This Week's Practice Exercise

Animal World



Prepared by: Alice Folkart
Posted on: Sunday, May 30, 2010

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In 400 words or less write a scene from an animal's point of view, have the animal want something from either a human or another animal.
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Is a dog waiting and waiting for his walk? Is a cat plotting to catch and eat the canary? Is a deer being hunted? That does the fish, swimming back and forth in his little aquarium, think of what he sees? The hamster--where does he think is he going in his running wheel? Perhaps the thoughts of a pet in a carrier on the way to the vet or going on a trip . Is this the voice of an old animal, tired, ready to die? What about the pampered 'accessory' dog who goes everywhere in his mistress's purse? Tame or wild, your choice.
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In 400 words or less write a scene from an animal's point of view, have the animal want something from either a human or another animal.
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In your critique consider whether the writer has given us a believable animal 'voice.' Is the fictional animal wiser and wilier than humans, or simpler? Does the animal's view of other animals or humans give us insights that we might not otherwise have had? If the piece is successful, tell us why. If it could be better, tell us how.


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.

Notes For May 28th, 2010

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This Day In Writing History

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On May 28th, 1940, the famous writer Maeve Binchy was born in Dalkey, Ireland - a quiet coastal town just ten miles south of Dublin. Her father William was a prominent barrister in Dublin. He and his wife both encouraged their children to be avid readers and to share stories at the dinner table, and nobody loved telling stories more than Maeve. She once quipped, "I had a very happy childhood, which is unsuitable if you're going to be an Irish writer."

Maeve Binchy went to University College in Dublin, majoring in history and French, and after she graduated in 1960, she became a schoolteacher, teaching history, French, and Latin at a Catholic grade school in Dublin. She spent her summer vacations indulging in her passion for travel. Binchy became such a popular teacher that her students' parents chipped in to send her on a trip to Israel.

While in Israel, Binchy wrote long, detailed letters home describing her adventures there, the country, the daily life, and the people that she met. Her father was so impressed with her writing that he typed up the letters and submitted them to the Irish Independent newspaper. When she returned to Dublin, to her surprise, she found that she'd become a published writer.

Binchy also found that she was interested in journalism, and landed a job as women's editor for The Irish Times. In the early 1970s, Binchy switched to feature reporting and moved to London to be with Gordon Snell, a BBC broadcaster turned children's book writer and mystery novelist, whom she had met and fallen in love with during a previous visit. They married in 1977 and remain happily married to this day. In 1980, the couple moved to Binchy's hometown of Dalkey and bought a cottage, where they still live.

After returning to Dalkey, Binchy began her writing career, publishing two collections of her newspaper work and a collection of short stories. In between reporting assignments, she wrote her first novel, Light A Penny Candle, which was published in 1982. Set during the outbreak of World War 2, the novel tells the story of Elizabeth White, a young British girl who is sent to stay with a large Irish family, the O'Connors, whose daughter Aisling is Elizabeth's age. The girls form an inseparable bond of friendship that remains long after the war ends, as they write to each other frequently.

As a writer, Binchy has been described as a modern day Jane Austen. Her novels mostly deal with the trials and tribulations of Irish women in the 20th century. They are also steeped deep in Catholicism, though as the influence of the scandal-plagued Church has waned in Ireland, so too has it waned in Binchy's writing. Eleven of her novels reached the New York Times bestseller list, and in reader polls taken in Ireland and England, Binchy has been rated higher than James Joyce, prompting her to joke that it was because most of her books were sold in airport bookshops and "if you're going on a plane journey, you're more likely to take one of my stories than Finnegan's Wake."

In 1995, Binchy's popular 1990 novel Circle Of Friends was made into a movie starring Minnie Driver and Chris O'Donnell. Unfortunately for fans of the book, in his adaptation, screenwriter Andrew Davies elected to give the film a completely different ending.

Binchy announced her retirement from writing in 2000, but it proved to be short-lived. She has written several novels since then. In addition to her novels and short story collections, Binchy is also a playwright, and her plays have been staged at the Peacock Theatre in Dublin. For over 30 years, she has written a hugely popular monthly column called Maeve's Week for The Irish Times which is part advice column, part gossip column, and part humor column.

Throughout her long career, which still continues, Maeve Binchy has proven herself to be one of Ireland's greatest writers.

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Quote Of The Day

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"I'm an escapist kind of writer." - Maeve Binchy

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features an interview with Maeve Binchy. She gives tips on how to write well. Enjoy!

Notes For May 27th, 2010

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This Day In Writing History

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On May 27th, 1894, the great writer and master of the hardboiled detective thriller Dashiell Hammett was born. Samuel Dashiell Hammett was born in St. Mary's County, Maryland, on a farm called Hopewell and Aim. Hammett's mother, Anne Bond Dashiell, was a descendant of one of Maryland's oldest families. When he turned 13, Hammett left school to work.

In 1915, at the age of 21, Hammett landed a job at the famous Pinkerton Detective Agency, where he worked for six years as an operative. This experience would plant the seeds of his writing career. Disillusioned by Pinkerton's role in strike-breaking and other anti-union activities, Hammett quit the agency in disgust. During World War 1, Hammett served in the Army in the Motor Ambulance Corps, but illness cut his tour of duty short; first he'd contracted Spanish flu, then tuberculosis. He spent most of the war in a hospital in Tacoma, Washington.

While in the hospital, Hammett met and later married a nurse, Josephine Dolan. She bore him two daughters, Mary Jane in 1921 and Josephine in 1926. Shortly after his second child's birth, due to Hammett's tuberculosis, Health Services nurses told his wife that she and the children should not live with him. So, they took an apartment in San Francisco. Hammett visited them on the weekends. Unfortunately, the separation took too great a toll on the marriage, and it fell apart.

Hammett started drinking and tried his hand at several jobs before beginning a writing career. His early work was comprised of a series of short stories featuring a detective with no name, referred to as The Continental Op. The short stories led to two novels, Red Harvest (February 1929) and The Dain Curse (July 1929). In Red Harvest, the Continental Op arrives in a coal mining town called Personville to meet with a new client, but finds that the man has been murdered. The client's father, a local industrialist, tells the Op that warring criminal gangs are fighting for control of Personville.

The Op solves his client's murder. With the Chief of Police totally corrupt, the Op cleans up the town by extracting and distributing the information he needs to set up a final showdown between the criminal gangs, manipulating them into wiping each other out. It has been suggested that Red Harvest was the inspiration for the great Japanese director Akira Kurosawa's 1961 masterwork, Yojimbo. Kurosawa often expressed his admiration for hardboiled American detective novels, citing them as an inspiration for several of his movies.

In 1929, Hammett became romantically involved with mystery writer Nell Martin, dedicating his novel The Glass Key to her. By 1931, their relationship ended and Hammett embarked on a lifelong affair with legendary playwright Lillian Hellman. They would never marry.

Hammett's writing matured after the publication and success of his Continental Op novels, his prose becoming more realistic and hardboiled. In 1930, Hammett published his classic novel, The Maltese Falcon, featuring one of the great detective characters of all time, Sam Spade. A bitter, sardonic character, Spade lets the police and other criminals think that he's a criminal while he works to nail the bad guys. The novel opens with Spade and his partner Miles Archer being hired by a woman, Miss Wonderly, to tail Floyd Thursby, a man who allegedly ran off with her underage sister. When Archer and Thursby suddenly end up murdered, Sam becomes the prime suspect.

Later, a man named Joel Cairo offers Sam $5000 to retrieve a valuable figurine of a black bird known as the Maltese Falcon. Suddenly, Cairo pulls a gun on Sam and decides to search Spade's office for the bird. The case leads Sam on a collision course with Cairo, rotund crime boss Kasper Gutman, and Gutman's bodyguard, Wilmer Cook. The Maltese Falcon was filmed three times, in 1931, 1936, (as Satan Met A Lady) and 1941.

