Prepared by: Pat Johnson Revised, reposted on: January 31, 2010
EXERCISE: In 400 words or less, write a scene in which a symbol is central to the story. Try to find a symbol that has not been overused, e.g., national flags, the Cross, devoted pets, broken arrows, etc. ______________________
Writers often use an object, place, person, animal, or even an historical idea to represent an ideal, an emotion(such as fear or desire), a relationship, a character's goal or hope, a conflict or even a whole society. The symbol helps to focus our attention on the most important message carried by the narrative.
We've all seen stories where a river has suggested the onward movement of life, or symbolized a path leading to or away from some situation. Rivers have stood for destructive, implacable forces of nature, givers or takers of life. Traditionally, a rose might symbolize a woman's purity or someone's desire for perfection. Bridges often symbolize connection and communication, but a bridge not crossed might represent dashed hopes or a failure to connect. A house passed down through generations might come to symbolize the family - is it kept with pride, or is the paint peeling? What would that suggest about the family?
If the symbol is too abstract, the reader won't understand and would miss an important aspect of the story you're trying to tell. However, if a symbol is used in an obvious way, it loses its magic and hits the reader unpleasantly right between the eyes. Let the reader glimpse or hear about the symbolic object, then in the story refer to it obliquely. If you do this well, your reader will get it, perhaps without even knowing why. ______________________
EXERCISE: In 400 words or less, write a scene in which a symbol is central to the story. Try to find a symbol that has not been overused, e.g., national flags, the Cross, devoted pets, broken arrows, etc. ______________________
CRITIQUING: Identify the symbol and tell why you think the author uses it and/or whether it works. Is the author heavy-handed or subtle with the symbol? Will most readers understand the symbol? Does it add to or detract from the story and characters? Keep in mind that although it could be interpreted differently by different readers, it is the author's successful use of the symbol for a particular purpose, deepening our understanding of a character's motivation or broadening the scope of the plot, that makes it enrich the story.
These exercises were written by IWW members and administrators to provide structured practice opportunities for its members. You are welcome to use them for practice as well. Please mention that you found them at the Internet Writing Workshop.
This Day In Writing History On January 29th, 1860, the legendary Russian writer Anton Chekhov was born in Taganrog, Russia. His father, Pavel, was a devout Orthodox Christian and choir director. He was also physically abusive to his wife and children and made their lives hell. Scholars believe that Pavel Chekhov served as a model of hypocrisy and tyranny for his son's writings.
As a boy, Anton Chekhov attended a school for Greek boys and the Taganrog Gymnasium, which is now known as the Chekhov Gymnasium. In 1876, Chekhov's father mismanaged his finances while building a new house and bankrupted himself. To avoid debtor's prison, the family fled to Moscow, where oldest sons Alexander and Nikolai were attending university. Anton Chekhov was left behind in Taganrog to finish his schooling and work to support the family. His mother was devastated, both emotionally and physically drained.
To earn money, Anton did various odd jobs; he worked as a tutor, caught birds and sold them as pets, and took up writing, selling short stories to newspapers. He sent all the money he could spare to his family, along with humorous letters to cheer them up. He became a voracious reader, delving into the works of Cervantes, Turgenev, Goncharov, Schopenhauer, and others. He also wrote his first play, a comic drama called Fatherless. He had many love affairs, including one with his teacher's wife.
In 1879, Chekhov completed his primary education, rejoined his family, and enrolled in medical school at Moscow University. Five years later, he obtained his medical degree and became a doctor. He made little money as a physician, treating mostly poor people for free. Not long after he began his practice, he started coughing up blood. By 1886, the attacks worsened, but he wouldn't admit to his family and friends that he had tuberculosis.
Chekhov returned to writing, and wrote prolifically, publishing many short stories in weekly newspapers and magazines, which earned him enough money to move his impoverished family into better housing. He made a name for himself as a writer and was invited to write exclusively for the Novoye Vremya (New Times), one of the most popular papers in St. Petersburg. It was owned and edited by millionaire newspaper magnate Alexey Suvorin, who was known to pay his writers generously. Suvorin and Chekhov would become lifelong friends.
After reading Chekhov's short story The Huntsman, 64-year-old Dmitry Grigorovich, a celebrated writer of the time, wrote to Chekhov, telling him "You have real talent - a talent which places you in the front rank among writers in the new generation." He advised Chekhov to slow down and concentrate on the quality of his writing instead of the quantity. Chekhov wrote back that the letter had struck him "like a thunderbolt," saying "I have written my stories the way reporters write up their notes about fires—mechanically, half-consciously, caring nothing about either the reader or myself." Actually, he often wrote with extreme care, and continually revised his work.
In 1887, with a little help from Grigorovich, Chekhov's short story collection At Dusk won him the Pushkin Prize. That same year, a theater owner named Korsh commissioned him to write a play. The play, Ivanov, was written in two weeks and premiered in November. Chekhov found the whole experience "sickening," and in a letter to his brother Alexander, he humorously described the chaotic production. To Chekhov's amazement, the play was a hit with both critics and theatergoers.
Two years later, in 1889, Chekhov's brother Nikolai died of tuberculosis, plunging him into a depression and influencing the writing of his short story, A Dreary Story. Searching for a purpose in his own life, Chekhov took up the issue of prison reform. In 1890, he made an arduous journey by train, carriage, and river steamer to the penal colony on Sakhalin Island in the far east of Russia. The letters he wrote during the two and a half month journey are among his best.
What Chekhov saw on Sakhalin shocked and disgusted him; prisoners were being flogged, supplies embezzled, and women forced into prostitution. "There were times," he wrote, when "I felt that I saw before me the extreme limits of man's degradation." He was especially moved by the plight of the children who lived with their parents in the penal colony: "On the Amur steamer going to Sakhalin, there was a convict with fetters on his legs who had murdered his wife. His daughter, a little girl of six, was with him. I noticed wherever the convict moved the little girl scrambled after him, holding on to his fetters. At night the child slept with the convicts and soldiers all in a heap together."
Chekhov concluded that charity wasn't the answer - the government had a duty to finance humane treatment of prisoners. He published his findings in a non-fiction work of social science called Ostrov Sakhalin (Island of Sakhalin) (1893-1894).
In 1892, Chekhov bought Melikhovo, a small country estate 40 miles south of Moscow, and settled there with his family. He joked that "it's nice to be a lord," but took his responsibilities as a landlord seriously and helped the local peasants. He organized relief for the victims of the famine and cholera outbreaks, built three schools, a fire station, and a free clinic where he treated peasants from miles around - even though his tuberculosis attacks increased.
Chekhov began writing his play The Seagull in 1894. It premiered two years later at the Alexandrinsky Theater in St. Petersburg. The production was a disaster and the audience booed. Chehkov was so incensed that he renounced the theater and vowed never to write another play. Theater director Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko was impressed by The Seagull and convinced a colleague, Constantin Stanislavski, to direct a production for the Moscow Art Theatre in 1898. Stanislavski's brilliant, innovative production was a hit.
His faith in the theater restored, Chekhov returned to play writing when the Art Theatre commissioned him to write more plays. The great Uncle Vanya, which Chekhov had written in 1896, premiered at the Art Theatre in 1899.
In 1897, Chekhov had suffered a major hemorrhage of the lungs, so he finally went to a clinic, where his tuberculosis, located in the tops of his lungs, was diagnosed. The doctors advised him to make a major change in his lifestyle. So, after his father died the following year, he bought land in Yalta and built a home there. When it was completed, he moved in along with his mother and sister. In Yalta, Chekhov planted trees and flowers, kept dogs and tamed cranes as pets, and entertained his friends and fellow writers, including Leo Tolstoy and Maxim Gorky. He also wrote more plays for the Art Theatre.
Chekov really hated living in Yalta, which he described as a "hot Siberia," so he often visited Moscow or traveled abroad to get away from it. In May of 1901, at the age of 41, Chekhov married his girlfriend, Olga Knipper. His marriage came as a surprise to many, because he had been called "Russia's most elusive literary bachelor" and preferred casual relationships and brothels to marriage.
His attitude is reflected in his classic short story, The Lady With The Dog, which told the tale of Dmitry, an unhappily married Moscow banker who believes that women are only good for one thing. So he engages in many meaningless affairs. Then one day, while vacationing in Yalta, he meets Anna, a young woman who is walking her dog along the seafront. Smitten, he introduces himself. Soon, Dmitry and Anna begin a passionate affair which lasts until he returns to Moscow.
Back home and back in his daily routine, Dmitry finds himself haunted by his memories of Anna and determines to find her. Using business as a ruse, he goes to St. Petersburg and finds out where she lives. Afraid that she's found someone else, he returns to his hotel. Later, he goes to see a production of the musical play The Geisha, thinking that Anna might be in attendance. He sees her with her husband. When the man steps out for a smoke, Dmitry greets Anna. Startled, she runs off, and he follows her.
