Category: Writing

The Women of The Iliad

On By katespitzmillerIn ancient greece, historical fiction, History, literature, Troy, Uncategorized, Women, Women's History, Womens History, Writing5 Comments

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In honor of my upcoming novel, Companion of the Ash, I would like to provide an introduction to the women whom Homer included in his epic eighth-century B.C. work, The Iliad. There are many women in The Iliad, but I am focusing on four–the four who I have included in my novel.

Bearing in mind that women in ancient literature were often treated as “extras,” serving the needs of men and as a sort of window-dressing for the author, I will do my best to illuminate the characters as they were revealed to us by Homer. We have a sorceress, an unpleasant woman, and women who are incessantly sad. These were pretty much standard roles women were relegated to in ancient literature.

Women were also only given roles in relation to men–they were the mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters of heroes and villains. Women did not appear in ancient texts as free-standing characters, unanchored to men. One exception to this is Penthesilea, the Amazon Queen, who does appear in The Iliad and other ancient works. It should be noted, however, that the Amazons as a group were described as “man-like,” and thus were given a sort of license to stand on their own as characters devoid of male counterparts–other than the centaurs, who were not fully men.

Kassandra
Kassandra was sister to Hector, Paris, and Helenus. She was the daughter of King Priam and Queen Hecuba. Thus, she was a princess of Troy. She was single, and, as such, served in the only real capacity a single woman could in the ancient world–as a priestess. She was also a “seer,” with the gift of prophecy. For this, she was considered insane. It is Kassandra who warned Paris not to go to Sparta because he would meet Helen, and it was Kassandra who predicted the fall of Troy at the end of the Trojan War. But she was cursed–no one believed any of her prophecies, even though they were all true.

Hecuba
Queen Hecuba appears in several ancient works, but I will focus on her role in The Iliad here. She is best known, perhaps, for being a mother–of nineteen children. These children include the heroes Hector and Paris, and the scholar and prophet (who people believed), Helenus. She was also mother to Kassandra, who she dismissed as insane. She appears in Homer’s work at prayer, and as–variously–a doting, anxious, and grieving mother.

Helen
It is on Helen’s shoulders upon which the entire Trojan War rests. We know now the famous quote, “the face that launched a thousand ships.” Well, it was also the face that brought down a great city. Helen returning to Troy with Paris was the literary cause of the Trojan War (but almost definitely not the historical cause). Homer paints her as sorrowful and regretful–perhaps even as a woman who misses her husband Menelaus in Sparta. In The Iliad, she is reunited with Menelaus in the end, after the fall of Troy and the death of Paris. She is a rather pathetic figure, considering the war is her fault.

Andromache
Andromache is the wife of the hero Hector. This connection is so central to her character that in Book 22 of The Iliad, Andromache is not even named. She is simply referred to as “the wife of Hector,” despite being a relatively major character in the work. Throughout the epic, Andromache is seen weeping and carrying on over deaths and deaths-to-come. She is portrayed as a weak woman; a woman who exists only for the purpose of providing emotional responses to her husband’s deeds. She is never given a full character of her own.

And it is to Andromache that I turned in writing my novel. I was taking a writing class in Derbyshire, England, in 2003, and the instructor asked us to answer the question, “What if?” After much scribbling and musing, I came up with the question: “What if Andromache was a strong, capable, fully-developed character?”

And, thus, Companion of the Ash was born. It is set for release this year from Spider Road Press. The story is a sequel to The Iliad, starting at the death of Hector. It is told through the eyes of a strong, courageous Andromache.

I thought, after twenty-eight centuries, she deserved as much.

The Lost Children: Vietnam

On By katespitzmillerIn adoption, birth fathers, Family, History, Uncategorized, Veterans, Vietnam War, Writing2 Comments

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“Rejoice O young man, in thy youth…”
– Ecclesiastes (from Platoon)

 

I had a strange thought today.

Those of you who have been reading my blog know that I have two fathers: my Dad, George, who raised me; and Jim, my birthfather.

My strange thought today was about Jim.

Jim was in Vietnam from 1969 to 1970. He was based at Lai Khe, headquarters of the 1st Infantry Division and an important base for the outer defense of Saigon. The base had a sign over its gate that read, “Welcome to Rocket City”–in part because by 1970 it was, along with Khe Sanh, one of the most heavily-rocketed bases in South Vietnam.