While the 1931 version wonderfully captures the grittier elements of the novel, the other two were sanitized as per Production Code requirements. (In the novel, Sam Spade is having an affair with both his partner's wife and his female client, Gutman and Cook are obviously homosexual lovers, and the effeminate Cairo is also gay.) However, the 1941 version, featuring Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade, is still the best of the three and rightfully considered an all-time movie classic.

Hammett's 1934 novel, The Thin Man, also turned out to be a classic. Set in New York City during Prohibition, ex-private detective Nick Charles and his clever, witty wife Nora - a wealthy socialite - spend most of their time cheerfully drunk in speakeasies and hotel rooms. Though he retired from the detective business, Nick finds himself investigating yet another crime, with Nora's help. As they try to solve a murder, Nick and Nora engage in snappy banter and imbibe vast quantities of alcohol. The case leads them into the rough world of gangsters, hoodlums, and the grotesque Wynant family.

The Thin Man would inspire a series of movies featuring the characters of Nick and Nora Charles, as well as a Thin Man TV series. It has been suggested that Dashiell Hammett modeled Nick and Nora after the personalities (and drinking habits) of himself and his longtime lover, Lillian Hellman. The Thin Man would prove to be Hammett's last novel.

Hammett devoted the rest of his life to political activism. In the 1930s, Hammett, a ferocious and outspoken anti-fascist, joined the Communist Party and the League of American Writers, a group of left-leaning activist writers. In 1942, Hammett, a disabled veteran of the first world war and ex-tuberculosis patient, pulled strings to get himself readmitted to the service. He spent most of World War 2 as a Sergeant stationed in the Aleutian Islands, where he edited an Army newspaper. He returned from the war with more lung trouble, this time emphysema.

Returning to political activism, Hammett was elected President of the Civil Rights Congress of New York in June of 1946 and devoted most of his time to working for the CRC. In 1951, he would be brought to testify before a U.S. District Court judge about his CRC activities. He refused to testify to anything, pleading the Fifth Amendment to every question. Congress began a full investigation of Hammett, and two years later in 1953, he was brought to testify before the HUAC - the House Un-American activities Committee. Hammett openly testified to his own activities, but refused to cooperate with the committee and inform on others. As a result, he was blacklisted.

Both trials took a toll on Hammett's already declining health. He died of lung cancer a few years later in 1961, at the age of 66. As he was a veteran of two world wars, Hammett was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Dashiell Hammett was one of America's greatest writers, a former detective turned author of hardboiled detective stories and novels whose iconic characters - and the classic films they inspired - will live on forever.

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Quote Of The Day

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"I've been as bad an influence on American literature as anyone I can think of." - Dashiell Hammett

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features the original theatrical trailer for the acclaimed 1941 feature film adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's classic novel, The Maltese Falcon. Enjoy!

Notes For May 26th, 2010

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This Day In Writing History

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On May 26th, 1897, Bram Stoker's classic novel Dracula was published in London. Stoker's tale of handsome, seductive Romanian nobleman and bloodthirsty vampire Count Dracula's move from Transylvania to London in search of new victims to feed on and add to his army of the undead wasn't a huge commercial success, but it was very popular with Victorian readers and critics alike.

Readers described the book as "the most blood-curdling novel of the paralyzed century." In a review in the Daily Mail published on June 1st, 1897, Dracula was proclaimed a classic of Gothic horror, the critic stating that "In seeking a parallel to this weird, powerful, and horrorful story, our mind reverts to such tales as The Mysteries of Udolpho, Frankenstein, The Fall of the House of Usher ... but Dracula is even more appalling in its gloomy fascination than any one of these."

Bram Stoker's epic epistolary horror novel is told in the form of letters and journal entries, as different characters, both male and female, narrate the story. The novel opens with entries from Jonathan Harker's journal, as the young solicitor travels to the border of Romania's Transylvania region in the Carpathian Mountains, where he has an appointment at the ominous Castle Dracula to help the Count complete his purchase of a new estate in London. Harker soon finds himself a prisoner in the castle and uncovers the Count's monstrous secret.

Dracula is a novel very much the product of its time, that being the late 19th century - the waning years of the Victorian era, as a new century approached. The book speaks both metaphorically and directly of the conflicts between science and religion and traditional versus modern life. Some have suggested that in Dracula, vampirism is a metaphor for uncontrolled sexual desire, the ungodly lust for blood equated with lust for the flesh.

Sexuality in the Victorian era was a strange and sharp paradox; rigid morality and fear of the body and one's natural biological impulses ruled on the outside, with unwed motherhood a scandal worthy of suicide. Yet, behind closed doors, Victorians rarely practiced what they preached. There was a thriving, seamy sexual underground in England at the time that included both female and male brothels catering to any and all desires. Some of the best literary erotica ever written was penned during the Victorian era and published in underground literary magazines and anthologies, all of which were distributed on the sly - usually under cover of darkness.

Though the suave and seductive Count Dracula's name was taken from that of the infamous Romanian prince Vlad Tepes, aka Vlad Dracul - dracul meaning devil in the Romanian language - the novel was partly inspired by Sheridan Le Fanu's classic 1871 novella Carmilla, which told the story of a lesbian vampire preying on lonely young women. Stoker added new aspects to the vampire mythos; in Dracula, for the first time, a vampire cast no reflection in a mirror, could be driven away with garlic, and could be destroyed by driving a wooden stake through its heart - through Dracula himself meets a different, nastier fate.

Though it wasn't the first classic novel to feature a vampire, over a hundred years since its initial publication, Dracula has inspired countless works of vampire fiction. Bela Lugosi's legendary performance as the Count in the first sound film adaptation of Dracula in 1931 set the stage for the vampire on film. But it was Stoker's novel that established the vampire as one of the most popular and intriguing characters in Western culture.

But Dracula is more than just a horror novel. It's also a classic work of 19th century English literature.

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Quote Of The Day

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"There are mysteries which men can only guess at, which age by age they may solve only in part." - Bram Stoker

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features the classic 1922 silent feature film Nosferatu - the first film adaptation of Bram Stoker's classic novel, Dracula. Although it was an unauthorized adaptation, it remains an all-time classic film, directed by the great F.W. Murnau and starring Max Schreck as the Count! This film is complete and uncut - enjoy!

Notes For May 25th, 2010

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This Day In Writing History

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On May 25th, 1803, the great poet, essayist, philosopher, and orator Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Emerson's father, Rev. William Emerson, was a Unitarian minister who died two weeks before his son's eighth birthday, leaving the boy to be raised by his mother and other female family members, all of whom were both intellectual and devoutly religious. Emerson was especially close to his aunt Mary Moody Emerson, and they would write to each other frequently until her death in 1863.

At the age of 9, Emerson attended Boston Latin School, then at 14, he went to Harvard College, where he was appointed freshman messenger for the president. During his junior year, he began compiling a list of books he'd read and started keeping a journal in a series of notebooks, which he called the Wide World. In his senior year, he served as Class Poet and recited an original poem on Harvard's Class Day, though by all accounts, he was an average student.

After graduating Harvard, Emerson helped his brother run a school for young women originally run out of their mother's house. Emerson took over the school when his brother went off study divinity. Emerson hated running the school, as he was very awkward around women. But it gave him the experience that enabled him to work as a schoolmaster for a few years before going to divinity school himself.

Emerson was most likely bisexual. During his Harvard years, he wrote in his journal of being "strangely attracted" to a male classmate by the ironic name of Martin Gay, about whom he wrote sexually charged poems. Emerson also wrote of his other male infatuations, including the writer Nathaniel Hawthorne. However, in 1829, not long after being ordained as a junior pastor at Boston's Second Church, Emerson met a young girl named Ellen Louisa Tucker and fell love with her. He married her when she turned 18 - even though she was stricken with tuberculosis.

When Ellen died two years later, Emerson was devastated and visited her grave frequently. His wife's death forced him to come to terms with his simmering discontent with religion, writing in his journal that "I have sometimes thought that, in order to be a good minister, it was necessary to leave the ministry. The profession is antiquated. In an altered age, we worship in the dead forms of our forefathers." He resigned as pastor.

