The INTERNET WRITING WORKSHOP

Notes For February 2nd, 2012

2012-02-02T12:08:00.000-08:00

This Day In Writing History

On February 2nd, 1923, the famous American writer James Dickey was born in Atlanta, Georgia. In 1942, after graduating from high school, Dickey enrolled at the Clemson Agricultural College of South Carolina, where he played on the football team as a tailback.

After his first semester ended, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps and served in the night fighter squadrons during World War 2.

After the war ended, Dickey enrolled at Vanderbilt University, where he earned degrees in English and philosophy. He taught first at the University of Florida, then at Rice University in Houston.

While teaching freshman composition at Rice, he re-enlisted in the military, this time in the Air Force, for a two-year tour of duty in Korea. After that, he returned to Rice and taught a course in the Literature of the American South.

James Dickey soon left teaching to work as an advertising copy writer, directing the creative work on advertising campaigns for Coca-Cola and Lay's Potato Chips.

He would later say that he only took up a career in advertising to support himself while he wrote poetry: "I was selling my soul to the devil all day... and trying to buy it back at night."

In 1960, Dickey's first book was published. It was a poetry collection titled Into the Stone and Other Poems. His second poetry collection, Drowning with Others (1962), won him a Guggenheim fellowship, and in 1965, his poetry collection Buckdancer's Choice won him the National Book Award.

After the Library of Congress named him a poetry consultant, Dickey published Poems 1957-67 in 1967. Considered to be a collection of the poet's best work, it led the University of South Carolina at Columbia to offer him a position as professor of English and writer-in-residence.

Although he was primarily a poet, James Dickey published three novels during his lifetime. His first, published in 1970, made him world famous and earned him a place in pop culture history, thanks to the acclaimed feature film adaptation of the novel that was released two years later in 1972. The novel would also leave an unflattering impression of the author's birth state on the American psyche that continues to this day.

Deliverance told the story of four middle-aged city men from Atlanta who embark on a weekend hunting and canoeing trip in the north Georgia wilderness that turns into a nightmare.

Friends Ed Gentry, Bobby Trippe, Drew Ballinger, and Lewis Medlock (the outdoorsman leading the trip) arrive at a gas station in the mountains where Drew meets Lonnie, a mentally handicapped, inbred hillbilly with an uncanny talent for playing the banjo. Drew takes out his guitar and joins him in a duet.

Later, the four friends begin their canoe trip and shoot the rapids. Ed begins to reflect ominously on just how isolated they are in the middle of the wilderness. Their attempt at male bonding goes awry when first Ed, then Bobby becomes irritated by Lewis' survivalist mentality.

To get away from Lewis, Ed and Bobby go canoeing. Later that day, they are accosted by two hillbilly mountain men, one of them carrying a shotgun.

In the novel's (and the movie's) most famous scene, the hillbillies tie Ed to a tree, then one of them brutally rapes Bobby and the other forces Ed to perform oral sex on him. The twang of a bow rings out as Lewis, who happened upon the scene, shoots one of the hillbillies and kills him. Then Ed wrestles the shotgun away from the other.

The four friends must now decide what to do with the dead hillbilly. Over Drew's objections, the others side with Lewis and bury the body, for fear of being put in front of a jury likely comprised of the dead man's friends and relatives.

Soon, the four friends find themselves fighting for their lives in a different way when more hillbillies attack them. When Drew is murdered by the hillbillies, Lewis, Ed, and Bobby hide his body as well. The trio manages to survive their battle with the vicious, depraved hillbillies.

Though the sheriff is suspicious of them, (one of the dead hillbillies was his deputy's brother-in-law) he lets them go due to lack of evidence and warns them not to come back. They return home safe but shattered from the experience.

The 1972 feature film adaptation of Deliverance was directed by John Boorman, working from a screenplay by James Dickey. It starred Jon Voight as Ed, Ned Beatty as Bobby, Ronny Cox as Drew, and Burt Reynolds as Lewis. James Dickey had a small co-starring role as the Sheriff.

The film earned several Academy Award nominations. The famous line where one of the hillbillies tells Bobby to "squeal like a pig" was not in the novel. It had been conceived by Ned Beatty while he was improvising the scene with Bill McKinney, who played the hillbilly. The movie was also famous for turning the instrumental piece Dueling Banjos into a horror theme.

James Dickey's two other novels were Alnilam (1987) and To The White Sea (1994). Alnilam was a 682-page epic novel set during World War 2.

It's 1943, and Frank Cahill, a middle-aged man who lost his sight to diabetes, gets a chance to go up in an Air Corps training plane. Later, Cahill learns that his son Joel, an Air Force cadet whom he never knew, (he and his wife separated when she was pregnant) crashed his plane while flying over a brush fire. His body wasn't found, but he's presumed dead.

Cahill goes to Joel's base and talks to officials and his son's fellow cadets. Joel's flying experience was legendary, and he was the leader of Alnilam - a secret group of cadets who were into mysticism. Skeptical, Cahill nonetheless plunges himself into the mystery of his son's life, disappearance, and alleged death in a plane crash.

To The White Sea was a World War 2 adventure about an American gunner pilot who is shot down during a mission. To save himself, he must parachute into Tokyo just days before a scheduled Allied firebombing raid.

James Dickey continued to write and to teach at the University of South Carolina. In 1977, he was invited to read his poem The Strength of Fields at the inauguration of President Jimmy Carter - a fellow Georgian.

In his later years, Dickey suffered from various health problems, including alcoholism, liver disease, and lung disease. In January of 1997, six days after teaching his last class at the university, he died at the age of 73.

A year after James Dickey's death, his son Christopher, a novelist and journalist, published Summer of Deliverance, a memoir of his sometimes troubled relationship with him.

Quote Of The Day

"A poet is someone who stands outside in the rain hoping to be struck by lightning." - James Dickey

Vanguard Video

Today's video features the original theatrical trailer for the classic 1972 feature film adaptation of James Dickey's novel, Deliverance. Enjoy!

Notes For February 1st, 2012

2012-02-01T14:45:00.000-08:00

This Day In Writing History

On February 1st, 1814, The Corsair, the classic epic poem by the legendary English poet Lord Byron, was published. The poem, a three-canto drama in verse, told the story of pirate Captain Conrad's attempt to rescue the damsel Gulnare from sexual slavery in the harem of the evil Turk, Pacha Sayed.

The noble Conrad is the quintessential Byronic hero. He will not stoop to Sayed's level and murder him, even to save himself. Gulnare is the quintessential Byronic heroine; a passive victim at first, she undergoes a proto-feminist transformation and becomes a vengeful murderess, losing her feminine soul to achieve masculine superiority - which endears her to Conrad, whose masculinity is subverted by Gulnare's transformation.

The shifting masculine and feminine personalities of his hero and heroine no doubt reflected Byron's frustration with and disdain for the narrow minded culture of early 19th century England, which demanded that he control his natural impulses and subscribe to a strictly defined masculine persona. Byron was openly bisexual; though he preferred women, he also had affairs with male paramours.

The Corsair was first published in an initial press run of 10,000 copies. It sold out on the first day. Byron was living at Newstead Abbey, his ancestral home in Nottinghamshire, when his publisher came to deliver the news. Soon, Byron would sell the Abbey and travel throughout Europe, as debt and scandal would drive him out of England.

The unhappily married Byron had engaged in several torrid affairs with married women, including novelist Lady Caroline Lamb. He also supposedly had an affair with his own half-sister, Augusta Leigh, who allegedly became pregnant with his child.

Although Byron's supposed affair with his half-sister is debatable, he did have an affair with Lady Caroline Lamb, who famously described him as "mad, bad and dangerous to know." For Lamb to call Byron mad was ironic, considering that she herself went mad after Byron broke off their affair.

She wouldn't take no for an answer. She sent him a lock of her pubic hair, (in return, he sent her a lock of his new mistress' hair) disguised herself as a page boy to get into his home, and held a public bonfire where she burned Byron's letters along with his effigy while children danced about the flames. To get his attention at a party, she slashed her arms.

Lord Byron died of blood poisoning after falling ill while involved in the Greek rebel army's fight for independence from the Ottoman Empire. He was 36 years old. To this day, he is considered a national hero in Greece, and his classic poem The Corsair remains hugely influential on English poetic voice. You can read the complete text of the poem here.

The Corsair would later be adapted as Il Corsaro, an opera by legendary composer Giuseppe Verdi and as a ballet by Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges and Marius Petipa.

Quote Of The Day

"If I don't write to empty my mind, I go mad." - Lord Byron

Vanguard Video

Today's video features a clip from Il Corsaro, Verdi's opera adaptation of Lord Byron's classic poem, The Corsair. Enjoy!

Notes For January 31st, 2012

2012-01-31T17:54:00.000-08:00

This Day In Writing History

On January 31st, 1923, the legendary American writer Norman Mailer was born in New York City. He enrolled at Harvard University in 1939 (at the age of 16) to study aeronautical engineering. During his freshman year, his first short story was published.

After Mailer graduated in 1943, he was drafted into the U.S. Army, where he served as a cook for the 112th Cavalry in the Philippines. Though he wouldn't see much combat during World War 2, his experience in the Army would inspire him to write his classic debut novel.

The Naked and the Dead (1948), set during an Allied invasion of a fictional island in the South Pacific, was a breakthrough novel that painted an incredibly realistic, warts-and-all portrait of American soldiers at war. Not only were the horrors of war graphically depicted, so was the language of the men fighting it.

Mailer's original draft was peppered with numerous uses of the word fuck and its variants. Fearing legal repercussions, his publisher demanded that he censor the manuscript. Rather than cut out the word, Mailer famously substituted the word fug instead. It sounded exactly like the obscenity, though it wasn't an obscene word.

With his fourth novel, An American Dream (1964), Mailer paid tribute to the legendary writers of the past by publishing it first in a serialized format, over an eight month period, in Esquire magazine.

Featuring a poetic narrative rich in metaphor, the novel told the story of Stephen Rojack, a war hero and ex-congressman turned sensationalist talk show host. Estranged from his wife, a society woman, Rojack ends up murdering her in a drunken rage. He makes the crime appear to be a suicide.

From there, Rojack descends into a sleazy, surreal world of jazz clubs and bars, and gets mixed up in mafia intrigue while trying to avoid the suspicion that's closing in on him. He also begins to lose his mind. This nightmare is a metaphor for the so-called American dream.

An American Dream was famously blasted by feminist critic Kate Millett in her famous book Sexual Politics (1970), a groundbreaking study of the treatment of women in literature. Not only did she accuse Norman Mailer of misogyny, she leveled the same charge against Henry Miller and D.H. Lawrence. Millett's book received mixed reviews.

Another of Mailer's memorable novels was The Executioner's Song (1979), a novelization of the true story of Gary Gilmore, the first man executed after a conservative Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976.

Gary Gilmore was a career criminal who robbed and murdered two people in two separate incidents on the same night in July of 1976. Convicted of both murders, Gilmore, who was 35 years old, declared to the court that he wanted to be executed rather than spend the rest of his life in prison.

Gilmore was sentenced to death, but the legal process entitled him to appeal the sentence as well as his conviction. When his court-appointed attorneys began working on an appeal, Gilmore fought them for his right to be executed. The attorneys continued to defy their client.

Gilmore would get his wish. Though his attorneys had won three stays of execution for him, their appeals were ultimately denied. Gary Gilmore was executed by firing squad in January of 1977. The Executioner's Song would win Norman Mailer a Pulitzer Prize.

In 1991, after not publishing a novel in seven years, Mailer returned in style with Harlot's Ghost, a whopping 1,300+ page epic. In it, senior CIA agent Harry Hubbard learns that his mentor, agent Hugh Montague, code named Harlot, is dead. He either committed suicide or was assassinated. Hubbard's wife then tells him that she's in love with another man.

Emotionally drained, Hubbard goes to Russia, where he rereads the manuscript of his autobiography, tentatively titled The Game. It's an incredibly detailed account of Hubbard's life in the CIA, beginning at the end of World War 2. The manuscript ends in 1984, with the words "To be continued."

Although Harlot's Ghost received mixed reviews, some of Mailer's famous literary colleagues, including Salman Rushdie, Anthony Burgess, and Christopher Hitchens, declared it to be the best novel he'd written so far. He planned to write a sequel called Harlot's Grave, but other projects got in the way and he never wrote it.

Mailer's last novel, The Castle in the Forest, was published in 2007 - the year he died. It was based on the life of Adolf Hitler. In this novel, Dieter, a demon from Hell, is sent to guide the young Hitler on his path of destruction. Rather than being part Jewish, as historians believed, here Hitler is the product of incest.

In addition to his literary career, Norman Mailer was a political activist. He covered the Democratic and Republican political conventions of 1960, 1964, 1968, 1972, 1992, and 1996. His account of the 1996 Democratic convention was the only one not published.

In 1969, Mailer ran for Mayor of New York City. The legendary columnist Jimmy Breslin was his biggest supporter. He lost the election. Some say it was because his platform included advocating the secession of New York City from New York State. Others believe it was because he advocated the release of Huey Newton, the founder of the Black Panther Party.

In 2003, just before the invasion of Iraq, Mailer spoke at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. He said the following:

Fascism is more of a natural state than democracy. To assume blithely that we can export democracy into any country we choose can serve paradoxically to encourage more fascism at home and abroad. Democracy is a state of grace that is attained only by those countries who have a host of individuals not only ready to enjoy freedom but to undergo the heavy labor of maintaining it.

A vocal advocate for freedom of speech, Mailer was a key witness in the famous 1965 censorship trial of William S. Burroughs' classic novel, Naked Lunch (1959), which had been banned in Boston. The ban would be reversed by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. Mailer described Burroughs as “the only American novelist living today who may conceivably be possessed by genius.”

Norman Mailer died of kidney failure in November of 2007. He was 84 years old.

Quote Of The Day

"Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing." - Norman Mailer

Vanguard Video

Today's video features a reading from Norman Mailer's last novel, The Castle in the Forest. Enjoy!

IWW Members' Publishing Successes

2012-01-31T03:43:00.000-08:00

I'm proud to present below our latest batch of Internet Writing Workshop members who found publishing success this past week. Congratulations to all of you!

Jody

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Mark Budman

My story "Anniversary" is up at One Forty Fiction. 140-characters. Twitter size.

Thank you, Bill Backstrom, for the market tip.

~~~

Rick Bylina

Every wonder what makes Rick tick? How the book sales are really going? How many decades it took to write his first novel? Check out the interview up on the Indie Writing blog. Working hard to make the Chatham County Best-Sellers list. I mean, really, how many books can be coming out of Chatham County in a year. I have to be in the top 100 by now. Can't I be? Maybe? Confidence ebbs, opossum in yard shakes head in disgust as he eats more of Rick's bird seed in front of Rick.

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Sherry Gloag

I have a guest blog up at Murders and Mysteries.

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Mel Jacob

Got an email in this morning's mail notifying me Deadly Valentine is now available from allromanceebooks.com and it's also up at Amazon. You can see the cover there.

~~~

Mona Leeson-Vanek

The editor of the River Journal plans to announce my online editions of "Behind These Mountains," vol. 1, 2 & 3. Trish Gannon, the editor wrote, "...Mona I had no idea you had put the books online - what a wonderful resource! I'll have to put something in the River Journal about it. You should also upload your files via Amazon's create space or something like it, so that those who might want a hard copy of the book can buy one. (Like me - I wish I knew who I had loaned my books to, so I could get them back.)

Yes! I replied with a press release, and then sent PR to a few MT newspapers, and to Libby, MT. School Supt. I need to find time to do promotion.

~~~

Elaine Moore

My story, "Oceans Apart," is the featured story today at Daily Love.

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Eric Petersen

My latest book review - a review of the gangster novel Narrows Gate by Jim Fusilli - has been published by the Internet Review of Books.

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Monideepa Sahu

My short story, "Rites of Passage," is now published in the anthology The Killer App and Other Paranormal Stories (Penguin India). The book is available on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Book depository UK and elsewhere.

My special thanks to Mithran Somasundram and Mira Desai for their valuable feedback.

~~~

Bob Sanchez

21,900 downloads of When Pigs Fly in January!

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Wayne Scheer

I have a poem, "Mojo," up at A Day's Encounter.

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Joanna M. Weston

Three of my poems up at Birds by my Window, down on the left hand side. With many thanks for the Poetry List for their help with at least one of them.

This Week's Practice Exercise

2012-01-29T08:35:00.000-08:00

Cowards Among Us

Prepared by: Charles Hightower
Posted on: 29 January 2012

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In 400 words or less, open a scene with a character who receives an alarming message. Something apparently has happened, is happening, or is about to happen. Show what follows when the recipient is unable to quickly clarify the situation or to fully participate in its outcome. Your goal is to produce a character in distress; help us to feel the mounting tension.

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In the past one received a message by letter, telegram, carrier pigeon, or even a note placed in a prominent place. Now we have answering machines and voicemail, e-mail, and text messaging. But all of these are one-way communications. If the initial information is incomplete or confusing, the recipient may not be able to learn more without the sender's cooperation.

How would an individual react to an e-mail message from a family member in the military, on deployment, saying, "Not badly hurt. More later." Or a whispered voicemail saying, "Holdup, Bank of America." Or, in a note left on the kitchen table from wife to husband, "Derek in trouble." Or a text message, "Man following me." Or an answering machine message, "I have your daughter." How would the character behave when attempts to reestablish communications fail?

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In 400 words or less, open a scene with a character who receives an alarming message. Something apparently has happened, is happening, or is about to happen. Show what follows when the recipient is unable to quickly clarify the situation or to fully participate in its outcome. Your goal is to produce a character in distress; help us to feel the mounting tension.

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Critique: Did the opening of the scene capture your attention? Would you read on? If not, why? Were the characters and/or the situation believable? Could you feel the character's 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.

Notes For January 27th, 2012

2012-01-27T11:31:00.000-08:00

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 that school, but when he moved on to Rugby School in Rugby, Warwickshire two years later, 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. Some biographers had claimed that Dodgson's falling out with the Liddell family happened because he wanted to marry the then 11-year-old Alice.

Leach claimed that the falling out happened because Henry Liddell discovered that Dodgson was having an affair with either oldest daughter Lorina or the family's nanny, both of whom were grown women.

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 chronicled 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, while others accuse Leach and the academics who support her of historical revisionism.

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 was released in March of 2010. Directed by Tim Burton, the movie featured 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!

Notes For January 26th, 2012

2012-01-26T13:29:00.000-08:00

This Day In Writing History

On January 26th, 1831, the famous American 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, and Hans 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 this 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 clip from the classic 1969 TV movie adaptation of Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates. Enjoy!

Notes For January 25th, 2012

2012-01-25T14:54:00.000-08:00

This Day in Writing History

On January 25th, 1759, the legendary Scottish poet and lyricist Robert Burns was born in Alloway, South Ayreshire, Scotland. He was the oldest of seven children. Robbie, as he liked to be called, was born in a house that his father built. His father, William, was a tenant farmer.

When Robbie was seven years old, his father sold his small house (it would later become the Burns Cottage Museum) and moved the family to the 70-acre Mt. Oliphant tenant farm Southeast of Alloway.

As a young tenant farmer, Robbie Burns grew up in an atmosphere of grinding poverty and grueling labor. Young Robbie's labors would leave him with a premature stoop and frail health that would ultimately and tragically cut his life short.

He and his siblings received little formal schooling. They were taught reading, writing, arithmetic, and other subjects by their father, who also wrote a textbook for them called A Manual of Christian Belief.

Robbie Burns and his brother Gilbert attended some local schools, including a new "adventure school" founded by John Murdoch, who taught his students French and Latin in addition to English grammar and other subjects.

For the Burns siblings and other children of tenant farmers, harvest time meant leaving school and returning to full-time farming.

By the age of 15, Robbie Burns practically managed the farm himself. He was assisted by Nellie Kilpatrick, a girl his age with whom he fell in love. She inspired him to write his first poem, O, Once I Lov'd A Bonnie Lass.

Three years later, in 1777, disgusted by the poor working and living conditions at the Mt. Oliphant farm, Burns' father William moved the family to another tenant farm, this one in Lochlea near Tarbolton, where the family would stay until William died in 1784.

Robbie Burns found the conditions at the Lochlea farm better than Mt. Oliphant, though not exactly ideal. Against his father's wishes, he joined a country dancing school. He and his brother Gilbert founded the Tarbolton Bachelor's Club.

In October of 1781, Robbie was initiated into the St. David Tarbolton Masonic Lodge. When this particular lodge became inactive, Burns joined another one. He would remain an active Mason throughout his life, helping to run his Lodge.

He would attain the rank of Depute Master, and in 1787 at the Lodge St. Andrew in Edinburgh, he would be toasted by the Grand Master, Francis Chateris, and named Poet Laureate - a title still honored by the Masons today.

In the summer of 1784, Robbie Burns became acquainted with a group of girls who called themselves The Belles of Mauchline. One member of the group was Jean Armour, the daughter of a fellow Mason. Robbie fell in love with her.

While they were courting, Elizabeth Paton, his mother's servant girl, gave birth to his illegitimate daughter. Within the next couple of years, Jean would become pregnant with Robbie's twin son and daughter. At this time, Robbie was also dating a girl named Mary Campbell.

Robbie wanted to marry Jean Armour, but her furious father forbade her from marrying him and sent her to stay with her uncle. Realizing that he was really in no financial position to marry Jean, Robbie accepted an offer to work in Jamaica as the bookkeeper for a slave plantation.

He loathed slavery, (and later wrote a poem called The Slave's Lament) but he was desperate. Unfortunately, he couldn't afford passage on a ship to Jamaica. So, taking a friend's advice, to earn the money, he decided to publish a collection of his poems.

On April 3rd, 1786, Robert Burns submitted proposals to John Wilson, a printer in Kilmarnock, to publish his collection, Scotch Poems. The volume appeared three months later as Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect.

It was an accurate title, as Burns wrote poetry in a Gaelic dialect, in English, and in a combination of both languages. The book was an overnight sensation, and soon, Burns was famous throughout Scotland.

Robbie earned enough money to pay for his trip to Jamaica, scheduled for September 1st, but he postponed it when he learned that Jean Armour had given birth to his twin children. Two months later, he borrowed a horse and rode to Edinburgh, hoping get his poetry collection published there.

It was accepted by publisher William Creech, who published it in a serialized format sold to subscribers. In Edinburgh, Burns found himself embraced by the city's literati and men of letters, who invited him to their gatherings. He also met the then 16-year-old Sir Walter Scott, who described him this way:

His person was strong and robust; his manners rustic, not clownish, a sort of dignified plainness and simplicity which received part of its effect perhaps from knowledge of his extraordinary talents. His features are presented in Mr Nasmyth's picture but to me it conveys the idea that they are diminished, as if seen in perspective.

I think his countenance was more massive than it looks in any of the portraits ... there was a strong expression of shrewdness in all his lineaments; the eye alone, I think, indicated the poetical character and temperament. It was large, and of a dark cast, and literally glowed when he spoke with feeling or interest. I never saw such another eye in a human head, though I have seen the most distinguished men of my time.

