SHHHHHHH! The Fairies are sending this today - Summer is on the way! (click the newsletter to make it big enough to read!)
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Take the Jane Austen Survey!!!
If you are a lover of Jane Austen - I am attaching a link to the new Jane Austen Survey being conducted by JASNA. I hope to attend the annual meeting someday and possibly contribute to the newsletter as well. I am also going to begin counting the days to June 2009 at which time I plan to finally visit Chawton and drink in all that is Jane. Cheers!
Saturday, May 3, 2008
Dorothy Trades Places with the Tin Man
I just won a writing contest at Memoirs Ink. It is the first contest I have ever won. Being a grown up, it felt like all the Christmas mornings of my childhood.
I began this writing journey four years ago when I enrolled in the MALS program (Master of Arts in Liberal Studies) at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Feeling restless and bored, sensing I needed something more, I responded to a curriculum catalog I picked up on a newsstand for the University which listed a class called “Writing for Readers.” I thought to myself, “I read, I used to write, why not?”
I remember feeling humble and scared at the first class. The teacher (amazing woman) had us go around the room and introduce ourselves and then she made us write. Everyone in the room was hesitant. We had to respond to a writing prompt with a mere paragraph. It was agony. For ten minutes we struggled and erased and crossed out and there seemed to be a collective groan pulsing like high frequency sound waves in the air. To top it off, she requested we read our responses out loud. She didn’t force us, but we could sense her eagerness and we already recognized her amazing-ness, so we acquiesced.
I will never forget driving home from that class. It was about a twenty minute trip and I wrote a poem in my head all the way and ran into my house to write it down. I still have it. I think it may be a very bad poem, but I love it. Since my name is Dorothy, I wrote a sort of metaphor about The Wizard of Oz and how Dorothy had kind of morphed into the Tin Man and how I, Dorothy, was now the Tin Man, released from my frozen, rusted state. I wrote that “words” had the same effect as oil and suddenly I was alive again, my pen limber and flowing. The poem may be dreck, but the sentiment is real. I began writing again that night and have never stopped.
I say I began again, because I have always loved to write. As a girl I wrote stories. I remember starting a novel in the fourth grade. “The Mystery at Blackberry Hill.” Obviously an homage to Nancy Drew. I wrote myths and fables. In six grade, I wrote a story called, “A Girl from California.” It was about a girl from California (duh) who moved to a suburb of Chicago and had trouble making friends and then she finds a really great boyfriend so everything is peachy again. It was written in the style of the short stories that appeared in Seventeen and Mademoiselle Magazines. Reading the short stories was the first thing I did when I received the magazines. I loved them.
“A Girl from California” was all me. Constance (the girl) looked like me and wore the same shade of lipstick as me (secretly, on the way to and from school.) The plot was me, the boyfriend was the boy I had a crush on and the mean friends were my mean friends. My teacher wrote on the story, “Very good story, did you really write it?” It didn’t occur to her that all the reading I did may have shown me a few tricks and informed my writing.I was devastated. Of course I had really written it. But her reaction, even though she apologized to me when I went to her in tears to proclaim the story was all me, spoiled writing for me a bit. I still wrote stories in high school, but dread always followed when I handed them in. I think I became gun shy.
When I saw the class “Writing for Readers,” I remembered sixth grade and thought, “see, reading DOES teach you a thing or two.” And it did and does. All of the stories written in my class, by supposed novices, were incredible. I even belong to a writing group now, "Scribblers," with two of my former classmates. When the class ended the amazing teacher reminded us to keep reading, “read when you get stuck,” she said, “it will help your writing.” It’s true. It’s like saying “open sesame.” It works. I wish I could tell my sixth grade teacher THAT.
I want to thank Felice Austin of Memoirs Ink for choosing my memoir. I also want to congratulate the other winners whose stories I just finished. WOW. They are amazing as well. I love your stories, Deborah Thompson, Lisa Piorczynski and Merry Gordon.
Words are wonderful. Life is good.
I began this writing journey four years ago when I enrolled in the MALS program (Master of Arts in Liberal Studies) at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Feeling restless and bored, sensing I needed something more, I responded to a curriculum catalog I picked up on a newsstand for the University which listed a class called “Writing for Readers.” I thought to myself, “I read, I used to write, why not?”
I remember feeling humble and scared at the first class. The teacher (amazing woman) had us go around the room and introduce ourselves and then she made us write. Everyone in the room was hesitant. We had to respond to a writing prompt with a mere paragraph. It was agony. For ten minutes we struggled and erased and crossed out and there seemed to be a collective groan pulsing like high frequency sound waves in the air. To top it off, she requested we read our responses out loud. She didn’t force us, but we could sense her eagerness and we already recognized her amazing-ness, so we acquiesced.