When Dmitry finally confronts Anna, she tells him that she never stopped thinking about him, but begs him to leave, promising to visit him in Moscow. She keeps her promise, and Dmitry realizes that he has fallen in love for the first time in his life. The story ends with Dmitry and Anna trying to plan for a life together.
By 1904, Anton Chekhov was dying of tuberculosis. In June, he and Olga went to the German spa town of Badenweiler, where he wrote cheerful letters to his mother and sister, telling them that he was getting better. In fact, he was getting much worse. He died on July 15th at the age of 44. This is how Olga described his death:
"Anton sat up unusually straight and said loudly and clearly (although he knew almost no German): Ich sterbe ('I'm dying'). The doctor calmed him, took a syringe, gave him an injection of camphor, and ordered champagne. Anton took a full glass, examined it, smiled at me and said: 'It's a long time since I drank champagne.' He drained it, lay quietly on his left side, and I just had time to run to him and lean across the bed and call to him, but he had stopped breathing and was sleeping peacefully as a child..."
Quote Of The Day "There is nothing new in art except talent." - Anton Chekhov
Vanguard Video Today's video features a reading of Anton Chekhov's short story Oh! The Public, performed by Kenneth Branagh. Enjoy!
This Day In Writing History On January 28th, 1873, the legendary French novelist and actress Colette was born. She was born Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette in Yonne, France. In 1893, at the age of twenty, Colette married writer and music critic Henri "Willy" Gauthier-Villars, who was fifteen years her senior. Willy was known for having a staff of ghostwriters (which he would direct) and for his notorious sexual exploits, which didn't end with his marriage.
Colette decided to try her hand at writing. In 1900, her first novel, Claudine a L'ecole (Claudine At School) was published - under her husband's name. It would be the first in a series of semi-autobiographical novels featuring Claudine, a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl. The novel takes the form of Claudine's journal as she records her home and school life. She lives in Montigny with her father, who ignores her.
At school, Claudine falls in love with Miss Lanthenay, the assistant headmistress, and they have an affair. Miss Sergent, the headmistress, finds out about the affair and gets Miss Lanthenay to break it off. She eventually takes Miss Lanthenay as her own lover. Heartbroken and feeling betrayed, Claudine turns to her friends - tough, cynical Anais and sweet-natured Marie - to help her cause trouble for the headmistresses.
In addition to chronicling her love affairs with both male and female paramours, Claudine also records the events of the school year, both mundane and important, such as the opening of a new school, a ball given in the honor of a visiting politician, and preparations for final exams. Claudine a L'ecole caused an outrage with its open and honest depiction of female bisexuality and a sensation with the quality of its prose.
Colette's husband Willy, who served as her editor, later tried to claim that the was the real author of the Claudine books. This, along with his constant philandering, put an end to their marriage. When she first discovered that he was cheating, she had an affair of her own with another woman, then learned that the girl was one of her husband's mistresses! When she revealed this to Willy, he suggested that they make it a menage a trois. Colette agreed, but the relationship didn't last.
Colette left Willy in 1906. She moved in with her friend, American writer Natalie Barney. The two women had a brief affair, but remained lifelong friends. Colette took up acting and became a music hall actress in Paris, under the tutelage of Mathilde "Missy" de Morny, the Marquise de Belbeuf. They became romantically involved, and in 1907, while doing a pantomime called Reve d'Egypte at the Moulin Rouge, the performance included an onstage kiss between the two women. It caused a riot, which had to be suppressed by the police.
The ensuing scandal resulted in the banning of future performances of Reve d'Egypte, and though Colette and Missy were no longer able to live openly together, their relationship lasted for five years. After it ended, Colette had relationships with male lovers - Italian writer Gabriele D'Annunzio and French car magnate Auguste Herriot. In 1912, Colette married her second husband, Henri de Jouvenel, editor of the newspaper Le Matin. She bore him a daughter, Colette de Jouvenel, who was called Bel-Gazou.
In 1914, during World War 1, Colette was approached by the Opera de Paris and asked to write a ballet. She accepted the offer and chose legendary composer Maurice Ravel to write the music. He turned it into an opera, and by 1918, Colette gave him her finished libretto, L'Enfant et les Sortileges, aka The Child and the Spells: a Lyric Fantasy in Two Parts. The opera debuted on March 21st, 1925. During the war, Colette had converted her husband's estate in St. Malo into a hospital for the wounded. For this, she was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 1920.
That same year, she resurrected her writing career, publishing her classic novel Cheri. Cheri is a young man of 25 involved in a passionate, albeit casual relationship with Lea, a retired courtesan nearly twice his age. When Cheri enters an arranged marriage to a young woman from a wealthy family, he and Lea realize that they are in love with each other. After nine months of misery in a loveless marriage, Cheri returns to Lea, who rescues him from the depths of depression and gives him the courage to return to his wife, realizing that she has to let him go for his own good. Colette would follow Cheri with a sequel, La Fin de Cheri (1926).
Colette, now regarded as France's finest female writer, became friends with legendary writer and filmmaker Jean Cocteau and became part of his literary circle. She divorced her husband after engaging in a scandalous affair with her stepson, Bertrand. In 1935, she married again, to Maurice Goudeket. In World War 2, during the Nazi occupation of France, Colette hid her husband and their Jewish friends in her attic, where they remained throughout the war.
In 1945, after the war in Europe ended, Colette published her most famous novel, Gigi. Set in turn of the century Paris, it told the story of Gigi, a young girl who is well-educated at a girls' school and taught etiquette, dress, and style by her female relatives, who are grooming her to follow in their footsteps and become a courtesan - a mistress of wealthy, cultured married men - and support them. Gigi doesn't want to be a courtesan - she wants true love. That true love takes the form of family friend Gaston Lachaille, a wealthy thirtysomething year old man who is bored with high society and his current mistress. He falls in love with Gigi - and ultimately marries her.
Gigi would be adapted as a Broadway play by Anita Loos in 1951. In 1958, the book would be adapted as an acclaimed albeit sanitized movie musical starring Leslie Caron in the lead role and co-starring Louis Jordan and Maurice Chevalier. Featuring a soundtrack of songs by Lerner and Loewe, including the endearing Thank Heaven For Little Girls, Gigi is rightfully considered a classic film.
Colette died in 1954 at the age of 81. She had written around 50 novels and become a feminist icon - a brilliant writer, intellectual, and free spirit who flaunted her bisexuality, determined to live her life on her own terms with apologies to no one.
Quote Of The Day "On this narrow planet, we have only the choice between two unknown worlds. One of them tempts us - ah, what a dream, to live in that! The other stifles us at the first breath." - Colette
Vanguard Video Today's video features the original theatrical trailer for the 1958 movie musical adaptation of Colette's classic novel, Gigi. Enjoy!
This Day In Writing History On January 27th, 1832, the legendary British children's book writer Lewis Carroll was born. He was born Charles Dodgson IV in Daresbury, Cheshire, England. His father was a fiercely conservative clergyman in the Anglican Church. Young Charles, however, did not share his father's conservatism or his extreme devotion to the Anglican Church.
Charles Dodgson received his early education at home. He was a precocious, intellectually gifted child and a voracious reader. He was also sickly. A fever left him deaf in one ear, and he suffered from a stammer, which would result in the extreme shyness that plagued him all his life. As a teenager, he would contract a severe case of whooping cough that left him with a weak respiratory system. He also suffered from a condition that matched the description of temporal lobe epilepsy.
In 1844, at the age of twelve, Charles Dodgson began his formal schooling at a small private school in Richmond, North Yorkshire. He loved the school, but two years later, when he moved on to Rugby School in Rugby, Warwickshire, he came to hate the place. R.B. Mayor, his mathematics master, recognized Dodgson's genius for arithmetic. Though he disliked Rugby School, he maintained his academic prowess and was an excellent student as always.
Dodgson enrolled in his father's alma mater, Christ Church, Oxford, in January of 1851. He was at university for only two days when he was summoned to return home. His mother had died at the age of 47 from "inflammation of the brain," a common euphemism for conditions such as meningitis and stroke. He later returned to university, where his talent as a mathematician won him a Mathematical Lectureship at Christ Church, and he would teach there for the next 26 years. Teaching bored him, but the pay was good.
Charles Dodgson had begun writing poetry and short stories as a young boy. He would publish them in Mischmasch, a magazine created by the Dodgson family for their own amusement. Later, between 1854 and 1856, his works would appear in both national magazines and smaller publications in the UK. Most of these works were humorous and satirical in nature. Too shy to use his own name, Dodgson wrote under his soon-to-be-famous pseudonym, Lewis Carroll, which was a clever play on his own name; Carroll is an Irish surname similar to the Latin word Carolus, from which the name Charles comes.
