taking your own advice

[marycatelli]

Much easier to give it than to use it. even in writing (she said, pondering philosophically).

It's amazing, opening a story you wrote yourself and find it littered with progressive voice and other unnecessary auxiliary verbs, but not with lively, well-chosen verbs and nouns, and vivid adjectives.

And reading primary sources.  To be sure, the natural ones that pop to mind for steampunk are Verne and Wells, but even if there are no other easy Victorian SF writers, there are the novelists who give a good view of customs, diaries, letters, and other stuff for that invaluable background and local color.

And deciding something's gone off in the wrong direction because it is entirely dead and can't be saved without lopping off the last scene and going somewhere new, or taking the last action and turning it on its head.  There's a tradeoff there, between inspiration and giving up too soon.  But it tends to leave the writer dull and flat which makes it harder to judge.

sigh

Comments

[nagasvoice.livejournal.com]

Some of the newer primary sources that might intrigue you would be things like photo archives of the period, converted to digital, that didn't use to be available. Seems to me I saw a link months ago from a photobug person on my flist, where the Library of Congress has some of that stuff available online these days. Smithsonian might too?

[marycatelli]

Sound intriguing.

[kriz1818.livejournal.com]

The Gutenberg Project. The Internet Archive. The Victorian Women Writers Project. English professors' online syllabi for classes about Victorian literature, to get potential titles.

Sorry for the telegraph style, I'm groggy this morning.

[marycatelli]

Now I have to do is read them.

[kriz1818.livejournal.com]

Which, of course, takes time ... I hear ya!