Emerson then toured Europe, writing of his travels in English Traits (1856). During his trip, he met William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Stuart Mill, and Thomas Carlyle. Carlyle was a strong influence, and Emerson would serve as his unofficial literary agent in the U.S., maintaining a lifelong friendship with him. In 1835, he bought a house in Concord, Massachusetts, which is now a historical landmark. He married his second wife Lydia Jackson in September, 1835, and she bore him four children: Waldo, Edith, Ellen, and Edward. Ellen was named after Emerson's first wife at Lydia's suggestion.

The following year, Emerson and some like-minded intellectuals formed the Transcendental Club, which held its first meeting on September 19, 1836. Shortly thereafter, he published his first essay, Nature. In this essay, Emerson puts forth the foundation of transcendentalism, defining nature - the very universe - as an all-encompassing divine entity that is part of us, rather than a kingdom ruled by a separate divine entity. In pursuing his new philosophy, Emerson delved into the Bhagavad Gita and the Vedic Texts - all of which are the ancient, sacred writings of the Hindu religion.

A year later, Emerson delivered his famous Phi Beta Kappa Address at Cambridge, where he issued a declaration of literary independence from Europe, urging his fellow American writers to create a literary style all their own, free from European influence. Around this time, Emerson struck up a friendship with writer Henry David Thoreau and asked him if he kept a journal. Thoreau's fascination with Emerson's journal practice strongly influenced his own writing. He became Emerson's protege.

On July 15, 1838, Emerson was invited to Harvard Divinity School to deliver the graduation address at Divinity Hall. In what came to be known as his famous Divinity School Address, Emerson disputed biblical miracles and proclaimed Jesus to be neither God himself nor the son of God, but a great man and spiritual teacher whom organized Christianity had turned into a "demigod, as the Orientals or the Greeks would describe Osiris or Apollo." Emerson's address caused considerable outrage. He was denounced as an atheist and a corrupter of young people's minds.

Nevertheless, Emerson remained a popular lecturer in New England and throughout the country. He also toured England, Ireland, and Scotland. By the 1850s, he was giving up to 80 lectures a year. His earnings from the lectures enabled him to buy eleven acres of land near Walden Pond.

In 1845, Emerson published his essay The Over-soul, which is clearly influenced by the Vedic Texts and has a distinct tone of non-dualism:

We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one. We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are shining parts, is the soul.

In 1847, Emerson published his first book of poetry, simply titled Poems. Among these is Threnody, a heart wrenching, dazzlingly lyrical ode to grief written after Emerson lost his firstborn son Waldo to scarlet fever in 1842. His second book of poetry, May-Day and Other Poems, was published in 1867.

In 1860, Emerson, an abolitionist, voted for Abraham Lincoln for President, but was greatly disappointed by Lincoln's initial inclination to allow the Southern states to maintain the institution of slavery in order to preserve the Union. On January 31st, 1862, Emerson gave a public lecture in Washington DC, declaring "The South calls slavery an institution... I call it destitution... emancipation is the demand of civilization." The next day, his friend Charles Sumner took him to meet Lincoln. He came away with a more favorable opinion of the President.

The decade of the 1870s marked the beginning of the end of Emerson's career. His Concord home burned down in July of 1872, and though his friends collected over $15,000 in donations to help him and his family rebuild, it added to the stress caused by the fact that Emerson's memory was failing. In 1874, he edited and published a poetry anthology called Parnassus. By the end of the decade, his memory had failed considerably, and in 1879, at the age of 76, he finally retired from lecturing. When asked by friends how he felt, Emerson would reply in classic form "Quite well. I have lost all my mental faculties, but am perfectly well."

On April 19th, 1882, despite having a cold, Emerson went out for a walk and got caught in the rain. His cold turned into pneumonia, and he died eight days later at the age of 79. Ralph Waldo Emerson was one of the all-time great American intellectuals - a poet, essayist, philosopher, and orator years, if not decades, ahead of his time. He will always have a place in the annals of literary history.

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Quote Of The Day

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"Talent alone cannot make a writer. There must be a man behind the book; a personality which, by birth and quality, is pledged to the doctrines there set forth, and which exists to see and state things so, and not otherwise." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Vanguard Video

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Today's Video features a "virtual movie" of Ralph Waldo Emerson reading his classic poem Hamatreya, which was loosely based on the Hindu text Vishnu Parana. Enjoy!

This Week's Practice Exercise

It's a deal.

Prepared by: Alice Folkart
Posted on: Sunday, May 23, 2010

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In 400 words or less give us a scene where two characters make a deal. Show us what the stakes are for each, what he or she stands to gain or lose.

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Parents make deals with kids. Kids make deals with each other. Husbands and wives, friends, make deals. Bosses make deals with employees. In other cultures fathers strike bargains over the worth of their daughters as wives--how many goats is she worth? The colorful ways to drive bargains and make deals are endless. Have fun.

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In 400 words or less give us a scene where two characters make a deal. Show us what the stakes are for each, what he or she stands to gain or lose.

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In your critique consider the force of the personalities. Does the author show us the characters' thoughts, aims, drive to win? What emotions are involved? What part, if any, do time and place play? Do we side with one character more than the other? Why? Would you read on to see what happens next?


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.

Notes For May 21st, 2010

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This Day In Writing History

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On May 21st, 1688, the legendary British poet Alexander Pope was born in London, England. His father was a linen merchant. As a young boy, Pope's education was complicated by the anti-Catholic laws enacted to establish the Church of England as the British empire's official clerical body. Unable to attend public school by law, Pope was taught to read and write by his aunt. He began his formal education at Twyford School in Hampshire, which, although a Church of England public school, looked the other way. Pope would later attend Catholic schools which, though technically illegal, were tolerated in some areas.

When he was twelve years old, Pope contracted Pott's disease, a rare form of tuberculosis that attacks the bones and deforms them. The disease left him a hunchback and stunted his growth. He would grow no taller than 4'6". Already a social pariah because he was Catholic, Pope's deformities alienated him further. He would never marry, but he had many female friends, and wrote them witty letters. One woman, his lifelong friend Martha Blount, was allegedly his lover.

Pope's health problems, which also included respiratory trouble, high fevers, inflammation of the eyes, and stomach pain, didn't affect his mind. He gained a reputation for his intellect, his rapacious wit, and his satirical verse. When his first poetry collection, Pastorals (1709), appeared in the sixth part of publisher Jacob Tonson's anthology Poetical Miscellanies, it made him an overnight sensation.

Pope struck up friendships with fellow writers Jonathan Swift, John Gay, Thomas Parnell, and John Arbuthnot. Together, they formed the Scriblerus Club, which was dedicated to satirizing ignorance and pedantry via a fictional scholar named Martinus Scriblerus. Pope continued on his path of literary success with his poems The Rape of the Lock (1712) and Windsor Forest (1713).

The Rape of the Lock was one of Pope's most popular poems. The mock-heroic epic poem satirized the high society quarrel between Arabella Fermor (named Belinda in the poem) and Lord Petre, (the Baron) who had cut off a lock of her hair without her permission. Pope mocks the conflict in an epic style; after Belinda's hair is stolen, she tries to get it back but it flies through the air and turns into a star.

Pope became friends with poet and playwright Joseph Addison and contributed to Addison's classic play, Cato. He also wrote essays for magazines of the day such as The Guardian and The Spectator. His classic epic poem An Essay on Criticism was first published anonymously in 1711. A satirical attempt to declare and refine his views as a poet and critic, the poem was said to be Pope's response to an ongoing debate on whether poetry should be a natural product of the poet's mind and heart or written according to predetermined, traditional rules such as meter.

In his inimitable style, Pope deliberately leaves the poem unclear and full of contradictions. His own position was that while rules were necessary, so was the passion and imagination that gave poetry its mysterious, sometimes baffling qualities. An Essay on Criticism featured the famous line, "For fools rush in where angels fear to tread."