I will never forget driving home from that class. It was about a twenty minute trip and I wrote a poem in my head all the way and ran into my house to write it down. I still have it. I think it may be a very bad poem, but I love it. Since my name is Dorothy, I wrote a sort of metaphor about The Wizard of Oz and how Dorothy had kind of morphed into the Tin Man and how I, Dorothy, was now the Tin Man, released from my frozen, rusted state. I wrote that “words” had the same effect as oil and suddenly I was alive again, my pen limber and flowing. The poem may be dreck, but the sentiment is real. I began writing again that night and have never stopped.
I say I began again, because I have always loved to write. As a girl I wrote stories. I remember starting a novel in the fourth grade. “The Mystery at Blackberry Hill.” Obviously an homage to Nancy Drew. I wrote myths and fables. In six grade, I wrote a story called, “A Girl from California.” It was about a girl from California (duh) who moved to a suburb of Chicago and had trouble making friends and then she finds a really great boyfriend so everything is peachy again. It was written in the style of the short stories that appeared in Seventeen and Mademoiselle Magazines. Reading the short stories was the first thing I did when I received the magazines. I loved them.
“A Girl from California” was all me. Constance (the girl) looked like me and wore the same shade of lipstick as me (secretly, on the way to and from school.) The plot was me, the boyfriend was the boy I had a crush on and the mean friends were my mean friends. My teacher wrote on the story, “Very good story, did you really write it?” It didn’t occur to her that all the reading I did may have shown me a few tricks and informed my writing.I was devastated. Of course I had really written it. But her reaction, even though she apologized to me when I went to her in tears to proclaim the story was all me, spoiled writing for me a bit. I still wrote stories in high school, but dread always followed when I handed them in. I think I became gun shy.
When I saw the class “Writing for Readers,” I remembered sixth grade and thought, “see, reading DOES teach you a thing or two.” And it did and does. All of the stories written in my class, by supposed novices, were incredible. I even belong to a writing group now, "Scribblers," with two of my former classmates. When the class ended the amazing teacher reminded us to keep reading, “read when you get stuck,” she said, “it will help your writing.” It’s true. It’s like saying “open sesame.” It works. I wish I could tell my sixth grade teacher THAT.
I want to thank Felice Austin of Memoirs Ink for choosing my memoir. I also want to congratulate the other winners whose stories I just finished. WOW. They are amazing as well. I love your stories, Deborah Thompson, Lisa Piorczynski and Merry Gordon.
Words are wonderful. Life is good.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Saturday, March 8, 2008
Millistump Hollowversity
The Student Fairies of Millistump University want to share their Newsletter with you. Be sure to click the newsletter to make it bigger! (Millistump Hollowversity is a subsidiary of The Secret Fairy Society)
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Shhhhhh!!!! The Secret Fairy Society - Valentine's Edition
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(Click on Newsletter to enlarge for reading! Quick! This is news you can use!)
Saturday, January 19, 2008
I Wasn't Persuaded...
Being a Janeite – I am making sure I watch all of the upcoming Masterpiece Theatre adaptations that will be shown on Sunday nights between now and April something or other. The first one up to the plate was a new version of Persuasion. Before I say what I thought, I have to qualify it. Any time there is something to watch with British accents and costumes, I give it an immediate three stars. It is worth watching for that alone. Unfortunately, this version of Persuasion does not climb above the three obligatory stars I had assigned it simply for being made. They should have saved the money and aired the 1995 Persuasion that starred Amanda Root and Ciaran Hinds. It was MUCH better.
The problem with this Persuasion was that it simply fell flat. The actress who played Anne Elliott seemed boringly mopey, too self pitying and her sister Mary was cartoon-ish and wasn’t three dimensional at all. Captain Wentworth, played by Rupert Penry-Jones appeared younger than Anne and too damn nice too soon. He wasn’t grimly stiff and looked soft. Captain Wentworth is supposed to be SEASONED, a self made man of means, a NEW kind of gentleman who was REFUSED by Anne. There should be a sense of bruised pride that emanates from Wentworth. The blonde Penry-Jones was lovely to look at, but it seemed as if he couldn’t possibly be captain, or old enough to have amassed his own fortune. He looked more like a mid-shipman if you ask me.