By February of 1788, Robbie Burns, now a famous poet, was finally reunited with Jean Armour and his twin children. Her father relented and allowed them to marry. Robbie leased a farm near Dumfries and gave it a go.

He also worked for the Customs and Excise Department. Two years later, he gave up farming, wrote some of his best poetry, and embarked on a project to collect and preserve Scottish folk songs. He also wrote lyrics for Scottish folk melodies.

Unfortunately, Robert Burns' early life as a tenant farmer and its grueling labors had taken a toll on his health. It is believed that he suffered from a rheumatic heart condition that was aggravated by his drinking and, possibly, by an infected tooth that was extracted several months before his death.

He died in July of 1796 at the age of 37. To this day, Robert Burns remains Scotland's most famous poet, and every New Year's Eve, people around the world sing his classic song, Auld Lang Syne. In 2009, the Royal Mint issued a commemorative two pound coin featuring a quote from the lyrics.

Quote Of The Day

"My way is: I consider the poetic sentiment, correspondent to my idea of the musical expression, then chuse my theme, begin one stanza, when that is composed - which is generally the most difficult part of the business - I walk out, sit down now and then, look out for objects in nature around me that are in unison or harmony with the cogitations of my fancy and workings of my bosom, humming every now and then the air with the verses I have framed. when I feel my Muse beginning to jade, I retire to the solitary fireside of my study, and there commit my effusions to paper, swinging, at intervals, on the hind-legs of my elbow chair, by way of calling forth my own critical strictures, as my pen goes." - Robert Burns

Vanguard Video

Today's video features Scottish singer-songwriter Eddi Reader performing Robert Burns' classic song, My Love Is Like a Red, Red Rose, from her 2003 album, Sings the Songs of Robert Burns. Enjoy!

Notes For January 24th, 2012

2012-01-24T17:55:00.000-08:00

This Day In Writing History

On January 24th, 1862, the legendary American writer Edith Wharton was born. She was born Edith Jones in New York City. The famous saying "Keeping up with the Joneses" is said to refer to her father's family. The Joneses were indeed an upwardly mobile aristocratic family - the kind of people Edith Wharton would skewer in her writings.

In 1885, Edith, then 23 years old, married Edward "Teddy" Robbins Wharton, who was 12 years her senior. Teddy also came from an aristocratic family, one of Boston's most respected, but he wasn't an intellectual like Edith - he was a sportsman. He did, however, share her love of traveling.

Teddy Wharton suffered from acute depression - recurring brief episodes of severe depression. Over time, the episodes would grow worse, ultimately manifesting as a serious mental illness. By 1908, he would be pronounced incurable and committed.

Later that year, Edith moved to Paris, France, where she met and fell in love with Morton Fullerton, an American journalist who was working as a correspondent for the London Times. In Fullerton, Edith found a soul mate and intellectual equivalent. They were introduced by a mutual friend - the legendary writer Henry James.

Edith Wharton's first novel, The Touchstone, was published in 1900. Her fourth novel, published in 1905, would make her name as a writer and be considered a classic. Though it was called The House of Mirth, it was no comedy. Rather, it presented a stark and scathing indictment of the fate of women in the aristocracy of early 20th century New York City.

The tragic heroine, Lily Bart, realizes that like all women of her class, she was "brought up to be ornamental" - a trophy wife for a wealthy upperclassman. But what she wants is love, and a relationship based on mutual respect.

Lily's naivete results in her ruin by both vicious, scheming society women and her refusal to stoop to their level to take revenge and restore her reputation, which was tarnished when the women falsely implicated her in scandalous behavior. Lily ultimately dies from a possibly intentional overdose of chloral hydrate, a sedative which she had become addicted to.

Another one of Edith Wharton's classic novels was Ethan Frome (1911). Unlike her previous writings which depicted the misery of upper class social mores, this novel dealt with working class life and its own miserable mores. The title character is a good man from rural Massachusetts whose marriage to his bitter, sickly wife Zeena has grown colder than the New England winter landscape.

Zeena's cousin Mattie has come to help keep house and take care of Zeena. Mattie and Ethan soon develop strong feelings for each other, which they struggle to repress. Zeena suspects that the two are falling in love and seethes with anger.

When the family cat breaks Zeena's favorite pickle dish, she blames Mattie and decides to get rid of her on the pretense of needing a more competent housekeeper. Ethan plans to run away with Mattie, but guilt forces him to reconsider. They decide to go sledding, and Mattie proposes a double suicide pact. They plan to crash their sled into a tree at full speed.

At the last moment, Ethan panics and turns away. They survive the crash but are left crippled. The novel ends with Zeena, who recovered from her illness, forced to take care of Ethan and Mattie, who is now the bitter and sickly one.

In 1920, Edith Wharton published the novel that made her the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize. The Age Of Innocence, a tale of upper class life in late 19th century New York City, finds lawyer and respected gentleman Newland Archer happily anticipating his upcoming marriage to May Welland, a beautiful, pampered fellow aristocrat.

Archer's outlook is changed completely when May's exotic cousin, Countess Ellen Olenska, arrives for a visit. Trapped in a bad marriage to a Polish count, Ellen left him, scandalizing herself and her family in the process. What's worse, she plans to divorce him. Archer is horrified and has second thoughts about marrying May.

When a law partner of Archer's asks him to convince Ellen to return to husband to save May's family's reputation, he comes to understand, care about, and ultimately fall in love with Ellen. Ellen reciprocates his affection, but won't consummate the relationship because she doesn't want to hurt her cousin.

Archer marries May, but it's a loveless marriage, as he can't forget Ellen, who decided to remain separated from her husband but not divorce him. Desperate to escape his joyless life, Archer takes Ellen as his mistress.

Later, Archer plans to leave May, but before he can tell her, she tells him that she's pregnant. Suspecting the affair, she deliberately got pregnant to trap her husband. With no way out, Archer is forced to give up his true love and remain in a loveless marriage for the rest of his life.

In addition to her novels, Edith Wharton published collections of short stories, poetry, and non-fiction.

Edith was living in France when World War 1 broke out in 1914. Thanks to her connections to the French government, she was allowed to travel to the front lines. She wrote a series of articles about France's war effort that would be published as Fighting France: From Dunkerque to Belfort.

During the war, Edith worked tirelessly to help homeless Belgian refugees, get work for unemployed Frenchwomen, promote concerts to provide work for musicians, and open tuberculosis hospitals. She edited The Book of the Homeless, a collection of manuscripts, art, musical scores, and erotica by artists left homeless by the war.

For all her war efforts, Edith would be named a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. After the war ended, she bought a villa in Provence. She would divide her time between Paris and Provence, writing and traveling. Her literary circle included old friend Henry James and new friends Sinclair Lewis, Jean Cocteau, and Andre Gide.

Edith Wharton died of a stroke in August of 1937. She was 75 years old.

Quote Of The Day

"Life is always a tightrope or a feather bed. Give me the tightrope." - Edith Wharton

Vanguard Video

Today's video features the original theatrical trailer for Martin Scorsese's acclaimed 1993 feature film adaptation of Edith Wharton's Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Age Of Innocence. Enjoy!

IWW Members' Publishing Successes

2012-01-24T14:54:00.000-08:00

Internet Writing Workshop members continue to find publishing success in all venues. Congratulations to our latest group!

Jody

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Michael Baird

My story "Grave Voices" will be on Fiction365 tomorrow. Thanks to the fiction list.

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Barry Basden

Prick of the Spindle has accepted "Benny Goodman Once Played Moonglow Just for Her" for their next quarterly online issue. They do lots of good things there.

Thanks to all who helped make this piece better.

Fwriction's Year One anthology includes "We Continue to Evolve." Happy to be there with some of my favorite writers.

Thanks to everyone who helped make my little prose poem better.

~~~

Rick Bylina

No, [a yahoo] not with a bunch of balloons tied to my house, even though I've been accused of a lot of hot air on occasion, but I'm up on The Muriel Reeves Mysteries with an interview. Ypsilanti for me.

Check it out. Membership in Mystery Writers of America paying off.

The good news on Friday the 13th continues...

Oxford Hunt Book Club has selected A Matter of Faith for their February read and has asked me to attend the roasting, er, discussion of the book. There's another 10-16 sales. I can eat at "IHOP"! Gotta find out how they heard about the book.

~~~

Guilie Castillo

My short story, "Piano Sonata in C Major, K 545," is now online at Pure Slush.

This story started as a Practice exercise a few months ago, so a great round of applause, please, for all the Practice members that helped shape it into something publishable.

~~~

Jeannette de Beauvoir

My flash fiction piece went up today at Dew on the Kudzu, just in time for my birthday! Yahoo indeed.

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Mira Desai

I'm delighted to announce that Flashes in the Dark has published my rather nasty flash, "DARK."

Thanks to the practice group, and to Wayne in particular, for suggesting this site.

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Sue Ellis

A reprint of my essay, "A Bucket of Dirt Clods," is up at Front Porch Review.

Thanks to those on the fiction list who helped me with this one.

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Sherry Gloag

Zizzling Hot Books gave From Now Until Forever a great review.

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Lynne Hinkey

A review of Marina Melee is up at Underground Books!

I was also interviewed by Underground Book Reviews; it's now up at their site, along with their review of Marina Melee!

~~~

Ann Hite

When I first began writing seriously, I dreamed of being noticed by Chapel Hill. That dream came true this week. They reviewed Ghost On Black Mountain and placed it in their North Carolina reference collection. I’m snoopy dancing. This is almost as exciting as being a finalist for the Townsend Prize and being nominated for Best First Novel by a Georgia Author.

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Mel Jacob

Contract has yet to come, but I have a pub date for When Lilacs Bloom, a time-travel romance. It's May 4, 2012, so I'll have two the same month (two different publishers).

My short "Deadly Valentine" is to be released Jan 27. They accepted it some time ago, but said they would hold it so I didn't think were going to issue it soon. It's only about 2K so I don't know what to expect, but it will be up before Valentine's Day. I found out when I got the copyedits today. :)

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Barbara Johnson

Just uploaded Why I Didn't Sleep with Mitt Romney on Amazon, which said it'll be online in 12 hours. If you have a Kindle app, you can get it from the Lending Library.

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Mona Leeson-Vanek

Yahoo! Much of the credit goes to IWW NFiction critters for the kudo I received this morning, regarding "Northwest MedStar: Eastern Washington's Affordable Vital Link in a Medical Emergency."

Northwest MedStar's Marketing & Communications Strategist, Jerrie Heyamoto, wrote:

"Thanks for the nice story. I've sent it on so everyone can take a look." See www.inhs.org.

~~~

Tom Mahony

My flash, "Three Waves," is up at Front Porch Review.

My third novel, Pacific Offering, will be published by Casperian Books, with a release date likely in 2013. Click here for a brief synopsis of the book.

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Judith Quaempts

Dreadful Little Press has accepted a flash piece, "The Nature of Love (and Other Disorders)" for a future issue. Funny thing is I submitted this last November and forgot all about it so quite surprised when I got the word yesterday.

Thanks to the fiction list for tweaking it.

~~~

Bob Sanchez

Today I offered my noir mystery Getting Lucky for free and then tweeted my brains out all day long. The result is 1436 downloads in one day. Amazon ranked it #244 in free ebooks and #5 in hard-boiled mysteries.

Apparently, "free" is good. Little Mountain is free this weekend, and 1845 people have downloaded it since yesterday. Ranked 25th in mystery & thriller!

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Wayne Scheer

My story, "The Transition," is up at Eunoia Review.

My flash, "Turning Thirteen" is up at Long Story Short.

Both of these stories began in Practice, so thanks for the inspiration and the helpful comments.

Atlantean Publishers, out of Essex, UK, has accepted my story, "You Can Never Be Too Careful," for their print publication, Monomyth Magazine. I subbed the story March, 2009. My reward will be a free contributors' copy.

It's the ones you least expect that please you the most. A while back I entered a strange contest at On the Premise. They asked for a story of less than thirty words using the same phonetic sound (alliteration) as much as possible. I won second place and ten dollars. If you're curious, here's what I came up with.

My story, "Bringing Mama Home," is up at Muscadine Lines.

My story, "Late Night Heroics," is up at Everyday Fiction.

My story, "Three Generations," has been reprinted by The Corner Club Press. It is in Issue 6, beginning on page 45.

My story, "A Jazz Tune-Up," written for Practice a long while back, is up at Pure Slush, their music themed issue.

My story, "Mysterious Ways," is up at Dead Mule. This story was written for a Practice exercise a few years ago. It took quite a few rewrites to land it a home.

This url will take you to my "southern legitimacy" statement. I think it captures my "Southernness." From there, you can click on my story if you so desire.

My non-fiction piece, "Off the Road," has been accepted by Cobalt Review for their March issue.

~~~

Jack Shakely

Yahoo. I have just been informed by Bedford/St. Martin Press that my op-ed piece on Indian mascots that appeared in the August 25, 2011, Los Angeles Times will be included in the college textbook "Everything's an Argument With Readings." The initial press run will be 200,000, which is 199,200 more than my first novel.

And I say to myself "It's a Wonderful World."

~~~

Pat St. Pierre

My photo "Red Velvet" is in the January issue of Front Porch Review under Visual arts.