In 1856, Dodgson published the first work to make him famous, a romantic poem titled Solitude. That same year, a new Dean arrived at Christ Church with his family. His name was Henry Liddell. He and his wife had four children: Harry, Lorina, Edith, and Alice. Dodgson became a close friend of the Liddell family. He would take the children on rowing trips to Nuneham Courtenay and Godstow. Of the four Liddell children, Dodgson was closest to Alice and would spend a lot of time with her.
On July 4th, 1862, during a rowing trip with Alice, Dodgson told her a story he was thinking about turning into a children's book. It was about a little girl (named after Alice) who falls through a rabbit hole and finds herself in a strange and magical world. Alice loved the story and begged him to write the book. So he did. A year later, he took his unfinished manuscript for Alice's Adventures Under Ground to a publisher named Macmillan for appraisal. He liked it immediately. In 1864, Dodgson presented Alice Liddell with his completed manuscript.
When the book was being prepared for publication, several other titles were considered, including Alice Among The Fairies and Alice's Golden Hour. The book was published in 1865 as Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, later shortened to Alice In Wonderland. It was a huge critical and commercial success, beloved by both children and adults. It made the name Lewis Carroll world famous. It also made the author a lot of money, but he still kept the teaching job he disliked.
Dodgson published a sequel, Through The Looking Glass and What Alice Found There in 1871, though the title page erroneously states that the book was published in 1872. Through The Looking Glass was a darker tale than the original, which no doubt reflected (no pun intended) the author's struggle with depression following the death of his father in 1868. Dodgson would publish several other children's books, including Sylvie And Bruno and The Hunting Of The Snark, a dazzling, epic "nonsense poem." He also wrote over a dozen mathematics textbooks.
When he wasn't writing or teaching, Dodgson explored his interest in photography and became a renowned photographer. Ironically, it was his photography, not his writing, that gained him entrance into high society. He would photograph many notable people, including legendary poet Alfred Lord Tennyson. When he retired as a photographer in 1880, Dodgson had taken over 3,000 photographs, but less than 1,000 of these images have survived.
In late 1897, Charles Dodgson contracted a bad case of the flu that turned into pneumonia. His weak respiratory system never recovered, and he died at his sister's home on January 14th, 1898 - two weeks before his 66th birthday.
Years later, several different biographers would speculate that Dodgson was a pedophile. He never married, he preferred the company of children to adults - especially little girls - and as a photographer, he had taken many nude photographs of young girls, including Alice Liddell. A group of scholars, including French academic Hugues Lebailly and biographer Karoline Leach, sought to debunk what they called the "Carroll Myth." Leach wrote a biography called In the Shadow of the Dreamchild, where she explained how the Carroll Myth came to be.
In her book, Leach argues that the myth of Dodgson's pedophilia arose from a misunderstanding of Victorian morality and aesthetics. In Victorian England, images of nude children were not only common but considered artistic representations of beauty and innocence, devoid of eroticism. Child nudes even appeared on Christmas cards.
Leach goes on to say that Dodgson's diaries showed that he was interested in adult women and had relationships with them that were considered scandalous by Victorian standards. While other biographers claimed that Dodgson's falling out with the Liddell family happened because he wanted to marry the then 11-year-old Alice, Leach claims that the falling out happened because Henry Liddell found out that Dodgson was having an affair with either oldest daughter Lorina or the family's nanny, both of whom were adults. Of the 13 diaries that Dodgson kept throughout his life, four are missing. Leach believes that they were destroyed by Dodgson's family to protect his name because they revealed his sexual relationships with unmarried women - not little girls.
Charles Dodgson's love for children came from the extreme shyness brought on by his speech impediment. He was more comfortable around children because they weren't bothered by the stammer he was so self-conscious of. Karoline Leach's biography of Dodgson is, like the writer's sexuality, still hotly debated. Some say that In the Shadow of the Dreamchild is a long overdue repudiation of the besmirching of Dodgson's name, others say that Leach and the academics who support her are historical revisionists.
Dodgson's classic novel, Alice In Wonderland, still beloved by readers of all ages and popular with literary scholars, has been adapted numerous times for the stage, screen, radio, and television. The latest feature film adaptation is due for release on March 5th, 2010. Directed by Tim Burton, the movie features Mia Wasikowska as Alice, Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter, Helena Bonham Carter as the Red Queen, Anne Hathaway as the White Queen, Stephen Fry as the Cheshire Cat, Alan Rickman as the Caterpillar, and Christopher Lee as the Jabberwock.
Quote Of The Day "Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle." - Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson)
Vanguard Video Today's video features the theatrical trailer for the new 2010 feature film adaptation of Lewis Carroll's classic children's novel, Alice In Wonderland. Enjoy!
This Day In Writing History On January 26th, 1831, the famous children's book writer Mary Mapes Dodge was born in New York City. As a young girl, Mary was well educated by private tutors, as her father, James Jay Mapes, was an affluent professor.
In 1851, at the age of twenty, Mary wed her boyfriend, a young lawyer named William Dodge. She bore him two sons, James and Harrington. Then, in 1858, facing serious financial trouble, Mary's husband abandoned the family. He was found dead in an apparent drowning a month later.
Left a poor widow at 27, Mary Mapes Dodge went to work to support herself and her children. Working with her father, she wrote for, edited, and published two magazines - The Working Farmer and The United States Journal. A few years later, in 1864, her first book was published.
The Irvington Stories was a collection of children's stories about life in colonial times. The book was so successful that Mary's publisher asked her to write another one. This time, she wrote a novel set in the Netherlands in the early 19th century. Her colorful portrait of Dutch life, which introduced a famous Dutch folk tale to American children, became an instant bestseller and brought Mary international fame.
Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates (1865) was inspired by historian John L. Motley's multi-volume works The Rise of the Dutch Republic and The History of the United Netherlands, which Mary Mapes Dodge had read and greatly enjoyed. Hans Brinker is a fifteen-year-old Dutch boy who, along with his younger sister Gretel, hopes to win the big speed skating race on the canal, though all they have are handmade wooden ice skates. The grand prize for winning the race is a new pair of silver skates.
Hans and Gretel's father cannot work because he is ill and suffering from amnesia after falling from a dike. So, Mrs. Brinker and her children must work to support the family. The Brinkers are looked down on in their community because they're poor. Hans and Gretel learn that a famous surgeon named Dr. Boekman may be able to cure their ailing father. Unfortunately, Dr. Boekman is expensive and has become gruff and hardhearted since he lost his wife and son.
When Dr. Boekman finally agrees to examine Hans Brinker's father, the diagnosis is pressure on the brain, which can be cured with a risky and expensive operation that involves trephining. To help pay for the operation, Hans offers Dr. Boekman the money he's been saving to buy steel skates for the big race. Touched by this gesture, the doctor agrees to perform the surgery for free.
Able to buy good skates, Hans enters the big race, but then lets a friend (who needs the silver skates more than he does) win instead. Meanwhile, Mr. Brinker's operation is successful, and his health and memory are restored. The experience changes Dr. Boekman, who loses his gruffness and hardhearted nature. Later, he helps Hans Brinker get into medical school, where he becomes a successful doctor.
The novel included the famous Dutch folk tale about the heroic little Dutch boy who stuck his finger in a dike to plug a leak. It was the first book to introduce the Dutch folk tale to American readers. It also introduced Americans to the sport of speed skating.
After the success of Hans Brinker, Mary Mapes Dodge would visit the Netherlands for the first time. She would write more children's books, including novels and children's poetry collections. She would continue her career as an editor as well. She became an associate editor of Hearth and Home, the literary magazine edited by Harriet Beecher Stowe, the legendary abolitionist and author of the classic novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin.
In 1873, Scribner's asked Mary to become the editor-in-chief of their new children's magazine, St. Nicholas Magazine. Under Mary's direction, it became the most famous and highly regarded children's publication of its time - an innovative and progressive literary and art magazine for children that contained no heavy-handed moralizing.
St. Nicholas Magazine would feature the writings and illustrations of the best contemporary authors and artists. The magazine's first hit was a serialized version of Frances Hodgson Burnett's classic novel, Little Lord Fauntleroy. Louisa May Alcott's Jo's Boys, Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book, and the works of Mark Twain and Robert Louis Stevenson would also be published in serialized form by the magazine, which would remain in publication for almost 70 years.
Mary Mapes Dodge died in 1905 at the age of 74.
