Line Drawings in Classic Literature

I love the line drawings in the classics and think it is a real shame that popular books now don't tend to have them. I recently finished an essay for University about the line drawings in Thomas Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd with my own critical opinions on them. They are not my favourite line drawings. Some are shown below:

Far from the Madding Crowd was initially published in serial form in the Cornhill magazine in 1874, 12 editions in total - one for each month. Each one was accompanied by a line illustration by Helen Paterson Allingham (a lady illustrator, yay!)

I found the illustrations to be overly romanticized, but beautifully drawn. Some of my favourite line drawings have been in the Dombey and Son editions (Dickens) and also the line drawings in Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White.

Below is my favorite line drawing, taken from The Woman in White.

Taken from this edition:

If I had the skills I would illustrate my own novels. Would you?

Logophilia... Weird and Wonderful Words

My husband and I are complete logophiles. He uses words like Sesquipedalian, fream and indefatigability. I use words like Tintinnabulation, nupson and Fidimplicitary.

Using them when you speak is like rolling around hot chocolate on your tongue - Oh So Good. Using them in your writing is a little like trying to balance ice-cream on the end of a straw on the end of your nose - not going to happen unless you're a pro. 

Some of my favorite words are: Nupson (A fool), Callipygian (Having a well-shaped butt), Indefatigable (Not yeilding to fatigue), and the early english word Glaik (A flash of light that dazzles). 

What are some of the weirdest words you've ever heard? What are your favorite words?

What are the words you cringe at when you read them in a book? Which words do you love to see? 

 

Reading and Writing

I racked my brains for about a good week thinking of something to blog about. I have read so many wonderful blogs over the last few months and they all have a very personal take on various situations 

(duh Dawn, really?). Yes, really. 

Particularly, there are a lot of vlog book reviews running around YoutTube and I really ought to do something like that, because there is so much awesome fiction out there that it is impossible not to review it. 

But. Instead. I am going to talk about reading as an act in itself.

I was not one of these gifted writers who picked up a book at the age of 18 months and then decided, some ten years later, to write a novel. Oh. No. Not by any means. In fact, reading had always been my own personal nemesis. 

I really struggled to read as a child, mostly because I had a mild form of dyslexia that made it incredibly hard for me to do. The first book I actually read was the first book in the Animorphs series by K.A Applegate when I was about 11. Eleven is very late to read your first novel.....

My mother began to force me to read to her when I was eight. She would be working or gardening or, whatever it was, and though I hated it at the time (and sulked, and cried and pleaded...) and thought she must have a sadistic wish to make me miserable, you can imagine how thankful I am for that now. At the time it was a. Different. Story. Completely.

So how did I go from a girl who hated to read, to a woman who devours books in single days? A woman who read two Courtney Summers books (Cracked Up to Be, Some Girls Are),  two Juliet Marillier books (Hearts Blood, Heir to Sevenwaters) and one Emily Maguire (Taming the Beast) in single days? The honest truth? I don't know. 

Though my mother helped me by forcing me to read to her (a lot, people), it was really K.A Applegate's Animorphs that got me hooked. And hooked I stayed. 

So, not everyone has the fantastic start in the wonderful world of books that a lot of authors do - we read quite often the following lines on personal websites: I began reading from an early age. Or: I have always had a love of literature, I would devour books under my quilt at night with my torch in hand.

Yeah, not so much for me.

And how did this lead on to beginning my first novel when I was twelve? Well... I had a scarily active imagination. I still do, and believe me, that can be wonderful but also pretty scary. When I was a kid, I drew what was in my head. A lot. I'm talking hundreds of reams of paper, and some of those old fax paper reams - you know the ones I mean, with the green and white lines and the perforated edges? Yeah, those. And what I didn't realise was that I was writing. Or rather, I was telling stories, which is what my writing is all about. 

So while a woman I had conjured in my head sat talking to me in fifth period math class, or her lover raged about how stubborn she was being during my Phys Ed lessons, or their tribe sang in chorus (loudly) while I tried to memorise Othello, these characters were simmering, waiting to be written down. Characters that were the raw basis for the protagonist and lover in my second novel, which I began ten years after I had dreamt them up.

So there you go. From anti-book beginnings to a mad and passionate love affair pretty much over night. Thank goodness too, otherwise I would never have read some of the awesome books I have done, including some of the best literature on the planet (in my opinion). 

Not all author stories are the same. Not all their beginnings are the same. But the one thing we do all have in common, and this is just one facet of our awesomeness as a group, we love to create. And we write. A lot. 

So I read books in single days sometimes, and I write books in single months sometimes. And sometimes it takes longer. But the point it, every author is different. Not all of us had the book bug right away! (And fear not, if you don't).

And also - thanks to K.A Applegate and to my awesome Mom, both cool cats that made me the writer I am today.

Dear Lucky Agent Contest

Here is a chance to have:

First place: 1) A critique of 25 pages of your work, by your agent judge. 2) A query critique from your agent judge. 3) Two free books from Writer's Digest Books (I will give you several choices and you pick the books your want).

Runner-ups - second and third place: 1) A critique of 10 pages of your work, by your agent judge. 2) One free book from Writer's Digest Books (I will give you several choices and you pick the book your want).

Interested? Enter here!