I am posted as a "Weekly Artist" at www.weeklyartist.com.

~~~

Bob White

Yesterday our local library held a 'Meet the Author' day for local writers. I was invited to bring my mystery novel, Abducted (Critted here last year by the Novels group). The results: (1) They've placed it in the library for loan; (2) I've been invited back for a solo book signing this spring; (3) The library's mystery book club has selected it to be the next novel they read; (4) I sold every copy I had with me for sale.

What a great day.

This Week's Practice Exercise

2012-01-22T09:47:00.000-08:00

Message From The Void

Prepared by: Charles Hightower
Posted on: 22 January 2012

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In 400 words or less, open a scene with a character who receives an alarming message. Something apparently has happened, is happening, or is about to happen. Show what follows when the recipient is unable to quickly clarify the situation or to fully participate in its outcome. Your goal is to produce a character in distress; help us to feel the mounting tension.

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In the past one received a message by letter, telegram, carrier pigeon, or even a note placed in a prominent place. Now we have answering machines and voicemail, e-mail, and text messaging. But all of these are one-way communications. If the initial information is incomplete or confusing, the recipient may not be able to learn more without the sender's cooperation.

How would an individual react to an e-mail message from a family member in the military, on deployment, saying, "Not badly hurt. More later." Or a whispered voicemail saying, "Holdup, Bank of America." Or, in a note left on the kitchen table from wife to husband, "Derek in trouble." Or a text message, "Man following me." Or an answering machine message, "I have your daughter." How would the character behave when attempts to reestablish communications fail?

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In 400 words or less, open a scene with a character who receives an alarming message. Something apparently has happened, is happening, or is about to happen. Show what follows when the recipient is unable to quickly clarify the situation or to fully participate in its outcome. Your goal is to produce a character in distress; help us to feel the mounting tension.

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Critique: Did the opening of the scene capture your attention? Would you read on? If not, why? Were the characters and/or the situation believable? Could you feel the character's 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.

Notes For January 20th, 2012

2012-01-20T13:05:00.000-08:00

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 had typed up a clean copy on his typewriter, but the ribbon was almost out of ink.

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. Here is the text of that poem:

Summoning artists to participate
In the august occasions of the state
Seems something artists ought to celebrate.
Today is for my cause a day of days.
And his be poetry's old-fashioned praise
Who was the first to think of such a thing.
This verse that in acknowledgement I bring
Goes back to the beginning of the end
Of what had been for centuries the trend;
A turning point in modern history.
Colonial had been the thing to be
As long as the great issue was to see
What country'd be the one to dominate
By character, by tongue, by native trait,
The new world Christopher Columbus found.
The French, the Spanish, and the Dutch were downed
And counted out. Heroic deeds were done.
Elizabeth the First and England won.
Now came on a new order of the ages
That in the Latin of our founding sages
(Is it not written on the dollar bill
We carry in our purse and pocket still?)
God nodded his approval of as good.
So much those heroes knew and understood,
I mean the great four, Washington,
John Adams, Jefferson, and Madison
So much they saw as consecrated seers
They must have seen ahead what not appears,
They would bring empires down about our ears
And by the example of our Declaration
Make everybody want to be a nation.
And this is no aristocratic joke
At the expense of negligible folk.
We see how seriously the races swarm
In their attempts at sovereignty and form.
They are our wards we think to some extent
For the time being and with their consent,
To teach them how Democracy is meant.
"New order of the ages" did they say?
If it looks none too orderly today,
'Tis a confusion it was ours to start
So in it have to take courageous part.
No one of honest feeling would approve
A ruler who pretended not to love
A turbulence he had the better of.
Everyone knows the glory of the twain
Who gave America the aeroplane
To ride the whirlwind and the hurricane.
Some poor fool has been saying in his heart
Glory is out of date in life and art.
Our venture in revolution and outlawry
Has justified itself in freedom's story
Right down to now in glory upon glory.
Come fresh from an election like the last,
The greatest vote a people ever cast,
So close yet sure to be abided by,
It is no miracle our mood is high.
Courage is in the air in bracing whiffs
Better than all the stalemate an's and ifs.
There was the book of profile tales declaring
For the emboldened politicians daring
To break with followers when in the wrong,
A healthy independence of the throng,
A democratic form of right devine
To rule first answerable to high design.
There is a call to life a little sterner,
And braver for the earner, learner, yearner.
Less criticism of the field and court
And more preoccupation with the sport.
It makes the prophet in us all presage
The glory of a next Augustan age
Of a power leading from its strength and pride,
Of young amibition eager to be tried,
Firm in our free beliefs without dismay,
In any game the nations want to play.
A golden age of poetry and power
Of which this noonday's the beginning hour.

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.

Later that year, on November 22nd, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

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!

Notes For January 19th, 2012

2012-01-19T15:22:00.000-08:00

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 system 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, where he won a promotion and his monthly pay was doubled. After serving for two years and being promoted 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 agreed to reconcile 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 wrote 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.

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. As her illness worsened, he began drinking heavily.

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.

Later, 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 wandering 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, where he died four days later at the age of 40.

Poe's 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 virulently 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!

Notes For January 18th, 2012

2012-01-18T12:39:00.000-08:00

This Day In Writing History

On January 18th, 1867, the legendary Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío was born. He was born Félix Rubén García Sarmiento in Metapa, Nicaragua. Shortly after his birth, his parents' rocky marriage completely fell apart. His father was a hopeless alcoholic.

Rubén's mother moved to Honduras to live with her new boyfriend, leaving him to be raised by her aunt and uncle in Leon. Rubén considered his Uncle Felix and Aunt Bernarda his real parents and never had any use for his birth parents.

A child prodigy, Rubén Darío learned to read when he was three years old, and begin writing poetry not long afterward. At the age of twelve, his first published poem appeared in a local newspaper.

Within a year, his work was appearing regularly in El Ensayo, (The Test) a literary magazine in Leon, where he became famous as El Niño Poeta de Leon - The Child Poet of Leon. He would often be invited to read his poetry at public functions.

Around this time, Rubén's Uncle Felix died, and he was sent off to be formally educated by the Jesuits. By then, his private studies of the great Spanish poets and writers of the day had kindled within him strong liberal convictions. These convictions clashed bitterly with the teachings of the Jesuits, whom he would blast in El Jesuita, an essay written in 1881 - when he was fourteen.

In December of that year, Rubén Darío moved to Managua, where some liberal politicians campaigned to have a government grant pay for him to be educated in Europe. Unfortunately, Pedro Joaquín Chamorro Alfaro, the conservative president of congress, denied the grant, as he was offended by Rubén's anti-religious writings.

After a public outcry, a compromise was offered that would pay for Rubén to be educated in the city of Granada, Nicaragua, but he opted to stay in Managua, where he would write for the city's top newspapers.

The following year, in 1882, Rubén Darío met a girl named Rosario Murillo. It was love at first sight for both of them, but there was a problem - he was fifteen years old and she was eleven. He planned to marry her when she reached the age of consent, but his friends talked him out of it, so he left Managua and set sail for El Salvador.

Several years later, following the sudden death of his first wife, he would be reunited with Rosario, now in her late teens. After her brother caught them in bed together, he forced Rubén to marry her in a shotgun wedding. It would not be a happy marriage. He drank and lived mostly with his mistress.

In El Salvador, Rubén Darío was befriended by the Salvadoran poet Joaquin Mendez, who took him under his wing and introduced him to the President, Rafael Zaldivar. Darío also met poet Francisco Gavidia, a connoisseur of French poetry.

Gavidia introduced him to the works of the French symbolist poets and Victor Hugo. (He would later meet his idol, French symbolist poet Paul Verlaine, in Paris.) He learned the French language well enough that he began writing poetry in French and using French rhythm and meter in Spanish poems.

When the Spanish-American War broke out, Darío served as a war correspondent. In his prophetic poem, A Roosevelt (1905), published several years after the war ended and dedicated to U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, Darío accurately predicted the plunder and exploitation of Latin America and her people by U.S. imperialists:

You are the United States
you are the future invader
of the naive America that has indigenous blood
that still prays to Jesus Christ and that still speaks Spanish

His work as a war correspondent finished, Darío served as the Nicaraguan ambassador to France. He had held other diplomatic positions before, which enabled him to travel around the world. When he visited New York City, he met Cuban poet José Martí. While working as an ambassador, he remained a prolific poet and continued to publish collections of his work.

In 1916, after writing his autobiography, Darío went bankrupt and fell ill with pneumonia. He returned home to Nicaragua and his wife Rosario, and died peacefully in bed. He was 49 years old.

Rubén Dario remains a huge influence on Spanish poetic voice and is considered a folk hero in Latin America. If you visit Nicaragua, you'll see a huge portrait of him hanging in Managua's international airport.

In 1965, a collection of Rubén Darío's poetry would be published in an English language edition by translator Lysander Kemp. This volume includes the classic Nocturne:

NOCTURNE

Silence of the night, a sad, nocturnal
silence — Why does my soul tremble so?
I hear the humming of my blood,
and a soft storm passes through my brain.
Insomnia! Not to be able to sleep, and yet
to dream. I am the autospecimen
of spiritual dissection, the auto-Hamlet!
To dilute my sadness
in the wine of the night
in the marvelous crystal of the dark —
And I ask myself: When will the dawn come?
Someone has closed a door —
Someone has walked past —
The clock has rung three — If only it were She! —

Quote Of The Day

"I seek a form that my style cannot discover, a bud of thought that wants to be a rose." - Rubén Darío

Vanguard Video

Today's video features a reading of the original Spanish language version of Nocturne, the classic Rubén Darío poem that appears in English above. Enjoy!

Notes For January 17th, 2012

2012-01-17T14:29:00.000-08:00

This Day In Writing History

On January 17th, 1904, The Cherry Orchard, the classic play by legendary Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, premiered at the Moscow Art Theatre. It would be the playwright's most challenging work - that is, challenging for the directors who stage it.

The Cherry Orchard was a product of its time in Russian history - the years after serfdom was abolished and before the Bolshevik revolution. It was a time when the aristocracy was losing power and the bourgeoisie was gaining it, and struggled to find meaning in its new status.

In the play, Madame Lyubov Andreievna Ranevsky, a middle aged aristocrat, and her family return to their country estate, which is scheduled to go on the auction block, as the family can't afford to pay the delinquent taxes on it. They can't even afford the upkeep of the estate, which is crumbling.

Madame Ranevsky's clan is not the only aristocratic family to fall on hard times, (the abolition of serfdom deprived the aristocracy of its slave labor supply) but she cannot come to terms with her financial predicament.

Her aristocratic pride makes her spend money she doesn't have to maintain the lavish lifestyle to which a person of her class is accustomed. And, she still grieves for her husband and one of her sons, who drowned a month after his father died.

Family friend Yermolay Lopakhin, a wealthy merchant, suggests that to make the money she needs to pay off her taxes, Madame Ranevsky should parcel out the vast lands of her estate, build a cottage on each parcel, and lease them all for summer rental. She rejects the idea because it would mean cutting down her beloved (and huge) cherry orchard.

Before he leaves, Lopahkin offers to lend Madame Ranevsky fifty thousand rubles to buy her estate back at the auction if she changes her mind and agrees to his plan for parceling out her land. Her feeble brother Leonid Gayev suggests some alternative solutions, such as a financing scheme involving some banker friends and hitting up a wealthy aunt for the money.

In the end, the stubborn, foolish Madame Ranevsky's plans to save her estate and her beloved cherry orchard fall through and Lopakhin buys the estate at the auction. He tells Madame Ranevsky that he plans to go ahead with the destruction of the cherry orchard and parcel out the land. Before the curtain falls, as Madame Renevsky and her family weep, the sound of chopping cherry trees is heard.

The characters in The Cherry Orchard are walking, talking metaphors. Madame Ranevsky represents the stubborn pride of the waning Russian aristocracy, while her brother Gayev, with his addiction to billiards, symbolizes the aristocracy's addiction to decadent pleasures, which has also rendered them helpless in the face of change.

Lopakhin represents the bourgeoisie, the middle class who profited most from the weakening of the aristocracy in the years before the Bolshevik revolution. He's a self-made man who rose from working class roots to become a wealthy merchant. He wears a fine, expensive white suit - and gaudy yellow shoes.

Lopakhin has a kind of love-hate relationship with Madame Ranevsky. He's grateful for the kindness she's shown him over the years, but he also resents her condescending attitude. Although he's wealthy - wealthier, in fact, than she is now - she still sees him as the lower class, because of his peasant roots. This is one of the reasons why she rejected his plan to save her estate.

Anton Chekhov was less than thrilled with the premiere of The Cherry Orchard at the Moscow Art Theatre in 1904. During rehearsals, the director of the production, Constantin Stanislavski, completely rewrote the second act, turning Chekov's comedy into a tragedy. The playwright was furious.

"...in the second act there are tears in their eyes, but the tone is happy, lively. Why did you put so many tears in my play? Where are they?" Chekhov wrote to complain. He later went to the theater in person to supervise the production and work out a compromise with the director.

Although a comedy at heart, The Cherry Orchard delicately balances farce with elements of tragedy. Stanislavski insisted on doing the play strictly as a tragedy. To this day, some directors still struggle to interpret the complex play. Audiences at the Moscow Art Theatre gave the premiere a rousing applause, but the critics' reviews were mixed.

When the play debuted in St. Petersburg at Panin's People's House theater, the audience of pre-revolutionary working class Russians, who understood Chekhov's scathing satire, reportedly cheered at the end, when the aristocrats wept over the demise of their cherry orchard, which was felled onstage.

The Cherry Orchard would be Anton Chekhov's last play. Inspired by incidents in his own life - including the demise of a cherry orchard he'd planted on his own country estate - the play was written over a period of several years, as the playwright began to lose his battle with tuberculosis. He died six months after its Moscow premiere, at the age of 44.

Quote Of The Day

"The role of the artist is to ask questions, not answer them." - Anton Chekhov

Vanguard Video

Today's video features a clip from a rare 1962 British production of The Cherry Orchard, featuring Peggy Ashcroft as Madame Ranevsky, Sir John Gielgud as Gayev, and Dame Judi Dench as Anya. Enjoy!

Notes For January 13th, 2012

2012-01-13T11:14:00.000-08:00

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.

While working for the BBC, 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, whom they name 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 and starring the voices of Charlie Adler as Paddington and Tim Curry as Mr. Curry.

Warner Brothers has announced that a Paddington feature film is now in the works. The film, called Paddington Bear, is scheduled for a 2014 release.

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 85, 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 when I was a kid. Enjoy!

Notes For January 12th, 2012

2012-01-12T10:49:00.000-08:00

This Day In Writing History

On January 12th, 1876, the legendary American writer Jack London was born. He was presumably born John Chaney in San Francisco, but his record of birth was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake.

London's 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 met and later 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, poet 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.

Long 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 was 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 difficulties 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 Alaskan 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, but 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 quickly 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 liked each other enough that they figured 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. Bess finally 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.

Charmian 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 living 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 is 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 do his work 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 one opponent, 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 it successful, 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 on his writing and on the ranch, even as his health deteriorated. On November 22nd, 1916, Jack London died at the age of 40.

Although uremia was listed as 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 remarkable 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.

A lifelong socialist, he wrote political books as well, 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!

Notes For January 11th, 2012

2012-01-11T12:13:00.000-08:00

This Day In Writing History

On January 11th, 1901, the legendary South African novelist, essayist, and activist Alan Paton was born in Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa. His father was a civil servant. After earning his Bachelor's degree at the University of Natal, Paton became a high school teacher. Later, in 1935, he took a job as principal of the Diepkloof Reformatory for black African juvenile offenders.

Disgusted by the prior mistreatment of the boys at the reformatory, and hoping to truly rehabilitate them, Paton introduced a series of progressive reforms, all of which were considered highly controversial by his fellow white South Africans.

The most controversial reform was his new honor system, whereby offenders would be allowed to work outside the reformatory. Some boys who proved their trustworthiness would even be allowed to live outside the reformatory with a foster family.

Paton's reforms proved to be a huge success. During his fourteen years as principal of Diepkloof Reformatory, some 10,000 boys were granted outside leave, and less than 1% failed to return.

When World War 2 broke out in 1939, Alan Paton volunteered for military service, but was rejected. So, he traveled around the world, visiting juvenile correctional facilities in other countries. While on the trip, he began working on his first novel, which would become an all-time classic and an international bestseller.

Cry, The Beloved Country (1948) told the story of Stephen Kumalo, a black pastor from the small village of Ixopo, who receives a letter from a priest in Johannesburg asking him to come and help his sister Gertrude, who is ill. Kumalo's son Absalom had gone to Johannesburg to look for Gertrude, but never came home. So, Kumalo decides to go to the city himself.

When he arrives in Johannesburg, Kumalo finds that Gertrude has become a prostitute and an alcoholic, but he convinces her to return along with her young son. Kumalo begins searching for his own son, Absalom. The trail leads him to discover that Absalom served time in a reformatory, impregnated a girl, and is now facing execution for allegedly murdering a man during a burglary.

The victim was Arthur Jarvis, a white activist for racial justice - and the son of James Jarvis, Kumalo's neighbor in Ixopo. James and Arthur had been estranged, but after reading his son's writings, James decides to carry on Arthur's work on behalf of oppressed black South Africans.

Meanwhile, Kumalo and his son Absalom are reunited. Before he is executed, Absalom marries the girl he impregnated. She decides to return to Ixopo with her new father-in-law. Back home, Kumalo, with help from James Jarvis, tries to restore the barren farmlands of his village.

Cry, The Beloved Country would become a classic, as it explored the societal and political changes in South Africa that would lead to the introduction of the apartheid system in that country.

The novel was published in 1948, and later that same year, the right wing National Party would seize power. Within the next few years, they would pass the legislation that defined the apartheid system, stripping black South Africans of their citizenship and rights.

In 1953, Alan Paton founded the South African Liberal Party, (SALP) which fought against the apartheid laws. Paton would serve as president of the SALP until the late 1960s, when the party was outlawed by the apartheid regime - because its membership was comprised of both blacks and whites. Paton's friend, Bernard Friedman, would later found the Progressive Party.

Paton's anti-apartheid activities often raised the ire of the regime. In 1960, the South African Secret Police learned that Paton's party was receiving donations from international sources.

Legally, they couldn't stop the transactions, so when Paton returned from a trip to New York City, (where he received the Freedom Award) the secret police confiscated his passport and didn't return it for ten years.

Alan Paton would write other memorable novels, which also dealt with racial injustice in South Africa, as did his short story collection, Tales From a Troubled Land (1961). He also wrote collections of essays; his last one, Save the Beloved Country, was published posthumously in 1989. He died in 1988 at the age of 85.

Beginning in 1990, as the result of violent resistance at home and mounting opposition around the world, South Africa's apartheid system slowly but surely came to an end, culminating in the African National Congress's landslide victory over the National Party in the 1994 election.

Quote Of The Day

"The truth is, our civilization is not Christian; it is a tragic compound of great ideal and fearful practice, of loving charity and fearful clutching of possessions." - Alan Paton

Vanguard Video

Today's video features a clip from a rare 1960 Canadian TV interview with Alan Paton. Enjoy!

Notes For January 10th, 2012

2012-01-10T18:07:00.000-08:00

This Day In Writing History

On January 10th, 1845, the famous English poet and playwright Robert Browning wrote his first letter to Elizabeth Barrett, a fellow poet who would become his true love and his wife. Ironically, at the time they first began corresponding, it was unlikely that Elizabeth would become anybody's anything.

As a young girl, Elizabeth Barrett was both intellectually gifted and physically weak. By the age of six, she was reading novels and writing poetry. At fifteen, she was struck with an illness that doctors were unable to diagnose.

Some have speculated that it was a debilitating heart condition that causes pain and weakness, such as angina. All three of her sisters contracted the illness as well, but for them, it didn't last long. They recovered quickly. Elizabeth did not. She had a severe case.

Whatever the illness was, it and the opiates she took for the pain made Elizabeth pretty much an invalid. She spent most of her time in her room, either in bed or writing at her desk. She saw few people except for her family, but she had a lot of family to keep her company - three sisters and seven brothers.

Despite her illness, Elizbeth Barrett became one of the greatest poets of her generation. When her classic poetry collection Poems was published in 1844, she became one of the most famous poets in England. Although she saw few visitors, she kept up a huge amount of correspondence.

One of Elizabeth Barrett's greatest admirers was Robert Browning, and his first letter to her was more than just standard fan mail. First, he complimented her poetic talent, "the fresh strange music, the affluent language, the exquisite pathos and true new brave thought," then he admitted that he was addressing Elizabeth the woman and "for the first time, my feeling rises altogether."

He went on to elaborate:

I do, as I say, love these books with all my heart... and I love you too. Do you know I was once not very far from seeing -- really seeing you? Mr. Kenyon said to me one morning "Would you like to see Miss Barrett?" then he went to announce me... then he returned... you were too unwell, and now it is years ago, and I feel as at some untoward passage in my travels, as if I had been close, so close, to some world's-wonder in chapel or crypt, only a screen to push and I might have entered, but there was some slight, so it now seems, slight and just sufficient bar to admission, and the half-opened door shut, and I went home my thousands of miles, and the sight was never to be?

Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett began a correspondence that would result in nearly six hundred letters exchanged between them. It would also result in a courtship, and a miraculous improvement in Elizabeth's health.

Though she would not recover completely from her illness, she would regain her strength, leave her invalid's bed, marry, have a child, and live until the age of 55 - far longer than was expected for someone with her condition.

Elizabeth's courtship with Robert Browning had to be carried out in secret, as her father, a domineering tyrant, had forbidden all his eleven children from ever marrying under penalty of disinheritance. Why? The answer lies in the family history. The wealthy, aristocratic Barrett family came from a long line of plantation owners.

Elizabeth Barrett's grandfather, who owned sugar plantations and other businesses in the West Indies, was known for his humane treatment of his slaves. He was also known to take slave women as his mistresses. Elizabeth's father, Edward Barrett, believed that his father may have adopted the light skinned babies of his slave mistresses, and that he may have been one of them.

A virulent racist, Edward Barrett was greatly shamed by the fact that Negro blood may be running through his and his children's veins. All of his children were white, but he feared that they might one day produce dark skinned offspring. This is why he forbade them from marrying.

Elizabeth Barrett was the polar opposite of her father. She despised slavery, wrote abolitionist poetry, and rejoiced when England outlawed slavery completely in 1833. This resulted in a huge rift between father and daughter.

Elizabeth never gave much thought to her father's decree forbidding marriage because she figured that her illness rendered her too sick too marry. She didn't plan on falling in love with Robert Browning. When they eloped, her father disinherited her and never spoke to her again. Her brothers didn't speak to her for years.

The happy couple settled in Italy, where Elizabeth regained her strength and after several miscarriages, bore their only child, a boy named Robert Wiedemann Barrett Browning, but called by his nickname, Pen.

Many years later, the Brownings' son published all but one of their letters to each other. The one missing letter was believed to have been burned by Robert Browning at Elizabeth Barrett's insistence because it was so passionate that she feared he might be arrested for sending it through the mail.

Quote Of The Day

"Love is the energy of life." - Robert Browning

Vanguard Video

Today's video features a reading from the first letter of Robert Browning to Elizabeth Barrett. Enjoy!

This Week's Practice Exercise

2012-01-08T07:17:00.000-08:00

Believe Me

Prepared by: Alice Folkart
Posted on: 8 January 2012

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In 400 words or less have a seemingly believable narrator tell us a story. Present this narrator as telling the truth, but gradually lead us to doubt the story. This could be just a scene. It needn't be a complete story. You could leave the reader hanging, not knowing whether what is being told is true or false, or you could show clearly that the narrator has been playing with the facts and perhaps our minds.

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Your narrator might be an absent-minded professor, an excitable teen with a taste for drama, or someone trying to cover a mistake. Anger, fear, pride, jealousy, or shame are only some of the many emotions that might lead the narrator to heighten or play down the facts of the story.

How will the reader recognize that the narrator's story is not to be trusted? Perhaps it does not match facts hinted at in dialogue with other characters, or shown in the setting of the scene, or described in the logistics of the plot. Perhaps the narrator's body language or actions give the lie to what he is telling us.

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In 400 words or less have a seemingly believable narrator tell us a story. Present this narrator as telling the truth, but gradually lead us to doubt the story. This could be just a scene. It needn't be a complete story. You could leave the reader hanging, not knowing whether what is being told is true or false, or you could show clearly that the narrator has been playing with the facts and perhaps our minds.

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When critiquing, tell the writer whether the narrator struck you as untrustworthy and identify the specific details that tipped you off. If the character/scene didn't work for you, tell why. Were the clues too subtle? Was the author trying to squeeze too much into 400 words? Would you read on? And, as always, point out any editorial issues – grammar, spelling, etc.

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 January 6th, 2012

2012-01-06T14:21:00.000-08:00

This Day In Writing History

On January 6th, 1883, the famous Lebanese poet, novelist, artist, and philosopher Khalil Gibran was born. He was born Gibran Khalil Gibran bin Mikha'il bin Sa'ad in the Maronite (Arabic Christian) town of Bsharri, Lebanon.

Gibran's grandfather was a Maronite priest. Since his family was poor, Gibran received no formal schooling as a young boy. However, he would be tutored by Maronite priests in subjects such as biblical studies and the Arabic and Syriac languages.

In 1891, when Khalil Gibran was eight years old, his father - a compulsive gambler and alcoholic - was imprisoned for embezzlement. As a result, all of the family's property was confiscated by the authorities.

Now homeless, Gibran's mother decided to pack up her children and follow her brother to America. The family settled in Boston's South End, which at the time was home to the second largest Lebanese / Syrian immigrant community in the United States.

A few years later, in 1895, while his mother worked as a seamstress and peddler of lace and linens, Khalil Gibran, then twelve years old, began his formal schooling. He was placed in a special class for immigrant children to learn English.

Due to a clerical error, he was mistakenly registered under the shortened name of Khalil Gibran instead of under his correct full name. He chose to keep the erroneous moniker.

Gibran also enrolled at a nearby art school, and through his teachers, he met the avant-garde Boston artist and photographer, Fred Holland Day.

Day recognized Gibran's talent as an artist and encouraged him in his creative endeavors. A publisher later used some of Gibran's illustrations for book covers.

Although he was strongly attracted to Western art and culture, Gibran's mother and older brother Peter wanted him to learn more about his Lebanese heritage. So, he returned to his homeland and enrolled at a Maronite-run prep school and college in Beirut.

Several years later, in 1902, Gibran returned to Boston to find that his younger sister Sultana had died of tuberculosis. The next year, his older brother Peter died of the same disease and his mother succumbed to cancer. So, he lived with his surviving younger sister, Mariana.

In 1904, at the age of 21, Khalil Gibran held his first public art exhibit at Fred Holland Day's studio in Boston. There, he met Mary Elizabeth Haskell, a respected headmistress ten years his senior. She would become a close, lifelong friend. They would write to each other extensively and Mary became a strong influence on his personal life and career.

In 1908, four years after his first public art exhibit, Gibran went to Paris, where he studied art with legendary sculptor Auguste Rodin. In addition to his art, Gibran developed a passion for writing both poetry and prose.

His early works, beginning with his first book, Nubthah fi Fan Al-Musiqua, (1905) were written and published in Arabic in his homeland of Lebanon.

Then, in 1917, one of the invited guests at a gathering at Gibran's New York City apartment turned out to be a businessman named Alfred A. Knopf, who had just started a publishing company. Knopf, like the other guests, was impressed with Gibran's writings and signed him to a contract. He wrote in English, specializing in collections of short, poetic prose.

The Madman (1918) and The Forerunner (1920), Khalil Gibran's first two books published by Knopf, weren't successful, but his third book would make him world famous.

The Prophet (1923) was sort of a cross between a novel, a collection of essays, and prose poetry. In it, a prophet named Al-mustafa, who has lived in the foreign city of Orphalese for the past twelve years, is about to board a ship bound for his homeland. He is approached by a group of people with whom he discusses the issues of life and the human condition - subjects such as love, friendship, marriage, children, work, laws, freedom, reason, passion, prayer, and death.

Long before he wrote The Prophet, Gibran had met Abdu'l-Baha, son of Baha'u'llah, (the 19th century Persian prophet and founder of the Baha'i Faith) during Abdu'l-Baha's 1911-12 visit to the United States.

Gibran was deeply impressed and affected by his meeting with the Baha'i leader, and the prose style of The Prophet bears a resemblance to that of the writings of both Abdu'l-Baha and Baha'u'llah. Gibran's prophet Al-mustafa is modeled after Abdu'l-Baha.

Khalil Gibran continued to write more books, most of which dealt with themes such as meditation and spirituality. He died in 1931 of both tuberculosis and cirrhosis of the liver, at the age of 48. A year later, his sister Mariana and his friend Mary Haskell bought an old Maronite monastery in Lebanon, which would become the Gibran Museum.

Gibran had willed Mary the contents of his studio, including over a hundred works of art, numerous manuscripts, and a collection of her letters to him that spanned a period of 23 years. She had agreed to burn this intimate correspondence, but, recognizing its historical value, changed her mind and donated it (and a collection of his letters to her) to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Several of Gibran's previously unpublished works would be published posthumously. The Prophet became a classic of the 1960s counterculture, popular with spiritual seekers. In 1995, a sequel to The Prophet would be published posthumously. It was called Eye Of The Prophet.

Quote Of The Day

"Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh, and the greatness which does not bow before children." - Khalil Gibran

Vanguard Video

Today's video features a reading from the second chapter of The Prophet, by Khalil Gibran. Enjoy!

Notes For January 5th, 2012

2012-01-05T11:51:00.000-08:00

This Day In Writing History

On January 5th, 1825, the legendary French novelist Alexandre Dumas fought his first duel. Two days earlier, the 23-year-old Dumas had gotten into a dispute with a soldier over a game of billiards and challenged the man to fight him in a duel.

Dumas had assured his seconds that he was a good shot with a pistol, then he found out that his opponent had chosen swords as the weapons.

Less confident in his chances of winning, Dumas nevertheless showed up for the duel at the prearranged time and place. His opponent did not, choosing to sleep in and postpone the duel for another day.

When the day came, both Dumas and his opponent arrived on time for their duel. Although the weather was cold, Dumas agreed to fight bare-chested and took off his cloak and upper clothing. When he did, his trousers fell down, causing bystanders to erupt with laughter.

Angry and confused, after the duel began, Dumas made his first move, lunging at his opponent with his sword. The man jumped back, tripped over a root, and somersaulted into a snowbank.

Feeling cheated, Dumas complained that he hadn't even touched his opponent, who tried to explain his clumsiness by saying that the touch of Dumas' cold blade made him jump back.

It would not be the first duel fought by Alexandre Dumas. The master of the swashbuckler fought in others, which also proved to be misadventures.

His second opponent postponed their duel because he caught a cold ice skating the day before. A third opponent canceled their duel because he had lost two fingers in a previous duel.

Dumas lost a duel to a fourth opponent, with the stipulation being that the loser had to shoot himself. So, Dumas went into another room, and closed the door behind him.

After a long pause, a shot rang out. The crowd of onlookers rushed in and found Dumas unhurt, holding a smoking gun. "Gentlemen," he said, "a most regrettable thing has happened. I missed."

Though he proved to be an inept duelist, Alexandre Dumas would become famous as one of the greatest French novelists of all time.

His swashbuckling novels, including The D'Artagnan Romances, (The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years Later, and Ten Years After) Robin Hood, and The Count Of Monte Cristo, are rightfully considered to be all-time classic works of literature.

Dumas died in 1870 at the age of 68.

Quote Of The Day

"True love always makes a man better, no matter what woman inspires it." - Alexandre Dumas

Vanguard Video

Today's video features the original theatrical trailer for the rare but classic 1974 film adaptation of Alexandre Dumas' novel, The Three Musketeers - featuring Michael York as D'Artagnan and Faye Dunaway as Milady De Winter. Enjoy!

IWW Members' Publishing Successes

2012-01-04T19:03:00.000-08:00

Internet Writing Workshop members continue to find publishing success in all venues. Congratulations to this week's crew!

Jody

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Barry Basden

My little piece, "Alpine Snow," was selected by Nailpolish Stories as one of their Best of 2011.

Those OPI colors do make great prompts.

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Guilie Castillo

I think I forgot to crow about this one… A chapter from my novel, Restoring Experience, is published in the first issue of Lady Ink, a new magazine in the US.

You may purchase either print or PDF copies at this link.

This is the first time in something like twenty years that my work appears in print--yep, I'm psyched. Unfortunately this chapter has not made it past the Novels-L list yet, so any quirks and funky language is completely my own responsibility :D

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Jeannette de Beauvoir

My flash fiction piece "Empty Houses" will appear on my birthday, January 16th, in Dew On The Kudzu.

Nice one to come in just under the wire in 2011!

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Sue Ellis

"Queen Elizabeth in the Garden" is up today at the Internet Review of Books.

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Mel Jacob

I have the following book reviews up at SFRevu.com:

The Daemon Prism: A Novel of the Collegia Magica by Carol Berg

In the Lion's Mouth by Michael Flynn

Shadows West by Joe R. Lansdale and John L. Lansdale

I also have the following reviews up at GumshoeReview.com:

Bloodland: A Novel by Alan Glynn

The Chalice of Blood: A Mystery of Ancient Ireland by Peter Tremayne

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Pauline Micciche

My story, "Initiation," is up on Story Space, with a current rating of 4.5 of 5.

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Eric Petersen

My latest book review - a review of The Hypnotist, a new Swedish horror novel by Lars Kepler - has been published by the Internet Review of Books.

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Wayne Scheer

My story, "Early Morning Reverie," is up at Pure Slush.

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Pat St. Pierre

A photo of mine "The Man of Many Hats" is on the cover of Decades Review issue two for JAN. 1.

Also another photo of mine "The Abandoned House" is included under photography.

The Harsh and The Heart (poems for the military) was available as a free Kindle download over the holidays. My poem, "The Angle of Marye's Heights," is included in this book which is also for sale from the publisher.

My children's Christmas story, "The Christmas Gift," can be found at My Light Magazine.

Click on 'stories' and you will find mine.

My poem "The Feeder" is up at Long Story Short for January.

Thanks to everyone for their help.