Quote Of The Day "What a dreadful thing it must be to have a dull father." - Mary Mapes Dodge
Vanguard Video Today's video features a collection of rare Disney Channel promo clips from the 1980s and early 90s, including a promo for Disney's adapation of Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates. Enjoy!
Internet Writing Workshop members continue to find publishing success in all venues, and this week we lead off with two members seeing their first published fiction!
Congratulations to this week's crew!
Jody
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John Raff
My fifty-word story "Drive Home" will be used in the 50 to 1 issue due out today.
This is my very first piece of published fiction and I am seriously jazzed.
William Ward
My story "Ghost Story" was accepted by 50 to 1 for next Christmas season. (Was too late for Christmas '09.)
Thanks to all who critiqued the story. It is my first fiction publication and wouldn't have happened without you. Thanks.
Ann Hite
The synopsis, query letter, and first three chapters of my novel were submitted to one of the big boy publishers in New York - one of those I can dream anyway, publishers. They bit today and requested the whole manuscript.
The managing editor said she loved the first three chapters and was anxious to read all of it. Understand I am under no illusion that this is close to a done deal, but I do find it encouraging to receive such a quick positive response. No matter what happens this gives me more fuel to move forward with the pursuit of novel publication. So now I have a medium size New York publisher and a GREAT big publisher interested.
Barry Basden
An even shorter, 140-character, tweet version of an earlier story, now called "Dancing in the Dark" is up at PicFic.
The format's a little off, but that can happen if you text while driving.
"Orange County," "My Old Flame," and "No Guarantees," three short poems, are up at Rusty Truck.
A big shout-out to the Practice list for critting this piece and to Kathy Highcove for her keen eye. I think I put this out before but now it's really there!
Rebecca Gaffron
My story "Flying Blind" has been included in the first print edition of Six Sentences, The 6S Review.
Thanks so much, Practice, for helping me smooth the bumps out of this one a couple of weeks ago. The editor intends to include it in an anthology of ten-sentence stories. Submission guidelines are simple, and she's very nice. The books will be for sale at Amazon. No pay, but a tiny piece of fame.
Tomlit has accepted two of my works. They plan to publish my story, "Doing Right," in their print venue, and a flash, "Is Love Enough?" online.
The editors of both of these publications are enthusiastic and offer personal comments on stories. I'd advise checking out both markets for flashes and longer fiction.
"The Shop of Little Horrors," a flash I wrote for Practice years ago, has found a home at Apollo's Lyre. It's set for their February issue.
And a piece I wrote just a few weeks ago with the Practice group, "A Fool Proof Plan," has been accepted at Fiction at Work and is scheduled for June 6.
MiCrow, the flash supplement for Full of Crow, (I like that), has accepted my flash, "A Good Deed," written for Practice. The editor says it will be up later this month.
Created by: Alice Folkart Posted on: 24 Jan 2010 _____________________
In 400 words or less write a scene that either springs from or culminates in one of the lines below. What in the world is going on? Who has done what to whom? Show us. You may also invent your own similar 'ultimatum' line, if you like.
"I'm never coming back!"
"That's my final word!"
"Get out and take your _________ with you!"
_____________________
Your scene or story will, of course, have at least two characters. Show us what has happened or is about to happen. Show us where these people are--at home, in a bar, on a boat, camping? This might be a good opportunity to work in a little action. Is anyone about to throw something? Are doors slammed? Is this serious? Or is this something that happens frequently with these characters? _____________________
In 400 words or less write a scene that either springs from or culminates in one of the lines below. What in the world is going on? Who has done what to whom? Show us. You may also invent your own similar 'ultimatum' line, if you like.
"I'm never coming back!"
"That's my final word!"
"Get out and take your _________ with you!"
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In your critique consider whether the writer has caught our attention immediately and whether the reaction which results in one of the characters issuing an ultimatum seems justified. Does the ultimatum show us something about one of the characters that we might not have known otherwise, e.g., the meek little wife finally telling the bullying husband where to go or the put-upon worker telling off his/her boss? How does the author use action and scene to highlight strong emotions?
These exercises were written by IWW members and administrators to provide structured practice opportunities for its members. You are welcome to use them for practice as well. Please mention that you found them at the Internet Writing Workshop.
This Day In Writing History On January 22nd, 1953, The Crucible, the celebrated play by legendary playwright Arthur Miller, premiered on Broadway at the Martin Beck Theatre, now known as the Al Hirschfeld Theatre. Although the play is set in the 17th century during the time of the witch hunts in Salem, Massachusetts, it's actually a scathing allegorical satire of the modern anticommunist witch hunts being conducted by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) under the direction of Joseph McCarthy, the notorious senator from Wisconsin who would later be censured for his outrageous and illegal conduct.
The Crucible opens with Reverend Samuel Parris, the unpopular minister of Salem's church, (he is disliked because of his greedy and domineering nature) praying over his daughter Betty, who had fainted after being caught in the forest allegedly practicing witchcraft, along with Parris' niece, 17-year-old Abigail Williams, and some other girls. John Proctor, an honorable married farmer, enters the room and is left alone with Abigail, who tries unsuccessfully to seduce him. He had an affair with Abigail when she worked as his maid, but he regretted it and broke it off.
Reverend John Hale, a respected minister and self-proclaimed expert on the occult, is summoned to look into the incident of alleged witchcraft. Abigail accuses her uncle's slave, Tituba, of being a witch. Afraid of being hanged and threatened with a beating, Tituba accuses two other women of being witches. Betty awakens, and she and Abigail accuse a list of people of practicing witchcraft.
In the second act, John Proctor's wife, Elizabeth, tells him that he must expose Abigail as a liar. Proctor tells her that he can't prove that Abigail is lying because they were alone together when she admitted it. The fact that they were alone together again upsets Elizabeth. Proctor sees her reaction as an accusation that he has resumed his affair with Abigail and they have an argument.
Later, the Proctors' new maid, Mary, arrives and tells them that she will be absent while she performs her duties as a newly appointed court official. Thirty-nine people have now been arrested and charged with witchcraft. John Proctor is angry that the court is condemning people to death without any solid evidence that they're guilty of the crime. Elizabeth makes a prophetic prediction that Abigail will falsely accuse her of witchcraft so she can marry John.
When Elizabeth is later arrested and charged with witchcraft, John tells Mary that she must testify against Abigail, because she can prove that Abigail is a liar. Mary is afraid of testifying for fear that Abigail and her friends will accuse her of being a witch. Proctor meets Abigail in the woods. She tries to seduce him again, but he pushes her away and demands that she take back her accusation against his wife. She refuses.
In the third act, during the trial, which is presided over by a sadistic, coldhearted, and ignorant judge, Mary is brought in to testify against Abigail, who, along with her friends, puts on an act, pretending to be in the throes of a spell. Finally, Proctor can stand no more. He admits his affair with Abigail and accuses her of being a whore. Elizabeth denies that her husband had an affair in a misguided attempt to save his good name. Abigail and her friends continue their act, pretending to see a bird that Mary sent to attack them. Mary, fearful of being accused of witchcraft, then accuses John Proctor of the crime. He's arrested, and Reverend Hale quits the court in protest.
The fourth act begins with Proctor in jail and Reverend Parris revealing to the judge and the deputy governor that his niece Abigail and her friend Mercy are not only liars, but thieves as well. The authorities are unsympathetic. They send Elizabeth to get John to confess to witchcraft to save his life. Elizabeth forgives him for the affair and he agrees to confess, but when he learns that his confession will be nailed to the church for all to see, thus ruining the names of many innocent people, he tears up the document and refuses to confess. The play ends with Proctor being taken to the gallows to hang.
Ironically, a few years after The Crucible debuted on Broadway. Arthur Miller found himself a victim of the witch hunts he had satirized in his play. In 1956, Miller applied to have his passport renewed, and the HUAC took advantage of it to subpoena him and make him testify about his leftist political activities. Miller told the committee he would testify to his own activities if they didn't ask him to denounce other people. The chairman agreed.
Miller appeared before the HUAC and kept his part of the deal, providing them with a detailed account of his own activities. The committee then reneged on the chairman's promise and demanded that he give them the names of friends and colleagues who participated in similar activities. He refused to comply. As a result, in May of 1957, a judge found Arthur Miller guilty of contempt of Congress. He was fined $500, sentenced to 30 days in jail, blacklisted, and denied a renewal of his passport.
Fortunately, Miller's conviction was overturned on appeal. The appeals court ruled that Miller had been deliberately misled by the HUAC chairman.
Quote Of The Day "A play is made by sensing how the forces in life simulate ignorance - you set free the concealed irony, the deadly joke." - Arthur Miller
Vanguard Video Today's video features a conversation with Arthur Miller and actor Daniel Day-Lewis on the 1996 feature film adaptation of The Crucible. Enjoy!
