Looooooooooooong Novel Excerpt

[caitri]

This is a chapter for my printerfic novel I've been revising for my creative writing class. You know, the seventeenth century one about the girl who wants to be a printer so she crossdresses (as happens) and runs into hijinks (as happens) and prints (as happens if I'm writing it). Anyone with some spare time and the will to concrit will be LOVED

Comments

[sail_aweigh]

You really had me caught up in Jane's story. I've probably read a few other bits and pieces here and there, but not enough to have gathered some of the salient points.

1) She's underage? for her position and also lied about that? Or is it that she would be old enough if she was a boy, but not as a girl? There's nuances there that I'm missing.
2) Aaron refers to her as a blackamoor. Where is she from? Is she black or just of a more Mediterranean ethnicity with accompanying complexion? I know the word can be used both ways. You've probably explained this in an earlier bit, but one I missed. I like that you've really done a great job recreating the various ways people of different classes/religions/backgrounds dance around each other in their proscribed roles. And that (if she is black) people of color existed in European society in roles other than slaves. I get so tired of (fan)fic writers who complain that you can't have blacks in historical AUs because they didn't exist as independent people. At least among American writers. They seem to think that no blacks were free anywhere in the world until we outlawed slavery here.
3) Would you mind adding a trigger warning to your header? I think that's what you meant by hijinks, but even with the foreshadowing from Jane, Mitchell's assault still caught me a little off guard and I had to do some quick skimming. If I'd read the piece where he originally created the problem, I probably would have been better prepared, but I felt a little blind-sided. Thanks, bb.

[caitri]

<33333333333333333333333 OMG HOW MUCH DO I LOVE YOU FOR READING AND COMMENTING!

1) So she's a girl, which means that she's underage until...25 or 21, I forget. If she was a boy, she'd be fine.

2) She's a British black--well, mixed, her Dad's white. In my head she's the great-grand-daughter of the black troubadour in Henry VIII's court. 17th c. racial issues are really interesting because it's when current racism is being sorted out: You do have slaves but you ALSO have artisans and so forth. Laws limiting positions and such like aren't established until the 1730s.

3) Sorry, bb, I didn't even think of that. I'd done it before with the earlier scene but I've gotten inured to "things sucked in the 17th c." Will edit forthwith!!

AND AGAIN I LOVE YOU SO MUCH BECAUSE I'VE BEEN WORRYING OVER THIS PIECE!!!!! <3333333333333333333333333333333333

[sail_aweigh]

You should not be worrying about this fic! I'm so peripatetic about keeping up on LJ that I haven't caught more of this and I wish I had. You've got such a deft touch with cluing us in to the process of printing with just enough exposition and then showing us how that translates to the process through the actions of the characters. I find it pretty enthralling. And, of course, that feeling of being on edge with Jane's predicament: will she be discovered as a fraud and the way she's navigated that before Mitchell inadvertently outs her. And now that they've found out, it's going to be interesting to see how that changes everything and what problems it will bring. I'm very much looking forward to being able to read the completed work at some time. :D

[caitri]

I write original fic slowly and have only posted little bitlets of this because it is coming slowly, or I change my mind about what happens with the characters, etc. etc. There's a modern-day component too, and I posted the first bit of it here. I want to make these pieces the focus of my submissions for my creative writing class this term tho, and we have a good prof, so I'm hyper-aware of wanting to have things all shiny!!!!!!!!!