~~~

Joanna M. Weston

My poem, "He's changing the tap," is up at Long Story Short. Scroll down and down until you find it!

Happy New Year!

Notes For January 4th, 2012

2012-01-04T14:49:00.000-08:00

This Day In Writing History

On January 4th, 1785, the legendary German writer, folklorist, and lexicographer Jacob Grimm was born in Hanau, Germany. His younger brother, Wilhelm Grimm, with whom he would collaborate on numerous projects, including the series of fairy tale collections for which they would become most famous, would be born about a year later, in February of 1786.

Jacob Grimm's father had intended for him to enter the legal profession, so in 1802, he began studying law at the University of Marburg. However, during his time at university, Grimm attended lectures by the legendary German historian Friedrich Karl von Savigny, who would awaken in him a passion for classical philology. The two men became good friends, and Grimm enjoyed delving through the Old German texts contained in Savigny's immense library.

Three years later, Savigny invited Grimm to work with him in Paris. Grimm eagerly accepted and came to love Paris - especially the city's libraries, where he continued his studies in the languages and literature of the Middle Ages.

After returning home to Germany, where his mother and brother Wilhelm had settled in Kassel, the only work he was able to find was a small-salaried position in the war office. He hated the job and having to wear a uniform instead of the stylish suit he'd bought in Paris.

By 1808, Grimm's mother had died, but his personal fortunes improved when Jérôme Bonaparte, the King of Westphalia, (and Napoleon's youngest brother) appointed him as the superintendent of his private library, and later, as an auditor to the state council.

After Jérôme was ousted as the ruler of Westphalia in 1813, Grimm was appointed as secretary of legation by the new government. In his official capacity, he would accompany the Hessian minister to the headquarters of the allied army, be dispatched to Paris to demand the return of valuable books looted by French soldiers, and attend the Congress of Vienna.

When he wasn't conducting official business as secretary of legation, Jacob Grimm worked with his brother Wilhelm, who had become a librarian, on various literary projects. Jacob would eventually become a librarian himself.

The first volume of the Grimm brothers' most famous literary collaboration, Kinder und Hausmärchen, (Children's and Household Tales) best known by the title of its English translation, Grimms' Fairy Tales, would be published in 1812. It contained 86 stories.

The Grimm brothers, both of them avid folklorists, would invite storytellers to tell their tales, which they then transcribed and edited, adding their own distinctive touches to the stories. A second volume, containing 70 tales, was published in 1814.

During the Grimm brothers' lifetime, five more editions of their story collections would be released, some containing new stories. Since then, all 211 stories would be published in one volume as Grimms' Fairy Tales.

Some scholars believe that the Grimm brothers removed salacious elements from the stories they collected, as they were both devout Christians. They did not, however, tone down the dark and violent elements of the stories, which led to complaints that the stories were inappropriate for children. Thus, over the years, since their initial publication, the Grimms' Fairy Tales have been softened and changed considerably by publishers.

The original, unaltered Grimms' Fairy Tales are still published, and parents who buy the book for their children are quite shocked by the content, as are other readers who remember the Disneyfied versions of such famous stories as Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. As in all the Grimms' original stories, the endings are different, and the villains are often tortured horribly and / or put to death.

Little Red Riding Hood (her original name was Little Red-Cap) and her grandmother are saved when a huntsman cuts open the wolf's stomach. He later skins the dead wolf and keeps the skin as a souvenir.

In Cinderella, (Cinderella was her nickname; her real name was Ashputtel) the nasty stepsisters mutilate their feet to try and fit into the glass slipper. Later, they get their eyes pecked out by doves as punishment for their cruelty and vanity.

And, in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, after Snow White is saved by her Prince, she marries him, and the Wicked Queen is lured to their wedding - where she is forced to wear hot iron shoes and dance until she dies.

Despite their dark and sometimes gruesome nature, the Grimms' Fairy Tales remain an all-time classic work of literature, inspiring generations of writers. In addition to their fairy tale collections, the Grimm brothers also published collections of Old German poetry, ballads, and song lyrics.

Jacob Grimm would also become famous for his own work as a linguist and lexicographer, publishing the classic works Deutsche Grammatik (German Grammar) in 1819, Geschichte der deutschen Sprache, (History of the German Language) in 1848, and Deutsches Wörterbuch (German Dictionary) in 1854. The Deutsches Wörterbuch would be his last collaboration with his brother Wilhelm.

In 1848, following the German Revolution, Jacob Grimm was elected to the Frankfurt National Parliament. He had become something of a folk hero because of his actions while teaching at the University of Goettingen in 1837.

Grimm was one of seven professors who drafted and signed a letter of protest against the King of Hanover's abrogation of the constitution. His brother Wilhelm was another of the seven. For doing this, the King had terminated all of their professorships and banished them from Hanover.

Jacob Grimm died in 1863 at the age of 78.

Quote Of The Day

"How often when we are comfortable, we begin to long for something new!" - Jacob Grimm

Vanguard Video

Today's video features a two-part reading of the classic Brothers Grimm fairy tale, Hansel and Gretel. Enjoy!

Notes For January 3rd, 2012

2012-01-03T17:37:00.000-08:00

This Day In Writing History

On January 3rd, 1892, the legendary English fantasy novelist, poet, and philologist J.R.R. Tolkein was born. He was born John Ronald Reuel Tolkein in Bloemfontein, South Africa. He would be known as Ronald to family and friends.

Tolkein's father Arthur was the manager of a British bank in South Africa. When Ronald was three years old, he accompanied his mother, Mabel, and his younger brother, Hilary, on a long visit to England. His father was supposed to join them, but he died suddenly of rheumatic fever before he could make the trip.

Left without an income, Tolkein's mother moved the family into her parents' home in Birmingham. They would later move into their own home, supported by relatives. Mabel Tolkein taught her children how to read and write; Ronald could read fluently by the age of four. His mother also taught him Latin and botany.

Tolkein developed an early interest in fantasy literature. Scottish writer Andrew Lang's Fairy Book series was his favorite collection of fairy tale and fantasy stories. It would become a huge influence on his own writing.

When Tolkein was twelve years old, tragedy struck again as his mother died at the age of 34. She had been a diabetic, and in those days, long before the invention of insulin treatment, people born with type 1 diabetes didn't live long.

A few years before her death, Mabel Tolkein had converted to Catholicism, outraging her devout Baptist family to the point that they broke ties with her and cut off all financial support. After she died, she named her priest, Father Francis Xavier Morgan, as her sons' legal guardian.

In 1908, at the age of sixteen, Tolkein met the woman who would become his true love and wife of over 50 years. Her name was Edith Bratt, and she was three years older. Tolkein's guardian, Father Morgan, was appalled to discover that his ward was in love with a Protestant girl.

Tolkein was ordered not to meet with, speak to, or write to Edith. If he did, Father Morgan would cut off the funding for his college tuition. He had no choice but to follow the order. However, when he turned 21, he wrote Edith a love letter and asked her to marry him. Unfortunately, she was already engaged to marry another man.

Edith thought Tolkein had forgotten her, but when they met again face to face, their love was rekindled. Edith returned the other man's engagement ring and agreed to marry Tolkein. Reluctantly, at his insistence, she also agreed to convert to Catholicism.

In October of 1911, Tolkein enrolled at Exeter College, Oxford, with a major in Classics. He would switch his major to English. When World War 1 broke out in 1914, Tolkein shocked his family by deciding not to enlist for military service until he finished his final year at university. After graduating in July of 1915, he enlisted.

Tolkein trained with the 13th (Reserve) Battalion in Staffordshire for eleven months. Although in a letter to his wife Edith, he quipped that "Gentlemen are rare among the superiors, and even human beings rare indeed," he became a Second Lieutenant. He was transferred to the 11th (Service) Battalion with the British Expeditionary Force and shipped to France.

With her husband away at the front, Edith Tolkein began suffering from considerable stress. So, Ronald devised an ingenious secret code with which he could communicate his movements to her under the nose of the mail censors. Edith would decode the secret messages in his letters, then use the information to track her husband's movements on a map of the Western Front.

In October of 1916, Tolkein contracted trench fever, a typhus-like disease carried by the lice that lived in the trenches. By the following month, he was back home in England recovering. Unfit for regular service, when he wasn't in the hospital, (the disease kept recurring) he performed garrison duties. He also worked on an early short story collection, The Book of Lost Tales.

After the war ended and he finally regained his good health, Tolkein took a job as an etymologist for the Oxford English Dictionary. From there, he would become an English professor, teaching first at the University at Leeds, then at Pembroke College, where he would write the novels that made him famous.

Before he became a famous writer, Tolkein had been a noted academic. He translated classic Old and Middle English works of literature and gave lectures. In 1936, he gave a famous lecture on the classic Old English epic poem Beowulf titled Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics. His own handwritten translation of Beowulf, which included detailed commentary, clocked in at a whopping 2,000 pages. The manuscript, thought long lost, was discovered in the archives of Britain's famous Bodleian Library in 2003.

One day in the early 1930s, while engaged in the tedious but necessary task of grading his students' exams, Tolkein found a blank sheet of paper in one student's exam booklet and scribbled a sentence that had just popped into his head: "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit." From this one sentence came his first classic fantasy novel.

Tolkein finished his first draft of The Hobbit in late 1932. He lent the manuscript to friends to get their input. His close friend and fellow writer, C.S. Lewis, loved the book and gave it a rave review. About four years later, one of Tolkein's students brought the manuscript to the attention of Susan Dagnall, who worked for the publishing house George Allen & Unwin, Ltd.

Dagnall showed the manuscript to her boss, co-founder Stanley Unwin, who asked his ten-year-old son Rayner to read it. The boy loved The Hobbit and gave it a great review. So, on September 21st, 1937, The Hobbit was published in London. The first edition featured numerous illustrations drawn by Tolkein himself. The entire press run of 1,500 copies sold out, thanks to all the glowing reviews that the novel received.

The Hobbit told the story of a hobbit called Bilbo Baggins. According to the author, hobbits were "a race of people only slightly taller than the average table but broad in the shoulders and of great strength." Bilbo meets the itinerant wizard Gandalf, who introduces him to a band of dwarves led by Thorin Oakenshield.

Thorin persuades Bilbo to accompany them all on a perilous journey to the Lonely Mountain, where they plan to recover a vast treasure stolen by the dragon Smaug. The group's trek through the Misty Mountains was inspired by Tolkein's hike through the Swiss Alps while on holiday from secondary school.

Although The Hobbit was originally written as a children's novel, it would become a favorite of adult readers and rightfully recognized as a classic work of English literature. Heavily influenced by Tolkein's lifelong love of mythology and his passion for Old and Middle English literature, it would be the first book of his famous Middle Earth series.

As Tolkein rejoiced in his success with The Hobbit and began working on a sequel, the winds of war brewed again in Europe. Although politically conservative, Tolkein denounced fascism long before the outbreak of World War 2. He vocally opposed the Nazi regime, whose racist doctrines he considered to be "wholly pernicious and unscientific."

In 1938, when a German publishing house was preparing to release a German translation of The Hobbit, they contacted Tolkein to verify that he wasn't Jewish, which infuriated him. He opposed all forms of racism, including the apartheid system of South Africa, where he was born. After England declared war on Germany in 1939, Tolkein volunteered for service as a code breaker. He was turned down.

During the war, Tolkein not only denounced the horrors inflicted by the Nazi and Japanese regimes on innocent civilians, he also spoke out against Allied war crimes, including the extermination of hundreds of thousands of civilians in the Dresden bombings in Germany and the firebombings of Kobe and Tokyo, Japan. When atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Tolkein blasted the "lunatic physicists" who invented the atomic bomb, calling them "Babel-builders."

Tolkein's magnum opus, the epic fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings, was originally published in three volumes, The Fellowship of the Ring (July 1954), The Two Towers (November 1954), and The Return of the King (October 1955). The novel finds hobbit Frodo Baggins, armed with a magic ring he inherited from his cousin Bilbo, on a quest that will place him at the center of a cataclysmic struggle between good and evil over the fate of Middle Earth.

Rightfully regarded as one of the great masterpieces of fantasy literature, The Lord of the Rings would be adapted for the radio and the screen, most famously as a series of epic feature films directed by Peter Jackson.

Tolkein retired in 1959, four years after the final volume of The Lord of the Rings was published. While he had hoped to be a successful writer, he never expected that his fantasy novels would make him a world famous literary icon. In England, fan attention was so great that he had to unlist his phone number from the public directory.

In the mid 1960s, Tolkein found that his novels had become hugely popular with the burgeoning American and British countercultures. As a conservative, he didn't agree with the young people's political convictions, but he was flattered that they loved his writings, quipping that "even the nose of a very modest idol... cannot remain entirely untickled by the sweet smell of incense!"

J.R.R. "Ronald" Tolkein died in November of 1971 at the age of 82.

Quote Of The Day

“All that is gold does not glitter; not all those that wander are lost." - J.R.R. Tolkein

Vanguard Video

Today's video features a rare recording of J.R.R. Tolkein reading from his classic novel, The Hobbit. Enjoy!

This Week's Practice Exercise

2012-01-01T07:57:00.000-08:00

The Shadow Knows

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Exercise: Write a piece of no more than 400 words in which a shadow or shadowing plays an important role. This could be a character sketch, a flash piece, memoir, poem, or a start on something longer.

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You may write anything that concerns 'a shadow,' but you could start with one of the following:
* Is someone being "shadowed?" (i.e., followed)
* Does a character discover his "shadow" side, i.e., the dark side of his personality?
* Does someone live "in the shadows?" (e.g., is depressed, in hiding, or under some constraint)
* Does someone live in the shadow of another person, e.g., son overshadowed by a father?
* Does a character have a strong impact on others or situations, e.g., "cast a long shadow?"
* Does a 'shadowy character' figure importantly?
* Perhaps a shadow on an X-ray or a window curtain plays an important part.

Be creative and imaginative. Enjoy the exercise.

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Exercise: Write a piece of no more than 400 words in which a shadow or shadowing plays an important role. This could be a character sketch, a flash piece, memoir, poem, or a start on something longer.

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In your critique consider the writer's creative approach to the idea of the shadow. Is it fresh, unique, interesting? What do you like about it? What works or doesn't? Could the idea be explored further? Could the author improve
the piece? 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 December 30th, 2011

2011-12-30T07:48:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year!

The Internet Writing Workshop would like to wish all of its members and blog readers a happy, healthy, prosperous, and productive new year.

This Day In Writing History

On December 30th, 1816, the legendary British poet Percy Bysshe Shelley married his second wife, writer Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, who would become famous for her classic horror novel, Frankenstein.

Five years earlier, after he was expelled from college for refusing to recant the atheist views expressed in a pamphlet he'd written, Percy Bysshe Shelley, then nineteen years old, went to Scotland.

There, he married his 16-year-old girlfriend, Harriet Westbrook, the daughter of a pub owner. They were married on August 28th, 1811, and Shelley's father disinherited him as a result.

Three years later, Shelley's marriage to Harriet had become unhappy. He often left her alone with their daughter, Ianthe.

When he went to visit the writer, journalist, and philosopher William Godwin at his home and bookshop in London, Shelley also met his daughter, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, with whom he fell in love.

On July 28th, 1814, Percy Bysshe Shelley left his wife and ran off with Mary, taking Mary's stepsister Claire Clairmont along for company.

They sailed about Europe, wandered through France, and settled in Switzerland, living mostly on a small inheritance Percy had received from his grandfather. Six weeks later, broke and homesick, they returned to England.

In the summer of 1816, Shelley and Mary made another trip to Switzerland, at the behest of Claire Clairmont, who wanted them to meet the great poet Lord Byron - her ex-lover, whose affections she hoped to recapture.

The Shelleys and Byron rented neighboring houses on Lake Geneva. Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron became good friends, and their conversations got Shelley's creative juices flowing again; he began writing prolifically.

In December of 1816, not long after the Shelleys returned to England, Percy's estranged wife Harriet committed suicide, drowning herself in the Serpentine in Hyde Park, London.

A few weeks after Harriet's body was recovered, Percy and Mary Shelley were properly married, partly so Percy could regain custody of his children. Unfortunately, the court refused to grant him custody of his children because he was an atheist. They were placed with foster parents.

Six years later, on July 8th, 1822, Percy Bysshe Shelley drowned in a storm while sailing from Livorno to Lirici on his schooner, the Don Juan. The boat, which was custom made for Shelley in Genoa, sank after being pounded by the sudden storm.

Shelley claimed to have had a premonition of his death. Mary Shelley would later claim that her husband's boat wasn't seaworthy. Most believe that the boat was seaworthy and sank as the result of both the violent storm and the poor seamanship of Percy Shelley and his two mates.

Some have claimed that Percy Shelley may have been depressed and committed suicide at sea, while others believe that Shelley's boat was attacked by pirates who mistook it for Lord Byron's ship.

There is also evidence, albeit scattered and contradictory, that Shelley was murdered for political reasons by an agent of the British government, which he had antagonized with his anti-monarchist, pro-Irish views, writings, and activities.

When Shelley's body washed ashore, he was cremated on the beach as per the requirements of the quarantine laws of the time. His heart was rescued from the pyre by his friend, writer / adventurer Edward Trelawny, and given to Mary Shelley, who kept it with her until the day she died, after which, it was interred next to her grave.

Quote Of The Day

"A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds." - Percy Bysshe Shelley

Vanguard Video

Today's video features a reading from Percy Bysshe Shelley's classic essay, A Defense Of Poetry. Enjoy!

Notes For December 29th, 2011

2011-12-29T12:06:00.000-08:00

This Day In Writing History

On December 29th, 1916, James Joyce's classic first novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, was published in the United States. It was the first publication of the novel in book form, as it had previously been published in a serialized format in Ezra Pound's literary magazine, The Egoist, from 1914-15.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was a complete rewrite of Stephen Hero, an earlier novel Joyce had been working on from 1904-05. Frustrated, Joyce abandoned it, but an incomplete first draft of Stephen Hero would be published posthumously in 1944.

Told in Joyce's dazzling, trademark stream-of-consciousness narrative style, (and with his trademark use of dashes in place of quotation marks) A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was an autobiographical novel that told the story of the physical, intellectual, philosophical, political, and spiritual coming-of-age of its main character, Stephen Dedalus.

Named after the first Christian martyr, St. Stephen, who also had conflicts with the established religion of his homeland, and Dedalus, the architect of ancient Greek myth who became trapped in a labyrinth of his own design, Stephen Dedalus begins to question the Catholic doctrine he was brought up to believe in. He eventually rebels against the Church and renounces his religion.

In Dedalus' native Ireland, the Church exerts a tremendous amount of influence on and power over all aspects of secular life, including the government. Whether one is on the political left or right, or in the middle, one cannot escape the power and influence of the Catholic Church.

Realizing this, Stephen Dedalus refuses to commit himself to any political party or beliefs. He also realizes that there is no future for him in Ireland, so he leaves the country and moves abroad to pursue his artistic calling.

In a 1907 lecture, Joyce discussed the issues that Dedalus faces in the novel:

The Irishman, finding himself in another environment, outside Ireland, very often knows how to make his worth felt. The economic and intellectual conditions of his homeland do not permit the individual to develop.

The spirit of the country has been weakened by centuries of useless struggle and broken treaties. Individual initiative has been paralyzed by the influence and admonitions of the church, while the body has been shackled by peelers, duty officers and soldiers. No self-respecting person wants to stay in Ireland. Instead he will run from it, as if from a country that has been subjected to a visitation by an angry Jove.

A seminal early novel that established the literary style and personal philosophy of one of the world's greatest writers, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a must read for anyone interested in James Joyce or great novels.

Its main character, Stephen Dedalus, would reappear as one of the main characters in Joyce's controversial epic masterpiece, Ulysses.

Quote Of The Day

"Art is the human disposition of sensible or intelligible matter for an aesthetic end." - James Joyce

Vanguard Video

Today's video features a rare recording of James Joyce himself reading from his classic novel, Finnegan's Wake. Enjoy!

Notes For December 28th, 2011

2011-12-28T11:47:00.000-08:00

This Day In Writing History

On December 28th, 1917, A Neglected Anniversary, the famous satirical essay by legendary American essayist, satirist, and journalist H.L. Mencken, was published in the New York Evening Mail.

The essay appeared to be a legitimate article on the American invention of the bathtub, but it was really a hoax - a practical joke on the American press and one of many classic Mencken jabs at the American bourgeoisie, which he liked to call the booboisie.

In a narrative parodying the style of an editorial, Mencken chided the public for failing to recognize such an important American cultural event as the anniversary of the invention of the bathtub.

"Not a plumber fired a salute or hung out a flag. Not a governor proclaimed a day of prayer. Not a newspaper called attention to the day," he lamented. To forget such an important anniversary was downright unpatriotic!

The nation had simply forgotten that the very first bathtubs appeared in Cincinnati. Why? Mencken believed it was because the bathtub had been denounced by the watchdogs of society as "an epicurean and obnoxious toy from England, designed to corrupt the democratic simplicity of the Republic."

The bathtub was also denounced by the American medical establishment, which believed that bathing in a tub caused "phthisic, rheumatic fevers, inflammation of the lungs and the whole category of zymotic diseases."

In a (seemingly) thoroughly researched account of the Great Bathtub Debate, Mencken observed:

The noise of the controversy soon reached other cities, and in more than one place medical opposition reached such strength that it was reflected in legislation. Late in 1843, for example, the Philadelphia Common Council considered an ordinance prohibiting bathing between November 1 and March 15, and it failed of passage by but two votes.