This Day In Writing History On January 21st, 1985, the famous writer Don DeLillo won the American Book Award for his 1984 novel, White Noise. Although DeLillo had been publishing novels since 1971, they mostly received little attention due to their avant-garde nature. White Noise, however, proved to be DeLillo's breakthrough novel; it established him as a major talent and made him famous.
White Noise is narrated by its main character, Jack Gladney, a professor of Hitler Studies - a field he originated. He is considered a master of his field, though he speaks no German. His fellow professor and star of the department, Murray J. Siskind, wants to start a field of his own - Elvis Studies. Jack lives with his fourth wife, Babette, and their children from previous marriages. 14-year-old Heinrich is a moody and introspective teen whose hairline is already receding. He plays chess by mail with an imprisoned mass murderer.
Eleven-year-old Denise is a "hard-nosed kid," and she leads "a more or less daily protest against parental habits she considers wasteful or dangerous." Younger daughter Steffie is a sensitive child who ''becomes upset when something shameful or humiliating seems about to happen to someone on the [TV] screen," so she leaves the room and stands outside while Denise tells her what's going on. Three-year-old Wilder rarely speaks, but his mere presence is a comfort to his parents.
The first part of the novel, Waves and Radiation, establishes these characters as it paints an absurdist portrait of modern (1980s) family life and satirizes the world of academia. Most of the plot takes place in the second and third parts of the novel. In the second part, The Airborne Toxic Event, a toxic chemical is spilled from a railroad car and released into the air over Jack Gladney's hometown, resulting in an evacuation. He discovers that SIMUVAC, an organization that recruits schoolchildren as volunteer victims in simulated evacuations is using the real-life airborne toxic event to rehearse its simulated evacuations.
In the third part of the book, Dylarama, Jack and Babette both confront their severe thantophobia - fear of death. Babette copes with her phobia in an unusual way. Jack discovers that she has become addicted to Dylar, an experimental drug used to treat thantophobia. (Acutally, Denise is the first to discover her mother's habit.) In order to get her fix, Babette has been sleeping with the shadowy manager of the Dylar research project, whom she refers to as "Mr. Gray." Babette doesn't see this as adultery. She explains to Jack that "it was a capitalist transaction" in exchange for drugs.
White Noise is a brilliant work of avant-garde postmodernist fiction that satirizes modern family dynamics, novelty academia, crass commercialism, media saturation, conspiracy theories, and the virtues of violence, all of which are part of the omnipresent soundtrack of American life - the white noise of the title.
The original title of the novel was Panasonic, which comes from the Greek word pan, which means all, and the Latin word sonus, which means sound. Unfortunately, Panasonic is also a registered trademark of the Matsushita electronics corporation, and they were opposed to DeLillo's use of the word as the title of his novel. So, his publisher made him change it.
In 2006, a feature film adaptation of White Noise reached the preproduction stage, but then the plans fell through and the novel was never filmed. Whether it will be filmed in the future is unknown.
Don DeLillo has written over a dozen novels. He still writes at the age of 73. His latest novel, Point Omega, is scheduled for release on February 2nd, 2010. On February 11th, he will give a first public reading of his new novel at Book Court in Brooklyn, New York, at 7PM.
Quote Of The Day "There's a curious knot that binds novelists and terrorists. Years ago I used to think it was possible for a novelist to alter the inner life of the culture. Now bomb-makers and gunmen have taken that territory. They make raids on human consciousness. What writers used to do before we were all incorporated." - Don DeLillo
Vanguard Video Today's video features a BBC radio interview with Don DeLillo, conducted by John Humphrys. Enjoy!
This Day In Writing History On January 20th, 1961, the legendary American poet Robert Frost read a poem at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy. Frost had written a poem called Dedication especially for this event. He typed up a clean copy on his typewriter, but the ink on the ribbon was fading.
With the glare of sunlight on the January snow reflected in his eyes, the 87-year-old Frost had trouble reading his faded text and started to stumble over the words. He gave up and recited another poem, one he remembered by heart. The poem was called The Gift Outright:
The land was ours before we were the land's. She was our land more than a hundred years Before we were her people. She was ours In Massachusetts, in Virginia. But we were England's, still colonials, Possessing what we still were unpossessed by, Possessed by what we now no more possessed. Something we were withholding made us weak. Until we found out that it was ourselves We were withholding from our land of living, And forthwith found salvation in surrender. Such as we were we gave ourselves outright (The deed of gift was many deeds of war) To the land vaguely realizing westward, But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced, Such as she was, such as she would become.
Frost recited the poem perfectly in a commanding voice. The JFK Library later received Frost's original handwritten manuscript of Dedication, the poem he had planned to read at the inauguration.
Robert Frost died on January 29th, 1963 - nearly two years to the day that he performed at the Kennedy inauguration - from complications following prostate surgery.
Quote Of The Day "A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness." - Robert Frost
Vanguard Video Today's video features footage of John F. Kennedy's Presidential inauguration day ceremonies. Enjoy!
This Day In Writing History On January 19th, 1809, the legendary American writer Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts. His parents, Henry Leonard Poe and Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins Poe, were both actors; at the time of his birth, they were in a production of Shakespeare's King Lear, and Edgar may have been named after the character in the play.
When Edgar was a year old, his father abandoned the family. A year later, his mother died of tuberculosis. He was adopted by Scottish merchant John Allan, who changed his name to Edgar Allan Poe and had him baptized in the Episcopal Church. As a parent, John Allan proved to be a man of extremes; he was both an incredibly doting father and a ferociously strict and aggressive disciplinarian.
In 1815, the Allans sailed to England. Six-year-old Edgar Allan Poe briefly attended a grammar school in his adoptive father's hometown of Irvine, Scotland. By 1816, he rejoined his family in London. He attended a boarding school in Chelsea until 1817, when he enrolled at the Manor House School in Stoke Newington, which was run by Reverend John Bransby.
By 1820, Edgar Allan Poe and his family had moved back to the United States, settling in Richmond, Virginia. In 1824, Poe, then fifteen years old, served as a lieutenant in the Richmond youth honor guard during the celebrated visit of the Marquis de Lafayette. Two years later, Poe enrolled at the University of Virginia, where he majored in languages. The university had been founded just a year earlier by Thomas Jefferson; the experimental college had strict rules against such things as tobacco, alcohol, and gambling, yet it also employed an honor system of student self-government.
Poe found this sysem to be chaotic and dysfunctional, adding to the stress he was already under. His engagement to his childhood sweetheart Sarah Elmira Royster had been broken off, and he had become estranged from his father after his gambling debts started cutting into his college finances. A year later, still struggling to pay for his education and unhappy with the honor system, he left university. After he learned that Sarah had married another man, Poe believed there was nothing left for him in Richmond. So, in 1827, he moved to Boston, where he worked as a clerk and a newspaper writer. He began writing poetry and fiction under the pseudonym Henri Le Rennet.
In May of 1827, unable to support himself, Poe enlisted as a private in the U.S. Army, using the alias Edgar A. Perry. He claimed he was 22 years old, though he was really 18. He was stationed at Fort Independence in Boston Harbor and earned $5 a month. That same year, his first book was published. It was a poetry collection titled Tamerlane and Other Poems. The byline read "by a Bostonian." Only 50 copies of the book were printed, and it went practically unnoticed. Poe's regiment was posted to Fort Moultrie in Charleston, South Carolina.
At Fort Moultrie, Poe won a promotion and his monthly pay was doubled. After serving for two years and promoted again to Sergeant Major for Artillery, he decided that he wanted to end his five-year enlistment early and enter the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He revealed his real name and age to his commanding officer, Lieutenant Howard, but Howard would only discharge him if he reconciled with his adoptive father, John Allan. Poe wrote to him repeatedly, but received no reply. When he visited him in February of 1829, Poe found that his father hadn't even bothered to tell him that his mother had died.
Despite this, Poe and his father did reconcile, and John Allan supported his decision to leave the Army. Before entering West Point, Poe moved to Baltimore to stay with his widowed aunt Maria, her daughter Virginia, his brother Henry, and his grandmother, Elizabeth Cairnes Poe. His second poetry collection, Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems was published. In October of 1830, Poe's father remarried. Poe disapproved of both the marriage and the illegitimate children sired as the result of John Allan's philandering. This led to bitter quarrels between the two men, and Poe's father disowned him.
Poe left West Point by deliberately getting himself court martialed. In February of 1831, Poe moved to New York City and released his third poetry collection, Poems. The book was financed in part by Poe's fellow West Point cadets, who loved the satirical poems he would write that made fun of their commanding officers. In Poe's third book, his long poems Tamerlane and Al Aaraaf were included again. The book also featured early versions of To Helen, Israfel, and The City In The Sea.
