Oh, and as for writing down what you happen to be thinking, Dickens was pretty bad but Victor Hugo makes him look focused and concise. He's also a sadist bastard. He puts his main character (and the little girl he's just rescued) dangling from a convent wall with the police prowling below, then goes 'hmmm... convent', and writes 200 pages on the strictures of the Benedictine Order. Coincidentally, his sister had just become a nun ;)