During the same year the legislature of Virginia laid a tax of $30 a year on all bathtubs that might be set up, and in Hartford, Providence, Charleston and Wilmington (Del.) special and very heavy water rates were levied upon those who had them. Boston, very early in 1845, made bathing unlawful except upon medical advice, but the ordinance was never enforced and in 1862 it was repealed.

Mencken was surprised and delighted when newspapers across the country fell for his phony article on the history of the American bathtub and republished it. Not only that, the "facts" in the article were added to reference books and touted by the health and hygiene industry.

The makers of calendars for the White House observed Mencken's anniversary of the bathtub and his claim that Millard Fillmore had been the first U.S. President to install one at the White House.

Eight years after he wrote the bathtub article, Mencken decided it was time to end the joke and expose the hoax. He published a confession, but some people believed that was the real hoax, and his phony bathtub anniversary continued to be commemorated.

Mencken had written A Neglected Anniversary as a satirical slap at both the gullibility of the American booboisie and the American press, which had been acting as part of the government's propaganda machine. In 1917, when the article was published, the United States had entered World War 1. Unlike World War 2, the U.S. had not been attacked.

Many Americans were apprehensive about entering World War 1 to fight Germany and her allies. So, for propaganda purposes, the press smeared everything German. American citizens of German descent were denounced as "dirty Huns" and their patriotism was questioned. Even prominent German-American writers like H.L. Mencken and his close friend Theodore Dreiser were denounced.

The propaganda machine went to such absurd lengths that sauerkraut, the popular German side dish, had been renamed "liberty cabbage" by the U.S. government. Sound familiar? Remember "freedom fries?"

When the press smeared him for daring to admit that he wasn't ashamed of his German heritage and that he admired German culture, Mencken had enough. A Neglected Anniversary was his revenge on the press for being part of the propaganda machine instead of the objective journalists they were supposed to be.

What did Mencken think of Germany during the second World War? When Hitler first came to power, Mencken dismissed him as a buffoon. When the Nazis began persecuting Jews, Mencken compared Hitler's Third Reich to the American Ku Klux Klan.

And, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt refused to admit Jewish refugees into the United States, Mencken blasted him publicly. He was one of the first American journalists to speak out against the persecution of Jews in Germany at a time when even the New York Times remained silent on the issue.

H.L. Mencken died in 1956 at the age of 75. One can only imagine what he'd think of the times we live in now, and media outlets like the Fox News Channel that serve the propaganda machine, presenting lies as truths.

Quote Of The Day

"A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier." - H.L. Mencken

Vanguard Video

Today's video features a clip of a rare interview with H.L. Mencken - the only recording of his voice known to exist. Enjoy!

IWW Members' Publishing Successes

2011-12-28T00:56:00.000-08:00

As the year winds down, many Internet Writing Workshop members continue to wind up enthusiasm for writing and finding publishing success.

We lead our final 2011 list with Rosana Atreya's announcement; she stayed the course for five years, and her shortlisted book (up for the Tibor Jones South Asia Prize for unpublished manuscripts) exemplifies purpose and perseverance.

Ann Hite and Mel Jacob also made major announcements and have much to celebrate, so be sure to read through to the end and discover what promises to be a very Happy New Year for them and other IWW members.

Congratulations to all for some well deserved publishing successes!

Jody

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Rasana Atreya

My book, Tell A Thousand Lies, has been shortlisted for the Tibor Jones South Asia Prize for unpublished manuscripts.

Needless to say, Fiction group on IWW gets a big thank you (with specific mentions of Holly Michael, Carol Kean, Yael Politis, Regina Zeller Wingate, Vrinda Baliga, Silvia Villalobos).

And let's not forget all the wonderful people in Practice-W who put up with my pathetic first attempts, gently steering me to better writing: Albert Ervine, Alice Folkart, Mira Desai, Kathy Highcove, Wayne Scheer, Carol Hicks. Please forgive me if I've left out names.

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Bill Backstrom

My very short story, "Midnight Crossing," was the Dec. 15 selection for OneFortyFiction.

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Barry Basden

"Hawaiian Reservations," started as just another little nailpolish story. Then it got really long, with a new title. It was snapped up a few hours after submission to Airplane Reading.

Instant gratification.

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Jan Bridgeford-Smith

My short story, "Grace's Good Intentions," was published in the inaugural edition of Lady Ink Magazine. The work of several IWW members can be found in this first issue!

The PDF version is a modest price and the publication is filled with interesting stories, poems, and art that "...seeks to promote an egalitarian view of women...and non-cliched treatments of the female form."

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Mark Budman

A great review of Sudden Flash Youth: 65 Short-Short Stories. I am a co-editor.

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Guilie Castillo

The link to my story, "Mischievous Moonlight," is now live on Fiction365.

Heartfelt gratitude to Wayne for this; after his Yahoo yesterday, I submitted a piece to Pure Slush and it's been accepted.

The piece is "Piano Sonata in C Major, K 545," which started as an exercise for Practice. Thank you so much to everyone that helped to make it stronger and publishable.

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Jeannette de Beauvoir

My play about Harriet Quimby and Amelia Earhart was just published in the first issue of Lady Ink.

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Ann Hite

I received the best of news late yesterday afternoon. The second book in the Black Mountain series will be published by Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. And I even get a slightly higher advance and an exciting promotional plan this time around ;). Those of us in the publishing industry know this is not a small accomplishment with the hard times the book business is going through at the moment. I'm very excited and see this as a wonderful Christmas gift. More exciting news to come about promotion for both Ghost and new book but this by far is thrilling. Ghost has only been out three months! We're on a roll.

Thank you for all your support and belief in me. I don't know what I'd do without you.

Also, Ghost On Black Mountain is one of the ten finalists for The Townsend Prize for Best Fiction. This is a prize given away every two years. My publisher is thrilled, but not as thrilled as me ;). Just being a finalist is a dream come true and gives me a place in Southern Fiction.

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Mel Jacob

Just got the offer for a mystery to be published in July 2012. That means I'll have two novels coming out in 2012.

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Jacquelynn Rasmenia Massoud

My story, "Muddy Promise" has been published by Every Day Fiction and is now online.

It may be worth mentioning that Every Day Fiction does pay $3 U.S. for a story. This can buy me two espressos from the café up the road. So, $3 = a moment of happiness.

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Pauline Micciche

My story, "The White Shoes," came in second in the public voting phase of the Columbus Creative Cooperative's "Shoes" Flash Fiction Contest. Unfortunately it did not win one of the prizes in the final phase conducted by Columbus Creative Cooperative judges.

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Sarah Morgan

I haven't been writing much of late, but I'm pleased as punch to see my little "Rubber Boot Koan" appears in Four and Twenty's December 2011 issue. Click here for the pdf version and scroll down through the poems. Mine is number 19.

I've found the turnaround from submission to acceptance (or not) is quite quick. It's a fun place and the editors are great to work with.

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Bob Sanchez

Holly Jahangiri did a great job interviewing me at her blog, The Next Goal.

I'd love it if you'd stop by and leave a comment.

Five Amazon reviews in December--two for When Pigs Fly and three for Little Mountain.

I'm tickled!

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Wayne Scheer

My story, "Early Morning Reverie," is up at Pure Slush.

Fiction365 bought my story, "The Dance of the Long-Time Marrieds." It's set for publication in about a month and a half. They pay $10 for fiction ranging from flash to full-length stories.

Pure Slush accepted my flash, "A Jazz Tune-Up" for their January 18 issue. Each month is devoted to a theme. January's theme is music. They are still accepting stories for January.

Two small victories.

An old flash from Practice, "There's Always Hope," is up at Airplane Reading. Barry Basden is right about how this is a good site if you need instant gratification. I sent them the story last night. It was accepted and up on their site in the morning. They're looking for stories involving airplane travel.

My poem, "Keeping the Earth in Orbit," has been accepted at Long Story Short for a future issue.

Flash Fiction Offensive puts the offensive in Christmas stories. The editor has been putting up Christmas Grit for a while now and my flash, "Home for the Holidays," was published December 26. It's the place to go if you need an antidote for holiday sweets.

I have a "Bouquet of Shorts" up at Apollo's Lyre. FYI: I've notified the editor about two errors that need correcting.

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Pat St. Pierre

My poem "The Green Shuttered Cape" was one of the 10 honorable mentions in the 14th Mattia International Poetry Contest (a Canadian contest). I have won honorable mentions there several times.

Just received an email from Silver Boomer Books that published "The Harsh and the Heart" military poems/stories (a poem of mine) in print; it will be an ebook on Amazon's Kindle.

So I guess that's more exposure of my work.

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Joanna M. Weston

I'm so pleased that my poem, "Rain," is up at the Camel Saloon.

A poem, "The Gardener," is up at Mused Online, the current issue, 9th from the bottom!

Two stories up at Nailpolish Stories. I just had to try these, thanks to Barry.

Happy New Year.

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Notes For December 27th, 2011

2011-12-27T12:31:00.000-08:00

This Day In Writing History

On December 27th, 1904, Peter Pan, the classic play by the famous Scottish playwright and novelist J.M. Barrie, opened in London at the Duke of York's Theatre. The play, whose full title was Peter Pan, or the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up, a beloved fairy tale which the author would novelize seven years after its stage premiere, actually had its roots in tragedy.

In 1866, when James M. Barrie was six years old, his 13-year-old brother David died suddenly. He was killed in an ice skating accident, leaving their mother devastated, as David had been her favorite son. To ease his mother's grief, (and finally get some attention from her) James took to wearing David's clothes in her presence and whistling the way David always did.

Barrie's mother was able to come to terms with her grief, and took comfort in knowing that David would be a boy forever, and never grow up to leave her. James took similar comfort in dealing with his own grief over his brother's death. Although the character wasn't named after him, it would be David he was thinking of when he conceived the character of Peter Pan - another boy who would never grow up.

Peter Pan was named after Peter Llewelyn Davies, one of the five Llewelyn Davies boys. Barrie was a close friend of the Llewelyn Davies family; the boys - Peter, George, John, Michael, and Nicholas - called him Uncle Jim. After the sudden deaths of their parents, Barrie was named one of their guardians in their mother's will.

The play opens with Peter Pan making another of his secret nighttime visits to the Darling family of Kensignton, London, to listen to Mrs. Darling tell her children a bedtime story. Peter is a boy of about twelve years old. He never grew up, and doesn't want to. He has become an immortal child who can fly. He lives in a magical place called Neverland.

On this particular visit, Peter is accidentally spotted. He flees, but loses his shadow. When he returns later to get it back, he wakes Mrs. Darling's oldest child, Wendy - a girl of about Peter's age. After she reattaches Peter's shadow to him, he invites Wendy and her two brothers, John (about ten years old) and Michael (about five) to Neverland. To get there, he teaches them how to fly.

In Neverland, the Darling children have many adventures. They meet the Lost Boys - whom Peter rescued after they got lost in Kensington Gardens - and Peter's fairy friend, Tinker Bell, who seethes with jealousy when Wendy falls in love with Peter and he begins to have romantic feelings for her.

Soon, however, Peter Pan finds himself once again battling his archenemy, the murderous pirate Captain James Hook, who blames Peter for his hand being bitten off by a crocodile. First, Peter saves Indian (Native American) princess Tiger Lily from Captain Hook and his pirate crew, then he must save Wendy, John, and Michael when they're captured by Hook.

The most famous scene in the play finds Peter, not realizing she's been kidnapped, deciding to take his medicine to please Wendy. After kidnapping Wendy and her brothers, Captain Hook had poisoned the medicine. Tinker Bell, having no time to warn Peter, drinks the medicine herself.

As she lies near death, Tinker Bell tells Peter that her life could be saved if children believed in fairies. So, Peter turns to the audience and pleads with the children watching to clap their hands if they believe in fairies. This always results in an explosion of applause, and Tinker Bell is saved.

In the end, Peter saves Wendy and her brothers and feeds Captain Hook to the crocodile who bit off his hand. Then he sails Hook's ship back to London. Peter wants Wendy to stay with him in Neverland, but she decides that her place is at her home in London. She, like all children, must grow up.

Not wanting to lose Wendy, Peter decides to trick her into thinking that her mother has forgotten about her, but when he realizes how much Mrs. Darling misses her children, he reconsiders.

In a surprise twist, it's hinted that Mrs. Darling was Peter's friend before she decided to grow up. Peter promises to visit Wendy every spring. The play ends with Wendy looking out her window and calling to him, "You won't forget to come for me, Peter? Please, please don't forget!"

When Peter Pan premiered in London in 1904, Peter was played by a woman - Nina Boucicault, the daughter of playwright Dion Boucicault. When the play opened on Broadway the following year, Maude Adams was cast as Peter Pan. It became a tradition for Peter to be played by a woman.

In 1954, a new Broadway musical version of Peter Pan opened, featuring Mary Martin in the title role. She would become the most famous actress to play Peter Pan on stage. Other notable Peters include Sandy Duncan and Cathy Rigby.

Peter Pan would also be adapted several times as a feature film, including the famous 1953 Disney animated musical, with Peter voiced by Disney child star Bobby Driscoll.

Hook, a 1991 adaptation, was an unusual sequel that found Peter Pan (Robin Williams) finally grown up. Now a middle aged husband and father, Peter must return to Neverland to battle Captain Hook (Dustin Hoffman), who has kidnapped his two children.

In 2003, Peter Pan, a lavish, big budget live action feature film adaptation of the play, was released. The acclaimed film featured Jeremy Sumpter as Peter, Rachel Hurd-Wood as Wendy, and Jason Issacs in a dual role as Captain Hook and Mr. Darling. (It was also traditional for Hook and Mr. Darling to be played by the same actor.)

Seven years after his play debuted in London, J.M. Barrie published a novelization of Peter Pan called Peter and Wendy. It would be somewhat different from the original play script, as Barrie would continually revise the play. He would publish another novel, Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens in 1906.

Throughout his literary career, J.M. Barrie authored many novels and plays. He died of pneumonia in June of 1937 at the age of 77. In his will, Barrie left all the rights to Peter Pan to the Great Ormond Street Hospital - England's leading chidren's hospital.

Quote Of The Day

"All the world is made of faith, and trust, and pixie dust." - J.M. Barrie

Vanguard Video

Today's video features the official theatrical trailer for 2003 feature film adaptation of J.M. Barrie's classic play, Peter Pan. Enjoy!

This Week's Practice Exercise

2011-12-25T05:49:00.000-08:00

This Little Light of Mine

Prepared by: Alice Folkart
Posted on: December 25, 2011

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In 400 words or less write a scene that takes place on the night of the Winter Solstice, the longest night of the year, and show us someone or something bringing light into the darkness.

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Our ancestors regarded the lengthening darkness of winter and the longest night of the year, the Winter Solstice, as a threat. They feared the darkness would never end, the sun wouldn't come back, crops would fail, and they would die, a fear which led to the development of rituals to chase away the darkness and beckon the light's return, where bonfires, torches, lamps and candles were important.

This exercise asks us to show the contrast between the time of darkness and the coming of light. You may set your scene in the past, present or future, in any culture. It might be as simple as the electricity going out and someone replacing a fuse or finding the flashlight. Or the scene might be dramatic--a man kindling a fire in desperate circumstances; nostalgic-- a family lighting the candles of the Menorah; or exciting, like the lighting of the huge bonfires along the levees in New Orleans. You might look at what the displays of Christmas lights do for the mood of communities. Why, in the dead of winter, do we need to 'lighten up?'

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In 400 words or less write a scene that takes place on the night of the Winter Solstice, the longest night of the year, and show us someone or something bringing light into the darkness.

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In your critique, look at whether the author has made you feel the threat of the darkness. Can you sense the relief brought by the coming of light? Do we participate in the story through the feelings of characters, description of the scene or through the development of the plot? What did you like best about the story? Could the story be improved? 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 December 23rd, 2011

2011-12-23T13:29:00.000-08:00

Happy Holidays!

We at the Internet Writing Workshop would like to wish all of our members and blog readers a happy and safe holiday season. For your holiday reading, I recommend A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, A Child's Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas, and Old Christmas by Washington Irving.

This Day In Writing History

On December 23rd, 1926, the famous American poet, philosopher, and activist Robert Bly was born. He was born in Lac qui Parle County, Minnesota. After graduating high school in 1944, Bly joined the Navy and served for two years. He then enrolled at St. Olaf College in Minnesota, where he stayed for a year before transferring to Harvard University.

At Harvard, Bly's fellow undergraduate students included a group of poets and writers who would later become famous, such as George Plimpton, John Hawkes, Kenneth Koch, John Ashbery, and Frank O'Hara. Robert Bly graduated Harvard in 1950 and moved to New York, where he spent the next few years.

In 1952, Bly received a Fulbright Grant to travel to Norway and translate Norwegian poetry into English. Being of Norwegian descent himself, Bly also took time to meet his Norwegian relatives.

While working on his poetry translations, Bly encountered the works of other internationally renowned poets who were barely known in the United States, including Pablo Neruda, Cesar Vallejo, Antonio Machado, Gunnar Ekelof, Georg Trakl, Rumi, Mirabai, and Harry Martinson.

Bly was determined to create an American forum for English translations of the works of those and other foreign poets. So, he founded a succession of literary magazines that introduced them to the writers (and readers) of his generation. He also published essays on American poets.

In 1954, he entered the Iowa Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa. While there, he met a girl named Carol on a blind date and later married her. She bore him four children and became a successful writer and teacher of the craft. They divorced in 1979. A year later, Bly married his second wife, Ruth.

Robert Bly's first poetry collection, Silence in the Snowy Fields, was published in 1962. It would prove to be a major influence on American poetical voice for the next two decades.

In 1963, Bly published an essay, A Wrong Turning in American Poetry, where he made a case against the influence of T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, and Marianne Moore on American poetical voice, believing that American poets should look toward the likes of Pablo Neruda, Cesar Vallejo, Juan Ramon Jimenez, Antonio Machado, and Rainer Maria Rilke for inspiration.

In 1966, Bly became a political activist, co-founding American Writers Against The Vietnam War. The group organized public readings, meetings, teach-ins, and antiwar rallies and demonstrations. Bly would become a leader in the writing community's opposition to the Vietnam War.

Bly would publish more collections of poetry, including The Light Around the Body (1967), which won him the National Book Award. In 2000, he received the McKnight Foundation's Distinguished Artist Award.

In 2002, he won the Maurice English Poetry Award and was named the University of Minnesota Library's Distinguished Writer. Six years later, in 2008, Bly was named the state of Minnesota's first poet laureate.

In addition to his poetry collections, Robert Bly wrote non-fiction books on a variety of subjects, including poetry and philosophy. His most famous non-fiction book combined both poetry and philosophy.

Iron John: A Book About Men (1990) uses an obscure Brothers Grimm fairy tale to deliver a philosophical treatise on the masculinity of the modern man.

Bly argues that the male psyche has been damaged by both the chauvinistic, aggressive "macho man" model of the 1950s (which was rejuvenated and embraced by the Reagan conservatives of the 1980s) and the "sensitive man" model of the 1970s created in part by the feminist movement.

Instead of these equally destructive models, Bly proposes an alternative model of manhood - a man of strength, bravery, intelligence, and conviction who is also a nurturer and not afraid to show (and share) his emotions.

Bly also proposes a return to the rituals of guiding boys into manhood. Iron John: A Book About Men has been credited with starting the Mythopoetic men's movement of the early 1990s.

In 2006, the University of Minnesota purchased Bly's archive of over 80,000 pages of handwritten manuscripts, a journal covering nearly 50 years of his life, notebooks filled with poems, early drafts of translations, his correspondence with many other writers, and hundreds of audio and video tapes. The collection is housed at the Elmer L. Andersen Library on the University's campus.

Quote Of The Day

"The beginning of love is a horror of emptiness." - Robert Bly

Vanguard Video

Today's video features Robert Bly reading his poem Talking Into the Ear of a Donkey at his 80th birthday party at the Guthrie Theatre. Enjoy!

Notes For December 22nd, 2011

2011-12-22T13:45:00.000-08:00

This Day In Writing History

On December 22nd, 1849, the legendary Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky was forced to suffer the psychological torture of a mock execution at the hands of Czar Nicholas I.

Dostoevsky was prepared for execution and made to stand in front of a firing squad. Just as he thought the soldiers were about to fire, he was given a reprieve, taken away, and sentenced to four years of hard labor at a prison camp in Omsk, Siberia.

Dostoevsky had been arrested for being a member of the Petrashevsky Circle, a liberal intellectual group founded by Mikhail Petrashevsky, a follower of French utopian socialist Charles Fourier.

The Petrashevsky Circle opposed the czarist autocracy and Russian serfdom. Their members included writers, teachers, students, government officials, military officers, and others.

Czar Nicholas I, fearful that the revolutions being waged in other countries would spread to Russia, mistakenly believed that the Petrashevsky Circle was a subversive revolutionary organization and ordered the arrest of its members.

While serving his time at the squalid, freezing, and filthy prison camp, Dostoevsky became disillusioned with Western ideas and converted to Russian Orthodox Christianity, planting the seeds for the next phase of his literary career.

He would later become famous for his legendary novels Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869), and The Brothers Karamazov, (1881) cementing his legacy as one of the greatest novelists of all time.

Fyodor Dostoevsky died of a lung hemorrhage from emphysema and an epileptic seizure on February 9th, 1881, at the age of 59.

Quote Of The Day

"It is not the brains that matter most, but that which guides them - the character, the heart, generous qualities, progressive ideas." - Fyodor Dostoevsky

Vanguard Video

Today's video features a reading from Fyodor Dostoevsky's classic novel, The Brothers Karamazov. Enjoy!

Notes For December 21st, 2011

2011-12-21T11:44:00.000-08:00

This Day In Writing History

On December 21st, 1879, A Doll's House, the classic play by legendary Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, opened in Copenhagen. Ibsen, born into an affluent family in Skien, Norway, took up writing while studying as an apprentice pharmacist. At this time, his parents, who were both descended from some of Norway's oldest and most respected families, experienced sudden financial ruin.

Ibsen's father plunged into severe depression. His mother sought solace in religion. They would both serve to inspire the characters in their son's plays, which often dealt with financial adversity, moral conflicts, and the hypocrisy and dark secrets that often lurk beneath cloaks of respectability. Henrik Ibsen would become one of the greatest playwrights of all time - and one of the most controversial. A Doll's House would become his most famous play.

A Doll's House opens with Nora Helmer, a middle class housewife and mother, returning home after doing her Christmas shopping. Her husband, Torvald, has a new job as a bank manager, and both he and Nora believe that their finances will improve. Torvald is terrified of debt; Nora behaves childishly, but her husband enjoys treating her like a child. He instructs her like a parent and indulges her whims.

Nora's old girlfriend Christine Linde arrives for a visit. Christine is a childless widow whose husband left her no money, so she has supported herself by doing various jobs. She's looking for more work, preferably work that's not too physically demanding.

