Wow! Thank you so much for all your wonderful advice!!! It was really eye-opening. Thank you!
     (By the way, I loved your scene with Jane and the sugar in her tea. It wasn’t “miserable”, it was cute!)
     Someone did reccommend to me that book by Daniel Pool, and I ordered it from my library, so it should come in in a week or so. I’m sure it’s going to be very helpful. I don’t know all that much about the period, other than what I read from Jane Austen’s books , so I’m sure it will be invaluable. The next tricky thing is going to be the ship she boards. I don’t know much about ships. Yeeps! But that’s one nice thing about writing, you learn so much by doing research a person ordinarily wouldn’t do. Someone once said “writer’s a walking encylopedias of useless tidbits of information”, lol!
     I do really like your suggestion to tell things from a “camera’s” point of view. I’ve often wanted to do that in the past, but I’ve received mixed information. Some writer’s guides say it’s better to tell everything from the character’s perspective, as if you’re telling it in first person, only with the pronouns changed. Others say to change points of view from a more intimate one to a more “camera-like” one throughout the story. I figured, since I’m an amatuer writer, I’d go with the first one since it seemed more sources said to go with that one since changing point of view is a messy business for beginners. I really want to be able to describe facial expressions and such, though, the facial expressions of the main character in particular, but that is something Jane wouldn’t be able to see if I was telling it from her head. What is your advice about all this view-changing stuff?
     I’d love to read something of yours sometime, if you want to show it, that is. It is a hard decision whether or not to let others read it in progress or not. I often get frustrated myself because I love receiving advice along the way, and often I’ll learn something I completely overlooked that stood out to someone else, and yet it’s tricky because I have to show them the rough draft. There advice wouldn’t be any good on a completed manuscript where I’d have to change every jot and tittle to make it fit in, but in the rough draft it’s helpful because when I rewrite it I can go back and incorporate all the changed in, however it’s hard because it is a work in progress and so many things are going to be changed and altered. When I write the rough draft for something, I don’t always know everything about the plot or where it’s going to go. I change, and even delete, characters along the way. And then there are scenes, like the one where I described Jane’s hair and how she couldn’t curl it, which are completely unnecessary. I feel like I need to write those in the first draft, though, so I can have it for my own referrence. In the real story I’d probably put that information in elsewhere where it actually had to do with the story, like when she’s preparing for a ball or something and she wants to look expecially nice for some guy she likes and is lamenting the fact her hair won’t curl. Anyway, I’m rambling.
     I thank you greatly for all your advice. You didn’t seem critical to me, only helpful, and I want to learn. I have my little-girl dream of being an author someday, and I have a ways to go before that and much to learn on the way. I’m up for the journey, though.
 
~Brittany