Blog Post alert: Just in time for a nor'easter here in the Berkshires, this endearing holiday card design by Dutch artist Anton Pieck posted at Lines and Colors. Thank you, Charley Parker!
Picturing a World
Pandemic reading
December 14, 2020
In a recent interview, author Emily St. John Mandel is quoted as saying about her own bestselling novel, "I don't know who in their right mind would want to read Station Eleven during a pandemic." Well, I've just read it, and I can tell you why. It's about a traveling orchestra and theatrical company in a post-apocalyptic world, but also about the characters' intertwined lives before, during, and twenty years after a pandemic much worse than the one we're in right now. Those interlocking stories have all the human interest of any good read (I especially enjoyed getting inside the mind of a graphic novelist whose running project gives the novel its title). And the picture of a world in which some people remember electricity and some don't makes you look around ours with new eyes.
Play in a 16th C hal
December 10, 2020
Blog post alert: I had a subplot about a theatrical company in the novella I'm working on now. A reader of an early partial draft said, "I like your actors, but I don't see where you are going with this." Neither did I really, so I removed most of it. Am ever I tempted to reinstate it, though, after seeing this image in the British Library's post, The Show Must Go On!
Sphere 1951
December 7, 2020
As a follow-up to yesterday's post, what fun! Father Christmas calling down the reindeer in a more natural version of his ice palace. This is obviously not the North Pole; but, after all, why not imagine his workshop somewhere in the North Woods? Or take the picture literally and see it as the backdrop for a theatrical production. I'm devouring it like a bon-bon, but if we play this year's story-generating game, there are already three possibilities: a story about Santa Claus, a story about a staged show, a story about a 1951 magazine.
Baynes and biscuits
December 6, 2020
Pauline Baynes's illustrations for The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, sank almost as deep into my imagination as C. S. Lewis's story did—and that's saying a lot! Yet somehow, I never quite liked her Father Christmas with the beavers. So what about this illustration to advertise Huntley & Palmer biscuits? Oh, my yes! How I wish I had a biscuit tin with it on top! NB: I don't think it suggests a story, only a delicious side of commercial Christmas. What do you say? In any case, Happy St. Nicholas Day!
Raindrops on windshield
December 4, 2020
Blog post alert: I can't think of an equivalent exercise for writers, but I was fascinated by James Gurney's video demonstrating Painting Raindrops on a Windshield. If you like to watch a pro work magic, check it out!
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Ten Terrible Ideas
December 3, 2020
Blog post alert: In Observation Journal: Ten Terrible Things, writer-illustrator Kathleen Jennings illustrates and explores an exercise she picked up from Helen Marshall: As quick as you can, jot down ten terrible ideas for a novel based on the X-meets-Y model. Examples: The Elements of Style as a musical, Where the Wild Things Are if it were a cooking show. Writers can use it to loosen up. Readers can turn it into a parlor game—or in these days when we should not be gathering for parties, one of you can plot a story about a group who did. My quick variation: Ten Terrible Romances, e.g., Heathcliff meets Bridget Jones, Elizabeth Bennett meets Superman. What's yours? (Warning: As Jennings observes, you may find yourself trying to develop one of your wacky ideas. Well, why not?)
Pigs and lace
December 1, 2020
Serendipity: Cold weather sent me searching for images of hot-water "pigs," ceramic bottles used as foot warmers (my old dissertation director once told me about how the monks in an Irish monastery provided her with one when she was doing research in their unheated library). A thumbnail at Foot warmers: hot coals, hot water sent me next on a hunt for an enlargement of a Dutch painting that shows a family using boxes of hot coals to warm their feet. No luck. What I found instead is a different painting by the same artist, Quirijn van Brekenlenham of a family in an interior. No foot warmers, but wow! what an exquisite depiction of lace-making. In this time of pandemic and Zoom, a reminder that we should all find time to work with our hands.
Blue sunset
November 29, 2020
Blog post alert: Who knew? Sunsets on Mars are blue! Now there's a small detail that should add a touch of unexpected realism to a sci-fi story or else spark some major imaginative flight of fancy. What about the night a blue sunset began to billow and sway like the aurora borealis?
Via Gurney Journey
Thanksgiving potluck, 2020
November 26, 2020
Instrucitonal page, Norman Rockwell Museum collection
A friend on a lovely New England back road told me about the barn-door, grab-and-go, potluck dinner she and her neighbors have organized for this COVID-19 Thanksgiving. Six of them (two couples and two singletons) have been assigned a dish. Each will make six servings and place them in six paper bags. This morning, they will gather at a table in the wide door of one participant's barn for each person to pick up a complete dinner. Then off they go home. It sounds so cute, so perfect for describing a picturesque New England town in these strange days, so—what could go wrong? Well, what could? Ladies and gentlemen, fire up your story engines!