Nora tells Christine the secret she's been keeping from her husband: when Torvald fell seriously ill, Nora borrowed money from disgraced lawyer Nils Krogstad to save his life. To protect her husband's pride, Nora made him and everyone else believe that she inherited the money from her father, who had died at the time.

Nora has been repaying her debt by skimming money from her housekeeping budget and secretly working, making handwritten copies of papers. Being able to earn her own money "as if she were a man" makes Nora proud. Now that her husband has a new job, the extra money he'll give her, combined with her secret earnings, will finally enable Nora to pay off her debt completely.

Nora asks Torvald to give Christine a secretarial job at his bank. He agrees. Later, Nora is approached by Nils Krogstad, who also works at Torvald's bank. He fears that he will be laid off to make room for Christine's position and demands that Nora help him keep his job. When she refuses, he threatens to reveal that she forged her husband's name on the loan bond.

Krogstad warns her that her reputation will be ruined like his if he exposes her forgery. He doesn't go into detail about his own indiscretion, but says that he did it for the same reason as Nora - to provide for a seriously ill spouse.

Krogstad leaves, but Torvald, who had seen him, asks Nora if Krogstad tried to get her to help save his job. Nora asks about Krogstad's indiscretion, and Torvald tells her that he committed forgery, then escaped prosecution by playing a "cunning trick."

Torvald would have trusted Krogstad had he admitted his guilt, but by continuing to feign innocence, Krogstad "has lost all moral character." Torvald believes that a parent who "lives a lie" poisons his children and causes them to become criminals as well. This distresses Nora greatly.

When Krogstad does lose his job, he arrives to tell Nora that while he no longer cares about the loan he made her, he intends to use the forged bond to blackmail Torvald into not only retaining his position but giving him a promotion as well. When Nora tells Christine of this, Christine reveals that she and Krogstad were in love once, and she'll talk to him.

Christine tells Krogstad that she always loved him and was forced to marry her husband out of financial desperation. She blames herself for Krogstad's disgrace. Moved, Krogstad abandons his blackmail plan, but Christine believes that Torvald should know the truth, for the sake of his and Nora's marriage.

When Torvald learns the truth about Krogstad's loan to Nora, he explodes. He berates Nora, denouncing her as a dishonest and immoral woman and an unfit mother. He declares that their marriage is over, and will only be preserved for the sake of appearance.

When Krogstad tells him that he has no intention of blackmailing him, Torvald burns the incriminating evidence and takes back his harsh words to Nora. But instead of recognizing the agonizing choice Nora made for the sake of his health, he attributes her actions to her foolishness, which is one of her most endearing feminine traits.

Nora finally realizes that the strong and gallant man she thought she'd married is a weak-willed, hypocritical, self-absorbed narcissist whose love for her was really love for himself for being a wonderful husband.

The play ends with Nora declaring that her sham of a marriage is over. She's leaving Torvald and her children and will live alone while she tries to find out who she is and decide what to do with her life. All her life, she's been treated like a doll - a plaything - first by her father, then by her husband, and she's not going to take it anymore.

Torvald insists that Nora do her duties as wife and mother, but Nora says that her first duty is to herself. She reveals that she had planned to kill herself to save Torvald's reputation because she thought that he would sacrifice his reputation to save hers.

Now she knows that would have been a pointless act, as Torvald only cares about himself. Before the curtain falls, Nora lets herself out of the house, leaving behind her wedding ring and keys. Her narcissistic husband is left behind as well, in a state of confusion.

A Doll's House was received with a mixture of high praise and loud cries of outrage. Ibsen's fellow playwright, George Bernard Shaw, found the play exhilarating. Most of Ibsen's fellow Scandinavians loved it; at the time the play premiered in Copenhagen, sales of printed copies were record breaking. But some critics saw in the play a direct assault on the sanctity of marriage.

For the play's debut in Germany, Ibsen was forced to write an alternate ending. The lead actress refused to play Nora as she was written, and producers demanded that the ending be changed as well, to make the play more palatable to conservative German audiences.

So, in that production, instead of leaving her husband, Nora decides to stay with Torvald for the sake of their children. Ibsen later condemned the alternate ending as a disgrace to the original play, calling it a "barbaric outrage."

A Doll's House would later be adapted for the radio, screen, and television. It is rightfully considered to be one of the greatest plays ever written.

Quote Of The Day

"The majority is never right. Never, I tell you! That's one of these lies in society that no free and intelligent man can help rebelling against. Who are the people that make up the biggest proportion of the population -- the intelligent ones or the fools? I think we can agree it's the fools, no matter where you go in this world, it's the fools that form the overwhelming majority." - Henrik Ibsen

Vanguard Video

Today's video features a clip from a rare 1959 live TV production of A Doll's House, featuring Julie Harris and Christopher Plummer as Nora and Torvald. Enjoy! Note: You'll have to click on Watch On YouTube to see it.

Notes For December 20th, 2011

2011-12-20T15:23:00.000-08:00

This Day In Writing History

On December 20th, 1929, Lady Chatterley's Lover, the classic novel by the legendary English writer D.H. Lawrence, was banned as legally obscene by the United States.

Lawrence's novel told the story of Lady Constance Chatterley, whose husband Sir Clifford's war injuries have left him crippled, impotent, and embittered. Lady Chatterley soon finds herself driven to the brink of madness by sexual frustration.

Finally, in desperation, she embarks on a passionate affair with her gamekeeper, Oliver Mellors. The affair leads her to realize that in order to truly live, she (and all human beings) needs to be alive not only intellectually and emotionally, but sexually as well.

Due to the novel's daring philosophy, explicit and erotic depictions of sexual encounters, and use of language considered obscene, including the words fuck and cunt, Lady Chatterley's Lover was banned in the United States.

When he wrote the novel, D.H. Lawrence was hoping to create a breakthrough work of literature that would set the literary world alight - a challenging, thought provoking novel that would open people's eyes and minds. He got his wish, though he wouldn't live to see it granted.

The content of Lady Chatterley's Lover made it impossible to publish in Lawrence's native England. The uncensored first edition was published in Italy in June of 1928, in an initial press run of 1,000 copies, all of them signed by the author. It sold out across Europe.

In early 1929, when British Customs agents learned that copies of the novel were being imported into the UK, they quickly began seizing them. As a result of the UK ban, and bans in other European countries, cheap pirated editions of the novel were produced en masse and sold on the black market and under the counter in certain bookshops.

In response to the pirated editions, Lawrence decided to self-publish a new, authorized uncensored second edition. Printed by a publisher friend of his in Paris, the signed second edition was released in a serialized version and sold via subscription.

The subscriptions were sold and shipped discreetly to countries where Lady Chatterley's Lover had been banned. Despite the continued presence of pirated editions, Lawrence's new official version sold well and made him a healthy profit. But soon, Customs agents in various countries caught on to the subscription plan, and the novel was banned yet again.

Lawrence had hoped that in the United States, whose constitution's First Amendment guaranteed freedom of expression, he would have an unrestricted market for his novel. Unfortunately, at the time, there was a federal law on the books called the Comstock Act which prohibited the shipment of obscene materials through the mail.

The Comstock Act, which would remain in effect in various forms until the Supreme Court struck it down completely in 1965, had a definition of obscenity so vague that its creator, Postal Inspector Anthony Comstock, even used it to block the shipment of certain medical textbooks to medical students. Years earlier, Comstock used his law to have James Joyce's classic epic novel Ulysses declared obscene.

By December of 1929, U.S. Customs agents had begun seizing all copies of Lady Chatterley's Lover that came into America. D.H. Lawrence, bemoaning the fate of his novel at the hands of "policemen, prudes, and swindlers," realized that he may have to do what he dreaded most - prepare a bowdlerized version of his novel:

"So I begin to be tempted and start to expurgate. But impossible! I might as well try to clip my own nose into shape with scissors. The book bleeds."

D.H. Lawrence was suffering from tuberculosis before Lady Chatterley's Lover became embroiled in a censorship battle. The stress resulting from the persecution of the novel and his vigorous attempts to defend it caused his frail health to deteriorate quickly. He died in March of 1930 at the age of 44.

The United States government's ban of Lady Chatterley's Lover would remain in effect for thirty years. Then, in 1959, legendary American publisher Barney Rosset of Grove Press published the original uncensored version of the novel in defiance of the ban, setting the stage for a landmark trial where it would be ruled not legally obscene. The ruling would be upheld by the Second Court of Appeals in March of 1960.

Around the same time that Lady Chatterley's Lover was being tried for obscenity in the United States, the legendary British publishing house Penguin Books defied the ban on it in England and faced a similar trial. In November of 1960, the novel was ruled not legally obscene by the Central Criminal Court at the Old Bailey.

Quote Of The Day

"The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted." - D.H. Lawrence

Vanguard Video

Today's video features an excerpt from D.H. Lawrence's famous novel, Lady Chatterley's Lover, read by Emilia Fox. Enjoy!

Notes For December 16th, 2011

2011-12-16T13:53:00.000-08:00

This Day In Writing History

On December 16th, 1775, the legendary English novelist Jane Austen was born in Steventon, Hampshire, England. Born into a large upper class family, Jane had six brothers and one sister, Cassandra.

With five sons to educate, (Jane's brother George was mentally handicapped and sent to live elsewhere) the Austens couldn't afford to send Jane and her sister to school, too. (When Jane was eight, the girls did go to Oxford for a year to begin their formal education, but then they fell ill with typhus and the family's finances became strained.)

So, the girls were well educated by their father and older brothers. Jane's clergyman father, William Austen, provided his daughters access to his large and eclectic library of books. He also provided them with writing and drawing materials.

Though part of the British upper class, the Austens were a liberal, intellectual family. Beginning around the time Jane was seven years old, the family staged plays privately for the amusement of themselves and their relatives and friends. Most of the plays were comedies and no doubt cultivated Jane's talents for comedy and satire.

She began writing her own plays, poems, and stories at the age of twelve. These works were originally written for her and her family's amusement, but she made clean copies of the manuscripts and organized them into three bound volumes known as the Juvenilia.

Among the works in the Juvenilia were Love And Friendship, a satirical epistolary novella, and The History of England, a scathing parody of Oliver Goldsmith's historical work of the same name, featuring watercolor illustrations by Jane's sister, Cassandra.

Scholar Richard Jenkyns has compared Austen's Juvenilia to the works of 18th century British novelist Laurence Sterne and the 20th century British comedy troupe, Monty Python's Flying Circus.

As she grew into womanhood, Jane Austen became involved in activities typical for young women of her age and social class. She practiced the piano, helped her mother and sister supervise the servants, attended church regularly, and socialized with her friends and neighbors. Socializing at the time usually involved dancing, and as her brother Henry later observed, "Jane was fond of dancing and excelled at it."

Although she had become an accomplished seamstress, at around the age of fourteen, she decided that she wanted to be a professional writer. In 1793, at the age of eighteen, Jane began work on a novella, Lady Susan, which she completed two years later.

In this epistolary novella, Lady Susan is an intelligent, attractive, and self-centered middle aged widow who uses her beauty and charm to manipulate and seduce both married and single men alike in her quest to snare another rich husband. She also tries to marry off her daughter Frederica, whom she considers stupid and stubborn, to a rich man. Frederica, however, is a sweet and sensible girl, and will have none of that.

Lady Susan was considered risque and shocking for its time, but Jane's liberal parents supported her writing endeavors. Around the time she completed the manuscript, the twenty-year-old Jane Austen met Tom Lefroy, the nephew of her neighbors.

Having just graduated from university, Lefroy, a young Irishman, had come to London to train as a barrister. He and Jane met at a social gathering, and it was love at first sight. They spent a lot of time together, but then Tom's family intervened and sent him away. They had decided that Tom and Jane were too young and too poor to marry, despite their social class. Jane never saw him again.

Jane began work on her first full-length novel, Elinor and Marianne, which would later be revised considerably and published as the classic Sense and Sensibility.

While working on her second novel, First Impressions, (which would be revised and later published as Pride and Prejudice) Jane's father tried to get Elinor and Marianne published. It was rejected. Jane probably never knew about it, as she kept writing.

In 1800, William Austen surprised his family by announcing his retirement and his plan to move the family to Bath. Jane was shocked at having to move out of the only home she had ever known. In Bath, she fell into a deep depression and her writing productivity slowed down to almost a standstill. Two years after the move, Jane and her sister visited their old friends, Althea and Catherine Bigg. Their younger brother, Harris Bigg, was back home, having returned following his graduation from Oxford.

Jane had known Harris since they were both young. He was a large, unattractive man who rarely spoke. When he did speak, he stuttered, engaged in aggressive conversation, and was completely tactless. He was, however, an heir to his family's considerable fortune, so when he proposed to Jane, she accepted.

Marriage to Harris would be practical - he could take care of her, provide a comfortable life for her parents in their old age, and a home for her unmarried sister. The next morning, though, Jane realized she had made a terrible mistake and withdrew her acceptance.

In 1804, Jane began work on a new novel, The Watsons, but it would remain unfinished. Several months after she started writing it, her father died suddenly. This left Jane, her sister Cassandra, and their mother penniless.

Jane's brothers Edward, James, Henry, and Francis contributed to the support of their sisters and mother. The women lived in rented rooms in Bath and Southampton for the next four years. Then, Edward's fortunes improved and he moved them into a cottage on his estate in Chawton.

Feeling secure again, Jane returned to her writing, and her level of productivity soared. In 1811, her first full-length novel, Sense and Sensibility, was finally published. The book was published anonymously, under the name "A Lady." The reviews were great and the first edition sold out.

The royalties provided Jane with both financial and psychological independence. She continued to publish classic novels, including Pride and Prejudice (1813) and Mansfield Park (1814), the first editions of which had also sold out.

After her novel Emma was published in 1815, Jane learned that the Prince Regent admired her writing and kept a set of her novels at every one of his residences. His librarian sent her an invitation to meet with the Prince at his home in London.

Jane disliked the Prince, but she couldn't refuse the invitation. She would later base her satirical piece, Plan of a Novel, (1815) on the many suggestions made to her by the Prince's annoying librarian.

In July of 1816, Jane completed the first draft of her next novel, The Elliots, which would later be published as Persuasion. Earlier in the year, she had fallen ill, but ignored her illness and kept writing at her usual pace.

As a result, her health began a long and slow deterioration. As the illness progressed, she lost all of her energy and experienced increasing difficulty in walking. Jane Austen died the following year at the age of 41. Her last two novels, Persuasion and Northanger Abbey, would be published posthumously in 1817.

Most of Jane's biographers relied on Dr. Vincent Cope's 1964 retrospective diagnosis of Addison's disease. Some claimed that Jane suffered from Hodgkin's lymphoma, a form of cancer. In a recent work, Katherine White of Britain's Addison's Disease Self Help Group suggested that Jane Austen most likely died of bovine tuberculosis, a common disease during her time that was contracted by drinking unpasteurized milk.

To this day, Jane Austen is rightfully considered one of the greatest English novelists of all time. Her works are still studied and admired by readers around the world.

Quote Of The Day

"There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart." - Jane Austen

Vanguard Video

Today's video features a reading from Jane Austen's classic novel, Pride and Prejudice, performed by the acclaimed British actress, Helena Bonham Carter. Enjoy!

Notes For December 15th, 2011

2011-12-15T11:32:00.000-08:00

This Day In History

On December 15th, 1936, the legendary British writer George Orwell (the pseudonym of Eric Blair) delivered the completed manuscript for his famous non-fiction book, The Road To Wigan Pier (1937), before leaving for Spain to help fight the fascists in the Spanish Civil War.

The Road To Wigan Pier was Orwell's account of life in Wigan, a poor coal mining town in Northern England. To research his book, Orwell lived like one of the locals, in a dirty rented room above a tripe shop.

He met many Wiganers, took extensive notes on the living conditions and wages, explored the mine, and spent days in the library researching public health records, working conditions in mines, and other subjects.

The resulting book is divided into two parts; the first part is a straightforward documentary on life in Wigan. The second part is a philosophical treatise that asks and attempts to answer a question: if socialism can improve the appalling conditions in Wigan and towns like it around the world, then why aren't we all socialists?

George Orwell was a lifelong socialist, and he believed that socialism could improve the condition of towns like Wigan. Why then was socialism not universally accepted? Orwell believed that reason was the ferocious prejudice of the conservative white Christian middle class against the kind of people they associated with socialism.

Among these "undesirables" were the lower class poor, blacks and Jews, intellectuals, atheists and agnostics, libertines, hippies (or sandal-wearers, as Orwell called them) pacifists, feminists, and others. Orwell concluded that "The ordinary man may not flinch from a dictatorship of the proletariat, if you offer it tactfully; offer him a dictatorship of the prigs, and he gets ready to fight."

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, right wingers in the United States and around the world embraced these novels as the bibles of anti-communism. George Orwell became their hero, and this gave way to a popular misconception that Orwell had been an arch conservative - perhaps even a fascist - though he was actually a staunch socialist.

Why then did Orwell write his famous novels? During the Spanish Civil War, 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 fascist army. 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 its members 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 Spanish Civil War. Orwell was wounded in action, shot in the throat by a sniper. While he recovered in a POUM hospital, he had a lot of time to think, and he came to hate Soviet communism.

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 than the one of poverty, despair, and apathy that he experienced while researching and writing The Road To Wigan Pier.

George Orwell died of tuberculosis in January of 1950, at the age of 46.

Quote Of The Day

"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." - George Orwell

Vanguard Video

Today's video features a reading from George Orwell's classic novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, performed by Christina Woo during a Banned Books Week ceremony. Enjoy!

Notes For December 14th, 2011

2011-12-14T15:06:00.000-08:00

This Day In Writing History

On December 14th, 1916, the famous American writer Shirley Jackson was born. She was born in San Francisco, California, to an upper-middle class family. When she was a young girl, the family moved across the country to Rochester, New York, where she later graduated from Brighton High School.

After high school, Shirley Jackson attended first the University of Rochester, then Syracuse University. While a student at Syracuse, her first published short story, Janice (1938), appeared, and through her work with the university's literary magazine, she met Stanley Edgar Hyman, who would become both a famous literary critic and her husband.

Shirley and Stanley settled down in rural Vermont and had four children - two sons and two daughters - who would become somewhat famous themselves when their mother included fictionalized versions of them in her humorous memoirs, Life Among the Savages (1953) and Raising Demons (1957).

Although Shirley's literary career - and sadly, her life - would be short lived, she wrote six novels, several children's books, and numerous short stories. She would famously quip, "Fifty percent of my life was spent washing and dressing the children, cooking, washing dishes and clothes, and mending."

Shirley Jackson's first novel, The Road Through the Wall was published in 1948. Inspired by the upper-middle class California suburb she had spent her early childhood in, the novel tells the dark stories of the people who live in a seemingly ideal community that is tearing itself apart on the inside. Meanwhile, a new road being built threatens to expose the isolated community to the outside world.

Jackson's first novel introduced her trademark prose style and fascination with the dark side of human nature. In her later novels, such as The Bird's Nest (1954) and The Sundial (1958), Jackson ventured into all out horror - stories that combined supernatural and psychological horror. This was nothing new to her. Jackson's most famous short story, The Lottery, dealt with similar themes.

The Lottery, first published in The New Yorker in 1948, told the story of a small, rural American town with a horrific secret. The story begins with the town's 300 residents acting strange and nervous, as June 27th approaches. That's when they will partake in their annual ritual, called "the lottery." In preparation for the ritual, children collect stones while the adults assemble for the event.

The reader soon learns that "the lottery" is an ancient ritual held to choose a human sacrifice to ensure a good harvest. In the first round, the head of each family chooses a slip of paper. Bill Hutchinson receives the paper with the black dot on it, so the sacrifice will come from his family.

In the second round, each Hutchinson family member chooses a slip of paper. Bill's wife Tessie receives the paper with the black dot. The townspeople stone her to death while she denounces the lottery to her dying breath.

The Lottery was quite a shocker for readers in 1948, and hundreds of letters poured in to the New Yorker. Shirley described the reactions as "bewilderment, speculation and old-fashioned abuse." Some charged her with a calculated, subversive attack on American values and religious faith.

The story would be republished in book form as the title story of the collection, The Lottery and Other Stories (1949). It would be adapted as an acclaimed short film in 1969, a made-for-TV feature film in 1996, and as a short film again in 2007.

Shirley Jackson's most famous novel, The Haunting of Hill House, was published in 1959. The brilliant supernatural horror story told the tale of Dr. John Montague, a parapsychologist who rents the famous and supposedly haunted Hill House for a summer.

Montague intends to prove that the house is in fact possessed by supernatural forces. Accompanying him are two people who have already experienced supernatural phenomena. They are Theodora, a psychic, and Eleanor, a shy, troubled recluse who as a girl witnessed poltergeist activity in and around her family's home.

The haunting soon begins, and as the novel progresses, it becomes obvious that the evil forces in Hill House are intent on possessing the vulnerable Eleanor, as frightening incidents begin to erode her sanity. Dr. Montague's bossy, arrogant, and tactless wife later arrives to help her husband with his investigation, along with boys' school headmaster Arthur Parker, who is also interested in the supernatural. Will any of these people survive Hill House?

The Haunting of Hill House was adapted first as an acclaimed feature film called The Haunting in 1963, starring Julie Harris, Claire Bloom and Richard Johnson, and again in a mediocre 1999 remake starring Liam Neeson and Catherine Zeta-Jones.

In his 1981 non-fiction book Danse Macabre, an analysis of horror in literature, radio, film, and comics, legendary horror novelist Stephen King proclaimed The Haunting of Hill House to be one of the greatest horror novels of the late 20th century. The novel's masterful prose and power to scare can be seen in the famous opening paragraph:

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.

As Shirley Jackson's reputation grew as a horror novelist, her husband Stanley started a myth that she practiced witchcraft. This was done as a publicity stunt to sell books, but many people took it seriously. Shirley found it funny. Later, the myth gave her the idea to write The Witchcraft of Salem Village (1956), a children's book based on the Salem witch trials.

Throughout her life, Shirley suffered from mental and psychosomatic illnesses. These illnesses, and the effects of the various prescription drugs she took to treat them caused her health to decline early in life. She was also overweight and a heavy smoker.

Shirley Jackson died in her sleep of heart failure in August of 1965 at the age of 48. In 1996, a crate of her unpublished short stories was found in the barn behind her home. The best of these stories were published later that year as the short story collection, Just An Ordinary Day.

In 2007, the Shirley Jackson Award was established, with permission from her estate, to honor her literary legacy and recognize outstanding achievement in psychological suspense, horror, and dark fantasy literature.

Quote Of The Day

"I have always loved to use fear, to take it and comprehend it and make it work and consolidate a situation where I was afraid and take it whole and work from there." - Shirley Jackson

Vanguard Video

Today's video features the acclaimed 1969 short film adaptation of Shirley Jackson's classic short story, The Lottery. Enjoy!