My strange thought came as I was watching the film Platoon this afternoon. I thought I remembered how many American soldiers died in Vietnam, but I wanted to be sure, so I Googled it. It was as I remembered: 58,220. I remembered the number from my teenage years, when I was fascinated by the Vietnam War and consumed anything I could find related to it–books, movies, TV shows, magazine articles.

But I never thought about the number. I knew it was a horrific amount of people, but I never thought until today that the majority of those killed in action were just kids–average age nineteen–who would never become husbands and fathers. I thought today about all the children that weren’t born because those 58,220 men were killed.

And then I thought of myself.

Jim survived. He wasn’t shot down. He didn’t crash. Despite being in a light, slow-moving aircraft far out in front of the main group for a full year, he did not go down. He survived.

Which means I survived, too.

A strange thought, like I said.

I’m here, but the children of thousands of other soldiers are not. This is devastating.

But this also means that I may have some role to play in the world, some purpose. As many Vietnam veterans themselves say, why did I make it when so many others did not? There must be a reason.

I suppose the children of veterans of World War II and Korea may feel the same way. A certain sense of grace or luck. Just one well-aimed rocket-propelled grenade, just one loose screw on a wing or engine part, and I would not be here.

I guess, in a way, we can all say that about ourselves. We would not be here if not for the ones who came before us. But there’s something about knowing your DNA survived a war when others did not that makes it different. They are the lost children of Vietnam–the ones who were never born.

As I said, I was always fascinated by the Vietnam War, even decades before I knew Jim served there. I cried at The Wall as an eighth grader, drawing stares from my classmates on a school trip. I felt something back then, staring at the black granite, I just didn’t know what.

Maybe now I do.

Spiders

On By katespitzmillerIn Africa, anxiety, hypothyroidism, medicine, Uncategorized, Women, Writing1 Comment

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In 2012, I went to Botswana. It was a two-week safari, and a dream fulfilled. I am an animal nut, so being in the Kalahari, the Okavango, and in a white rhino reserve were all ecstasy for me. I saw every African animal imaginable, with the exception of a cheetah.

But I’m not writing about the mammals today–although I could write pages and pages about the lions and the elephants and the hippos. No, today, I’m writing about the spiders.

When you go on an African safari and you’re staying in tents, you’re not permitted to go anywhere in the dark by yourself. This is for the very obvious safety reason–no tour company wants a client eaten. So, you wait faithfully for your guide–in my case, Francis–to walk you to and from your tent when the sun goes down.

One night in the Okavango, we were staying on a small island surrounded by rich, green marshland. We had gone out in mokoros, or narrow canoes, in the afternoon, and had been serenaded at dinner by snorting hippos. It was a lovely day. It was pitch black when Francis walked me back to my tent. As the only solo traveler in my group, I was often the last one dropped off by Francis. I opened the wooden door of my tent and said goodnight to Francis. He told me he’d be back for me at five a.m., and said goodnight.

I stepped into my tent and flicked on the small light by the door.

Someone had lit my mosquito coil, and it burned lazily in a red clay dish in the middle of the room. The smoke curled slowly upward, and for some reason, my eyes rose with it. The ceiling of the tent–dark green canvas gathered in the center at a large, looping knot–was covered with dozens and dozens of spiders. Big spiders, medium-sized spiders, small spiders. Spiders with spots, spiders with stripes, spiders with long, arching legs that looked like they were made for leaping.

Now, I have spent the majority of my life afraid of spiders. And at the moment that I flicked on the light in that tent, I was afraid of spiders. I’m the girl who used to scream when there was a daddy-long-leg in the shower, hoping my Dad would come in and kill it with a paper towel.

But in the Okavango after dark, you can’t leave your tent alone.

So, what did I do? I looked up at that ceiling, and I said, “I guess I’m no longer afraid of spiders.” Then, I climbed into my pajamas, slid into bed, and turned off the light.

In the morning, the spiders were gone, away back to whatever crevices of the tent they called home during the day. Francis came for me at five a.m., as promised, and we went to breakfast.