Alexander Pope's most ambitious projects were his English translations of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. Beginning in 1717, his translation of the Iliad appeared in one volume a year over a six year period. For his translation of the Odyssey, Pope, confronted with the arduousness of the task and his increasingly fragile health, employed his friends William Broome and Elijah Fenton to work on the translation with him. The entire translation was published under Pope's name. When word got out that Pope hadn't translated the entire work himself, his reputation took a hit, but the translation of the Odyssey still sold well. It first appeared in 1726.

Before he began work on the Odyssey, a volume of Shakespeare's plays transcribed and edited by Pope was published. The volume had been commissioned by Pope's publisher. It was hugely controversial - more like a revision of Shakespeare's plays than a transcription. Pope cut over 1,500 lines and relegated them to footnotes, believing them to be of such poor quality that he doubted Shakespeare had ever written them. The lines, he thought, were the result of actors' interpolations. Poet Lewis Theobald wrote a scathing pamphlet denouncing the volume called Shakespeare Restored.

Among Pope's last great works were a series of poems called Imitations of Horace. Appearing between 1733-38, they were satires of life under King George II and the corruption of Robert Walpole's ministry, which Pope believed was tainting Britain. By the time he completed the series in 1738, his health began to deteriorate. He planned to write an epic blank verse poem called Brutus, but he abandoned it and only a few lines have survived. Instead, he devoted his remaining years to revising his final masterwork, The Dunciad. The four-book satirical epic poem told the story of how the goddess Dulness and her servants plunge Britain into a quagmire of imbecility, tastelessness, and ultimately, decay. Originally written in three books, Pope revised it and added a fourth book, which was published in 1742.

Alexander Pope died two years later, on May 30th, 1744. He was 56 years old.

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Quote Of The Day

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"True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, as those who move easiest have learned to dance." - Alexander Pope

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a reading from Alexander Pope's classic satirical epic poem, The Rape of the Lock. Enjoy!

Notes For May 20th, 2010

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This Day In Writing History

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On May 20th, 1937, the legendary British writer George Orwell (the pseudonym of Eric Blair) was wounded in action while fighting the fascists in the Spanish Civil War. He was shot in the throat by a sniper.

Orwell fought alongside the POUM, (Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista - the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification) which was allied with Britain's Labour Party, of which he was a member. The POUM was one of several leftist factions which had formed a loose coalition to fight General Franco's fascists. Another member of this coalition was the Spanish Communist Party, which was controlled by the Soviet Union.

At the Soviets' insistence, the Spanish Communist Party denounced the POUM as a Trotskyist organization and falsely claimed that they were in cahoots with the fascists. Near the end of the war, the POUM was outlawed, and the Spanish Communist Party began attacking its members. Tragically, this infighting would break apart the coalition and give the fascists the opportunity to win the war. While George Orwell recovered from his injuries in a POUM hospital, he had a lot of time to think, and he came to hate Soviet communism.

Orwell would later become famous for his novels Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), both of which were brilliant allegorical satires of Stalinism. Animal Farm was a modern cautionary fable, while Nineteen Eighty-Four was a work of dystopic science fiction. In the years since their publication, the right in the United States and Europe embraced these novels as the bibles of anti-communism. George Orwell became their hero, and this led to a popular misconception that he had been a staunch conservative - perhaps even a fascist - although he was really a socialist.

The lesson Orwell teaches us in Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four is that even an ideal as noble as socialism can become corrupted and twisted into something far worse than the ills it seeks to cure. And yet, he remained a lifelong socialist and always hoped for a better world free of poverty, inequality, and social injustice.

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Quote Of The Day

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"In our age, there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia." - George Orwell

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features the acclaimed 1954 British animated feature film adaptation of George Orwell's classic novel, Animal Farm - complete and uncut! Enjoy!

Notes For May 19th, 2010

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Writing Contest

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The Southern Illinois Writers Guild is holding its annual writing contest. The categories include fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, and prizes will be awarded in each category. First prize is $100, second prize is $50, and third prize is $25. The entry fee is $5, and the deadline for entries is August 1st, 2010.

For complete information, click here. If you have any questions, feel free to contact Roger Poppen at drrock2k@yahoo.com.

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This Day In Writing History

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On May 19th, 1930, the famous African-American playwright Lorraine Hansberry was born in Chicago, Illinois. Her father, Carl Hansberry, was a prominent real estate broker. In 1938, when Lorraine was eight years old, her father moved the family to an all-white neighborhood where a majority of homeowners had formed a covenant that banned blacks from buying homes in the neighborhood. So, he had a white friend buy the house for him.

After the Hansberrys moved into their new home, they were attacked by an angry mob. A brick was thrown through Lorraine's bedroom window, and she just barely avoided being struck by it. Her father later sued the white homeowners for discrimination, and in the case of Hansberry v. Lee, the Supreme Court issued a landmark decision banning such neighborhood homeowners' associations from banning people from buying or renting homes because of their race.

Although Lorraine's father had prevailed in court, the family was still subjected to harassment from their racist white neighbors. She later quipped that she had lived in a typical "warm and cuddly white neighborhood." Ironically, after her death, her family home would be designated by the city of Chicago as a historical landmark. The climate of racism she grew up with would inspire her to write her first and most famous play, A Raisin in the Sun (1959). The title comes from the poem Harlem by legendary African-American poet Langston Hughes.

A Raisin in the Sun tells the story of the Youngers, a poor black family living in a small apartment in Chicago's South Side in the 1940s. The family patriarch has died, and his survivors will soon receive an insurance check for ten thousand dollars. His widow, Mama, wants to fulfill the dream she shared with her husband and buy a house. Her grown son, Walter, wants to use the money to invest in a liquor store with his friends - an investment he believes will provide the whole family with long term financial security.

Beneatha, Walter's sister, wants to use the money to pay for her medical school tuition. Walter's wife, Ruth, agrees with Mama, believing that a new house would provide more living space for their son Travis. As the play progresses, the Youngers fight over their conflicting dreams. When Ruth becomes pregnant, she considers having an abortion, as she and Walter really can't afford another child. Walter doesn't object, so Mama puts a down payment on a nice house in a white neighborhood. Beneatha is not happy about her family mixing with whites. She's not the only one.

When the Youngers' soon-to-be new neighbors find out that the black family is moving in, they send Mr. Lindner from the Clybourne Park Improvement Association to bribe them to stay out of the neighborhood. They refuse the deal, even after Walter loses the rest of the insurance money when his friend Willy runs off with it instead of investing it in the liquor store. In the play's third act, Beneatha's Nigerian boyfriend wants her to move to Africa with him after she gets her medical degree, and the rest of the family prepares to move out of their apartment and into their new house, fulfilling their dream and exposing them to a potentially dangerous racist environment.

When A Raisin in the Sun opened, it became the first play written by an African-American to be produced for the Broadway stage. The original cast featured Sidney Poitier as Walter, Ruby Dee as Ruth, and Claudia McNeil as Mama. It would be adapted as an acclaimed feature film in 1961, with the entire original Broadway cast reprising their roles - including a young Louis Gossett, Jr. as George Murchison.

The play would also be adapted as a Broadway musical called Raisin in 1973. The musical would be nominated for nine Tony awards and run for 847 performances. Original cast members included Joe Morton as Walter, Debbie Allen as Beneatha, Ernestine Jackson as Ruth, Ralph Carter as Travis, and Virginia Capers as Mama.

Lorraine Hansberry wrote several other plays, including her second most famous play, The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window. After 110 performances, the play closed on the day she died, January 12th, 1965. She was 34 years old and had lost a long battle with cancer. Despite her illness, she continued to work as an activist for civil rights, women's rights, and other causes. Her other writings were turned into an acclaimed play called To Be Young, Gifted, and Black: Lorraine Hansberry in Her Own Words. It would be the longest running off Broadway play of the 1968-69 season.

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Quote Of The Day

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"The thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all, is inevitably that which must also make you lonely." - Lorraine Hansberry

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features the original theatrical trailer for the acclaimed 1961 feature film version of Lorraine Hansberry's classic play, A Raisin in the Sun. Enjoy!

