Guy Windsor

Consulting Swordsman. Writer.

Archives for December 2014

How to Win More Fights, in one easy step.

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I have been stuck in bed with some ghastly ailment for the last week or so, and am still not recovered yet (don't tell my wife I'm working!), so I'll be brief.

The question on many fencers' minds is how to win more matches. The solution is pretty simple: be a better fencer. Good fencers win more matches.
Problems arise when we get this the wrong way round; you don't become a good fencer by winning matches. You win matches when you're a better fencer.

Today's post is inspired by a teaching opportunity that raised its head after rapier class a couple of weeks ago. Three senior students were fencing each other, and getting frustrated by lack of progress. In short, they were trying to win each point, and as a result being too cautious, snipy and generally not very swordsmanlike. So I stepped in to help, with a couple of simple rule hacks.

Firstly, we created a rule that if your opponent disengages, you must attack. This directly led to some obviously foolish attacking, yes, but also bumped them out of their excessive caution.

Then they fenced between two lines on the ground, far enough apart that with their back foot on the line, they were one step out of measure. The winning conditions were now strike, or get your opponent to step over the line. This reduced the tendency to run away! At this stage I had each fencer identify one thing they should be working on. One needed to be bolder, one wanted to work on their attack by disengage, and the third was working on keeping their parries neat under pressure (if I recall correctly).

Then I had them fence normally, but explicitly working on the one specific aspect they were trying to improve. Unsurprisingly, they were fencing much, much better. This is because they were not trying to win points, they were trying to fence better, let the points fall where they may.

So your goal in every match should not be to win it; it should be to improve one specific aspect of your fencing. This might be boldness, speed, maintaining technique under pressure, getting one specific action to work, whatever. If you pursue this consistently, you will inevitably improve, and, as a result, win more matches.

Yes, you caught me. This is just another way of prioritising process over outcome. But it can be very hard to let go of the point-scoring mentality, which is why little rule hacks can really help. Play with them, and let me know how you get on!

FOUND in Translation

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Five years ago, I got an email from a German friend of mine asking about the German translation of my book, The Swordsman’s Companion. I had no idea what he was talking about, and so he sent me this link.

I nearly fell off my chair (this was before I changed to a standing desk, and just as well, or I might have fainted). There, out on Amazon, was a translation of my book, the only translation of any of my books, published without my knowledge. I was beyond furious, as you might imagine.

So I contacted the publisher, Hans Wieland of Wieland Verlag, and asked him what the hell was going on. He said that he had a deal with my publisher at the time, Chivalry Bookshelf, in which Wieland would publish my book in German, Chivalry would publish a book of theirs in English, and to make the accounting simple, I would get royalties on the German book, and the German author would get the royalties from my book.

Let me say that again: someone else would get author royalties for my book. Only a writer can truly fathom the wrongness of that.

Unfortunately, the contract I had signed with CB meant that this deal was in fact legal, and Wieland had naturally assumed that CB had discussed it with me. But nobody had even told me about it, let alone asked for my help in preparing the German edition. Wieland sent me a copy, and I hit the roof (again). The book is beautifully made, gorgeously laid out. (I can’t speak as to the quality of the translation, but I assume it's pretty good.) But the cover. Oh dear.

Handbuch

Here it is, in all its glory. There are notches on the blade, the sword is in the wrong position, held in the wrong grip, with bent wrists; the person is in wrongly made mail, wearing the wrong jacket, with no elbow protection, the gauntlets’ fingers are too short, the gauntlets and mail are 200 years out of date with each other; even his mouth is open (so he may bite his tongue or break his teeth if he gets hit).

Not to mention the dodgy facial hair and mad staring eyes.

And many people have thought that that was ME on the cover! Aaaaaaaaarghhhhhh!

I gave Mr Wieland a piece of my mind, over email. He was polite and apologetic, and there was nothing to be done. I should state here that it is still a good book, and publishers have always been at liberty to make whatever covers they want; marketing the book is their job, after all.

A couple of years later, I was part of a class action suit (organised by Greg Mele, who worked tirelessly over many months to gain a favourable outcome) against Chivalry Bookshelf in which the rights to my first two books reverted to me. (The terms included a non-defamation clause, so I will be very polite about what went on.) This is why both the Swordsman’s Companion and the Duellist’s Companion are back in print (thanks, Greg!).

Shortly afterwards, I got an email from Thomas Laible of Wieland Verlag, informing me that in the circumstances (the break with CB, and the obvious non-publication of the German book in English for which I was supposed to get paid), Wieland would be paying me all the back royalties on my book.

Though they had absolutely no legal obligation to do so, and despite my unrestrained response to the cover, they were offering me my royalties (which by this point were about 1500 euros). I nearly fell off my chair (again).

Since then, we have signed a contract for them to publish The Duellist’s Companion, and just last week, we signed the contract for the German edition of The Medieval Longsword. That’s right, people, Fiore is about to speak German. He already does, in Osnabruck, but with the new books coming, the potential for the true (Italian) art to spread in Germany is hugely increased.  Halleluliah!

It is an unmitigated pleasure to do business with people who can be relied on to do the right thing. And I am hugely pleased to think there may come a generation of German-speaking longsword enthusiasts doing Italian longsword.