Writing Meme Day 21
Apr. 21st, 2010 07:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
erastes21. Do any of your characters have children? How well do you write them?
Well, to be honest, I don't think it's up to me to say how well--or not--I write them, that's up to the reader. As I said in an earlier writing meme post, I'm not keen on kids. Never had any, never wanted to have any, ever, so my interaction with children has been severely limited. I have two nieces, but I saw very little of them when they were growing up, and made every attempt to avoid them when they were smelly lumps of poo.
My mother was a teacher of first year infants (5 and 6 years old) and I was probably put off partly by going to visit her classrooms and having children attach to me like leeches, holding my hand and generally being creepy. (I was also put off greatly by the sex education film they showed at my school. NO-ONE (other than a doctor/nurse) needs to see what happens down the business end of a birth, the mother doesn't see it, and DOESN'T NEED TO SEE IT WHEN SHE'S 14 THANK YOU. Very few of my classmates had children. I wonder if there's a direct correlation...
Anyway! I have few children in my books (so far). Rafe has a son, but being the Regency he’s rarely seen and heard, even though Rafe is probably quite the exception to the general rule of the time, and loves his son to distraction. He still neglects him (to our standards) quite a lot. Going to London for “business” (and pleasure) for weeks at a time, and leaving him in the hands of a tutor for most of the day. So you don’t see a lot of him, but I hope what I did write of him was memorable. He was a little Adele-like(from Jane Eyre), I’m aware of that, but that’s a little deliberate, too. There are children that Ambrose teaches in London, but you don’t get to see much of them.
Mordecai from Frost Fair is not exactly a child; he’s probably about 13 or 14. Tteens as a concept didn’t exist until the 20th century, children were infants and then miniature adults in English society. I think perhaps it would have been good if we’d kept some ceremony, as other cultures have, showing the passing from boy to man. So Mord is grown up in his aspect (except briefly when he shows his childish anger to Joshua) – he’s probably had to be “the man” in his household for years – there’s no mention of a father, his mother works a fishstall on the streets, and his two younger brothers are probably already out at work too.
There are some children in Muffled Drum, although I haven’t got to that stage yet, and am not sure exactly how they will – or if they will – appear. It’s always a difficult decision with married homosexual/bisexual men, because some readers will consider that to be “cheating” on the homosexual couple - and so will be put off by that aspect of real historical life, but I am trying to write about real people, so that’s something I’ll have to suck up.
I suppose then the answer is that—as with female characters—I’m not particularly interested in writing about children, and so they don’t feature in my work, and are not likely to in the future.
Well, to be honest, I don't think it's up to me to say how well--or not--I write them, that's up to the reader. As I said in an earlier writing meme post, I'm not keen on kids. Never had any, never wanted to have any, ever, so my interaction with children has been severely limited. I have two nieces, but I saw very little of them when they were growing up, and made every attempt to avoid them when they were smelly lumps of poo.
My mother was a teacher of first year infants (5 and 6 years old) and I was probably put off partly by going to visit her classrooms and having children attach to me like leeches, holding my hand and generally being creepy. (I was also put off greatly by the sex education film they showed at my school. NO-ONE (other than a doctor/nurse) needs to see what happens down the business end of a birth, the mother doesn't see it, and DOESN'T NEED TO SEE IT WHEN SHE'S 14 THANK YOU. Very few of my classmates had children. I wonder if there's a direct correlation...
Anyway! I have few children in my books (so far). Rafe has a son, but being the Regency he’s rarely seen and heard, even though Rafe is probably quite the exception to the general rule of the time, and loves his son to distraction. He still neglects him (to our standards) quite a lot. Going to London for “business” (and pleasure) for weeks at a time, and leaving him in the hands of a tutor for most of the day. So you don’t see a lot of him, but I hope what I did write of him was memorable. He was a little Adele-like(from Jane Eyre), I’m aware of that, but that’s a little deliberate, too. There are children that Ambrose teaches in London, but you don’t get to see much of them.
Mordecai from Frost Fair is not exactly a child; he’s probably about 13 or 14. Tteens as a concept didn’t exist until the 20th century, children were infants and then miniature adults in English society. I think perhaps it would have been good if we’d kept some ceremony, as other cultures have, showing the passing from boy to man. So Mord is grown up in his aspect (except briefly when he shows his childish anger to Joshua) – he’s probably had to be “the man” in his household for years – there’s no mention of a father, his mother works a fishstall on the streets, and his two younger brothers are probably already out at work too.
There are some children in Muffled Drum, although I haven’t got to that stage yet, and am not sure exactly how they will – or if they will – appear. It’s always a difficult decision with married homosexual/bisexual men, because some readers will consider that to be “cheating” on the homosexual couple - and so will be put off by that aspect of real historical life, but I am trying to write about real people, so that’s something I’ll have to suck up.
I suppose then the answer is that—as with female characters—I’m not particularly interested in writing about children, and so they don’t feature in my work, and are not likely to in the future.
