I’m posting late and at home where, because of Blogger’s antipathy toward Macs, if I try to upload pics the browser crashes.

So today, it’s deathless prose only.

This week I’m engaged in a Book-in-a-Week(BIAW). Writing one, that is. It’s a ploy writers often use to jumpstart a project, the idea being that you get together with a bunch of people, publicly set goals, and post daily what your word count is. It can be very effective. Since I’m having to write a lot anyway because I’m on deadline, I proposed a BIAW to my local chapter, seeking misery in company. There was a terrific response–some of us are revising, some writing new material. We’re all raring to go.

Here is the true, unadulterated account so far of my efforts. My goal is 50 new pages by Sunday.

Day One: Monday. I arrived home from work, and find an imploded melon. This was a small, seedless watermelon–called, in the store, for some reason, a “personal watermelon.” A cute little green-striped thing, nothing like those large, impersonal corporate melons that give the fruit a bad name. Adorable. In fact, we liked it so much we couldn’t bear to cut into it and Mother Nature took over. Cleared up melon. Made dinner. Wrote five pages.

Day Two: Tuesday. Watched the only TV show I will go out of my way to watch, “House.” Four pages. A discussion started on our BIAW list about unpleasant vegetable matter in our respective refrigerators, following the story of the imploded melon. I’m planning a refrigerator clean out and I can guarantee I am the winner, Slattern Queen of the BIAW.

Day Three: Wednesday. Now this was a great evening. Ten pages. Went to bed very late, wired, and couldn’t sleep, and then when I did drop off, was awoken by my musical husband having a sneezing fit and humming in between nasal explosions.

Day Four: Thursday. The evening is relatively young but so far two pages are written. I decided to make stuffed squash for dinner. After putting on some rice to cook, I noticed that the house was full of smoke and the fire alarm went off. Burned rice. Started again. Meanwhile, the sausage I was going to use, even frozen, had a very peculiar odor. So I put it back in the freezer until I can safely get it into the trash (we’ve also run out of trash bags). I decided to use turkey bacon instead, which, while it is a nice idea, is not bacon. I won’t give the rest of the ingredients, because, believe me, it was disgusting and I should have just eaten the squash alone. I also spent quite a bit of time frolicking on eBay–yes, this is writing-related, buying promotional items.

So would I recommend BIAW? Yes, definitely. It’s a way of instilling good writing habits, you do get a lot done (generally) and it’s nice to be in touch with a bunch of other people in the same situation. I would, however, recommend that you get all melons out of the house first.

Janet

…and they’re written for a reader.

That’s the philosophy of Edward Mendelson, who teaches at Columbia University and has just published a book called The Things That Matter. In it he explores what the following novels tell us about the stages of life–Frankenstein, Middlemarch, Jane Eyre, and Wuthering Heights; and three by Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway, To The Lighthouse, and Between The Acts. He gave a fascinating interview on Weekend Edition on NPR last Saturday.

He’s got some amazing things to say, for instance, about Wuthering Heights as a depiction of childhood. But what really impressed me most in this interview–other than his refreshing attitude of not looking for a message, but taking a book for what it is, a statement of the human condition–was this perceptive comment on what happens when a writer sits down to write, and he/she is…

…cooperating with hundreds, thousands of other writers; to have the support of the shape of a novel, to have the help of the English language…with its rhymes and puns and its echoes and allusions. When you sit down to write this book you’re not alone. You have all of your reading, all of the language, all of the things that you’ve forgotten that got into your head working with you, helping to shape that world…

A wonderful thought. We are not alone!

And have you checked out the current Riskies contest? See Sunday’s interview with Pam Rosenthal.

A few months ago I blogged about a biography of Harriet Wilson that I was reading on my commute to work. My latest tart-on-the-tracks experience was with this biography of Mary Robinson by Paula Byrne–Perdita: The Literary, Theatrical, Scandalous Life of Mary Robinson.

It’s a pretty good biography, but you don’t get a sense of who Mary Robinson really was. There’s something enigmatic about her–she did an excellent cover-up job with the media and with her own writing. Even her biography is, acccording to Ms. Byrne, fairly typical for its time, full of omissions and inventions, always anxious to appear a nice, respectable girl. First and foremost an actress, she was adept at assuming roles–as a leader of fashion, a woman of politics (Fox was her lover for a time), an abandoned waif, child bride, tragic heroine. She began her theatrical career as a protegee of Garrick (although she probably wasn’t his mistress), before attracting the attention of the youthful Prince of Wales. He became besotted with her in the role of Perdita in The Winter’s Tale, referring to himself as Florizel, when she was a lovely young thing of 20 or 21, and he was as much of a lovely young thing as he was ever going to be at the age of 17.