This story comes back to me now as I battle sudden-onset hypothyroidism. I have been very sick for nearly three months with extreme fatigue, weakness, and muscle pains. I am blessed to have a job that is seasonal, and I have had the time off to rest and try to get well. But Tuesday, the junior hockey season begins, and I return to work. I am not yet one hundred percent. And I am scared.

But I am no longer afraid of spiders. I stared dozens of them down in Africa despite a lifetime of fear. And so, I face Tuesday with the knowledge that I can overcome fear and I can overcome odds. I am strong–my trip to Africa taught me that in a hundred different ways.

Right now as I type, I am afraid of what Tuesday will bring, I am afraid of how I will feel physically when the alarm goes off at five a.m. on September 4th–but when the time comes, I will look at the day squarely and say, “I am no longer afraid.”

The spiders taught me that.

The Submission Process: “But you don’t own a shih-tzu.”

On By katespitzmillerIn Writing, Writing AdviceLeave a comment

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I had a dream last night in which I was trying to explain the novel submission process to my father. My Dad passed away in 1990, and dreams about him are rare, so it was something of a gift. And, considering the nasty topic, it was a pretty humorous dream.

“You can’t just write ‘Dear Agent,’” I said.

“What do you write?” he said.

“You write whatever their name is. ‘Dear Ms. Huntington’ or whatever.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad.”

“Well,” I said, “but then you have to personalize the letter.”

“How do you do that?”

“’Dear Ms. Huntington, I read in the recent Annals of the American Kennel Club that you are the breeder of champion shih-tzus, and that your prize bitch, Foxy Fiona, recently won fifth prize in her class at Crufts. I, too, am the owner of a shih-tzu.’”

“But you don’t own a shih-tzu.”

“It’s for the letter, Dad. I’m supposed to make a personal connection with the agent. I’m supposed to show that I’ve done my research, and that I know something about her.”

“Sounds stupid.”

“It is.”

Of course, I know as well as you do that one does not go off on a tangent about an agent’s shih-tzu in a query letter (unless one’s book is about shih-tzus). But the dream was instructive. It was instructive in that I woke up laughing.

There is a game to be played in the submission process, and having been through it once before with my first novel, I dread it again this time with my second.

The submission process has been dangling over my head like an anvil in a Wiley Coyote cartoon — freezing me in place, preventing me from completing my most recent draft. If I finish this draft, my mind tells me, then I’ll have to finish the next draft. And then soon enough, I’ll be submitting.

But the fact that my subconscious found enough humor in the process to create a nocturnal comedy sketch about it (with my father included) tells me that maybe I am in fact ready to move forward. Maybe I shouldn’t take it all as seriously as I have in the past – the research, the e-mails, the rejections.

If my subconscious says it’s okay to laugh in my dreams, then it should be okay to laugh in my waking life. Laugh at the “Dear Author” emails, the “Thank you for your query letter, but…” e-mails.

Easier said than done, right?

So that’s one of the reasons I’m writing this post. To remind myself of my dream. To remind myself of the lunacy of shih-tzus and query letters. If my mind can come up with that, it can come up with anything.

And isn’t that what being a writer is all about?

When Friends Don’t Support Your Writing

On By katespitzmillerIn Creativity, Writing, Writing Advice6 Comments

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I’ve had to make a choice. A friend, or my writing. I chose my writing. Sounds harsh. Narcissistic. But she did not support me. In fact, she undermined me. And I’ve been on this planet long enough to know that there are people out there who are willing to support me – sometimes strangers (like you) who connect only through the ethereal mist of the internet. And I know that staying attached to those in my life who do not support me in my writing is toxic and a waste of my time.

Being a writer is hard enough without someone pulling you down, telling you in words or otherwise that it is a pointless pursuit.

This particular friend had the following statement for me: “Focus on something other than your book!” The words came in a text, complete with exclamation mark.

As writers, we pour ourselves into our work — our souls, our hearts, our entire life experiences. And this friend was dismissing hours and hours and hours of my life’s work with just a few flicks of her finger on her iPhone.

I had given her the completed first draft of my novel to read – 75,000 words. That alone should tell you how close we were. She had her hands on the manuscript for six months and had only read two chapters. She once called me up on a day I had scheduled for writing to see if I wanted to join her shoe shopping at the mall. “No, thanks,” I told her. “Today is a day I have scheduled for writing.” In response, she said, “You can’t sit around all day doing nothing.”

