It's a very special day today as two very important people were born on this date. My sister was born 22 years today and ruined my chances of being an only child forever :-P . As for the other very special lady, I think it would be fair to say that "it is a truth universally acknowledged" that she is very well known would have been celebrating her 235th birthday had she been alive today.
I am of course talking about Jane Austen, author of my favourite novel Pride and Prejudice. She has been a huge influence on my writing and I absolutely love all of her books. I have to confess something to you though. I only properly discovered Jane Austen earlier this year. I had heard of her of course but I had never read any of her books or seen their televised adaptations- it's very embarassing to me having to admit this to you.
For christmas last year, I was given 100 Classic books for the Nintendo DS and seeing the novel on there I decided to give it a go and ever since then I am quite literally hooked on Austen to the point of obsession. After reading the rest of her novels and falling in love with Mr Darcy I felt inspire to write again, despite having never written anything other than fanfiction and the odd few stories in my childhood.
It was P&P which made me feel like I could do anything, and that was when my first novel idea popped into my head. It's an incomplete Regency story with the powerful head strong Austen inspired heroine and a multidimensional male lead. Incomplete as it may be, the idea that I had got me writing again, and I think that had I not read p&p I would not have completed my first novel in Nano and would not be sat here typing this now.
Showing posts with label Jane Austen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jane Austen. Show all posts
Thursday, 16 December 2010
Sunday, 17 October 2010
On Smallpox, Colds and Libraries
If you have seen my twitter feed today you will know that I am feeling a bit under the weather and suffering from a virus. I'll live but this feeling ill has cost me today. (more on this later and please forgive the constant sneezing)
As you may have noticed it's been a couple of days since my last post for which i apologise, but sometimes 24hrs isn't enough hours for one day. Since my last post i attended a further two lectures at the Cheltenham literature festival, one on Jane Austen and one on fairytales, and both of these were excellently delivered and very enjoyable. I had hoped to go to a further talk on saturday on (Atchoo!) Catherine of Aragon, however when i went to purchase a ticket on thursday it had unfortunately sold out. I was very disappointed at this but what can you do...
On the bright side, Stephen Fry was the Cheltenham Literature Festival on Friday and whilst I could not justify spending the money to see him talk, i did see him signing books in the waterstones bookcase after the talk, so yay!
On Friday and Saturday I did not write anything further on the novel, however on saturday I managed to borrow a very important book for the research for my novel. My MC and her family are going to get smallpox and for some of them it will be... Gasp!...Fatal!!!! Anyway I obviously needed to readup on Smallpox in 18th Century, i knew quite a bit about the discovery of the vaccination as the guy who discovered it (named Edward Jenner) lived in Berkeley, Gloucestershire not far from where I live and have grown up from, and all kids from gloucestershire automatically get the smallpox lessons at some point (usually primary school). Whilst I knew all about Edward Jenner and how the cure was discovered I knew little about the illness itself other than it was often fatal especially in kids, and Queen Elizabeth I suffered from it. I wanted to find out a bit more what it was like to live with it but really struggled to find anything on this, other than passing references to someone with it, the stats or the aftermath or a lecture on Edward Jenner - YES I KNOW WHO HE IS FOR THE TENTH TIME!!! Sorry you have to forgive me I'm ill don't you know...
I found this book in the gloucestershire library catalogue called princes and peasants smallpox in history, but couldn't work out which of the libraries in Glos actually had it. I also tried to reserve it but with no luck. So i popped down to my local smaller library which is 5mins walk from here and has novels but not much else and i asked them about it. They told me its at Gloucester, they ring up Gloucester Library and are told its in 'the basement' do i really want it. Well duh? why else would i ask for it? They promise to check they definitely have it i give them my phone number and make my way home via the co-op for groceries and half an hour later they ring me, so i told them i would pick it up in an hour. As i was making a special journey to the main library I thought i would check their catalogue for some other books i wanted, and then turned up with a list but could not find a single one. I can find 3 books on Georgian History thats it for well over 100 years of history yet the victorians get two shelves not fair! I give the list to the library woman- not a nice lady and a bit rude who tells me these are in the basement do i want them? (I got fed up of people saying this to me) Yes i do. She asks me if i want other similar books if she finds them, and i'm like yea ok. 15mins later she comes back with one book off the list one on 18th century art a couple of others which aren't really relevant but are on the georgians and one on the French revolution! (These people are supposed to be experts with books!)
I gave up picked up a book on samuel peyps, the smallpox one and one or two others and make my way home by bus and it tips it down with rain.
I went to bed last night with a sore throat and having done no chapters, my throat got worse last night affecting my sleep and today i have gradually worsened with the temp and drippy nose that comes with a cold. Having spent the day in bed I started word on the chapter mentioned in previous post, but reading it back its pretty terrible and desparately needs a re-write asap. I copied the marriage ceremony text out of a book from "dearly beloved" to "I now pronounce you man and wife" just to get the word count, and then i wrote the consummation of the marriage which isn't too bad i suppose but isn't too great.
In conclusion, today was a waste of time, i should have stayed in bed - i'll rephrase that I should have stayed in bed and not written my chapter.
I'm going to sneeze so I will leave you all in peace now and stop babbling on about nothing, which i am prone to do when ill. Hopefully will be better tomorrow, to sort out that chapter, (Too late Achoo! Achoo!) and am going to spend the rest of the night on the Nanoforums.
Nighty Night x
As you may have noticed it's been a couple of days since my last post for which i apologise, but sometimes 24hrs isn't enough hours for one day. Since my last post i attended a further two lectures at the Cheltenham literature festival, one on Jane Austen and one on fairytales, and both of these were excellently delivered and very enjoyable. I had hoped to go to a further talk on saturday on (Atchoo!) Catherine of Aragon, however when i went to purchase a ticket on thursday it had unfortunately sold out. I was very disappointed at this but what can you do...
