The Writing of GLENCOE, A ROMANCE OF SCOTLAND

by Muireall Donald

My paternal grandmother was a Campbell from the town of Inverary in Argyll. My husband is descended from Clan Donald. When we were married, my father said, "you know there was always bad blood between those two clans." I didn’t pay him much attention at the time. But then about five years ago my husband and I attended a meeting of the local Scottish Society. When I stood to introduce myself, I said, "I’m Muireall, Campbell by birth and Donald by marriage. A man in the back of the room laughed and said, "I hope he doesn’t turn his back on you while he sleeps."

So I knew I had to find out about this bad blood.

I found the bare bones of the story in a Scottish history book. Even to the mind of a Scottish-American three hundred years later, it was a shocking recital.

The Glencoe Massacre occurred in the early morning of February 13, 1692. Thirty eight members of a small branch of the MacDonald clan, including two women, two children, and the chief, were killed by a small party of soldiers from a Campbell regiment which had been billeted upon them. The justification for the act was the failure of the chief to take the oath of allegiance to William of Orange by a prescribed date. The massacre was intended as a warning to other tardy Highland chiefs. But the message backfired. To the Highlanders, the more serious crime was the violation of the sacred tradition of hospitality.

The oath of allegiance to King William had to be signed before the first of January, 1692. The MacDonalds of Glencoe, like other Highlanders who opposed the Dutch born English king, had reluctantly decided to sign it, hoping to spare his people the wrath of the Crown. But due to bad weather and confusing circumstances, the Glencoe chief was six days late signing the oath. This was the official excuse for the massacre.

King William signed an order that was passed to Lt. Robert Campbell. In part it gave royal sanction to the following:

"... You are ordered to fall upon the rebels, the MacDonalds of Glencoe, and to put to the sword all under seventy. ... have a special care that the old fox MacIan and his sons upon no account escape your hands. This is by the King’s special command for the good and safety of the country. See that this is put in execution."

The soldiers arrived at Glencoe and were taken in under the Highland tradition of hospitality to strangers. The MacDonald chief was told that the soldiers were there to collect taxes. In the middle of the night of the worst blizzard of that winter, the soldiers rose up and began their slaughter.

The story of the Glencoe massacre stalked me for a long time before I surrendered to writing about it. It had everything an author could hope for: a wild dramatic setting, fierce characters, political machinations, and unspeakable tragedy. And I knew that somewhere in all that mix there was also the story of the regular people – the ones who, through no fault of their own, were accidental survivors and victims of the events that led to Glencoe.

But I didn’t know who those people were until I woke up one morning in the wee hours with a snatch of dialogue running through my head. Suddenly the characters were there, life sized and full throated. Because I had friends who were starting a local chapter for romance writers and because I enjoyed reading romances, I decided to format my book for the romance industry.

I pitched the novel to an editor at a romance writers’ conference in the fall of 1994. He thought the premise sounding interesting but warned me not to let the history overshadow the characters. That’s when I knew I was in trouble. And no other prophecy could have proved more accurate. My characters were the sum and total of the historical events at Glencoe. The book was rejected by two romance houses because there was too much history in it. But I had to be true to the voices of my characters. I could no more separate them and let the massacre become just a backdrop than I could have invented a science fiction background for them to play against. Come to think of it, that might have been easier…

Somewhere along the way, I ran across a bit of advice from James Michener that I followed with deceptive arrogance: "… write as if you knew everything in the world." This is especially valuable when tons of research are necessary to fill out your novel. In the first draft, I wrote for the joy and passion of the story, listening to the muse. Lesson one: Don’t question. Just write. When I forgot that rule, I endured horrid periods of frustration when I didn’t know what details to supply. Then I decided if I didn’t have the details or information at hand to describe how the Scots built cottages in the seventeenth century, I would leave that passage blank to be filled in after I finished the first draft. The point here is not to let the technicalities drag the story down.

This is radically different advice than you will hear from many established authors. They prefer to immerse themselves in the history and research before they begin writing. But to do that would have silenced my muse. She sent me the characters and the story first. I had to write it the way she told me to.

So my decision was to start with some understanding of when and where the book takes place, but save the heavy research for after the first draft is finished. For instance, I already knew that in the seventeenth century Highlands, people lived hard and proud and were hostile to England’s authority. Things like the type of clothing they wore, what plants grew near the cottage, and how far away from the glen the village was just weren’t pertinent at this place in my writing. Lesson number two: I wrote the story until it told me it was finished.

Some writers talk about outlines and character sketches as though they are the most precious things in the world. Glencoe was written without an outline and I almost had a breakdown mid-way through writing it. A writer friend of mine calls that place ‘the saggy middle’. And that’s exactly what it was. I was in the middle of this great story, I knew what the end was supposed to be, but I didn’t know how to get there. To try to get myself going again, I did character sketches on the two main characters and found the process to be tedious and aggravating.

For about four weeks I floundered and fussed around the house. An outline would have saved the day. An outline reminds you that you really did think about this book before you started writing it. It gives writers a form to follow: you know, in chapter ten, hero fatally wounds rival and is imprisoned in dungeon. With an outline telling you what is supposed to happen next, all you have to do is figure out how to fill in the blanks.

But I was being an artist. I was letting my characters tell me the story. Who needed an outline? Problem was, they stopped talking to me. So I went out and bought Scottish historicals in the desperate hope that reading other authors would provide the magic I needed. Bad move. All it did was depress me. Who was I to think I could outdo these authors who had proven track records and scores of devoted fans?