So when she told me to focus on something other than my book, several thoughts ran through my head. What should I focus on, then, I thought. Perhaps the triad of depressiveness that is Donald Trump, climate change, and the Syrian refugee crisis? Should I give up on my writing, the thing that gives my soul life and depth and clarity, and dwell upon the negatives of life? Or should I skirt around the edges of life, like you, dear friend, channeling my energy into my hair and makeup and the latest trendy boots? No. I choose words. I choose to write. I choose characters and soul and the weaving of stories. This is where I find my truth.

Writing is where humans have found their truth for millennia. The act of quill on paper, stylus on clay tablet, chisel on tomb wall. And before writing, we painted our stories on cave walls 15,000 years ago. We humans are storytellers — that is what we do.

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I suppose writing cannot really be explained to the nonwriter. And I am certainly not the one to do the explaining. But when it came time to choose, I chose writing. And I always will. It is, as one of my characters once said, “in my veins.”

So, I wish my friend well with her trendy boots and her newest mascara. I only wish, for one small moment, that she could feel the joy of creation — the spark — that comes from forming a beautiful sentence, an eloquent phrase, or from finding just the right word at just the right time. But she won’t. Because she is not a writer. She is a consumer of things, not a creator of things.

And creation, whether it be the telling of stories or the writing of music or the painting of pictures, is where beauty lies. I will not give up. I will not “focus on something else.” It is not who I am. I must be authentic to myself. And my self, my soul, is a writer.

Dear Roger

On By katespitzmillerIn Writing2 Comments

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We learn many lessons in our high school years, some academic and intended, many social and unintended, and others life lessons that we carry with us well beyond those years of cliques and clubs and standardized tests.

I’m going to dig deep into the annals of high school for this post, so bear with me.

When I was a senior in high school, I was in an honors English class taught by an amazing man who could – literally – speak Old English. He could read Beowulf aloud in the original text.  Seriously.  But that’s beside the point.

Our class was given an assignment: write the beginning of a frame story introducing five unrelated characters and put them in a unique situation in which they all must come together, alá Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.

I worked my butt off. I spent every minute of my free time on the assignment. I had written stories my whole life – kept them in secret notebooks tucked away in the bottom drawer of the desk in my bedroom and never shared them with a single soul because I thought creative writing was, well, somehow embarrassing.

So this was just the kind of writing assignment that I lived for.  Had been waiting for.

And damn, was it good.

The night before the assignment was due, I was at a friend’s house, where there was a gathering of students from the English class. Everyone traded papers and read each other’s stories. One student – I’ll call him Roger (although his name was really Jeremy) – read my story and turned to me with a smirk on his face and said, “This isn’t what Dr. Brown wants at all.”

I was crushed. I had worked so hard; had perfected every word, every phrase, every sentence. It was, I thought, the best thing I had ever written. And it was too late to do anything about it. It was nine o’clock the night before the story was due.

I drove home that night in tears.

The next day, I turned in the paper, knowing it was a complete failure, knowing, as Roger had said, that it wasn’t what the teacher wanted at all. Knowing my work — my very finest work — just wasn’t good enough.

A week later, Dr. Brown had the papers graded and began returning them. I was a bundle of nerves. I was terrified that I had failed. I watched as the students around me received their papers, talking to each other and sharing their grades. But no paper appeared on my desk. Imagine that – everyone has a paper, everyone is chatting about their grades – and I had nothing. Nothing but an empty desk and a desolate feeling in my gut. Kids started asking me, “Where is your paper?” and I realized that my paper was so bad, so supremely awful, that it wasn’t even worth grading; Dr. Brown had kept it to perhaps speak with me after class about its worthlessness.

And then Dr. Brown addressed the class. He stood in front of his desk as he always did, holding a paper in his hands. He said, “Students. Someone in this class will be a professional writer one day.” And then he looked at me over the rim of his tortoiseshell glasses.

“Kate,” he said, “Will you read your story to the class?”

The lesson, of course, is not to listen to the Rogers in life.

It has been twenty-seven years since that moment, but it still holds great meaning for me. It is still a lesson I draw on as I write today. And last summer I was reminded again of the Rogers in the world.