A month after he arrived in New York, Poe returned to Baltimore to stay with his aunt, cousin, and brother. His older brother Henry died five months later from complications due to alcoholism. Afterward, Poe decided to try and make a living as a writer. Unfortunately, copyright laws were practically nonexistent in the early 19th century, and pirated editions of literary works were common. Undaunted, Poe put his poetry on the back burner and turned to prose. He sold a few short stories and began work on his only play, Politian.
In 1833, Poe's short story MS. Found In A Bottle won him a prize from the Baltimore Saturday Visiter. It also brought him to the attention of John P. Kennedy, a novelist and prominent Baltimorian, who helped him sell some more stories and land a job as assistant editor of the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond in August of 1835. He was fired a few weeks later for being drunk on the job. Poe returned to Baltimore, where he secretly married his 13-year-old cousin, Virginia. After he promised to behave, Poe was reinstated at the Messenger. He and Virginia and her mother moved to Richmond. Poe and Virginia later had a second, public wedding ceremony.
By 1838, Poe's only complete novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, was published. It was widely reviewed and praised. In the summer of 1839, Poe became the assistant editor of Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, where he published numerous short stories, reviews, and articles, building his reputation as both a writer and a critic. That same year, his classic short story collection, Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, was published in two volumes. It received mixed reviews and he made little money from it.
In 1840, Poe became assistant editor of Graham's Magazine. He made plans to start his own literary magazine, The Stylus, but his plans fell through. Two years later, his wife Virginia was stricken with tuberculosis. Poe began drinking heavily again as her illness worsened. He left Graham's and returned to New York, where he worked for the Evening Mirror, which would publish his celebrated poem, The Raven, in January of 1845. Though he was paid only $9 for it, the poem became a huge hit and made him a household name. Children would follow him as he walked down the street, and he would caw "Nevermore!" at them. They would scream and pretend to run away, then laugh and keep following him until he cawed "Nevermore!" at them again.
Poe later become editor and then owner of The Broadway Journal. Still drinking, Poe would alienate himself from his fellow writers when he publicly accused poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow of plagiarism. Longfellow never responded to the charge. After The Broadway Journal failed, Poe moved into a cottage in The Bronx, which is known today as Poe Cottage. Less than a year after he moved in, his wife Virginia died of tuberculosis. Poe was devastated and plunged into a quagmire of alcoholism and mental illness.
Poe dated poet Sarah Helen Whitman, who lived in Providence, Rhode Island. Their engagement was called off as a result of Poe's drinking, his mental instability, and the interference of Sarah's mother, who did all she could to sabotage the relationship. Poe returned to Richmond and resumed his relationship with his childhood sweetheart, Sarah Elmira Royster. He later returned to Baltimore.
On October 3rd, 1849, Edgar Allan Poe was found on the streets of Baltimore by a man named Joseph W. Walker. Poe was severely ill, incoherent, and wearing someone else's clothes. Walker took him to Washington College Hospital. Poe died four days later at the age of 40. His death certificate and medical records were lost, so the actual cause of his death remains a mystery. Newspapers reported that he died of "congestion of the brain" or "cerebral inflammation," which were common euphemisms used when a person died of illicit causes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, or venereal disease.
Rufus Griswold, an enemy of Poe's, somehow became his literary executor. He wrote a biography of Poe called Memoir of the Author, where he described Poe as a depraved madman addled by drink and drugs. Most of Griswold's claims were lies or half-truths. For example, although Poe was an opium user and wrote about it, he was a casual user and never became addicted to the drug. Griswold's biography was denounced by those who knew Edgar Allan Poe. The letters that Griswold presented as proof of his claims were later revealed to be forgeries.
Edgar Allan Poe's writings, especially his classic horror stories such as The Tell-Tale Heart, The Black Cat, The Cask Of Amontillado, and The Fall of the House of Usher continue to inspire new generations of writers.
Quote Of The Day "Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality." - Edgar Allan Poe
Vanguard Video Today's video features a reading of Edgar Allan Poe's classic poem, The Raven - performed by Vincent Price! Enjoy!
Internet Writing Workshop members continue to find publishing success in all venues.
Congratulations to this week's crew!
Jody
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Paul Stenquist
I have five more posts up at the New York Times "Wheels" blog. See first five urls.
Catherine Robinson
My new column in the Tampa Tribune starts today and will run every other Saturday.
Lesli Richardson
My latest (writing as) Tymber Dalton book, Safe Harbor, is now available at Siren-BookStrand. My next one with them, Steam (sequel to Boiling Point and a prequel to Trouble Comes in Threes) will be released on 1/29/10, and they have contracted Fierce Radiance, which should be released some time before May.
Also writing as Tymber Dalton, I have Cardinal's Rule coming soon from Captiva Press (Placida Publishing, LLC).
Randy Radic
My review of Timothy Louis Baker's new book is up at Alvah's Books. Thanks to Timothy for the book and Rebeca for the opportunity.
My blog/article about the Haiti earthquake is up on Basil and Spice.
My article about the Doomsday Clock is up at Basil and Spice.
My story "Alphabet Soup" has been accepted for publication by Short Fiction, a UK publication.
Barry Basden
"The Home Front," from the WWII era, is up at Blink Ink.
This is another new site for short work, a bit off center but oddly elegant. Short pieces seem to be riding a wave. Please don't read them while driving.
Prepared by: Florence Cardinal Reposted on: January 17, 2010
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Exercise: Use no more than 400 words to write a scene. Bring it "full circle" by tying the end to the beginning by use of the same symbol. Try to show a change in the character's perception of the symbol at the end of the story. _____________________
Bringing a story "full circle" is one technique used to write effective endings. For instance, if you start the story with softly falling snowflakes, then end it by mentioning the snow again. This device repeats a symbol or image to establish a sense of closure. The change in the character can be subtle or startling.
This is from the first paragraph of a descriptive essay written by Florence Cardinal, a former admin:
"With the first killing frost, the pelicans left, heading for their winter home in Texas."
The last paragraph of the same essay brings it full circle to an effective close:
"As I trudge up the path, I look up and see frost fairies dancing in the moonlight."
What went on in between brought a change in the character's outlook on the frost.
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Exercise: Use no more than 400 words to write a scene. Bring it "full circle" by tying the end to the beginning by use of the same symbol. Try to show a change in the character's perception of the symbol at the end of the story. _____________________
To critique, focus on whether or not the scene uses the beginning symbolism at the end, and whether the character changes from beginning to end. Remember, this symbol can be anything--a place, an object, even an animal or a person--and the change can be subtle or far-reaching.
These exercises were written by IWW members and administrators to provide structured practice opportunities for its members. You are welcome to use them for practice as well. Please mention that you found them at the Internet Writing Workshop.
This Day In Writing History On January 15th, 1891, the famous Russian poet Osip Mandelstam was born. He was born in Warsaw, Poland, to a wealthy Jewish family. His father, a leather merchant, was able to get a special dispensation exempting the family from having to relocate with other Jews to the "pale of settlement" region of Russia. So, not long after Osip was born, the Mandelstams moved to Saint Petersburg.
In 1908, at the age of seventeen, Osip Mandelstam entered the Sorbonne (the University of Paris) to study literature and philosophy, but left the following year and went to the University of Heidelberg in Germany. In 1911, Mandelstam decided to finish his education at the University of Saint Petersburg. To do this, he converted to Methodism, but never practiced the religion.
That same year, Mandelstam and several other young poets formed the Poets' Guild. The group, led by Nikolai Gumilyov and Sergei Gorodetsky, would later be known as the Acmeists. Mandelstam wrote their manifesto, The Morning Of Acmeism, in 1913, but it wouldn't be published until 1919. However, his first poetry collection, The Stone, would be published in 1913, and re-released in an expanded edition in 1916.
By 1922, Osip Mandelstam had married his girlfriend Nadezhda Yakovlevna and moved to Moscow. At that time, his second poetry book, Tristia, was published. For the next several years, Mandelstam nearly abandoned poetry, as he mostly wrote essays, literary critcism, short prose, and memoirs. He took a job as a translator and translated 19 books in a period of six months. His marriage began to sour and he had affairs, but he and his wife reconciled.
Mandelstam started writing poetry again. In November of 1933, he wrote his most famous poem, Stalin Epigram. The poem was a harsh criticism of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, whom he referred to as the "Kremlin highlander." The poem was likely inspired by the effects of the Holodomor (the Great Famine) which Mandelstam had witnessed while vacationing in Crimea. The Holodomor was caused by Stalin's collectivization of farms and his drive to exterminate the kulaks - the affluent peasant farmers.