Notes For December 13th, 2011

2011-12-13T16:43:00.000-08:00

This Day In Writing History

On December 13th, 1915, the famous Canadian-American crime thriller writer Kenneth Millar, best known by his pseudonym Ross Macdonald, was born. He was born in Los Gatos, California, to Canadian parents who then moved back to their hometown of Kitchener, Ontario.

When Millar was a boy, his father suddenly walked out on the family. Millar found himself moving frequently, shuffled between his mother and various relatives. Years later, the themes of broken homes and domestic discord would feature prominently in his fiction.

In 1938, while living in Canada, the 23-year-old Kenneth Millar met and married his wife, Margaret Sturm, who would become a successful mystery writer under her married name, Margaret Millar. She bore him a daughter, Linda. Kenneth Millar began his literary career writing short stories for pulp magazines.

To avoid being confused with his wife, Kenneth Millar took the pen name John Macdonald. Then he learned that there was a famous writer called John D. Macdonald. To avoid confusion again, Millar changed his pseudonym to John Ross Macadonald before settling on Ross Macdonald as his permanent pen name.

For his college education, Kenneth Millar attended the University of Michigan in the United States, where he earned a degree in literature. In 1944, while doing his graduate work, his first novel was published.

The Dark Tunnel, aka I Die Slowly, published under his first pseudonym John Macdonald, was a spy thriller. In it, college professor Robert Branch ridicules his best friend for suspecting that a Nazi spy may be lurking in their sleepy Midwestern town. Branch is more interested in the fact that his German ex-girlfriend has accepted a position at the university where he teaches.

Trouble lands a one-two punch when first Branch's ex is suddenly engaged to marry the son of the university's German professor, then Branch witnesses his suspicious best friend fall to his death from his office window. Branch is the only one who doesn't believe that his friend's death was a suicide. When the professor tries to solve the crime, he finds himself marked for death.

The same year that Kenneth Millar's first novel was published, he joined the Navy, as World War 2 was still raging. He served a two-year tour of duty as a communications officer. After his discharge in 1946, he returned to Michigan, earned his Ph.D., and continued with his literary career.

Millar's third novel, Blue City (1947), marked his transition to hard-boiled detective fiction. It told the story of Johnny Weather, a young soldier who returns from the war to find that his estranged father is dead. His father, a nightclub owner, was a prominent figure involved in the corruption of the town, and the police are more than happy to let his murder remain unsolved.

As Johnny Weather tries to solve the crime, he finds that more people than just the cops prefer that his father's murder remains unsolved, even the man's ex-wife, who attempts to seduce Johnny. The novel would be adapted as a feature film in 1986.

In 1949, Kenneth Millar published The Moving Target, his first novel featuring a detective character who had been the subject of a short story series. Lew Archer, named after writer Lew Wallace and Philip Marlowe's partner Miles Archer, was not your typical detective. We learn a lot about him in his first novel.

Big (6'2") and tough, yet intelligent and empathetic, Lew Archer possesses a far greater depth of humanity than the average hard-boiled detective. A troubled child (he says that he once "took the strap away from my old man") turned petty thief, Archer was befriended and reformed by a kindhearted older policeman.

Archer became a cop himself, training with the Long Beach (California) Police Department. When he finds that the department is a cesspool of corruption, he won't go along with it, and is kicked off the force. With the war on, he joins the Army and serves in military intelligence. After the war ends, he returns home and becomes a private detective.

While he solves crimes, Archer pines for his ex-wife Sue and drinks too much. In his first novel, he's hired by the dispassionate wife of an eccentric oil tycoon who has mysteriously vanished. His attempts to solve the crime lead him to a strange cast of characters and numerous other crimes that must be solved before he can solve the one that he was hired to investigate.

What makes the Lew Archer novels so memorable is that they're more than just detective novels. Using incredibly complex plots and adding a great deal of psychological depth and insights to his characters' motivations, Millar's detective novels were essentially part whodunit and part psychological thriller.

A huge hit with genre fans and literary critics alike, one of Millar's greatest admirers was his close friend, the legendary, Pulitzer Prize winning writer Eudora Welty. Millar would write 18 Lew Archer novels in all. His last, The Blue Hammer, was published in 1976.

Kenneth Millar, aka Ross Macdonald, died of Alzheimer's disease in 1983. He was 67 years old.

Quote Of The Day

"There's nothing wrong with Southern California that a rise in the ocean level wouldn't cure" - Ross Macdonald (Kenneth Millar)

Vanguard Video

Today's video features the original theatrical trailer for the Harper, the feature film adaptation of Ross Macdonald's first Lew Archer novel, The Moving Target. In this movie, the detective was renamed Lew Harper and played by the great Paul Newman. Enjoy!

IWW Members' Publishing Successes

2011-12-13T09:05:00.000-08:00

Internet Writing Workshop members continue to find publishing success in all venues. Congratulations to this week's crew!

Jody

------------------

G.K. Adams

My personal essay, "Hurricane Ike's Unexpected Fruit," has been accepted by Texas Gardener. Thanks to all on the nonfiction list who commented. I couldn't've done it without you!

~~~

Rick Bylina

Okay, a bit of a Christmas present to pubbed writers on IWW--publicity, a bit of shameless self-promotion--naturally, and another long interview up on the web this morning--finally.

Listed the 2011 pubbed books that I know of from IWW writers along with some other friends of mine on my blog this morning. My Monday blog entry usually has over 100 hits so hopefully it's more exposure for you. If I missed you, add yours in comments or through an email to me. I can edit the blog entry.

The author interview, done two months ago, finally showed up on Book Bags and Cat Naps. I actually meet two out of three criteria the web owner cited for self-pubbed best-seller success. Guess which two?

~~~

Barbara Johnson

Published: "The Internet Writing Workshop" with review of The Stasi File by Peter Bernhardt.

~~~

Tom Mahony

Here's a review of my novel, Flooding Granite, at Paddling Life Magazine.

~~~

Guilie Castillo Oriard

My story "Mischievous Moonlight," critiqued in Fiction, will be published on Fiction 365 this Friday, Dec. 16th.

~~~

Wayne Scheer

In an attempt to get into the holiday spirit, One Forty Fiction has published my story in less than one hundred and forty characters, "The Christmas Spirit."

The Foliate Oak Literary Magazine has accepted my flash, "Stop Saluting Seahorses, Ernest," for their January issue.

~~~

Pat St. Pierre

Two of my poems were accepted by Long Story Short Poetry.

One will be published in January. Will send link when published.

~~~

Joanna M. Weston

I have a photo up at The Camel Saloon (poem will follow).

------------------

Notes For December 9th, 2011

2011-12-09T16:33:00.000-08:00

This Day In Writing History

On December 9th, 1608, the legendary British poet and polemicist John Milton was born in London, England. He had an older sister and a younger brother. Two baby sisters died in infancy.

Milton was born into an affluent and cultured middle class family. His father was cast out of the family when his own father, (John's grandfather) an insanely devout Catholic, caught him reading an English-language copy of the Bible.

As a child, John Milton lived with his grandmother and siblings. He attended a Protestant church where the minister, Richard Stock, became a close family friend and strong influence on John, who shared in Stock's hatred of the Catholic Church and belief in publicly censuring the sins of the powerful.

Although Milton's parents lived apart from the rest of the family, his father's prosperity provided him tutors. He soon entered St. Paul's School in London, where at the age of 15, he wrote his first known poems - two psalms.

In 1625, Milton enrolled at Christ's College, Cambridge, to be educated for the ministry. He had already begun studying Latin and Greek, and also learned Italian. He continued his language studies at university.

Later, he became friends with Anglo-American theologian and political dissident Roger Williams. Williams also loved languages, and soon, he and Milton were tutoring each other; Milton taught Williams Hebrew in exchange for Williams teaching Milton Dutch.

After graduating Christ's College in 1629. Milton enrolled at the University of Cambridge, from which he graduated with a Master of Arts degree in 1632. Although he had intended to become a minister, he didn't enter the ministry, as he had come to hate the Church of England as well, finding fault with organized religion in general.

He moved in with his parents on the outskirts of London and began educating himself. The family would move to Berkshire, most likely to avoid the plague outbreak.

In addition to Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, and Dutch, Milton became proficient in French and Spanish as well. He also learned Old English and began writing poetry prolifically, though most of his work remained private and would not be published publicly for some time. To earn money, he wrote poetry and masques commissioned by wealthy patrons. Masques were the precursors of musical plays; not operas, but plays with music, singing, and dancing.

In 1638, John Milton embarked on a 15-month tour of France and Italy, accompanied by a servant. In Florence, he met legendary astronomer Galileo, who was under house arrest at the time. When he returned to England, the Bishops' Wars resulted in more armed conflict between England and Scotland.

Milton began a new phase of his writing career - he became a polemicist, writing prose tracts on various subjects; he opposed episcopacy and favored parliamentary government. He also became a private schoolmaster, educating his own nephews and other children from affluent families.

In June of 1643, Milton married Mary Powell, the 16-year-old daughter of a man who owed him money. A month later, unable to stand her cold and domineering 35-year-old husband any longer, Mary deserted him and returned to her family. Due to the outbreak of the English Civil War, Mary remained with her family for two years.

During this time, Milton wrote and published a series of pamphlets wherein he argued in favor of the legality and morality of divorce. The pamphlets outraged the authorities, who confiscated and burned them. When Milton learned of this, he wrote and published Areopagitica, his celebrated anti-censorship tract.

After the Civil War ended, Mary returned to John Milton and they reconciled. She bore him four children and remained with him until her death in 1652. His first published poetry collection, 1645 Poems, appeared late that year.

With the parliamentary victory in the First Civil War, Milton's reputation as a polemicist earned him an appointment as Secretary for Foreign Tongues in March of 1649. In October, he published his famous polemic text, Eikonoklastes, a defense of the execution of Charles I, in response to the Eikon Basilike, a text published by the exiled Charles II and his party, which depicted Charles I as a Christian martyr.

John Milton continued to serve in his position, despite the fact that he had developed an eye disorder (most likely glaucoma) which left him totally blind by 1654. Undaunted, Milton dictated his writings to assistants, which included a sonnet about his condition, On His Blindness, which is one of his best known poems.

After Oliver Cromwell died in 1658, the English Republic collapsed into warring factions. This led to the Restoration, where the government was restored under the rule of the monarchy, as Charles II returned from exile.

The return of the monarchy sent John Milton into hiding, as a warrant was issued for his arrest. His writings were seized and burned. He was eventually arrested and briefly imprisoned until some powerful friends intervened and got him a pardon.

He lived quietly for the last decade of his life, publishing several minor prose works. Then, in 1667, his greatest work was published, one that would establish him as one of the greatest English poets of all time.

Paradise Lost was a book-length, blank verse epic poem based on the biblical story of the fall of Adam and Eve, who were tempted by Satan and then expelled from the Garden of Eden by God.

The poem incorporates paganism and classical Greek references as well as Christianity. It deals not only with the Old Testament's book of Genesis, but incorporates elements from both Testaments of the bible and addresses such diverse topics as marriage, politics, monarchy, fate, sin, and death.

Milton's dazzling work is comprised of twelve "books." The first book opens with Satan and his fellow rebel angels in Hell, just after being cast out of Heaven following their defeat in a war with God.

The last book finds the Archangel Michael telling Adam of the future of the world before leading him and Eve out of the Garden of Eden. Though Adam and Eve have lost the physical Paradise, they have gained the opportunity to enjoy a Paradise within themselves, which is "happier farr."

Milton wrote Paradise Lost over a six year period, from 1658-64, via dictation to his assistants. It would become one of the most famous and influential works of English literature ever written. He would follow it with Paradise Regained, a shorter sequel, published in 1671, along with a play, Simon Agonistes.

John Milton died of kidney failure in 1674, at the age of 66.

Quote Of The Day

"Truth... never comes into the world but like a bastard, to the ignominy of him that brought her forth." - John Milton

Vanguard Video

Today's video features a reading of excerpts from John Milton's classic epic poem, Paradise Lost. Enjoy!

Notes For December 8th, 2011

2011-12-08T12:17:00.000-08:00

This Day In Writing History

On December 8th, 1894, the famous American writer James Thurber was born. He was born in Columbus, Ohio. His father was a clerk and minor politician with dreams of becoming a lawyer or an actor. His mother was a fun-loving practical joker whom he described as "a born comedienne... one of the finest comic talents I think I have ever known."

James Thurber had two brothers. When he was a boy, his brother William accidentally shot him in the eye with an arrow during a game of William Tell. Medical technology was primitive at the time, so James lost his eye. Since the injury prevented him from participating in sports and other recreational activities, Thurber channeled his energy into creative endeavors, taking up writing and drawing.

Thurber attended Ohio State University, but never graduated because his poor eyesight disqualified him from taking a mandatory ROTC course. He would be awarded a degree posthumously, in 1995. After leaving university in 1918, near the close of World War 1, James worked as a code clerk for the Department of State, first in Washington, D.C., then in Paris, a position he would hold until 1920.

After leaving his job as code clerk, Thurber moved back home to Columbus, where he began his writing career, first as a reporter for the Columbus Dispatch. In addition to reporting, he wrote book, film, and play reviews in a weekly column called Credos and Curios.

He moved back to Paris for a time and wrote for several major newspapers as a freelancer. Then, in 1925, he moved to New York City's Greenwich Village, taking a job as a reporter for the New York Evening Post.

Two years later, James Thurber became an editor for the New Yorker magazine, with help from his friend, the famous writer E.B. White. In 1930, White found some of Thurber's drawings in a trash can and submitted them for publication. As a result, Thurber became both a writer and cartoonist for the New Yorker for the next thirty years.

In 1935, he married his second wife, Helen, just one month after his divorce from his first wife was finalized. His marriage to Helen would be a happy one and the couple would remain together until Thurber's death. They had no children, but Thurber's first wife, Althea, had bore him a daughter, Rosemary.

Although James Thurber's first published book, co-written with E.B. White, was a parody of sexual psychology manuals titled Is Sex Necessary, or Why You Feel The Way You Do, Thurber was best known for his short story collections, wherein he established himself as one of the masters of the form.

While dark tales such as The Whip-Poor-Will, The Dog Who Bit People, and The Night The Bed Fell are among his most famous works, his best known and most popular story was a poignant comic gem titled The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty.

Walter Mitty (modeled after Thurber's father) is a mild-mannered nebbish en route to do his weekly shopping with his wife, who has an appointment at the beauty parlor. During this trip, Mitty escapes from his extremely mundane world (and his overbearing wife) through a series of fantastic daydreams.

In these daydreams, he becomes the pilot of a Navy seaplane caught in a storm, a brilliant surgeon performing a revolutionary medical procedure, a cool assassin on trial, and a daring RAF pilot on a secret suicide mission during World War 1. The theme of the story is summed up in the sentence "Success is a journey, not a destination."

In 1947, The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty was adapted as a feature film starring Danny Kaye in the title role. Though he served as script consultant, all of Thurber's suggestions were ignored by producer Samuel Goldwyn. The movie bore little resemblance to Thurber's story, and in a letter written to Life magazine, Thurber expressed his deep hatred of the film. Despite this, Goldwyn insisted that Thurber approved of the project.

Throughout his prolific literary career, James Thurber wrote numerous short stories which were published in dozens of collections. Among these were over 75 fables, the most famous being The Unicorn In The Garden.

In this humorous modern fable, a mild mannered husband sees a unicorn in his garden. When he tells his wife about it, she ridicules him and reminds him that "the unicorn is a mythical beast." He persists, maintaining that the animal is real, so she threatens to have him committed. He doesn't believe her, but she makes good on her threat.

The authorities arrive and the wife tells them that her husband saw a unicorn in the garden. They ask her husband if he saw the unicorn and he says no, because "the unicorn is a mythical beast." So they take the wife away in a straight-jacket and "the husband lived happily ever after!"

Thurber's other writings include numerous nonfiction articles and essays, including humorous essays on the English language and a five-part 1947-48 series for the New Yorker on the popularity of radio soap operas.

In the late 1930s, he co-wrote the hit Broadway play The Male Animal with his college friend, actor-director-writer Elliot Nugent. It would be adapted as a feature film in 1942 that starred Henry Fonda and Olivia de Havilland.

As a cartoonist, Thurber was known for his surreal, satirical drawings. With his eyesight failing, the last cartoon he drew was a self-portrait in yellow crayon on black paper, which appeared on the cover of the July 9th, 1951 issue of Time magazine.

Although he worked in other genres and mediums, James Thurber was best known as a master of the short story. He died on November 2nd, 1961, of complications from pneumonia, following a stroke. He was 66 years old.

Quote Of The Day

"Don't get it right, just get it written." - James Thurber

Vanguard Video

Today's video features the classic 1953 UPA cartoon adaptation of James Thurber's fable, The Unicorn In The Garden. Enjoy!

Notes For December 7th, 2011

2011-12-07T17:31:00.000-08:00

This Day In Writing History>

On December 7th, 1873, the famous American writer Willa Cather was born. The oldest of seven children, she was born Wilella Sibert Cather in Gore, Virginia. When Willa was nine years old, her father moved the family to Nebraska, where he tried his hand first at farming, then at the real estate and insurance business.

The young Willa fell in love with the landscape and weather of the frontier. She also became interested in the cultures of the immigrant and Native American families who lived in the area. All of this would inspire her as a writer.

When Willa enrolled at the University of Nebraska, she chose science for her major, as she had initially planned to become a doctor. Then, during her freshman year, an essay she wrote about Scottish writer Thomas Carlyle was published by the Nebraska State Journal. She soon became a regular contributor to the Journal and changed her major to English, determined to become a writer.

After graduating with a degree in English, Willa Cather moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to take a job writing for the Home Monthly, a women's magazine. From there, she became a drama critic and telegraph editor for the Pittburgh Leader. She also taught high school English, Latin, and algebra. At the Allegheny High School, she became the head of the English department.

In 1906, at the age of 33, Willa moved to New York City to work as an editor for McClure's Magazine, a hugely popular liberal magazine that was famous for its muckraking exposes of corporate crimes and abuses. In addition to her editing duties, her fiction was published alongside that of Mark Twain, Rudyard Kipling, Jack London, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Willa also co-authored the biography Mary Baker Eddy: The Story of Her Life and the History of Christian Science which was published in a serialized format by McClure's in fourteen installments over an eighteen month period. It would later be republished in book form.

After several years working at her hectic editing position, Willa found her own writing output slowing to a crawl. So she bounced back and wrote her first novel. Alexander's Bridge 1912, first published in a serialized format by McClure's, received great reviews from The New York Times and the Atlantic Monthly.

Alexander's Bridge was way ahead of its time in its depiction of a man suffering from mid-life crisis. The middle-aged, married Bartley Alexander, a construction engineer famous for the bridges he's built, finds himself drawn into an affair with an old flame, Hilda Burgoyne. Torn between two loves and tormented, Alexander's life literally comes crashing down around him when he is summoned to Canada to inspect his newest bridge, which is in danger of collapsing.

Willa Cather followed her memorable debut novel with her classic Prairie Trilogy - O Pioneers! (1913), The Song of the Lark (1915), and My Antonia (1918). O Pioneers! told the story of a Swedish immigrant farm family in Nebraska at the turn of the 20th century. In The Song of the Lark, the young heroine Thea Kronborg leaves her Colorado hometown, determined to become an opera star.

My Antonia, the third and most famous novel in the trilogy, chronicles the life of Antonia "Tony" Shimerda, a young Bohemian girl living in the small town of Black Hawk, Nebraska. The novel, which incorporates several previously written short stories, is divided into five "books" and narrated by Jim Burden, a successful lawyer. Antonia was his childhood sweetheart and remains his lifelong friend, though she marries another man and Jim has an affair with another childhood friend, Lena Lingard.

In 1922, Willa published the novel that would win her a Pulitzer Prize. One of Ours is a tale of existential angst set in Nebraska around the time of the first World War. Claude Wheeler, the son of a successful farmer, is attending a Christian college, which he hates. He pleads with his parents to let him enroll at the state university in order to get a better education. They refuse.

Struggling to find meaning in his life, Claude strikes up a friendship with the Erlichs, a family who introduces him to classical music and progressive free thinking. Unfortunately, Claude has the rug pulled out from under him when his father expands the family farm and orders him home to help work it.

Pinned to the farm like a mounted butterfly, a bored and listless Claude finds no fulfillment in farm work. He marries Enid Royce, a childhood friend, but soon realizes that she cares more about her activism and Christian missionary work than him. She ultimately leaves him and goes to China to care for her sister, a missionary who has fallen ill.

Devastated and disillusioned, the only thing that Claude has to take his mind off his miserable life is news of the world war that has broken out in Europe. His entire family is obsessed with the war. When the United States enters the war in 1917, Claude volunteers for military service.

Ironically, despite the hardships and horrors of war, Claude finally finds meaning in his new life as a soldier. Despite all his new responsibilities and all the orders he must follow, he has never felt so free. The idealist without an ideal to cling to now has something to fight for in the hellish trenches of France, as his regiment engages an overwhelming German force in a ferocious battle.

Willa Cather established herself as one of the best writers of the early twentieth century. Unfortunately, her work fell out of favor as the American landscape made a dramatic shift from the Jazz Age to the Great Depression. Discouraged by criticism that her work had become irrelevant, her later writing output was sporadic and she became a recluse. She died of a stroke in 1947 at the age of 73.

Quote Of The Day

"Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen." - Willa Cather

Vanguard Video

Today's video features a reading from Willa Cather's classic, Pulitzer Prize winning novel, One of Ours. Enjoy!

IWW Members' Publishing Successes

2011-12-07T16:32:00.001-08:00

This has been an especially good week for Internet Writing Workshop members, particularly for writing partners Francene Stanley and Edith Parzefall. They -- along with many other list members -- are a true testament to rewards reaped from dedication and perseverance.

We begin this week's list of publishing successes with Francene and Edith's announcement.

Congratulations to this week's crew!

Jody

~~~

Francene Stanley and Edith Parzefall (submitted by Francene)

Over the last year or so, Edith and I have submitted our four-volume novels of the Higher Ground series about a future world after the great flood destroyed the world as we know it.

We've just signed our contracts with Double Dragon Publishing for the first book, Wind Over Troubled Waters, and they are interested in the three further books as well. We're pretty confident they'll be published. Of course, we'll have to wait over a year before the book appears in all its glory as an ebook and paperback.

I can't tell you how excited I am. Years of dedication and perseverance have paid off. I spend seven hours a day at my computer and love every second. If it hadn't been for the Internet Writers Workshop, Edith and I would not have met and this partnership would not have formed. Not only that, but I give credit to the generous, skilled people at Novels-L for honing my writing over the years. Edith is the best partner anyone could have, as I'm sure anyone knows who has been lucky enough to receive a critique from her.

~~~

Jan Bridgeford-Smith

Kathy Highcove, editor of the Valley Scribe newsletter, included my short story, "Minty's Gourd," in the December issue, page 13. It's online now. I subbed a version of the story on the Practice list and as usual, got helpful comments that strengthened the final tale.

Thanks, Kathy, for your constant support of IWW members.

Additionally, my piece "Garden Bounty" is now live at 6 Tales.

Six stories, online for one month...it's a neat site...do hope you'll take a look.

Thanks to all the Practice List folks that read this as a sub and commented; your crits always guide my revisions and final product...thank you.

