Showing posts with label Writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Writing. Show all posts
Sunday, November 25, 2007
A Little Sunday Reading...
A new story published at the Chick Lit Review! Check it out here: The Best Hair.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Honorary Welsh Girl Hears the Mothership

The other side of the pen reads: www.studyintheuk.org. I have already done that. And it may be pure coincidince, but my time in Wales was such an important time in my life, that I feel like the sudden and inexplicalbe presence of this pen in my life means something.
Maybe it's trying to give me direction. When I was in Wales I was completely confused about myself and my place in the world. I was lost and lonely, but I was accomplishing a goal that I had my entire life. I was living abroad. I was studying abroad. I was traveling to Italy. I was falling in love in a foregin country. So while I was a little lost hobbit on a crazy adventure most of the time, there was such importance and purpose behind my life that in a strange way I felt romantically fulfilled. I could have given Wordsworth a run for his money.
Maybe I'm just supposed to focus on saving for and planning my next trip abroad. Maybe I am supposed to focus on my writing. Maybe I am supposed to work harder at making a career out of my writing.
I have no idea where I am going with this post other than this: a symbol of a very important part of my life has surfaced lately, and I think it is trying to tell me something.
*** "Not all who wander are lost." J.R.R. Tolkein ***
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
I rock so hard.
There's nothing better than browsing a website that has published your work only to stumble across an article that the EDITOR wrote praising your story.
Check it out.
I rock so hard.
Check it out.
I rock so hard.
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Grand Central Station

I'm in the deadline version of Grand Central Stations right now. Projects are arriving on little railways and must be ready to take off on their departure time or I'll have a train full of angry employers. My reputation is on the line. In other words, no time for fancy talk. Stay tuned for an article on Snoop Dog coming your way this weekend.
Disclaimer: Showing the flag backwards in this photo is not intended to be disrespectful. It was simply the best angle for taking this picture.
Friday, September 01, 2006
When would you go?
The Summer of 1816
Bryan Adams may sentimentally croon about the first real six string he bought in the summer of ’69 and Jay Gatsby can spend all the time he wants reaching desperately towards a green light on the other side of the shore, but if I could go back in time, I would visit Geneva, Switzerland in 1816. Granted, 1969 would probably come in a close second if I could visit Height-Ashbury, but 1816 still gets the number one slot, hands down.
The weather in Switzerland in the summer of 1816 was very weird. At first everyone was enjoying nice sunny summer weather, but then a volcano in Indonesia erupted and they were suddenly subject to stormy, depressing, eerie, and England-in-the-winter-esque storms. The change in weather was only appropriate, considering the gothic events that were about to transpire.
Mary Shelley, her stepsister Claire Clairmont, Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, and Byron’s physician John Polidori were staying in the Geneva District, an area that many people considered to be a sacred area of enlightenment. On the evening of the 16th the weather proved too awful to safely travel home, so the crew stayed at the Villa Diodoti, the home Byron had rented for the summer. They spent the evening reading German ghost stories aloud, and at the end of the evening Byron challenged everyone in the room to a scary story writing contest. The next evening they gathered again. Percy Shelley shared a story that no one seemed to care enough about to remember and Byron wrote a short bit that he never expanded on, but Polidori wrote the beginnings of The Vampyre, the first modern day vampire story. Mary Shelley did not write anything just then. Several emotions were stewing inside her, feelings of guilt were haunting her and she was depressed about her inability to have a baby, but she could not articulate those feelings into a story just then.




The next night, Lord Byron gave a reading of Coleridge’s haunting poem, Christobel. Percy Shelley became so frightened that he began seeing the villaness’s face transposed on his wife’s face, and he ran screaming from the room. I think this event alone deserves time travel, by the way. I’d love to sniff around and see if there were any other reasons, other than sheer terror, that made Shelley hallucinate so dramatically.
Finally, a week or so later, Shelley had a dream in which a student had created a creature. She wrote in her diary, “I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life…” The next morning she woke up and wrote the first few lines of Frankenstein.
I am a huge fan of Gothic Literature and Romantic Literature, and the events that transpired during that week and a half period in the summer of 1816 had an influence on both of these literary genres. I also love the dynamic of this group of legendary writers. I think the best way to observe these events would to be from a sort of Romantic/Gothic writer Band Aid: a lucky girl who was somehow invited to hang out with her stars for the summer.
Source
Bryan Adams may sentimentally croon about the first real six string he bought in the summer of ’69 and Jay Gatsby can spend all the time he wants reaching desperately towards a green light on the other side of the shore, but if I could go back in time, I would visit Geneva, Switzerland in 1816. Granted, 1969 would probably come in a close second if I could visit Height-Ashbury, but 1816 still gets the number one slot, hands down.
The weather in Switzerland in the summer of 1816 was very weird. At first everyone was enjoying nice sunny summer weather, but then a volcano in Indonesia erupted and they were suddenly subject to stormy, depressing, eerie, and England-in-the-winter-esque storms. The change in weather was only appropriate, considering the gothic events that were about to transpire.
Mary Shelley, her stepsister Claire Clairmont, Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, and Byron’s physician John Polidori were staying in the Geneva District, an area that many people considered to be a sacred area of enlightenment. On the evening of the 16th the weather proved too awful to safely travel home, so the crew stayed at the Villa Diodoti, the home Byron had rented for the summer. They spent the evening reading German ghost stories aloud, and at the end of the evening Byron challenged everyone in the room to a scary story writing contest. The next evening they gathered again. Percy Shelley shared a story that no one seemed to care enough about to remember and Byron wrote a short bit that he never expanded on, but Polidori wrote the beginnings of The Vampyre, the first modern day vampire story. Mary Shelley did not write anything just then. Several emotions were stewing inside her, feelings of guilt were haunting her and she was depressed about her inability to have a baby, but she could not articulate those feelings into a story just then.




The next night, Lord Byron gave a reading of Coleridge’s haunting poem, Christobel. Percy Shelley became so frightened that he began seeing the villaness’s face transposed on his wife’s face, and he ran screaming from the room. I think this event alone deserves time travel, by the way. I’d love to sniff around and see if there were any other reasons, other than sheer terror, that made Shelley hallucinate so dramatically.
Finally, a week or so later, Shelley had a dream in which a student had created a creature. She wrote in her diary, “I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life…” The next morning she woke up and wrote the first few lines of Frankenstein.
I am a huge fan of Gothic Literature and Romantic Literature, and the events that transpired during that week and a half period in the summer of 1816 had an influence on both of these literary genres. I also love the dynamic of this group of legendary writers. I think the best way to observe these events would to be from a sort of Romantic/Gothic writer Band Aid: a lucky girl who was somehow invited to hang out with her stars for the summer.
Source
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