Six months after Stalin Epigram appeared in print, Osip Mandelstam was arrested. Amazingly, he was neither condemned to death nor sent to the Gulag. Instead, he was exiled, along with his wife, to Cherdyn in Northern Ural. After he attempted suicide, his sentence was softened; he was banned from the largest cities, but allowed to choose his new place of residence. He and his wife chose to move to Voronezh.
Unfortunately, this proved to be a temporary reprieve. Although Mandelstam wrote poems glorifying Stalin, (as was required of him) in 1937, as the Great Purge was beginning, the pro-Soviet literary establishment assailed him in print, accusing him of harboring anti-Soviet sentiments. A year later, he and his wife received a government voucher for a vacation not far from Moscow. When they arrived, Mandelstam was arrested again and charged with counter-revolutionary activities.
Four months after his arrest, in August of 1938, Osip Mandelstam was sentenced to five years in the Gulag. He was taken to a transit camp in Vladivostok at the Second River. A few months later, on December 27th, 1938, he died at the camp. The official cause of death was an unspecified illness. In 1956, during the Khrushchev thaw, Mandelstam was officially "rehabilitated" - cleared of the charges brought against him during his 1938 arrest. In 1987, he would be cleared of the charges stemming from his first arrest in 1934.
Quote Of The Day "Only in Russia is poetry respected - it gets people killed. Is there anywhere else where poetry is so common a motive for murder?" - Osip Mandelstam
Vanguard Video Today's video features a reading of Osip Mandelstam's poem, The Clock-Cricket Is Singing. Enjoy!
This Day In Writing History On January 14th, 1886, the famous British-Irish children's book writer Hugh Lofting was born. He was born in Maidenhead, Berkshire, England. As a boy, he developed a love of animals and kept "a combination zoo and natural history museum" in his mother's linen closet. He received his education in Jesuit-run private schools. He later went to the United States, where he studied civil engineering at MIT - the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
After graduating from MIT, Lofting returned to England and became a civil engineer, traveling throughout the British Empire as his job required him to do. When World War 1 broke out, he enlisted in the Irish Guards, a Foot Guards regiment in the British Army. In his service as a soldier, he became horrified by not only the human carnage he witnessed, but also by the sufferings of horses and other animals used at the front.
During the war, Lofting wrote letters to his children frequently. Wishing to spare them the horrors of war, (and to escape from them himself) he would tell his children stories about John Dolittle, a country doctor who learned how to talk to animals. Lofting illustrated the stories in his letters.
When he returned home from the war, Lofting reworked his stories into a book he illustrated himself, the first in a hugely popular series that made him world famous. The Story of Doctor Dolittle was published in 1920. In it, we meet Dr. John Dolittle, a young country doctor who lives with his sister in the small English village of Puddleby-on-the-Marsh. Over the years, his love of animals grows, and he acquires a menagerie of exotic pets. Unfortunately, his animals scare off his human patients.
After he learns how to speak to animals from his parrot Polynesia, Dolittle gives up his human medical practice and becomes a veterinarian, only to see his new practice start failing after he adopts a crocodile. However, in the animal kingdom, he becomes world famous. Just as he's about to go bankrupt, the British government conscripts Doctor Dolittle and orders him to go to Africa and cure a monkey epidemic.
So, Dolittle borrows a ship and supplies and sets sail for Africa with a crew of his animal friends. The group is shipwrecked upon arrival. As they journey toward the monkey kingdom, the group is arrested by the king of Jolligingki, who, after being victimized by European exploitation, wants no white men in his country. Dolittle and the animals escape through a ruse and reach the monkey kingdom, which is in dire straits, as the epidemic is raging. Dolittle vaccinates the well monkeys and nurses the sick ones back to health, containing the disease. In appreciation, the monkeys give him a pushmi-pullyu - a rare and valuable two-headed animal that's a cross between a gazelle and a unicorn.
Unfortunately, Dolittle and his friends are arrested again in Jolligingki upon their return. This time, they escape with the help of the king's son, Prince Bumpo, after Dolittle bleaches Bumpo's face white so he can be like the European fairy tale princes and hopefully marry his white Sleeping Beauty. Bumpo gives Dolittle and his animal crew a new ship. After having a couple run-ins with pirates, Dolittle wins a pirate ship filled with treasures. When he finally returns home to England, he exhibits the pushmi-pullyu in a traveling circus and makes enough money to retire.
Hugh Lofting would write a total of twelve Doctor Dolittle books, the last three of which would be published posthumously. They would be adapted numerous times for the radio, screen, and television. Many years after their first publication, the Doctor Dolittle books would court controversy due to certain language and illustrations now considered racially offensive and politically incorrect. Beginning in the 1960s, certain words or sentences would be removed in some reprint editions of the books in both the UK and the U.S. By 1981, the original, unexpurgated versions would go out of print in both countries.
In 1986, to mark the 100th anniversary of Lofting's birth, the Doctor Dolittle books were republished in a special edition - a bowdlerized version with passages of text rewritten or removed and some illustrations either altered or removed and replaced. Ironically, Lofting himself was no racist; black African characters were portrayed sympathetically. In the first Doctor Dolittle book, the king of Jolligingki describes his country's exploitation by the white man:
"Many years ago a white man came to these shores; and I was very kind to him. But after he had dug holes in the ground to get the gold, and killed all the elephants to get their ivory tusks, he went away secretly in his ship - without so much as saying `Thank you.'"
In addition to his Doctor Dolittle books, Hugh Lofting wrote other children's books, including a book of children's poems called Porridge Poetry (1924). His only book geared toward adult readers was Victory For the Slain (1942), an antiwar epic poem. He died in 1947 at the age of 61.
Quote Of The Day "For years it was a constant source of shock to me to find my writings amongst 'Juveniles.' It does not bother me any more now, but I still feel there should be a category of 'Seniles' to offset the epithet." - Hugh Lofting
Vanguard Video Today's video features the original theatrical trailer for the 1967 feature film adaptation of Doctor Dolittle, starring Rex Harrison in the title role. Enjoy!
This Day In Writing History On January 13th, 1926, the famous British children's book writer Michael Bond was born. He was born in Newbury, Berkshire, England. As a boy, Bond was educated at Presentation College, a Catholic boys' school. During World War 2, he served in both the RAF (Royal Air Force) and the Middlesex Regiment of the British Army.
Michael Bond began his writing career in 1945 at the age of nineteen. He sold his first short story to the London Opinion magazine. He continued to write stories and plays and later took a job as a cameraman for the BBC, where he would film the popular Blue Peter children's TV series. In 1958, his first book was published. It was a children's book, and the first in a beloved series of classic children's books that would bring its author international fame.
A Bear Called Paddington told the story of a bear from "Darkest Peru" who is sent to England by his Aunt Lucy. He arrives in London's Paddington Station wearing his bush hat, coat, and boots, carrying a battered suitcase and his favorite food - marmalade sandwiches. He is found by the Brown family - Mr. and Mrs. Brown and their two children, Jonathan and Judy. Pinned to the bear's coat is a note that reads "PLEASE LOOK AFTER THIS BEAR. THANK YOU." The Browns decide to adopt the charming, well-mannered bear, naming him Paddington. They bring him home, where he gets into all sorts of misadventures and annoys the Browns' foul-tempered next door neighbor, Mr. Curry.
Two years before his book was published, on Christmas Eve, 1956, Michael Bond noticed a lone teddy bear on the shelf of a London store. He bought it as a Christmas present for his wife. That gave him the idea for the story of Paddington, and he based the details of the bear's arrival on old newsreels he'd seen during the war that depicted child evacuees leaving London with labels around their necks and carrying small suitcases.
The Paddington books would become hugely popular in both the UK and the U.S., and be published in many other countries. Bond would write over a dozen Paddington books throughout the years. In the early 1970s, he began a new series of books featuring another popular character, Olga da Polga. The first book in the series, The Tales of Olga da Polga, was published in 1971.
Olga da Polga is a guinea pig. She's also a teller of tall tales in the tradition of Baron Munchhausen. Something fairly ordinary will happen to her, and she'll give a wildly exaggerated account of it to her friends. Bond would write numerous books featuring Olga da Polga's alleged adventures.
In 1975, while he was working on his Olga da Polga series, Michael Bond served as the producer of a BBC TV series based on his Paddington books. The animated series had a unique look; while the other characters and the backgrounds were two-dimensional animations, Paddington was rendered in 3D stop-motion animation. Whenever Paddington touched two-dimensional objects, they would become 3D like him. The series was a huge hit in the UK and just as successful when it premiered on American television. In 1989, a new Paddington animated series premiered on American TV, produced by the Hanna-Barbera studios. It starred Charlie Adler as the voice of Paddington and Tim Curry as Mr. Curry.
Warner Brothers has announced that a Paddington feature film is now in the works.