My historical fiction short story “Brigida” won first prize in Spider Road Press’s 2015 Spider’s Web Flash Fiction Contest and the story will be published in their 2016 anthology Approaching Footsteps later this year.

Which is great news. And which may or may not qualify me as a “professional writer” as Dr. Brown said. But it’s not the end of the tale.

When I first learned of the Spider’s Web contest, I stood, hands on my hips, staring at my computer screen – and laughing. “Seven hundred and fifty words?!” I shouted, spooking the cats, who ran off in three different directions.

You see, I consider myself a novelist, and had just completed a 92,000-word project. I never thought I could conquer flash fiction. I thought 750 words was an impossibility. “There’s no way I can create complex characters and a rich plot in 750 words,” I said – loudly — to the computer. Seven hundred and fifty words is half a chapter. A quarter of a chapter.

“It can’t be done,” I thought.

So there are Rogers lurking inside us, too.

And those are the Rogers that must be silenced most of all.

Cartimandua: Queen of the Brigantes

On By katespitzmillerIn History, Women, Womens History, Writing2 Comments

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“Women hold up half the sky.”  – Mao Zedong.

Queen Cartimandua. First-century leader of the Brigante tribe of northern Britain. She ruled for nearly a quarter of a century, from approximately 43 AD to 69 AD, and she was a formidable force for her time. Roman historian and writer Tacitus names her as the only native regina, or queen, in Roman Britannia. Not even the great female Celtic Iceni leader Boudica is given this title in his writings.

Cartimandua ruled the Brigantes by inherited right, rather than through marriage. She did eventually marry, but later divorced her husband and ruled alone. Making a treaty with the occupying Romans during a time of great Brigante tribal upheaval, she was defended by the fabled Ninth Legion Hispana – an honor in and of itself that showed her significant importance to the male-dominated hierarchy of Rome.

Things did not end well for Cartimandua – nor, it must be said, for the Brigantes. In 69 AD, a Brigante revolt during a time of Roman political unrest led to the downfall of the queen and to a long period of Brigante rebellion in the north of Britannia. Cartimandua disappears from the record at this point. The Brigantes themselves were eventually defeated by the Romans, and their culture, like most native British tribes, absorbed by the invading Anglo-Saxons following Rome’s departure from the island in the fifth century.

But she was there for twenty-six years, leading her people in a time of occupation, a time of great social and political upheaval in ancient Britain. At a time when the forces of Rome were transforming her island into yet another defeated province of the empire, Cartimandua remained proudly Brigante while balancing a solid peace with the very Romans who had come to bring a change of politics, language, and social fabric. Indeed, the Romans found her so valuable that they defended her from her enemies with one of their greatest legions.

Cartimandua. Queen of the Brigantes. Regina.

Forgotten now, like her people. But remembered, perhaps, for a moment or two, today.

Her life has been fictionalized in Daughters of Fire by Barbara Erskine.

GoodReads      Amazon

For a more scholarly read, try Cartimandua: Queen of the Brigantes by Nicki Howarth.

GoodReads      Amazon

“Remember the Ladies”

On By katespitzmillerIn History, Women, WritingLeave a comment

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“Remember the ladies.” Abigail Adams wrote these words in a letter to her husband John Adams on March 31st, 1776 as he and the other men of the Continental Congress set out to establish a new nation. “If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies,” she wrote, “we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.” It took 150 years after Abigail wrote these words for the United States to pass the 19th Amendment allowing women to vote, but we did it, and it all started with her, in a letter to her husband.

Women have long been forgotten in history. And women have long been characterized in the Classics and historical writings as hysterical, weak, and the downfall of men (think Guinevere). As a writer of historical fiction, I seek to represent women as they have always been: strong, tough, integral parts of society — the backbone upon which all of society was built. “Remember the ladies,” for they are the mothers of us all.

Some book recommendations:

The Red Tent by Anita Diamant. The life and experiences of Dinah, a minor character in the Old Testament.

The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley. The Arthurian legend told from the perspective of the women, particularly Morgaine (Morgan Le Fay). A must-read for anyone interested in the tales of King Arthur.

Ahab’s Wife by Sena Jeter Naslund.  Una, a minor character in Melville’s Moby-Dick, is given her own voice and tale in this wonderful novel.  Read a terrific New York Times review here.

May 6th, 2016