Notes For May 18th, 2010

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This Day In Writing History

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On May 18th, 1593, a warrant was issued by the Queen's Privy Council for the arrest of the famous English playwright and poet, Christopher Marlowe. The warrant accused Marlowe of spreading "blasphemous and damnable opinions."

Five days earlier, Marlowe's friend, roommate, and fellow playwright Thomas Kyd had been arrested and charged with the same crime. During an interrogation in which Kyd was horribly tortured, he claimed that offending documents found in his possession really belonged to Marlowe.

Marlowe was subsequently arrested. He was released on bail while the prosecutors prepared their case. The day before Marlowe was scheduled to appear in court, he was killed in a drunken brawl when a dagger was driven through his eye. He was 29 years old. Although in life, he had been a controversial personality - he was known to be a hot-tempered alcoholic frequently in trouble with the law - he proved to be far more controversial in death.

The same Privy Council that had charged Marlowe with blasphemy had intervened on his behalf six years earlier to explain to Cambridge University why Marlowe frequently cut classes, pleading that he not be expelled. They claimed that Marlowe had cut classes to be of service to the Queen in "matters touching the benefit of his country."

That was actually true. Christopher Marlowe had been recruited as a secret agent while at university, and it now appears that he died not at a pub, but at a government safe house, while in the company of other spies and spy-runners. His housemates undoubtedly had motive to kill him, especially in a drunken rage, given Marlowe's volatile personality and libertine philosophy.

Conspiracy theories continue to follow the death of Christopher Marlowe. Some believe that Marlowe's death was faked to protect him from enemy agents. What became of him afterward? Well, some believe that while the rest of Britain thought that he was dead, Marlowe continued to write plays - and had an actor named William Shakespeare pretend to be the author. Another theory claims that William Shakespeare was Marlowe's pseudonym and that an actor with the same name took credit for Marlowe's work. These theories, while intriguing, have yet to be proven. Most regard them as nonsense.

One thing is definitely true; as a playwright, Christopher Marlowe's talent was on a par with Shakespeare. For centuries, scholars have agreed that Marlowe's plays, such as Tamburlaine, Edward II, The Jew of Malta, and Doctor Faustus were in the same league as Shakespeare's classic tragedies.

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Quote Of The Day

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"I count religion but a childish toy, and hold there is no sin but ignorance." - Christopher Marlowe

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a reading of Christopher Marlowe's classic poem, The Passionate Shepherd to His Love. Enjoy!

This Week's Practice Exercise

Wake up.
Prepared by: Charles Hightower
Posted on: May 16, 2010
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Exercise: In 400 words or less, your character awakes in an unexpected location and you must show how the character reacts.
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Your character comes to consciousness and is surprised by the surroundings. Show your readers what the character experiences, how he/she behaves.

The tale should begin the moment the character wakes up. Remember, this is not to be a story about a dream, but about a real event in your character's life.
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Exercise: In 400 words or less, your character awakes in an unexpected location and you must show how the character reacts.
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In your critiques, note how well the writer has constructed the setting and shown us authentic characters acting in believable ways. What do we learn of the characters from their reactions to the failure? Would you like to read more of the story? And, as usual, pay attention to all the technical concerns that go into good writing.


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.

Notes For May 14th, 2010

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This Day In Writing History

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On May 14th, 1962, A Clockwork Orange, the legendary novel by the famous British writer Anthony Burgess, was published in London, England. A Clockwork Orange (the title comes from the British slang expression, "queer as a clockwork orange.") is an antifascist parable set in a dystopic England of the future. The novel is narrated by its main character, Alex - a highly intelligent but psychopathic teenager who leads a violent street gang comprised of his friends Pete, Georgie, and Dim. Alex introduces everyone and sets the scene in this unforgettable opening paragraph:

There was me, that is Alex, and my three Droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, Dim being really Dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark chill winter bastard though dry. The Korova Milkbar was a milk-plus mesto, and you may, O my brothers, have forgotten what these mestos are like, things changing so skorry these days and everybody very quick to forget, newspapers not being read much, neither. Well, what they sold there was milk plus something else. They had no licence for selling liquor, but there was no law yet against prodding some of the new veshches which they used to put into the old moloko, so you could peet it with vellocet or synthmesc or drencrom or one or two other veshches which would give you a nice quiet horrorshow fifteen minutes admiring Bog and All His Holy Angels And Saints in your left shoe with lights bursting all over your mozg. Or you could peet milk with knives in it, as we used to say, this would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of dirty twenty-to-one, and that was what we were peeting this evening I'm starting off the story with.

The story begins with Alex and his gang at a milk bar, where they drink drugged milk to get themselves ready for committing random acts of violence. They gleefully beat an old, homeless drunkard. One night, while joyriding in a stolen car, the gang breaks into an isolated cottage, where they terrorize the couple that lives there, beating the husband and raping his wife. When he's not out with his gang, Alex passes the time in his dreary home, escaping his poor excuse for parents by blasting the works of his favorite composer, "Ludwig Van," (Beethoven) and masturbating to violent sexual fantasies.

When Georgie challenges Alex for leadership of the gang, he puts down the rebellion by beating Georgie in a fight and slashing open Dim's hand. Then he takes them out for drinks at the milk bar. Georgie and Dim have had enough, but Alex demands that the gang follow through with Georgie's plan for a "man-sized" job and rob a rich old woman who lives alone. The robbery is botched when the old woman calls the police - but not before she is assaulted and knocked unconscious. The gang then turns on Alex, attacking him and leaving him to take the fall when the police arrive. The old woman later dies of her injuries and Alex is accused of murder.

After spending a couple of years in prison, Alex becomes an involuntary participant in an experimental rehabilitation procedure called the Ludovico Technique, which, in two weeks, is supposed to remove all violent and criminal impulses from the human psyche. The prison chaplain is opposed to the Ludovico Technique, arguing that conscious, willing moral choice is a necessary component of humanity. Nevertheless, Alex undergoes the procedure.

For two weeks, Alex's eyes are wired open and he is forced to watch violent images on a screen while being given a drug that induces extreme nausea. It's a horrific form of aversion therapy. Unfortunately, the soundtrack to the violent film presentation includes the works of Beethoven, and Alex begs the doctors to turn off the sound, telling them that's a sin to take away his love of music, and Beethoven never did anything wrong. They refuse.

After the procedure is completed, Alex is brought before an audience of prison and government officials and declared successfully rehabilitated. To demonstrate this, they show how Alex is unable to react with violence even in self defense, and is crippled by nausea when he becomes sexually aroused. The outraged prison chaplain again protests the Ludovico Technique, accusing the state of taking away Alex's God-given ability to choose good over evil. "Padre," a government official replies, "There are subtleties. The point is that it works."

Alex is released from prison, but his life plunges into a downward spiral. He finds that the Ludovico Technique has rendered him physically unable to listen to his Beethoven and he cannot defend himself from attack. First, he is beaten by a former victim, then when the police arrive, they turn out to be Alex's former gang member Dim and former rival gang leader Billyboy. They beat him, too. Later, Alex is befriended by a political activist who turns out to be the man whose wife Alex had raped during the home invasion. When he finally recognizes Alex as the gang leader, he tortures him with the classical music he once loved.

After Alex attempts suicide, the government agrees to reverse the Ludovico Technique in order to quell all the bad publicity. They offer Alex a cushy job at a high salary, but he looks forward to returning to his life of ultra-violence. He forms a new gang, but after watching them beat a stranger, he finds that he has tired of violence. Alex contemplates giving up gang life, becoming a productive citizen, and doing what he secretly always wanted to do - start a family of his own. He wonders if his children would inherit the violent tendencies he once had.