In the 1980s, Bond began yet another series of novels, this time geared toward adult readers. It was a series of humorous mystery novels featuring Monsieur Pamplemousse, a French food critic and amateur detective. Assisting him in his investigations of crimes is his faithful bloodhound, Pommes Frites. The first book in the series, Monsieur Pamplemousse, was published in 1983.
In addition his popular novel series, Michael Bond has written numerous other books, including non-fiction books such as a travel guide and his autobiography, Bears and Forebears: A Life So Far (1996). In 1997, he was awarded the OBE (Order of the British Empire) for services to children's literature. Ten years later, in 2007, the University of Reading awarded him an Honorary Doctor of Letters. Now, at the age of 84, he still lives in London, with his wife, not far from Paddington Station. If you visit the station, you'll see a bronze statue of Paddington Bear, sculpted by artist Marcus Cornish.
Quote Of The Day "It's nice having a bear about the house." - Michael Bond
Vanguard Video Today's video features a clip from the classic 1970s BBC TV series adaptation of Paddington, produced by his author, Michael Bond. This was one of my favorite shows as a kid. Enjoy!
This Day In Writing History On January 12th, 1876, the legendary American writer Jack London was born. He was presumably born John Chaney (his record of birth was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake) in San Francisco. His mother, Flora Wellman, a music teacher and spiritualist, had become pregnant by her boyfriend, astrologer William Chaney. Chaney demanded that she have an abortion; when she refused, he refused to accept responsibility for the child.
In desperation, Flora Wellman attempted suicide by shooting herself. She wasn't seriously injured, but had become mentally ill, so her friend, ex-slave Virginia Prentiss, took care of the baby while she recovered. Virginia would remain a strong maternal figure throughout Jack London's life. After his mother recovered, she married John London, a disabled Civil War veteran. The baby, named John but called Jack, came to live with them.
The Londons moved around the San Francisco Bay Area before settling in Oakland. Jack London began his schooling. In 1886, at the age of 10, he discovered the Oakland Public Library and became a voracious reader, his love of literature nurtured by the librarian, Ina Coolbrith, who later became the state's first poet laureate.
In 1897, when he was 21 years old and a student at the University of California, Berkeley, London read an old newspaper account of his mother's attempted suicide. Learning the name of his biological father, William Chaney, London wrote to him. Chaney wrote back, telling him that he wasn't his father, and that his mother was a whore who had slandered him, ruining his good name. London was devastated.
Before he had attended Berkeley, Jack London started working at the age of 13. He toiled from 12 to 18 hours a day for slave wages. Seeking a way out of this grueling labor, London borrowed money from his black foster mother and bought a boat from an oyster pirate named French Frank. He became an oyster pirate himself for a few months, but then his boat became damaged beyond repair. So, he gave up piracy and switched sides, joining the California Fish Patrol.
From there, London signed up to work on a sealing schooner bound for Japan. When he returned to the U.S., he found his country in the grip of the Panic of '93, a precursor to the Great Depression. Labor unrest had swept through his hometown of Oakland. After suffering through more grueling, low-paying jobs, London joined the famous Kelly's Army protest march of unemployed workers and became a tramp. These experiences would result in London becoming a lifelong socialist.
After living as a hobo for a while, Jack London decided that he would have to use his brains to escape poverty. So, he completed high school and went on to the University of Berkeley. Financial circumstances forced him to leave university in 1897, so he never graduated. He set sail for Alaska with his brother-in-law, James Shepard, hoping to strike it rich in the Yukon Gold Rush. Instead, like most would-be prospectors, he fell ill from exposure to the harsh climate. He suffered from malnutrition and a bad case of scurvy. He soon found himself living in a shelter and medical facility for the poor. London would later base one of his greatest short stories, To Build A Fire (1908) on these struggles.
When he returned to California in 1898, Jack London determined to become a writer. His first published short story, To The Man On Trial, appeared in The Overland Monthly that year. The magazine paid him $5 for the story, and was slow in sending him a check. Just as he was about to give up on being a writer, The Black Cat accepted another of his stories, A Thousand Deaths, (1899) and paid him $40 for it.
London had begun his literary career at the right time; new printing technology had just been introduced that enabled high quality magazines to be produced at low cost. This resulted in a boom of literary magazines that catered to a wide variety of genres and tastes and a strong market for short fiction and serialized novels. London's writings continued to sell and sell well. By 1900, he was making $2,500 a year - the equivalent of $51,000 in today's money.
That year, London married his first wife, Bess Maddern. She had been an old and close friend of his. They both knew (and publicly acknowledged) that they didn't really love each other, but they did like each other enough that they could make a successful marriage. Bess bore Jack two daughters, Joan and Bessie, who was called Becky. After the birth of their second daughter, their marriage soured. Bess wanted no more children, and she believed that sex without the express purpose of procreation was immoral, so she wouldn't let her husband touch her. Frustration led London to frequent brothels. Finally, Bess agreed to a divorce, and they parted amicably.
A year later, Jack London married his second wife, Charmian Kittredge. She had been his publisher's secretary. In Charmian, Jack found a soul mate. Despite her prim and dignified exterior, Charmian was a libertine who enjoyed sex. She also possessed an intellect equal to her husband's. She had been raised by an aunt who was a libertine, a feminist, and a disciple of the famous suffragist, Victoria Woodhull. Jack and Charmian tried to have children together, but their first child died at birth and a second pregnancy resulted in a miscarriage.
In 1903, Jack London's most famous novel, The Call Of The Wild, was published, first in a serialization by the Saturday Evening Post. They asked London to set his price, and he received a payment of $750. Later, Macmillan bought the book rights. London chose to take a lump sum payment of $2000 instead of royalties, not realizing that his novel would become a classic, selling millions of copies. He had no regrets, because Macmillan's extensive promotional campaign made his name as a writer and helped him sell more novels.
The Call Of The Wild told the story of Buck, a domesticated dog in the rough and frigid Yukon during the Gold Rush who finds himself forced into service as a sled dog. Buck's experiences cause him to revert to his primordial instincts. Although considered a children's novel because its main character is a dog, The Call Of The Wild is actually a dark tale with many scenes of cruelty and violence.
Jack London would publish more classic novels, including The Sea-Wolf (1904) and White Fang (1906). In The Sea-Wolf, pampered, rich intellectual Humphrey Van Weyden is on board a San Francisco ferry which collides with another ship in the fog and sinks. Adrift in the sea, Van Weyden is rescued by Wolf Larsen, the captain of a sealing schooner. The misanthropic Larsen proves to be no hero; he rules his crew with an iron fist and promptly shanghais Van Weyden, forcing him to work as cabin boy. The formerly pampered rich man must toughen up fast in order to perform his labors and protect himself from the brutal crew. When the crew attempts a mutiny, Wolf Larsen fights them off, then tortures them in retribution.
White Fang tells the story of the title character, a wolf-dog hybrid who is adopted by an Indian tribe in the Yukon. The pack of dogs that live with the tribe see White Fang as a wolf and attack him. The Indians save him, but the dogs still persecute him relentlessly. The morose and solitary White Fang grows up to be a savage and deadly fighter. The Indians sell him for a bottle of whiskey to Beauty Smith, a white prospector who runs a dog-fighting operation. The savage White Fang goes undefeated until a ferocious bulldog nearly tears him apart. Left to die, he is rescued by Weedon Scott, a wealthy young prospector. After nursing White Fang back to health, Scott manages to tame the formerly vicious wolf-dog.
In 1905, Jack London bought a 1,000 acre ranch in Glen Ellen, California, on the eastern slope of Sonoma Mountain. He loved the ranch, and over the next decade, he invested his writing income (after 1910, he mostly wrote potboilers strictly for money) into making a success of it, but it turned out to be a huge failure. By 1916, he began suffering from both kidney failure and dysentery. He continued to work, both in writing and on the ranch, even as his health deteriorated. On November 22nd, 1916, Jack London died of uremia at the age of 40. Although uremia was the official cause of death, London was taking large doses of morphine to relieve the extreme pain he was in, and most believe that he really died from an accidental (or intentional) overdose of morphine.
Throughout his writing career, Jack London wrote numerous novels and short stories. He also published several works of non-fiction, including two memoirs: The Road (1907), about his life as a tramp, and John Barleycorn (1913), about his battles with alcoholism. As a lifelong socialist, he wrote political books, including The People Of The Abyss, (1903) - an expose of slum life in London - and Revolution, And Other Essays (1910). He is, without a doubt, one of the greatest American writers of all time.
Quote Of The Day “I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.” - Jack London
Vanguard Video Today's video features a rare 1969 short film adaptation of Jack London's classic short story, To Build A Fire, narrated by Orson Welles. Enjoy!
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