) that most of us won't get academic jobs so we might as well learn to write well. i've actually found it hard to make the head shift back - its only a thesis i'm producing, not my first book! for all my delusions of grandure, my audience is really only three! perhaps once you get to your point, though, the 'writer' tag is a longer-lasting fit?
Of course, there's always historical fiction - one of the ways I became interested in British history was through the writings of Jean Plaidy (aka Philippa Carr and Victoria Holt). Because she wrote her historical fiction in first person, she brought the eras, in which her characters lived, alive and effectively reminded the reader that the people who lived then were 'modern' by their own timeline.
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