The Facts that Engender: Using Virginia Woolf’s ideas of truth and character to articulate my creative process as a historical novelist

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Abstract / Description of output

In “The Fact That Engenders”, I outline how Virginia Woolf’s conception of “the fact that suggests and engenders” in biography, and her focus on unfixed selfhood in fiction, help me better understand and articulate my creative process as a historical novelist. I contextualize Woolf’s ideas, and explore why these ideas are – for me – more helpful than Georg Lukács’ argument that the realist form alone can capture historical truth, and that characters are best positioned as historical-types. In this, I draw on Dame Hilary Mantel’s articulation of her own creative process. I discuss how understanding the power of facts that engender, and the power of absence that engenders, is central to my creative process, reflecting on the role of archival and site-based research in my approach to truth and character. My debut novel, Testament, explores the impact of the Holocaust on three generations of a family. Building on Julia Briggs (2005) and Hussey et al (1991), I examine Virginia and Leonard Woolf in the context of the Holocaust. Finally, I suggest how the relationship between creative writing and historiography might empower both forms of writing to be fully alert to the potential of facts that engender today.
Original languageEnglish
JournalWriting in Practice: the journal of creative writing research
Volume5
Publication statusPublished - 31 May 2019

Keywords / Materials (for Non-textual outputs)

  • historical fiction
  • archival research
  • Virginia Woolf
  • Hilary Mantel
  • Georg Lukács
  • truth
  • character
  • Holocaust
  • archive theory and art
  • writing process

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