In the U.S. edition of the novel, the last chapter was omitted by the publisher, who wanted the story to end on a dark note (with Alex looking forward to resuming his violent ways) because he believed that the original UK edition ending (with Alex realizing the errors of his ways) was unrealistic. When legendary British filmmaker Stanley Kubrick adapted the novel as an acclaimed feature film in 1971, he felt the same way, and based his screenplay on the U.S. edition of the novel. I myself prefer the U.S. edition because its ending really brings home the main theme of the novel - that fascism is an evil far worse than the societal ills it seeks to cure.

Today, both editions of A Clockwork Orange are available in the U.S., and it remains a classic work of literature, famous for its dazzling experimental narrative, wherein Alex speaks a lyrical dialect that combines English with modified Slavic and Russian slang and words specifically invented by the author.

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Quote Of The Day

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"The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and and try another. But above all, try something." - Anthony Burgess

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features the original theatrical trailer for the classic 1971 film adaptation of A Clockwork Orange, directed by the legendary Stanley Kubrick. Enjoy!

IWW Members' Publishing Successes

According to Johann von Goethe, "In the realm of ideas, everything depends on enthusiasm; in the real world, all rests on perseverance."

Internet Writing Workshop members understand these concepts well. Whether polishing a piece for the Practice or Poetry list or sending final chapters to Novels-L, enthusiasm underscores the perseverance behind each and every publishing success across all our lists.

Congratulations to the latest group of members who followed the Write—Critique—Learn yellow brick road to the publication land of awes.

Jody

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Vrinda Baliga

My flash fiction, "Sepia Tones," has appeared in the May issue of The Shine Journal.

My flash fiction, "Only a Girl," appeared in A Long Story Short.

My flash story, "Sound Bytes," has been selected for the annual print anthology of Temenos.

I would like to thank everyone on the Practice group who critiqued these pieces.

Florence Cardinal

My short story, "Carter's Trip Home," was the winning submission for Demand Studios' "National Tell a Story Day" on their Facebook Fan Page. This story was critiqued in the Prose workshop some time ago.

My article "Offbeat Solutions for Sleep Disorders" is up at Health Central.

My article on tonsils and sleep is up at Health Central.

Jeannette Cezanne

My new one-act play, "Cleaning The Corners," was accepted for the Spring Playwrights Festival in Provincetown. It will be performed in mid-June.

My play "The Pact" (an adaptation of the novel by Jodi Picoult) has been selected for publication by Playscripts. This means that I can do a little less (figurative!) sidewalk-pounding to get it produced.

Rebecca Coleman

My novel The Kingdom of Childhood has made it to the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest's Semifinals.

Publisher's Weekly reviewed all quarterfinalists' full manuscripts, and I'm pleased to announce they had an entirely positive review.

In addition, to those on Novels-L who have followed my writing from its beginnings, I've just received the biggest news of my writing career thus far; I now have an agent, and a very good one at that.

Mira Desai

The spring issue of 91st Meridian features my essay on translations, “Looking for a patli gali, an urban shortcut,” and "The Final Chapter," my translation of Pravinsinh Chavda’s Gujarati story “Antim Adhyay.”

91st Meridian is the journal of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa.

A huge heartfelt thanks to Alice Folkart for her help with the essay.

I'm also pleased to announce that I'm among the three winners of the Karadi Tales "Will you write with me?" contest.

This was fun, terribly competitive, and I'm thankful for everything that the Practice group drills in, week after week.

Sue Ellis

Poor Mojo's Almanac has reprinted a rant that first appeared at Six Sentences, which I edited a tiny bit. Chemical sensitivity is an aggravating condition, so it was very satisfying to vent on paper.

Alan Girling

A new poem of mine called "Purple and Teal" is up at Ink, Sweat and Tears. Check it out if those colours appeal to you.

Dawn Goldsmith

My article about award winning machine quilter Karen McTavish is published in the July issue of The Quilter Magazine. Karen called from California to say it is selling so fast the stores can't keep it stocked. That has more to do with her than me, but I like it. I like it!

Ann Hite

My story, "Bahama Lime," was accepted to the print issue of Skyline Magazine.

Sheila Hollinghead

An editor for a major publishing company has asked to see a nonfiction book I have written.

Thanks to those on Novels-L for all the help!

Mel Jacob

I have the following books reviews up at SFRevu and the Gumshoe Review:

At SFRevu:

Dragon Haven: Volume Two of the Rain Wilds Chronicles by Robin Hobb

Robin Hobb's sequel to Dragon Keeper, Dragon Haven, traces the continuing journey to locate the fabled Elderling city of Kelsingra. Challenges to the dragons, their keepers, and the humans accompanying them, escalate and threaten the survival of all.

Much Fall of Blood by Mercedes Lackey, Eric Flint, & Dave Freer

The action-filled Much Fall of Blood continues the series Heirs of Alexandria. In this alternative history/fantasy series, the Library of Alexandria survived and the Catholic Church uses magic albeit sparingly. Set in 16th century, the novel opens with the young Mongol prince Kildai knocked from his horse. Political machinations involve Europe, Byzantium, Hungary, Poland, and the Mongols.

At Gumshoe Review:

Death on the Aegean Queen by Maria Hudgins

Death on the Aegean Queen is the third of Maria Hudgin's Dotsy Lamb Travel Mysteries. This time Dotsy, accompanied by her friends Lottie and Ollie Osgood, takes an Aegean cruise. Murder and stolen ancient artifacts demand answers and Dotsy steps into to solve the crimes.

Gunshot Road: An Emily Tempest Investigation by Adrian Hyland

Adrian Hylan's debut novel Gunshot Road features a mixed heritage Aborigine woman, Emily Tempest. Set in the Outback of central Australia, the novel features crusty, eccentric miners, rugged loners, losers, and various Aborigine clans. The murder of an eccentric scientist/prospector demands solution.

Soap Bubbles by Denise Dietz

Mystery writer and romance novelist Denise Dietz's new novel Soap Bubbles will confuse some of her readers and fascinate others. Three ugly ducklings — Delly, Anissa, and Maryl — grow from childhood ducklings to adult swans. Sex and teen-age angst permeates most of their growing years. Ambition and murder clouds their adult years.

Wanna Get Lucky? by Deborah Coonts

This debut novel by Deborah Coonts features Lucky O'Toole head of Customer Relations at the Babylon megacasino in Las Vegas. The novel begins with a young woman falling to her death from a helicopter into the middle of the Babylon's pirate show. Lucky knows the victim and suspects foul play. Murder, blackmail, and sex via a porn film convention provide plenty of excitement.

Mark Kline

My translation of a Naja Marie Aidt short story, "A car trip," is up at Words without Borders. It comes from Baboon, her collection that won the Nordic Council Literature Prize in 2008, Scandinavia's #1 literary prize. It's a great site for anyone interested in contemporary fiction from writers working in languages other than English.

Frances Mackay

I'm proud to say that my poem, "A Posy of Violets," has been included in In Focus, the May newsletter of the California Writers Club/West Valley, edited by our own Kathy Highcove.

Jassy Mackenzie

I'm thrilled and delighted that Random Violence has received a glowing write-up in this week's New York Times Sunday Book Review. My heroine Jade de Jong is described as a "remarkable new sleuth, whose future exploits should be well worth watching." Let's hope they are!

Tom Mahony

My flash, "The Compliment" is up at Foliate Oak.

For those with short attention spans, my 140-character story, "An Agonizing Choice" is up at PicFic.

Catherine Robinson

"Getting the lump out of my head," is up in my column with The Tampa Tribune.

I've also been hired to write a bi-weekly alt mom column for Creative Loafing, so you locals can check it out!

Wayne Scheer

My flash, "An Epiphany," has been accepted at LitSnacks. I began this one on the Practice List.

Another flash, "A New Song," also written for Practice, is up at Eclectic Flash. Eclectic Flash is published both online and in print. To read my story online, please go to their website and scroll down to page 11.

The Shine Journal has accepted two stories of mine for their July issue -- "The Winter Coat" and "And the Band Played On."

Everyday Fiction has accepted, "Renewal," for a future date.

Cynic Magazine has accepted, "No Secrets," for their July 1 issue.