On the bright side, Stephen Fry was the Cheltenham Literature Festival on Friday and whilst I could not justify spending the money to see him talk, i did see him signing books in the waterstones bookcase after the talk, so yay!
On Friday and Saturday I did not write anything further on the novel, however on saturday I managed to borrow a very important book for the research for my novel. My MC and her family are going to get smallpox and for some of them it will be... Gasp!...Fatal!!!! Anyway I obviously needed to readup on Smallpox in 18th Century, i knew quite a bit about the discovery of the vaccination as the guy who discovered it (named Edward Jenner) lived in Berkeley, Gloucestershire not far from where I live and have grown up from, and all kids from gloucestershire automatically get the smallpox lessons at some point (usually primary school). Whilst I knew all about Edward Jenner and how the cure was discovered I knew little about the illness itself other than it was often fatal especially in kids, and Queen Elizabeth I suffered from it. I wanted to find out a bit more what it was like to live with it but really struggled to find anything on this, other than passing references to someone with it, the stats or the aftermath or a lecture on Edward Jenner - YES I KNOW WHO HE IS FOR THE TENTH TIME!!! Sorry you have to forgive me I'm ill don't you know...
I found this book in the gloucestershire library catalogue called princes and peasants smallpox in history, but couldn't work out which of the libraries in Glos actually had it. I also tried to reserve it but with no luck. So i popped down to my local smaller library which is 5mins walk from here and has novels but not much else and i asked them about it. They told me its at Gloucester, they ring up Gloucester Library and are told its in 'the basement' do i really want it. Well duh? why else would i ask for it? They promise to check they definitely have it i give them my phone number and make my way home via the co-op for groceries and half an hour later they ring me, so i told them i would pick it up in an hour. As i was making a special journey to the main library I thought i would check their catalogue for some other books i wanted, and then turned up with a list but could not find a single one. I can find 3 books on Georgian History thats it for well over 100 years of history yet the victorians get two shelves not fair! I give the list to the library woman- not a nice lady and a bit rude who tells me these are in the basement do i want them? (I got fed up of people saying this to me) Yes i do. She asks me if i want other similar books if she finds them, and i'm like yea ok. 15mins later she comes back with one book off the list one on 18th century art a couple of others which aren't really relevant but are on the georgians and one on the French revolution! (These people are supposed to be experts with books!)
I gave up picked up a book on samuel peyps, the smallpox one and one or two others and make my way home by bus and it tips it down with rain.
I went to bed last night with a sore throat and having done no chapters, my throat got worse last night affecting my sleep and today i have gradually worsened with the temp and drippy nose that comes with a cold. Having spent the day in bed I started word on the chapter mentioned in previous post, but reading it back its pretty terrible and desparately needs a re-write asap. I copied the marriage ceremony text out of a book from "dearly beloved" to "I now pronounce you man and wife" just to get the word count, and then i wrote the consummation of the marriage which isn't too bad i suppose but isn't too great.
In conclusion, today was a waste of time, i should have stayed in bed - i'll rephrase that I should have stayed in bed and not written my chapter.
I'm going to sneeze so I will leave you all in peace now and stop babbling on about nothing, which i am prone to do when ill. Hopefully will be better tomorrow, to sort out that chapter, (Too late Achoo! Achoo!) and am going to spend the rest of the night on the Nanoforums.
Nighty Night x
Sunday, 10 October 2010
When one chapter becomes two
So i planned my novel first by doing a full synopsis and then did a chapter by chapter outline detailing what was going to happen in each chapter. In my original chapter outline I had approximately 23 chapters that was until a minor change in the plot at the beginning which resulted in chapters 3 and 4 being about something different so 2 more chapters were added. result 25 chapters. Then chap 5 also under went some alterations and needed another chapter so i was upto 26 chapters until i came to write chapter 6 did my detailed chapter outline and realised it was too long and too much happens so now i've split the events over two chapters and i'm upto 27 chapters.
I am happier with the novel being as it is now. in the scheme of things nothing major has changed, I just wanted to show more character development and had some better ideas. It does however mean i have more work to do and also the word count has gone up dramatically.
The first draft of chapter 6 done means chapter 7 is the next thing i have to do. Events in chapter 7 are slightly Austenish but then reading her novels this year have greatly inspired my own and allowed me to pick up a pen and write after suffering from writers block for longer than I care to remember. chapter 7 is going to be exciting with declarations of love, a proposal and the consequences of the proposal which truly set the novel in motion and its definitely going to be more fun than it was writing chapter 6 (I spent ages looking for an 18th century song which would have been in existence at the right time and was in English).
Anyway I'm knackered which is why this post probably reads a bit weird so im off to chat on the Nano forums and nibble poppadoms dipped in mango chutney Yum- don't judge me!
I am happier with the novel being as it is now. in the scheme of things nothing major has changed, I just wanted to show more character development and had some better ideas. It does however mean i have more work to do and also the word count has gone up dramatically.
The first draft of chapter 6 done means chapter 7 is the next thing i have to do. Events in chapter 7 are slightly Austenish but then reading her novels this year have greatly inspired my own and allowed me to pick up a pen and write after suffering from writers block for longer than I care to remember. chapter 7 is going to be exciting with declarations of love, a proposal and the consequences of the proposal which truly set the novel in motion and its definitely going to be more fun than it was writing chapter 6 (I spent ages looking for an 18th century song which would have been in existence at the right time and was in English).
Anyway I'm knackered which is why this post probably reads a bit weird so im off to chat on the Nano forums and nibble poppadoms dipped in mango chutney Yum- don't judge me!
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