Which Jane?

    

The falling sleet and occasional thunder made for a good reading day (click here to share the experience). 

           Earlier today I read about Lady Jane Grey, the "nine days queen" who ascended the English throne at sixteen. It was the first sort of autobiographical literature this semester that really fascinated me! From her biographies and personal letters I gathered that, she...


...was well-educated 
"I found her in her chamber reading Phaedon Platonis in Greek, and that with as much delight as some gentleman would read a merry tale in Boccaccio." --excerpt from Roger Ascham's Schoolmaster
...was bold
In a letter rebuking her former tutor for renouncing his faith, "Why dost thou now show thyself most weak, when indeed thou oughtest to be most strong? The strength of a fort is unknown before the assault: but thou yieldest thy hold before any battery be made. O wretched and unhappy man, what art thou, but dust and ashes? and wilt thou resist thy maker that fashioned and framed thee?"
...cared about her family

Sheepish Writer

    When I say I'm majoring in English, 90% of people ask me, "Oh, so you want to teach?" And I always feel sheepish when I tell people, "No, I want to be a writer."

     Maybe I feel sheepish because I write more about writing than anything. Or maybe because I halfway don't believe my ultimate dream will ever come true, because it would be too good to be true. Living above my bakery-bookstore in a quiet English town or a noisy American city, scribbling poems in a dog-eared notebook at a coffeeshop, recording music in a studio, owning a tabby cat, being indebted to my editor, posting audio chapters of Wynna on my website, and sending friends and acquaintances autographed copies of my book would be too good to be true.

      Maybe this isn't a feeling of sheepishness but of selfishness.

     How do I spread hope with poems about my emotions and stir hearts with stories about dragons and princesses? And do hope and heart-stirring mean as much to me as all the rest?

In a Chocolate Shop in Switzerland

          Daydreaming doesn't have to take place during the day. It can just as well happen at night. And although dreaming requires that you be asleep, you have to be awake to daydream. The funny things we talk about in linguistics.         

The cold spell broke and Pudding enjoyed snack-time outside!

             Yesterday the lazy writer was daydreaming (instead of reading the paragraph on the page in her textbook about international marketing) about owning a chocolate shop in the shadow of the Alps, in Switzerland. In her daydream, a group of cyclist friends met in the chocolate shop after a race. One of them was gray-haired and rather old, but several of them were young. The lazy writer wondered to herself (with her eyes intently staring at the same paragraph) whether Manny the mammoth on Ice Age speaks the truth and, "Guys don't talk to guys about guy problems. They just... punch each other on the shoulder." The lazy writer watched the young men at the chocolate shop to see what they would do. They began...to talk. About guy problems. The lazy writer jumped up from her chair and plugged in her computer, resolved to record her daydream instead of (a) waiting for a better idea or (b)  waiting until she finished her homework. In other words, she decided not to be lazy and just to write.

Sweet Mint: Bradstreet

         Dorinth and Boronovia are still frozen in time, a bit like the backyard (we haven't had so many snows or such sustained cold weather since I can remember!), and after my grand declaration that I would be posting ever-after on Saturdays, I already missed the first one!  I could rename this blog Confessions of a Lazy Writer.

        As a sort of an excuse, I spent most of yesterday at 2 different shooting ranges helping my dad gather research data. 

❃ ❃ ❃ ❃ ❃ ❃ ❃ ❃ ❃ ❃

     I have been trying to really soak in the good stuff from my assigned readings, to help my writing when I do actually get to it. One American author I quite like is Anne Bradstreet. She was the devoted Puritan wife of a prominent colonial politician and the mother of their eight children. Her writing is from the same period as the explorer narratives of men like John Smith and William Bradford. After listening to my classmates rip them apart for their hypocrisy and shameful treatment of the Native Americans (I plead the fifth as to my political/moral opinion in this discussion), Bradstreet's poetry was sweet mint to my ears. "To My Dear and Loving Husband" is in some ways rather generic, but her deep sincerity of feeling struck me.

     Click here to hear it read aloud (by me! I'm trying something new).

     Those of you who enjoy hearing poetry read aloud, try the If Poems app (available for purchase on iTunes). I got it for Christmas, and it's a little bit cumbersome to scroll through and find the poem I want, but it's worth it to have Tom Hiddleston read me poetry while I make my hair &c! ♥ 

New New New

     When we heard the campus bookstore was selling 501 French Verbs for a dollar, my English major friend (and fellow fashion blogger at rubyslippersfash.wordpress.com) and I zipped over to buy a copy.

     I ended up with a few more books than I intended to, but all six of them (brand new!) plus a wall calendar cost me less than $8. That's thriftiness right there.
      The Sense of an Ending, right in the middle of my pile, I've been wanting to read for a while now. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy--you might have seen the movie version in the theater. It sounds intriguing. Those Lovable Pets I plan to wrap up and send to my retired high school librarian, and squirrel seeks chipmunk I only hurriedly flipped through before I snatched it up, mostly because of the cute size and cute cover. I hope it's good.

     Flip-through, snatch-up. That sums up my flurry of a past two weeks. I have sacrificed a bit of sleep to get back into reading in the midst of everything. In the realm of Christian literature I'm working on Orthodoxy, by G.K. Chesterton. His style reminds me of C.S. Lewis, from his hard-to-wrap-your-head-around intellectualism to his dry, punny humor.
     Also on my bookshelf are "Sir Orfeo" (Brit Lit) and John Winthrop's "A Model of Christian Charity" (American Lit), and in my suppertime reading, I've journeyed as far as the Old Forest with Frodo & Co.

     I've had little time...I've made little time for writing, as I adjust to scheduling around a new weekday job. New. New job, new month, and really just the beginning of this new year (still crossing out 2013?). Time for a new post day. Welcome to Saturday afternoons at The Well!

     

Branching out Into Boronovia

     This semester, I think I'm going to be reading my eyeballs out over British, American, and Irish Women's literature, plus the reading for my marketing class. In Brit Lit we're starting out in medieval England with "Caedmon's Hymn" and "The Dream of the Rood."
    For my own pleasure I'm reading 1,000 Gifts by Ann Voskamp and re-reading The Fellowship of the Ring. Although, I suppose all the reading I'm doing should be pleasurable--I don't know what it is about being assigned reading that takes away the enjoyment.

Lurith

     Recently I'm writing a short story (and a bit of history) on the country of Boronovia, which covers almost the entire eastern coast of Lurith. The people are concentrated in the northern middle because of active volcanoes in the south and vicious Ice Bears in the North.        
Logline: In a land of bitter winters, boot-making Piyar...

Traditional msiri Recipe

Ingredients
milk
honey
cinnamon
ginger

Directions
1. Fill a tea or coffee mug with milk and microwave until hot (1 min 35 seconds in my microwave)
2. Add a spoonful of honey and the spices
3. Stir and enjoy

The spices don't mix very well, as you can see.

      With the snow and freezing rain forecasted for tonight, I'm sure we could all use a warm beverage, and msiri is simple enough that "anyone with the use of their limbs…" (quote Mrs. Patmore) could make it.  But the real reason I posted the recipe was in case anyone wants to try a Dorinthian drink! It's what King Durim, Princess Lili, and Wynna have while they talk in the palace gardens, partway through the tale.

     
       My most quotable English professor started eating onion sandwiches because of Ernest Hemingway's character Nick, in Big Two-Hearted River. Yesterday, my brother ate a macaroni-cheese and ketchup sandwich to test out Slim's (Hank the Cowdog, John R. Erickson) idea. I'm sure msiri is much tastier than either sandwich, but it just goes to show that stories inspire people.

Share your book recipes in the comments below!