"Being Watched," my attempt at a comic crime flash, is up at Death Head Grin.

All of these stories were critiqued at either Practice or Fiction or both, so sincere thanks are in order.

And, finally, my story, "The American Dream," is up at Everyday Fiction. Thanks to all at Fiction who offered critiques that made this one better.

Pat St. Pierre

My children's article "Is the Great Blue Heron Really Blue" has been published by Irish Story Play House.

Barbara Weitbrecht

My first submission to the PicFic blog and Twitter feed has been accepted.

Joanna M. Weston

My poem, "The Canoe," is in the print and online version of the journal, Descant.

My poem, "Unfolded," is up at The Cynic Magazine.

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Notes For May 13th, 2010

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This Day In Writing History

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On May 13th, 1907, the famous British writer Daphne du Maurier was born in London, England. Her father, Sir Gerald du Maurier, and her mother, Muriel Beaumont, were both prominent actors. Her grandfather was the famous writer and cartoonist, George du Maurier. The Llewelyn-Davies boys, who would be befriended by writer J.M. Barrie and used as the inspiration for the Lost Boys in his classic play, Peter Pan (1904) were her cousins.

Daphne du Maurier's first novel, The Loving Spirit, was published in 1931, but it would be her fourth novel, Jamaica Inn (1936) that made her name as a writer. Set in Cornwall in 1820, the novel told the story of Mary Yellan, a young woman forced to live with her Aunt Patience after her mother dies. Her aunt's husband Joss is the keeper of the Jamaica Inn. When Mary arrives, she finds her aunt under the thumb of her vicious, domineering husband. Mary senses that something is definitely wrong at the gloomy, ominous Jamaica Inn, which has no guests and is never open to the public.

Mary soon falls in love with Joss' younger brother Jem, who, although a thief, is not evil like Joss. As she tries to solve the mystery of the Jamaica Inn, Mary discovers that her uncle Joss is really the leader of a murderous criminal gang. She turns to the town vicar for help. After her aunt and uncle both turn up murdered, Mary finds a shocking clue that reveals the killer's true identity, placing her life in danger...

Jamaica Inn would be adapted as a feature film by legendary British director Alfred Hitchcock in 1939, starring Charles Laughton and Maureen O'Hara. The screenplay took great liberties with the novel, and du Maurier hated the film. Alfred Hitchcock would adapt more of her writings as feature films, including her next novel, which is considered her masterpiece.

Part suspense thriller, part Gothic romance, Rebecca (1938) is narrated by an unnamed woman who tells the story of her marriage to wealthy Englishman Maxim de Winter. She met him while working as a companion to a rich American woman on vacation in the French Riviera. They fall in love, and after a courtship of two weeks, the narrator accepts de Winter's marriage proposal. After their wedding, they return to live at de Winter's beautiful West Country estate, Manderley.

The narrator soon realizes that her husband is haunted by the death of his first wife, Rebecca. Their sinister, controlling housekeeper Mrs. Danvers, was deeply devoted to Rebecca, and is determined to undermine her employer's new marriage by any means necessary - including manipulating the narrator into wearing a replica of one of Rebecca's dresses. After Mrs. Danvers' attempt at manipulating the narrator into committing suicide fails, the narrator's husband makes a shocking confession.

Rebecca was a cruel woman who tortured Maxim with her affairs and illegitimate pregnancy. Finally, Maxim could stand no more. He shot Rebecca and disposed of her body on her boat, deliberately sinking the vessel. After Rebecca's boat is raised, an inquest is held and Maxim is cleared of suspicion due to lack of evidence. Unfortunately, Rebecca's cousin (and lover) Jack tries to blackmail Maxim with evidence of his guilt...

Rebecca was adapted several times, first as a feature film by Alfred Hitchcock in 1940. The film, which starred Sir Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine, won the Academy Award for Best Picture. The novel was also adapted as a play by its author. The play opened in London in 1940 and ran for over 350 performances.

In addition to her novels, Daphne du Maurier was famous for her short story collections. Her second short story collection, The Apple Tree (1952) contained six stories, including one of her most famous - The Birds. Told from the viewpoint of Nat Hocken (a farm worker in coastal Cornwall) and his family, the story chronicles the inexplicable attacks on humans by birds in the area. The Birds would be adapted by Alfred Hitchcock as a classic horror film in 1963, starring Tippi Hedren. In the title story, The Apple Tree, a widower believes that the old apple tree in his garden is possessed by the spirit of his neglected wife.

du Maurier's 1971 short story collection Not After Midnight, features her second most famous story, Don't Look Now. In it, married couple John and Laura Baxter are vacationing in Venice, trying to recover from the devastating, sudden death of their five-year-old daughter, Christine, which has strained their marriage. In a restaurant, Laura meets two odd looking women - elderly identical twin sisters who have psychic knowledge of Christine. Meanwhile, John encounters a little girl who bears a striking resemblance to his dead daughter. Don't Look Now would be adapted as an acclaimed horror film in 1973 by the great British director, Nicolas Roeg.

du Maurier also wrote several works of non-fiction, including memoirs both of herself and her family members. She married Sir Frederick "Boy" Browning, a Lieutenant General in the British Army, and bore him a son and two daughters. Biographers have noted that as a wife and mother, she was sometimes warm and loving, and sometimes cold and distant.

Writer Margaret Forster, who worked with the approval and assistance of the du Maurier family, revealed in her biography that Daphne had a few affairs with women, (including a passionate affair with actress Gertrude Lawrence) but vigorously denied being bisexual. Personal letters released after the author's death revealed, according to Forster, that Daphne was terrified that she might be a lesbian. She had been raised to hate homosexuals with a passion by her father, who was a virulent homophobic bigot.

Daphne du Maurier died in April 1989 at the age of 81.

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Quote Of The Day

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"When one is writing a novel in the first person, one must be that person." - Daphne du Maurier

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features the original theatrical trailer for Alfred Hitchcock's classic 1963 film adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's classic short story, The Birds. Enjoy!

Notes For May 12th, 2010

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This Day In Writing History

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On May 12th, 1883, Life on the Mississippi, the famous memoir by Mark Twain (the pseudonym of Samuel Clemens), was published. It was published simultaneously in Boston and London. In this classic book, Twain combines autobiography with history. He begins with the discovery of the Mississippi River by Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto in 1542.

As he chronicles his own personal history with the river, Twain tells of his training and career as a steamboat pilot before the Civil War, discussing the science of navigating the Mississippi. To become a steamboat pilot in those days was an incredible achievement - you had to memorize the geography of the entire river, from St. Louis to New Orleans. That was no easy task, as the river changed its course frequently.

Later in his life, Twain and some of his friends traveled the same path by steamboat, and the author discusses how the river boating industry had changed since he was a pilot. Interspersed through the straightforward documentary are numerous anecdotes and commentaries, as Twain offers his perspective on the people who live on the Mississippi and their culture - everything from the architecture of homes to local customs and folklore.

The narrative is classic Mark Twain, often tongue-in-cheek and filled with self-deprecating humor. Life on the Mississippi is a fascinating read filled with detailed insight into 19th century life in the American South. To write the book, Twain used a then newfangled instrument called a typewriter. Life on the Mississippi is believed to be the first book submitted to a publisher in the form of a typewritten manuscript.

In 1980, Life on the Mississippi was adapted as a movie for American public television. Starring David Knell as Samuel Clemens, the film weaves folklore from the book into a fictional narrative of the author's life.

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Quote Of The Day

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"In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. That is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the Old Oölitic Silurian Period, just a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upwards of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing rod. And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three quarters long, and Cairo and New Orleans will have joined their streets together, and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a mutual board of aldermen. There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact." - Mark Twain, from Life on the Mississippi

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features an excerpt from the one-man show, Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi, starring Ken Teutsch as Twain. Enjoy!

