I can't find much to write in this blog entry; maybe something will come to me while I'm writing it. Meanwhile, I have finished Jane and the Ghosts of Netley by Stephanie Barron and have moved on to William Makepeace Thackeray's novel, Vanity Fair. I never thought Victorian literature was this interesting and fun to read. I'm in the beginning of the novel, up to the point where Becky Sharp is sent to be a governess to Sir Pitt Crawley's daughters. Joseph Sedley's drunken antics at Vauxhall seem sad and funny at the same time and I truly feel sorry for him.
My stomach is grumbling at the moment but I really don't feel like eating anything. I might snack on some strawberries later on.
Okay, I'm going to share a memory or two of my childhood, which helps to break the writer's block. One of them was when I was four years old. My grandma took me and my pregnant aunt to Toys R Us because my aunt needed some baby stuff. I remember the three of us being in one aisle and I seemed to continue to linger in that aisle for a moment or two until I had discovered that my grandma and aunt were no longer in that same aisle. Panicking, I remember running from aisle to aisle with tears in my eyes, looking for my aunt and my grandma, only to find them in a few aisles down from where I was. I also got lost twice in a hardware store at that same age. I was with my dad and I remember him yelling at me to stop crying because I had separated from him. These pivotal moments had given me a form of separation anxiety that stuck with me for years as a kid. Not only does blogging this stuff clear my mind but I guess it serves as a form of therapy.
I keep imagining my novel in my head over and over again like if it was a hallucination. The plot and its characters seem to never change. Once I thought I had the story all figured out, I noticed a plot hole near the end and I want to fix it but that would mean eliminating one of my characters from the story. I am trying to figure out how to fix this problem.
I also had previously bought two books that I had intended to read for the purpose of getting used to the Regency/Victorian mindset of my Victorian-era book that I'd like to write sometime. One of them was God is an Englishman by R.F. Delderfield and the other one was The Dress Lodger by Sheri Holman. I have read the beginning of both books and just couldn't get into them. God is an Englishman seems too long and dreary and lost interest after about 134 pages. The Dress Lodger seemed hopeful as some of the critics described the novel as Dickensonian in nature. I got into the first few chapters and was surprised at the crudeness of language used in it. The book itself has adult themes which I read from the back cover of it but I didn't expect the author to use vulgarities to describe what goes on, something I never saw in Dickens' A Christmas Carol. Sadly, I don't think I will continue to read these books. A book I had bought several months back titled Lady's Maid by Margaret Forster, which detailed the life of poet Elizabeth Barrett and her maid, has some valuable insight into Victorian domestic life but I still cannot get myself to read through it because it seems so horribly paced. I need to find Victorian era literature that's not necessarily easy to read but quickly paced, if you will. I previously read The Silent Governess by Christian author Julie Klassen, which was set during the Regency period but it was actually a quick and good read. I am going to make my novel easy to read and between 250-300 pages. Honest to goodness, I don't have a tolerance for reading literature longer than 450 pages. Some people have patience for that but I don't; I'm the type that itches for it to all end on page 350. Vanity Fair is a challenge for me but I promised myself I'd get through it.
I guess I had something to say after all. So much for writer's block. Fin.
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