In the 1995 version Sophie Thompson played Mary Musgrove, Anne Elliot’s hypochondriac, self absorbed but younger MARRIED sister. She was completely insufferable. And wonderful because of it. Amanda Root as Anne in the earlier versions perfectly fit the fading but kind and competent heroine. She was never mopey, just quietly resigned to her fate. The newer Masterpiece Anne (Sally Hawkins) was too ‘blooming.’ She was almost exotic in her looks, with full lips and lovely, peachy cheeks. Although they tried to make her appear dowdy by dressing her in dreadful, bland costumes, (dreadful hats, absolutely DREADFUL) she was still entirely too lovely. In the book, Anne is clearly on the waning edge of her youth and the beauty that comes with youth. Remember, back in 1819 or so, a 27 year old unmarried woman was getting up there. Jane Austen wrote this book when she was past HER own bloom and was a confirmed old maid. Like a deeply exhaled sigh, Persuasion is a wistful imagining of an unlikely reality. Anne Elliot is clearly NOT a young beauty, “A few years before Anne Elliot had been a very pretty girl, but her bloom had vanished early; and as, even in its height, her father had found little to admire in her (so totally different were her delicate features and mild dark eyes from his own), there could be nothing in them, now that she was faded and thin, to excite his esteem.” Jane’s words, not mine. Masterpiece didn’t read closely enough! They used too much blush.
The scene where Louisa Musgrove (Mary’s sister in law, the lady Wentworth is now courting) stupidly throws herself from the sea wall was underplayed. There should have been a tension created. In the book, Jane Austen makes much of this pivotal scene, showing us Louisa’s youthful idiocy compared to Anne’s calm level headedness. This is the turning point when Wentworth realizes he needs to try again and put aside his pride. In the Masterpiece theatre film, it was thrown away and acts as a perfect example of the rushed and compressed script. Okay – I will say it. It just wasn’t good enough. So there.
The problem with this Persuasion was that it simply fell flat. The actress who played Anne Elliott seemed boringly mopey, too self pitying and her sister Mary was cartoon-ish and wasn’t three dimensional at all. Captain Wentworth, played by Rupert Penry-Jones appeared younger than Anne and too damn nice too soon. He wasn’t grimly stiff and looked soft. Captain Wentworth is supposed to be SEASONED, a self made man of means, a NEW kind of gentleman who was REFUSED by Anne. There should be a sense of bruised pride that emanates from Wentworth. The blonde Penry-Jones was lovely to look at, but it seemed as if he couldn’t possibly be captain, or old enough to have amassed his own fortune. He looked more like a mid-shipman if you ask me.
In the 1995 version Sophie Thompson played Mary Musgrove, Anne Elliot’s hypochondriac, self absorbed but younger MARRIED sister. She was completely insufferable. And wonderful because of it. Amanda Root as Anne in the earlier versions perfectly fit the fading but kind and competent heroine. She was never mopey, just quietly resigned to her fate. The newer Masterpiece Anne (Sally Hawkins) was too ‘blooming.’ She was almost exotic in her looks, with full lips and lovely, peachy cheeks. Although they tried to make her appear dowdy by dressing her in dreadful, bland costumes, (dreadful hats, absolutely DREADFUL) she was still entirely too lovely. In the book, Anne is clearly on the waning edge of her youth and the beauty that comes with youth. Remember, back in 1819 or so, a 27 year old unmarried woman was getting up there. Jane Austen wrote this book when she was past HER own bloom and was a confirmed old maid. Like a deeply exhaled sigh, Persuasion is a wistful imagining of an unlikely reality. Anne Elliot is clearly NOT a young beauty, “A few years before Anne Elliot had been a very pretty girl, but her bloom had vanished early; and as, even in its height, her father had found little to admire in her (so totally different were her delicate features and mild dark eyes from his own), there could be nothing in them, now that she was faded and thin, to excite his esteem.” Jane’s words, not mine. Masterpiece didn’t read closely enough! They used too much blush.
The scene where Louisa Musgrove (Mary’s sister in law, the lady Wentworth is now courting) stupidly throws herself from the sea wall was underplayed. There should have been a tension created. In the book, Jane Austen makes much of this pivotal scene, showing us Louisa’s youthful idiocy compared to Anne’s calm level headedness. This is the turning point when Wentworth realizes he needs to try again and put aside his pride. In the Masterpiece theatre film, it was thrown away and acts as a perfect example of the rushed and compressed script. Okay – I will say it. It just wasn’t good enough. So there.
That is my first review. Northanger Abbey is next. They will reprise the Colin Firth P&P and the A&E Emma. I will enjoy watching both again. I am really looking forward to Mansfield Park (my current Austen favorite) since I hated the politically correct screed of a version that was made a few years ago. I may even enter the JASNA (Jane Austen Society of North America) essay contest contrasting the book with the movie. All in all, it is going to be a lovely four month wallow in all things Jane
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