Notes For May 11th, 2010

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This Day In Writing History

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On May 11th, 1916, the famous Spanish novelist Camilo José Cela was born in Iria Flavia, Padrón, Galicia, Spain. Half Spanish and half English, he was born Don Camilo José Cela Trulock. Raised with strong religious and anti-communist beliefs, after briefly studying law at the University of Madrid, Cela fought on the side of the fascists during the Spanish Civil War. He was discharged after being wounded in action.

After recovering from his injuries, Cela took up journalism and dedicated himself to newspaper work. He would later work in civil service. One of his civil service positions was that of a government censor - an ironic position, as he would later reject fascism and become an outlaw writer, battling the censors to get his novels published in his native Spain.

In 1942, at the age of 26, Camilo José Cela published his first novel, La Familia de Pascual Duarte (The Family of Pascual Duarte). Taking place in Spain from 1888-1937, the novel opens with its main character and narrator, Pascual Duarte, awaiting execution on death row. He tells the story of his life and how he became a murderer, a homicidal path culminating in the murder of his mother - a sadistic, perverted alcoholic.

Strongly rooted in the Spanish realist school of writing, (and often grotesquely realistic) La Familia de Pascual Duarte is also a classic of existential fiction. Unable to feel remorse, Pascual Duarte believes that Fate is controlling his life, (which has always been full of pain and bad luck) and no matter what he does, it will never change. The novel caused an uproar and was banned in Spain less than a year after its first edition was published. The ban would be lifted in four years.

In 1951, Cela published a novel that is considered by most to be his masterpiece. La Colmena (The Beehive) was set in Madrid in 1942, after the end of the Spanish Civil War. The 350-page novel contained six chapters and an epilogue. Each chapter contained a number of fragments called sequences, where various characters described their unhappy lives in their newly fascist homeland. The novel's 300+ characters and the events in their lives work together to form the conclusion, much like bees work together in a hive.

Although La Colmena was the most important novel written in post civil war Spain, Cela was unable to get it published there. General Franco's Catholic Church-affiliated fascist government decried the novel as immoral. Banned in Spain, it was published in Argentina instead. Six years later, in 1957, Cela was appointed to the Real Academia Española and made the Marquis of Iria Flavia by King Juan Carlos I.

Beginning in the late 1960s, Camilo José Cela's writings grew more experimental in nature and more subversive. In 1969, he scandalized Spanish society with his Diccionario Secreto, (Secret Dictionary) a dictionary of obscene words and phrases. He followed that with his Enciclopedia del Eroticismo, (Encyclopedia of Eroticism) a four-volume survey of sexual practices in Spain. His best known (and boldest) experimental novel was Cristo versus Arizona (Christ versus Arizona). Published in 1988, it was a retelling of the shootout in the OK Corral - in one single sentence that's more than a hundred pages long.

After General Franco died in 1975, Spain made the transition from fascist dictatorship to democratic republic. Camilo José Cela was made a Royal Senator in the Constituent Cortes (Spanish Parliament) where he helped write and draft the Spanish Constitution of 1978. In 1989, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature. As he entered his golden years, old age failed to temper his outrageous personality. During one TV interview, he claimed he could drink an entire liter of water in one sitting - through his anus. In 1995, he was awarded Spain's Cervantes Prize for Literature, despite the fact that he had described the award as being "covered with shit."

Camilo José Cela died of chronic heart disease in January 2002. He was 85 years old. He remains one of Spain's most important and influential writers.

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Quote Of The Day

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"Literature is the denunciation of the times in which one lives." - Camilo José Cela

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Vanguard Video

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The only video material on Camilo José Cela that I was able to find was an interview in Spanish with no English translation. So, here's a video of another great Spanish writer - a virtual movie featuring a reading of the English translation of Federico Garcia Lorca's classic poem, Cogida and Death. Enjoy!

This Week's Practice Exercise

What's going on here?
Prepared by: Bob Sanchez
Reposted on: May 9, 2010

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Exercise: In 400 words or less, write a scene building on the basic information provided here. Be sure to make each character's motivations clear, and let us know something of each one's personality.

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A woman runs on a quiet stretch of road. She isn't wearing running clothes, but she moves quickly. Not far behind, a man in street clothes also runs. A canal parallels the road on one side; on the other side are scattered houses. A half mile down the road, a brick building.

So what's going on here? Let us in on the story through the point of view of either character. Add any sensory and descriptive details at your discretion, but be sure we understand the motivations of the characters. What do they want? What do they have to do with each other? Do their goals coincide, or do they conflict? Can we see a quality or personality trait that drives each person? The reader does not necessarily have to learn the outcome, as long as the situation is clear.

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Exercise: In 400 words or less, write a scene building on the basic information provided here. Be sure to make each character's motivations clear, and let us know something of each one's personality.

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In your critique, tell whether the writer has clearly established the situation. Are the individual goals clear? Do we have a sense of their respective personalities?



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.

Notes For May 7th, 2010

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This Day In Writing History

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On May 7th, 1812, the famous British poet and playwright Robert Browning was born in Camberwell, London, England. His father was a well-paid clerk for the Bank of England who had amassed a collection of around 6,000 books, most of them rare. Thus, Browning was raised in an intellectual family with a passion for literature.

When he was twelve years old, Browning wrote his first book of poetry. Unable find a publisher, he destroyed it. He attended private schools, but soon developed a fierce hatred of institutionalized education. He was then educated at home by tutors. An outstanding student, he became fluent in French, Greek, Italian, and Latin by the age of fourteen. At sixteen, he enrolled at University College, London, but left after his first year.

In 1845, Browning met poet Elizabeth Barrett. Six years his senior, her health problems (chronic lung disease) had left her a semi-invalid. She lived in her father's house on Wimpole Street. Despite her poor health, she and Browning fell in love. The following year, Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett secretly eloped (her father had forbade all of his children from marrying) and fled to Italy, living first in Pisa, then in Florence.

Three years later, Elizabeth gave birth to their only child, Robert Barrett Browning, known by his childhood nickname, Pen. Robert Browning loved Italy and was fascinated by its art and literature. While living in Florence, he worked on the poems that would appear in his first major poetry collection, the two-volume Men and Women (1855). The collection would include classic poems such as Love Among the Ruins and Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, which would inspire horror master Stephen King to write his Dark Tower series of fantasy novels featuring Roland of Gilead, the Last Gunslinger.

Around this time, while Robert Browning's name was known by the cognoscenti, (he had written plays in verse and dramatic monologues) he remained an obscure poet until 1861, when he returned to England following the death of his wife. He became part of the London literati and his reputation took off. By 1868, after five years of work, he completed and published The Ring and the Book, an epic blank verse poem comprised of twelve "books."

Based on a real crime that took place in Rome in 1698, the story, which is narrated by various characters, tells of an impoverished nobleman, Count Guido Franceschini, who is convicted of murdering his wife and her parents. The Count supposedly committed the murders as an act of revenge after discovering that his wife Pompilia was having an affair with a young priest, Father Giuseppe Caponsacchi. Despite the Count's protests of innocence, he is found guilty and sentenced to death. He appeals to Pope Innocent XII to overturn the conviction, but the pontiff denies his request.

Steeped deep in philosophy, psychology, and spiritual insight, The Ring and the Book was rightfully considered a work of genius - a masterpiece of dramatic verse. It was also Browning's best selling work during his lifetime - a huge commercial and critical success that brought him the renown he had sought for 40 years.

Browning spent his last years traveling extensively. He continued to write, publishing a series of long poems, then returning to collections of shorter verse. His last major work, Parleyings with Certain People of Importance In Their Day, was published in 1887. In it, the poet speaks in his own voice as he engages in a series of dialogues with long forgotten figures from the worlds of art, literature, and philosophy. Highly regarded today, Parleyings baffled Browning's Victorian readers.

For his last published work, Asolando, Robert Browning returned to traditional form and wrote another collection of short poems. The book was published on the day he died, December 12th, 1889. He was 77 years old.

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Quote of the Day

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"Ignorance is not innocence, but sin." - Robert Browning

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a reading of Robert Browning's classic poem, Porphyria's Lover. Enjoy!