Dance and Despair: Writing What You Know
Dance and Despair: Writing What You Know
I lay in the bath, deep in a cloud of lavender-scented bubbles, pondering a question. Where could I set a contemporary romance series?
I’d previously written historical novels based around real events. These had required an enormous amount of research to get the details of daily life correct. This new project would be different in that respect. The characters would be able to zip up their clothes, and eat things like chocolate and potatoes. They would get to drive cars and ride trains, and have phones and go to fancy restaurants.
I stretched out my feet in that bubbly bath, pointing and flexing them, the habit of using spare moments to exercise having come from my ballet training, and the answer to the question arrived. I was going to set the books in the ballet world. I was going to write what I knew.
Events and circumstances from my life quickly made it onto the page.
In the first book of the series, TENDU, the main character sustains injury due to having been made to do an excessive amount of pointe work. That experience was my own.
One week at dance college, my usual morning-class teacher – the late great Imogen Claire – was absent and a substitute put in place. This new teacher decided that I needed to be stretched and pushed, and had me do everything en pointe. Just me. Nobody else. This singling-out drew a few nasty looks from the other dancers. But really, there was nothing to be jealous about. Because it literally was everything. Every bend. Every jump. I love jumping en pointe. I still do it sometimes for fun. But as a training method in morning class, this excessive pointe work made no sense. It removed the benefit of many of the exercises, and I limped off to the other lessons of the day improperly warmed-up.
After two days of this activity, my feet were sore. After a week, they were a mess. Then Imogen returned with her no-nonsense approach to teaching ballet, and I healed. As does Amalphia, from her, somewhat worse, injury.
In book two of the series, CABRIOLE, there is a deeply dark moment. I don’t want to give too massive a spoiler, but it’s something that many women, myself included, go through, and it’s painful. Extraordinarily painful, in so many ways. Amalphia is still recovering from some terrible and dramatic things that happened in book one, and then this horror strikes. It causes her to experience acute grief and then profoundly affects her responses to, and understanding of, lesser events that occur afterwards.
Women’s grief, like women’s opinions, can sometimes be dismissed as moaning, or nagging. What woman hasn’t known that sort of misogyny? I was drawing from my own life, yes, but it also felt like I was tapping into a wider female knowledge, one that can be hard to speak about. I had to do it justice. I had to get it right. So, I pulled up those dark memories from the past and made myself relive the emotions. And then I wrote the fullness of the despair and the trauma and the resulting depression. I didn’t hold back. I didn’t let shame or embarrassment censor the words or the feelings.
But there had to be balance to the story. There had to be fun. And lots of it.
Before I left that bubbly bath of inspiration, I had decided that there would be a large amount of exuberant naughtiness in the series, and that the dance school in the books would be housed in the same Scottish castle that had featured in my historical novels. I knew this fictional place so well, and it was great fun giving the building some modern additions like a swimming pool and a theatre. I knew the main character would be neurodivergent. As am I. I knew she would love chocolate. As do I.
Of course, I also wrote what I didn’t know. The characters rebelled against my planned outline and very much went their own way halfway through the saga. So I did have to do some research, after all. But I knew that well too. It was fun. And I loved it.
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Bio:
Ailish Sinclair trained as a dancer and taught dance for many years, before working in schools to help children with special needs. A short stint as a housekeeper in a castle fired her already keen interest in untold stories of the past and she sat down to research and write.
She now lives beside a loch with her husband and two children where she writes and dances (yes still, chronic medical conditions allowing, pah!) and eats rather too much chocolate.
Author Links:
Website: https://ailishsinclair.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ailishsinclairauthor/
X: https://twitter.com/AilishSinclair
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ailishsinclair
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ailishsinclair/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/AilishSinclair
Amazon author page: http://author.to/mermaid
TENDU: Dancing in the Castle
Scotland’s all misty lochs and magical forests and perfect boyfriends, right?
When dance student Amalphia Treadwell embarks on a secret relationship with her charismatic new teacher, she has no idea of the danger that lurks in his school in Scotland.
She’s soon dealing with her boyfriend’s obsessive ex, the strange research taking place at the castle school and her own ever-evolving relationship issues.
Amalphia works hard to be the best dancer she can be, but as tension builds within the old walls of the castle, she begins to wonder if she will ever escape the dank dark of the dungeon…
Dark, witty, steamy and fun, Tendu is a compelling and seductive story of love, dance and obsession.
CHECK OUT THE ENTIRE SERIES HERE
Category: On Writing
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