The other love of her life was Colonel Banastre Tarleton, a hero of the American Revolutionary Wars, and not a particularly pleasant person (his nickname over here was “Butcher,” a dead give away). But there must have been something about him (maybe it was his third arm as the portrait suggests)–their affair lasted for years, with Mary, ever the publicity hound, submitting sentimental poems to newspapers at each breakup and reconciliation. They were the Posh and Becks, the Jennifer and Brad of their time, adored, imitated, extravagant leaders of fashion. Politically they were at opposite ends of the spectrum. She was a supporter of the abolitionist movement and in sympathy with the French revolution; Tarleton came from a rich Liverpool family and was pro-slavery and old school; nevertheless Mary wrote (some of) his political speeches and they co-authored a book together about his military experiences. I can’t help but think of Mary leaning over his shoulder correcting his spelling while he writes with his lips moving.

She gave up her stage career at the request of the Prince of Wales, who proved unreliable thereafter in his annuity payments, and after illness and disability from rheumatic fever ended her career as a courtesan, earned her living writing poetry and novels. Godwin and Coleridge were her friends and admired her work. She was rediscovered in academic circles in the 1990s though I have to admit the poetry copiously quoted in Ms. Byrne’s biography left me cold and/or slightly cringing at its sprightly archness.

I must admit she didn’t appeal to me as much as Harriet Wilson, but I enjoyed this biography–there are some great descriptions of clothes and of late eighteenth-century London; it’s just a pity that Mary is presented mostly as a series of public personae. And that’s the way she would have liked it…here’s to you, Mrs. Robinson…

It’s nothing to do with the Regency, or books, or writing. Just a painting I like, The Arnolfini Marriage aka The Marriage of Giovanni Arnolfini and Giovanna Cenami painted in 1434 by Jan van Eyck. The original is in the National Gallery in London, and is surprisingly small and modest (about 30″ x 20″). What I like about this painting is its sense of mystery and the huge amount of symbolism the ordinary household objects convey; and also its sense of intimacy as though you’re peeping through an open door at the marriage ceremony.

The candle burning in daylight represents the all-seeing Eye of God; the image of St. Margaret, the patron saint of childbirth, is carved on the back of the bed, and the fruit on the window ledge represent both fertility and the fall from the Garden of Eden. The dog is a symbol of fidelity, and the discarded shoes a symbol of humility. A bird flying outside represents the Holy Spirit.

If you poke around online you’ll quite easily find some hi-res images of this painting, and be able to zoom in on a closeup of the mirror. There you can see the reflection of the artist and another figure–witnesses to the marriage? The amount of detail is fabulous–the decorative projections of the mirror each represent a meticulously painted religious scene. The mirror itself is convex and represents the room–and more, the sky and garden outside.

Wow. If I were feeling more clever tonight, I might draw some sort of conclusion between what van Eyck is doing and what writers try to do, the creation of worlds within worlds. Showing everything but keeping that sense of mystery.

That’s all.

Janet

Do you believe in fairies? Or, to be more specific, do you believe in fairy stories and/or archetypes?

Enough of the questions already. No, I don’t believe in fairies although my husband told me that once, when he was a child, a little man in green walked across the the landing outside his bedroom door. Yes, I believe in fairy stories or archetypes, purely because when I’m writing and it’s working, I’ll think Oh, of course, this is …. Cinderella…Sleeping Beauty and suddenly it all makes sense.

But the fairy story I ponder the most, and the one that fascinates me, is Beauty and the Beast. One of my favorite writers, Angela Carter, was intrigued enough by it to write several versions in her marvellous collection The Bloody Chamber. Cocteau made an amazing movie of it too. Beauty is a true heroine–no, she’s not some sort of kickasss type, but she’s her own person, which is both her strength and her weakness. If she’d asked her father to bring her home a length of silk or jewels, and not a white rose, she wouldn’t have started off the chain of events at the Beast’s castle. And she makes the decision to return to the Beast and brings about his transformation, her own heroic journey when she truly comes into her own.

I read a lot of illustrated versions aloud to my daughter when she was little, but I think this one by Marianna and Mercer Mayer was my favorite. This was long before I started writing myself. There was one illustration I found particularly captivating–Beauty, dressed in silk, sits at the window of a circular tower, surrounded by books, and with a bird, released from its cage, perched on her hand. She has a dreamy, contemplative expression on her face as though escaping into some inner world, the world of her imagination; she’s caged by the Beast, but she’s found a freedom beyond the stone walls of the tower. Now I see her as an allegory of a writer, invited into a fantastic world and bringing to it her own feelings and experience, and maybe that’s why that illustration in particular had such an appeal for me.

So what’s your favorite fairy story? Why? And do you think it influences what you like to read and write?

Janet