Lesson number three: Just write. Even when my characters were reluctant to speak, I had to remember to write. Interview them. Ask them pointed questions. If they wouldn’t answer, I described the room they were in at the moment, the clothes they were wearing, the sounds they were hearing. Remember this is the first draft. I had lots of opportunity to fix it all in the eighth draft through the thirteenth drafts.

I learned another thing during my bout with the saggy middle. Not to go back at this point and read what I’d done. l was tempted to rewrite. This was not the time for rewriting. This was the time to write. Remember Lessons one and two?

Okay. So I interviewed my main character and asked her what was happening in her life right then. She’d been living with the enemy clan for awhile and getting to know them as real people and not the monsters of legend that her family had described. We had a good long discussion and what emerged from that interview became one of my favorite parts of the book. It showed me that she was growing up during my story in ways I hadn’t foreseen.

Meg Campbell and I wrote that section together – chapters sixteen and seventeen. This was the most valuable experience I’ve ever had in my writing. It was the first time a character really lived in my mind. And no, I wasn’t on medication at the time.

The book took me about nine months to write and another six to eight months to complete. I took the last three months off from work to finish it because it was compelling me to the point that I wasn’t any good at the job. That’s another "how not to" that you have heard many times before. Don’t quit your day job. Instead write at night, write in the mornings before work, write on your lunch break, write at the dinner table. Groceries, electricity, and car payments are important. Computers won’t work without electricity (mine won’t at least), my body needed comfort food to keep me going, and the car got me to and from the library for research. My husband managed not to freak out. We sold our motor home and ate lots of beans and rice. The novel got finished and the research began.

Where to start? The local library ordered lots of books for me. I scoured the bibliographies of every book I read and kept prodigious notes. The notes alone would make another book. Because the Glencoe Massacre is so important in the world of Scottish history, I needed to have a solid understanding of the politics of the time. Political intrigue had always bored me. Not this time!

I also needed to know what was happening in the outside world during the late seventeenth century. For instance, did you know that tea was not introduced to Scotland until sometime in the mid-seventeen hundreds? Oops. Go back into novel and delete all references to "tea".

And tartans. My God, is that ever a landmine. The problem is, there were really no standard colors at that time. Tartan colors differed according to the dyes the weavers could glean from native plant life and quite often the members of the same clan wore definite variations of color. My solution was to have my male character wear a specific plaid most of the time, but he does make an appearance in another tartan in one part of the novel. This probably won’t sit well with purists of Scottish historicals. If not, they can write their own novels and educate me.

Celtic novels are a highly popular form of fiction. Readers are devouring all the Celtic lore they can find and they are savvy about names, places, and history. This trend has given us many fine books on Celtic folklore and myths and legends. It also makes accurate research critical. Good history books on Ireland and Scotland are easy to find now, where several years ago such books had to be special ordered.

Many authors keep research notes on 3x5 cards. But I prefer the notebook method. Like in school. I have divided sections for topics like clothing, food, buildings, entertainment, medicine, government, military, and religion. I know how my characters lived. Is this finally beginning to sound like a job? It’s true. The research notes for a novel are the most important thing an author will ever write.

For me, the historical information went into the second and third drafts of Glencoe. Then I went back to make the writing sing. That’s when I really fell in love with the story. By this time I knew the characters as well as I knew myself. I knew exactly how Meg’s eyes narrow when she intuits a lie, and I could clearly see how Niall breathes when he is angry.

These are the details that make scenes come alive for readers. They are best left until the very end of the writing project. And I had another hard awakening about writing until there are no words left to write. My most important advice to writers is: Don’t let anyone else read your novel until you are finished with the bone work of it. Otherwise you end up with what my support group calls ‘a book written by committee’. Lesson four: My job as an author is to just write the best book I can and to cherish and encourage its life. When I am absolutely sure that I am finished with a book, then I turn it over to a critique group for line editing and proof reading. To do otherwise is to diminish my personal vision and it is a terrible injustice to the book.

After most of the writing on Glencoe was done, we went to Scotland. The first question I usually hear is, "how important was that to the book?" That’s hard to answer. I could probably have written the book without going to visit the places I wrote about. Imagination is such an integral part of writing that in many instances, it is more important than details. But I think that seeing the Glencoe Pass and visiting the Folk Museum, which is a tiny cottage filled with artifacts of the MacIains, added dimension to my novel.

Going to Scotland made the people more real to me. Not just my characters, but the flesh and blood ancestors who were part of the historic event. I saw the memorial to the slain MacDonalds in the now thriving Glencoe tourist center. Walked the castle grounds at Inverary Castle, home of the Campbells of Argyll. Saw the purple rhododendrons blooming on the mountainside and dodged hairy Highland cows on the narrow roadways. I also had the unique experience of listening to a MacDonald lady in Inverary harangue me over the injustices my clan heaped on hers three hundred years ago. The trip gave me the opportunity to taste the romance of Scotland.

So is my book an historical novel or an historical romance? It meanders into both areas, I think, which most publishing houses don’t like to hear. They want to be able to niche books. Laughing Owl Publishing has wisely chosen to market it as mainstream fiction and let the readers categorize it as they wish.

This may all sound like an unorganized approach to writing a novel. It was. It’s really a treatise on how not to write a Celtic novel. But I think if you write exactly what your heart is compelling you to write, it won’t matter whether you use an outline or a plot or a synopsis or whether you just let the story tell itself. Writing from the heart makes the book live.

And that is what readers are looking for and what will bring them back to you the next time.