Book review: "The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls" by Emilie Autumn

Warning: Possible spoilers (though I have tried very hard not to give any).

The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls is the debut novel of singer and musician Emilie Autumn. As well as being a novel of sorts, it is also an autobiographical account of Autumn's experiences with mental illness and psychiatric treatment. The story begins when Emilie tries to kill herself with sleeping pills, and her subsequent incarceration in a mental health ward in present-day California with other "crazies". While there, Emilie finds letters from another young woman who has been committed in London in the Victorian era, Emily ("with a 'y'"), and thereafter the stories are told in tandem, with exceprts from Emilie's real diaries interspersed with letters from Emily.

Ready, Set, Novel! Plan and Plot your Upcoming Masterpiece (first impressions)

Since the weather has gone from cold and miserable to warm and actually-springlike today I ventured down to my nearest Waterstones while on my lunch break to see what I could get with some of my birthday money. Almost as soon as I stepped in a huge display of notebooks, pads, stationery, cards and books caught my eye. I do have some magpie-like tendencies when it comes to books and stationery (plus it was the first display in the shop), and so I wandered over to have a look and my eyes immediately alighted on this...

Ready, Set, Novel! by Chris Baty, Lindsey Grant and Tavia Stewart-Streit

(Apologies for the terrible photo quality in this post, my camera is not the best.)

Ready, Set, Novel! is a book about writing. It is a book to help people write that novel they've had in their head for years but don't know how to make it work, or people who would like to write a novel but who have yet to hit upon the perfect idea for one.

I have had ideas for various novels floating around my head for years, but have had trouble thinking exactly how to get started and write them, and so I was intrigued by this book, even more so when I noticed that it was written by some of the organisers of NaNoWriMo. I picked it up, flicked through it briefly and did not put it back down. I browsed some more to see if there was anything I would prefer to get instead but, finding nothing, I bought the book and returned to the office, excited.

Having now flicked through the book in more depth on my bus journey home, it appears that the authors have done a good job of covering all the main bases regarding to writing a novel: character, dialogue, setting, mood, theme and so on. The parts are covered by various activities which involve the reader (or rather, the author-to-be!) working out things about their novel simply by scribbling things down. The tone of the book seems light-hearted and friendly, the same kind of tone used on the NaNoWriMo site really.

From the blurb:

"These handy tips, battle-tested activities, and bits of creative mayhem have helped thousands of NaNoWriMo participants put pen to paper and are sure to get you geared up to start writing."

I'm hoping to use this to plot one particular novel that I have in my head (I may even post some of my progress here) and probably will post a review of Ready, Set, Novel! when I have a better understanding of it. For now, I will say that I feel that I may find that this book has been written for someone of a slightly younger age group than myself, but I may only feel that way because I have a degree in Creative Writing specifically, while this book is written for everyone, experienced in writing or not. We shall see!

I'm really looking forward to using this and seeing how it compares to other similar books. The 'interactive writing exercises' element reminds me of Keri Smith's Finish This Book, though the latter has more of an established plot to follow, while Ready, Set, Novel! is literally just for your own story, with minimal prompts, designed for you to freehand within some (relatively minor) constraints. I enjoy having some structure to how I go about writing, so I hope that with the gentle guidance of this book I may finally be able to start writing my own novels.


Ready, Set, Novel! is available from Waterstones for £11.99, or on Amazon for £8.27 (excluding postage).

So, why write about writing?

So, what is the point of writing about writing? Surely it's a terribly pretentious, silly thing to do, only for academics and people with too many opinions?

Well, maybe it is. I've certainly come across my share of pretentious writers-who-wrote-about-writing, and I detested some of the things they came out with. Dorothea Brande, for example, whose ideas about what a writer should be made me extremely angry in second year when we studied her in one my my classes. I felt that she had invalidated my prerogative to try and get my writing published, and I cast her aside with bitterness and resent.

But, having said that, I have read some beautiful writing-about-writing, words which made me feel amazing about being a writer. Ted Hughes, for example, in his poem The Thought Fox, takes the image of a fox walking in a snowy night and turns it into an allegory for the process of composing a piece of writing. When I studied it in sixth form I was applying to study Creative Writing at university and I fell in love with the poem. It has stuck with me for at least five or six years now as both a wonderful way to describe the creative process and as a beautiful piece of writing in and of itself.

But the influence of others is only a small consideration to me. As useful and interesting as influences can be, if I were to only consider those in my own thoughts I would find myself parroting their ideas back to others, whereas I would like to build on their ideas and try to form my own. I am not seeking to deliberately disagree with or agree with any one writer and their ideas, but I will attempt to use theirs to inform my own, as there is much to be learned almost anywhere if we just look for it.

But this is more a question of how - I was trying to tell you why I'm writing about writing.

Well, I suppose one of the simplest and most straightforward answers is that I was bored. Having graduated from university in the summer, and then spent six months looking for a job, and then finally got one, I found that I haven't made as much time for writing as before, nor do I have essays and assignments to do to keep me going. Okay, so I did attempt my own version of NaNoWriMo in November (I managed 25k words in the month allocated), and yes, I have been continuing to write a story I started for a friend's birthday a few years ago (sorry Beanie!), and sure, I run my roleplaying game each week and have to write plot for that. Aside from these, however, I haven't been devoting any real time to writing, and I really hate that feeling. So, this blog is partly to help combat that and give me something real to do and stuff to write about.

Another reason is that I would like to have my writing published in the future, and to this end, this blog will hopefully help on two fronts: firstly as a way to promote myself and my writing and secondly because I think there is always room for improvement, and practise makes perfect, as the old saying goes. If I can use this blog to practise, revise and improve my writing, I think my "proper" writing will be much better.

Lastly, I would like to get back into the habit of reading, as it's another one of those things I have been neglecting. Part of the purpose of this blog is as a place to review books, and hey, I can't review books if I don't read them, right?!

I guess overall, this blog is really just about disciplining myself and getting myself back into the literary groove, so to speak. I'm excited for the future of this blog and the opportunities it might present, and I hope you enjoy reading!

The Awkward Introductory Post

Well hello there. If you have stumbled across this blog I can only assume you're interested in writing or reading, or reading someone's writing about reading and writing, or any or all of the above (and if that didn't confuse you, you're more alert than I am...)! 

My name is Alice. I don't often go by nicknames, though my sister calls me Liss on occasion, and if you ask various people they do have nicknames for me. Still, I've always mostly just gone by my plain, normal name. I live with my boyfriend Charlie, both of us having graduated from uni in the summer. Having been searching for a job since, I recently started working full-time in an office, and figured while I'm there I may as well try to maintain a blog at the same time (because that's obviously totally easy and doable - hooray for optimism).

I'm a huge advocate and lover of reading and writing, such that my Bachelors was in Creative Writing, and wanted to have a place where I could devote some time (as much as possible) to writing about writing, writing about reading, and maybe sometimes writing about writing-about-writing-or-reading. How very meta!

I also invite comments as much as people should want to comment - I enjoy discussion and debate about a lot of topics, especially concerning books and writing.

With all that being said, I welcome you to my blog, and hope you find it enjoyable to read.

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