~~~

Mira Desai

After a monsoon of rejects, I'm glad to announce publication of a story, "Ebony has many shades," in an online anthology, In Her Place.

~~~

Sue Ellis

From January, almost a year ago, my story "A Bucket of Dirt Clods" appeared in Poor Mojo's Almanac(k).

Thanks to everyone in Fiction who commented on this story when it was submitted.

~~~

Dawn Goldsmith

I've been getting several assignments to write profiles of fabric artists. One just sent me a thank you for what I wrote. She said:

"Thank you so much for your eloquence in conveying what I do. I seriously have cried twice today just thinking of it. I can't wait to see more of your writing in upcoming issues!"

That was almost as valuable payment as the check. :) It feels good to get positive feedback.

~~~

Mel Jacob

I have the following book reviews up at SFRevu.com:

The Doctor and the Kid: A Weird West Tale by Mike Resnick
Honor's Paradox (Kencyrath 6) by P.C. Hodgell
Mayan December by Brenda Cooper
Mecha Corps: A Novel of the Armor Wars by Brett Patton
Phases of Gravity by Dan Simmons
Planesrunner (Everness, Book One) by Ian McDonald

I also have the following book reviews up at GumshoeReview.com:

The Angel Makers by Jessica Gregson
Danger in Deer Ridge: A Blackthorne, Inc. by Terry Odell
Dangerous to Know (Lady Emily) by Tasha Alexander
Dead Bolt: A Haunted Home Renovation Mystery by Juliet Blackwell
Double Booked for Death (A Black Cat Bookshop Mystery) by Ali Brandon

Warmest Christmas Wishes is out now available on Melange Books and Lulu.com (I couldn't find the link there, but publisher is checking).

Honey on White Bread by Brenda Whiteside is up on Lulu as is Return to Me by Tara Fox Hill; I edited both.

~~~

Adrienne Ross

I am pleased to say that my flash essay "Pasayten Wilderness" is posted at the web anthology In Her Place: Stories About Women Who Get Around.

If you read it, please consider leaving comments.

~~~

Bob Sanchez

I have a guest post over at Diane Wolfe's Spunk on a Stick and would love it if you'd stop by and say hello. The discussion there is low-cost promotions.

I have a blog appearance at Make Mine Mystery, where the topic is "Learning from the Pros." Please stop by and leave a comment.

~~~

Wayne Scheer

"Kim's Picture," written recently for Practice, has been accepted at Apollo's Lyre for their March issue.

Notes For December 6th, 2011

2011-12-06T15:28:00.000-08:00

This Day In Writing History

On December 6th, 1933, a federal judge ruled that Ulysses, the classic epic novel by legendary Irish writer James Joyce, was not legally obscene. At the time, the novel had been banned in the United States for over ten years.

Beginning in 1918, Ulysses was published in serialized form in the American literary magazine The Little Review.

In 1920, when the magazine published the novel's thirteenth episode, Nausicaä, a moralist group called The New York Society for the Suppression of Vice (NYSSV) objected to the content and determined to keep Ulysses from being published in America in any format.

The NYSSV was founded in 1873 by the notorious Anthony Comstock and his supporters in the Young Men's Christian Association. (Yes, that YMCA.) Comstock was a United States Postal Inspector.

The same year that he founded the NYSSV, he persuaded Congress to pass the Comstock Act, which made it illegal to send obscene materials through the mail. The passage of the Comstock Act resulted in the enacting of "Comstock Laws" at the state and federal level. The last of these laws wouldn't be struck down by the Supreme Court until 1965.

The Comstock Act was a nightmare. His definition of obscenity was so vague that he even used the law and his power as a Postal Inspector to block the shipment of certain medical textbooks to medical students. He had copies of George Bernard Shaw's classic play Mrs. Warren's Profession blocked, calling Shaw "an Irish smut dealer."

The furious playwright remarked: "Comstockery is the world's standing joke at the expense of the United States. Europe likes to hear of such things. It confirms the deep-seated conviction of the Old World that America is a provincial place, a second-rate country-town civilization after all."

Although Comstock enjoyed a public reputation as a devout Christian guardian of morality, privately, he was corrupt - and notoriously so. As a moralist, he destroyed the lives of many innocent people. He proudly admitted to being responsible for 4,000 arrests and 15 suicides.

In his later years, he suffered from poor health after having suffered a severe blow to the head from an unknown attacker. Before he died in 1915, Comstock attracted the attention of an admirer - a young law student named J. Edgar Hoover who agreed with Comstock's beliefs and was interested in his methods of investigation, prosecution, and conviction.

Comstock's NYSSV was successful in its prosecution of The Little Review for publishing the offending episode from Ulysses.

At the first trial in 1921, the literary magazine was ruled legally obscene, and as a result, Ulysses was banned in the United States. The ruling was a product of its time. The Nausicaä episode contained a scene which must have been shocking to 1920s sensibilities.

At the beach, Leopold Bloom (one of the main characters) meets Gerty MacDowell, who has come to watch a fireworks display. Gerty notices Bloom staring at her. Her passion stirred by both him and the fireworks, Gerty deliberately exposes herself to Bloom. He becomes aroused and starts to masturbate, which arouses her in return.

They both reach orgasm as a Roman candle explodes overhead, gushing out "a stream of rain gold hair threads." Afterward, Gerty leaves and reveals herself to be lame, leaving Bloom to contemplate on the beach.

With Joyce's playful punning, the erotic scene becomes a parody of the Catholic Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament ceremony, with Bloom acting out his own version of an Adoration, Gerty's body serving as the body of Christ. The revelation of her lameness is Joyce's biting metaphor for the Catholic Church.

The trial that resulted in Ulysses being banned in the United States drew a huge amount of publicity. As a result, pirated editions of the novel were published and sold on the black market or under the counter in bookshops. It was a bestseller, but Joyce didn't earn a penny from the sale of these pirated books.

In 1933, after twelve years of frustration, Joyce's official U.S. publisher, Random House, decided to set up a test case. They imported an uncensored French edition of Ulysses and had Customs confiscate a copy after the ship was unloaded.

That year, the case of United States vs. One Book Called Ulysses came to trial. On December 6th, 1933, U.S. District Judge John M. Woolsey ruled that Ulysses was not legally obscene.

The NYSSV was outraged and appealed the decision. The case reached the United States Second Court of Appeal, which affirmed it on August 7th, 1934. Ulysses was finally published uncensored in the United States. Most of these editions - including the one that I have - feature the text of the Woolsey ruling as part of the forward.

Woolsey had ruled that Ulysses was not pornographic because it contained no "dirt for dirt's sake." Also, the novel was so hard to understand that people would be unlikely to read it for the purpose of titillation.

British literary scholar and translator Stuart Gilbert wrote that Woolsey's ruling was "epoch-making." He was right. The ruling changed the standard for literary obscenity, making it much harder for would-be censors to declare written works legally obscene, and nearly impossible for an entire novel to be declared obscene because of a few allegedly offending lines or passages contained within it.

Quote Of The Day

“[A writer is] a priest of eternal imagination, transmuting the daily bread of experience into the radiant body of everliving life.” - James Joyce

Vanguard Video

Today's video features a documentary on the censorship trials of James Joyce's Ulysses. Enjoy!

This Week's Practice Exercise

2011-12-04T06:07:00.000-08:00

On The Road (Version 2)
Prepared by: Alice Folkart
Revised and posted on: 4 December 2011

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In 400 words or less show us someone traveling alone or with others. Why is this journey important to the traveler or his/her companions? What is the destination? What do the traveler and his/her companions expect to achieve there?
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Is your story about best friends on the way to Spring Break or a Little League team going to a playoff? Does it follow refugees running from war or perhaps show us someone on a business trip that might make or break a career. Is someone going home?
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In 400 words or less show us someone traveling alone or with others. Why is this journey important to the traveler or his/her companions? What is the destination? What do the traveler and his/her companions expect to achieve there?
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In critiquing, consider the plot and characters. Are both interesting enough to make you want to read on. Whether yes or no, tell us why. Is the landscape through which the characters travel important to the story? What does it contribute? Can you tell if the writer has done any research to provide realistic detail of mode of travel, background, period, and characters? Does it enrich the piece. Would you want to read more?

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 December 2nd, 2011

2011-12-02T13:56:00.000-08:00

This Day In Writing History

On December 2nd, 1867, the legendary British writer Charles Dickens gave the first performance of his first public reading tour of the United States. It wasn't Dickens' first visit; he previously visited the United States and Canada in 1842. He spent that time in the U.S. giving lectures, publicly denouncing slavery, and raising support for the enacting of copyright laws.

Dickens' fierce abolitionist convictions didn't endear him to many Americans during his first visit - he even met with then President John Tyler at the White House to discuss the atrocities he'd witnessed while passing through the Southern slave states. When he returned to England, Dickens wrote American Notes for General Circulation, a travelogue of his visit to America.

Filled with scathing satire, the book described not only the horrors of slavery, but also the vulgarity and ill manners of white Southerners. He also chronicled his visits to prisons and mental institutions and criticized the American press and the poor sanitary conditions of American cities. Despite all this, Dickens had a generally favorable impression of America, though he couldn't forgive the country's insistence on maintaining the practice of slavery.

Twenty-five years later, for his next visit to America, Dickens had planned his first public reading tour. At this time, the 55-year-old writer had become hugely popular in America, and he was moved that the country had finally abolished slavery. So, on November 9th, 1867, Dickens set sail for the United States. He landed in Boston, where he began his public reading tour in America.

Dickens' first reading, like almost of all of his performances on the tour, was sold out. Some fans had slept outside the night before tickets went on sale; as they'd expected, the line for tickets was literally half a mile long.

In attendance for Dickens' first reading in Boston were New England's literary elite, including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, and Charles Eliot Norton. Emerson complained that Dickens' performance was too polished for his taste. Legendary American writer Mark Twain saw Dickens read and dismissed the performance as "glittering frostwork." Mostly, however, the performances earned rave reviews.

That Emerson should criticize Dickens' performance as too polished was surprising considering the fact that he was quite ill for most of the tour, suffering from insomnia, exhaustion, the flu, catarrh, and a limp from neuralgia of the foot. He handed out printed cards of apology to his audiences for his sickness.

Dickens' illness didn't prevent him from reaching his audience and delivering his message. When he read his classic novella, A Christmas Carol (1843) in Boston on Christmas Eve, a local factory owner in attendance experienced a Scrooge-like transformation and sent every one of his employees a turkey.

There were some funny experiences on the tour as well. A little girl recognized him on a train, sat down next to him, and told him how much she loved his books. She also said, "Of course, I do skip some of the very dull parts, once in a while; not the short dull parts, but the long ones." Dickens laughed heartily, then took out his notebook and asked her to elaborate.

Another humorous incident found Dickens recognized by the janitor of the hotel he stayed at in New York. The janitor, a German immigrant, struck up a conversation with Dickens, saying, "Mr. Digguns, you are gread, mein herr. Der is no ent to you! Bedder and bedder. Wot negst!"

Realizing that his health was declining and believing that there would be no more American tours for him, at his last performance in New York, Dickens ended his show with the following announcement:

"Ladies and gentlemen, the shadow of one word has impended over me all this evening, and the time has come at last when the shadow must fall. It is but a very short one, but the weight of such things is not measurable by their length, and two much shorter words express the whole round of our human existence.... Ladies and gentlemen, I beg to bid you farewell - and I pray God bless you, and God bless the land in which I leave you."

Charles Dickens died three years later in 1870, at the age of 58.

Quote Of The Day

“Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.” - Charles Dickens

Vanguard Video

Today's video features a clip from Dickens Reading Dickens, actor Tim Tully's one man show which depicts Charles Dickens giving one of his public reading performances. Enjoy!

Notes For December 1st, 2011

2011-12-01T11:58:00.000-08:00

This Day In Writing History

On December 1st, 1821, Adonais, the classic epic poem by legendary English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, was published. It appeared in the Literary Chronicle and became known as one of the greatest Romantic poems ever written.

Adonais was Shelley's elegy to his close friend, the legendary English poet John Keats, who had died of tuberculosis at the age of 25. Shelley believed that scathing reviews of his poetry, not tuberculosis, had actually killed Keats.

During his short life, Keats' work was loudly derided by critics. It wouldn't be until after his death that Keats was finally recognized as the one of the greatest poets of all time.

In Adonais, Shelley metaphorically depicted Keats' critics as loathsome creatures such as worms, reptiles, and dragons. Other scathing metaphors included "carrion kite" and "a noteless blot on a remembered name."

Keats' girlfriend, Fanny Browne, complained that Adonais made Keats appear overly sensitive and gave him "a weakness of character that only belonged to his ill-health."

The great poet Lord Byron, a mutual friend of Shelley and Keats, recalled his own reaction to negative reviews and quipped, "Instead of bursting a blood-vessel, I drank three bottles of claret and began an answer." In his classic poem Don Juan, Byron described Keats' fate this way:

'Tis strange the mind, that very fiery particle,
Should let itself be snuffed out by an Article.

Shelley's poem wasn't really to blame for the resulting myth of Keats' fragility. Keats had wanted his gravestone to read, "Here lies one whose name was writ in water," but this is how his executors had it engraved:

"This Grave contains all that was Mortal, of a YOUNG ENGLISH POET Who, on his Death Bed, in the Bitterness of his Heart at the Malicious Power of his Enemies, Desired these Words to be engraven on his Tomb Stone."

By the time the engraving was completed on Keats' tombstone, Percy Bysshe Shelley had also died, drowning at sea after his ship went down in a storm.

Quote Of The Day

"Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world." - Percy Bysshe Shelley

Vanguard Video

Today's video features a complete reading of Adonais - performed by Vincent Price! Enjoy!

Notes For November 30th, 2011

2011-11-30T14:59:00.000-08:00

This Day In Writing History

On November 30th, 1835, the legendary American writer Mark Twain was born in Florida, Missouri. He was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, the son of a lawyer and judge. He was the sixth of seven children; only three of his siblings would survive childhood.

When Twain was four years old, his father moved the family to Hannibal, Missouri, a port town on the Mississippi River. Growing up in Hannibal, Twain came to love the town and would model the fictional town of St. Petersberg, Missouri, after it.

Twain's father contracted pneumonia and died when he was eleven years old. A year later, Twain went to work as a printer's devil, (apprentice) where he learned the printing and typesetting trade. By the age of sixteen, he was working as a typesetter and writing articles and humorous pieces for the Hannibal Journal, a newspaper owned by his brother, Orion.

When he turned eighteen, Twain left Hannibal and moved East, living in Cincinnati, Philadelphia, and New York City. He worked as a printer by day and educated himself at night in public libraries. He found a wider spectrum of information available to him in libraries than in conventional schools. He returned to Hannibal four years later.

While traveling by steamboat down the Mississippi to New Orleans, Twain befriended the pilot, Horace E. Bixby, who inspired him to become a steamboat pilot himself. At the time, steamboat piloting was a very prominent and respected position. It also paid well - around $3000 per year, which is equivalent to about $72,000 in today's money. In order to obtain a steamboat pilot's license, one had to go through extensive training.

While Twain was training, his younger brother Henry was killed on another steamboat when it exploded. A month before the explosion, Twain had a dream where his brother died; after he was killed, Twain was racked with guilt, as he had encouraged Henry to train on the ill-fated steamboat and never took the dream seriously. He would develop an interest in parapsychology as a result.

Despite this tragedy, Twain worked as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River until 1861, when the Civil War broke out. His famous pen name, Mark Twain, was a term used by steamboat captains to note that the water was at least two fathoms deep, and thus safe to travel on.

Twain's experiences as a steamboat pilot would lead him to write his classic book, Life on the Mississippi (1883), a combination of non-fiction and fiction in which he mixed autobiography and history with folklore.

In 1861, Twain moved out West and joined his brother Orion, who had been appointed secretary to James W. Nye, the governor of the Nevada Territory. To get there, Twain and Orion traveled two weeks by stagecoach across the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains. The trip would inspire him to write his first classic short story, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County (1865), and his famous travelogue, Roughing It (1872).

When they arrived in Virginia City, Nevada, Twain found work as a miner. He failed at mining, so he switched gears and began working as a journalist for the Territorial Enterprise newspaper, where he first used his famous pen name, Mark Twain.

He moved to San Francisco in 1864, where he met famous writers such as Bret Harte, Artemus Ward, Dan DeQuille, and Ina Coolbrith. Twain's first classic short story, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County would be published a year later in The Saturday Press, a weekly literary newspaper based in New York City.

In 1867, Twain was still working as a journalist when a newspaper sponsored him to take a tour of Europe and the Middle East, during which he wrote a series of popular travel letters. These letters would be compiled and published in book form as his classic travelogue, The Innocents Abroad (1869). While on his tour, Twain met Charles Langdon, whose sister, Olivia, he would later marry.

Twain met Olivia in 1868. It was love at first sight, and within two years, they would be married. She bore him a son and three daughters. Twain's son Langdon died at the age of two from diphtheria. His daughter Susy would die suddenly from meningitis at 24. Daughter Jean, an epileptic, would die at 29 after suffering a seizure in the bathtub. Though oldest daughter Clara would live a long life, her relationship with her father was tempestuous and plagued with scandal.

Mark Twain's wife, Olivia, came from a wealthy, liberal, intellectual family, and through them, he met fellow abolitionists, "socialists, principled atheists and activists for women's rights and social equality" including Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frederick Douglass, and the famous utopian socialist, William Dean, who became a lifelong friend.

Olivia's family and their friends would have a strong influence on Twain's philosophy and writings. Although a Presbyterian, Twain was often critical of religion and once quipped that "if Christ were here now there is one thing he would not be – a Christian."

Twain would become most famous for his classic novels such as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), The Prince and the Pauper (1882), A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889), The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894), Eve's Diary (1906), and many others.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), considered by many to be Twain's greatest novel, was attacked for its abolitionist themes when it was first published. The sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) finds Tom's friend Huckleberry Finn on an adventure of his own. While running away from his guardians, Huck meets Jim, an escaped slave who hopes to make it to Ohio, a free state, and eventually buy his family's freedom so they can join him there.

Through initially opposed to the idea of Jim becoming a free man, when he befriends and travels with him, Huck comes to realize that Jim is a good, intelligent man who deserves to be free. When Jim is betrayed by some grifters and recaptured, Huck helps him escape again even though its against the law to do so - it's considered a form of theft.

Ironically, Twain's novel would be attacked again some seventy years after it was first published - this time for its alleged racism. The NAACP has denounced the novel for its use of the racial epithet nigger and alleged racist stereotyping of blacks.

The novel is often targeted by African-American activists who want it banned from classrooms and school libraries, but Twain scholars point out that the author let his Southern white characters speak their own ugly language as a way of denouncing slavery and the Southern notion that black people were subhuman.

In addition to his writings, Twain was also a lecturer - a speaker in demand all over the world. His lecture tours also helped to establish his reputation as America's greatest humorist and iconoclast. When he ran into financial troubles from bad investments, he would go out on more lecture tours to earn back the money he lost.

During one European tour, Twain was invited to speak as the guest of the Concordia Press Club in Vienna, Austria. In typical Twain style, he gave a speech in German - Die Schrecken der Deutschen Sprache, which means The Horrors of the German Language.

Mark Twain died in 1910 at the age of 74. He will always be remembered as one of the greatest writers of all time and the founding father of American literature.

Quote Of The Day

"Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words." - Mark Twain

Vanguard Video

Today's video features a couple of clips from Hal Holbrook's legendary one-man show, Mark Twain Tonight. Enjoy!

IWW Members' Publishing Successes

2011-11-29T21:29:00.001-08:00

Internet Writing Workshop members continue to find publishing success in all venues. Congratulations to this week's crew!

Jody

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Barry Basden

"Saved, Nevertheless" has been published in Pure Slush's religion issue. I also answered their odd questionnaire.

Thanks to all who commented on this flash.

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Les Denham

For my brother's birthday present (his birthday was last week) I wrote the narrative of a 5000km drive across Australia we made together in 2007, illustrating it copiously with photos we took, and had it printed as a hardcover, 164-page "coffee table" book by Lulu.com.

At the birthday party the book was handed around and many of the guests asked about getting a copy for themselves. One guest, who is Assistant Manager of an independent bookstore in a rural city in NSW asked if she could get a few copies to sell in her store. As a result I ordered three copies to be shipped to her last night.

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Margaret Hamill

My memoir, Two Small Candles and a Little Pine Tree is now in print in the Dec./Jan. issue of Looking Back Magazine. It's probably available in your local book store, or by subscription.

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Mel Jacob

Sold a Valentine's Day story, but no idea when it will be issued. The publisher wants to put it in an anthology because it's short.

Christmas anthology Warmest Christmas Wishes, Melange Books, is now scheduled Dec 4. So it will be out for Christmas!

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Barbara C. Johnson

Why I didn't sleep with Mitt Romney . . . and . . . exclusive article to be released on Monday, November 21st, 2011.

Thanks to all who helped by critiquing.

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Tom Mahony

My story, Rough N' Tender, is up at Diddledog.

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M. Elaine Moore

My very, very short story, "Possessive," is live today at One Forty Fiction.

My poem, "Thankful," joins Pat. St. Pierre's today at the Camel Saloon.

My teeny, tiny story, "Letting Go," is live at 50 Word Stories.

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Loretta Carrico-Russell

My opinion piece on people who collect recyclables was published today in our local daily. It looks little like the original I submitted and it had to be just 600 words - but it found a home! Thank you to all who helped me with this.

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Bob Sanchez

Sarah Morgan posted a very nice review of Little Mountain, and Rasana Atreya gave five stars to When Pigs Fly.

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Wayne Scheer

My story, "The Revenge of the Words," is up at Eric's Hysterics. Thanks to all who helped with this one.

My flash, "Early Morning Reverie," begun in Practice, has been accepted at Pure Slush. It will be published some time in December.

An old story, "Dauntless," was accepted for the inaugural issue of Sole Literary Magazine of Mary Washington University.

My story, "Quiet Desperation," is up at Fiction365. Thanks to the fine folks at Fiction for their help with this one.

My poem, "A Once-in-a-Lifetime Deal," is up at The Camel Saloon. Alice Folkart is to be held responsible for me thinking I can write poetry.

My flash, "Mysterious Ways," has been accepted by Dead Mule for their December issue. This story began as a Practice exercise.

~~~

Pat St. Pierre

My flash fiction "A Fork in the Road" is up today at www.dailylove.net.

Thanks to all who helped to critique.

My poem "Paths on the Beach" (Nonet style) is posted on the Camel Saloon.

My poem "Ingredients" is up at the Camel Saloon.

~~~

Joanna M. Weston

I have two poems in the annual Constellations: A Journal of Poetry and Fiction, edited by Nina Alonso. It is a very elegant print journal.

Notes For November 29th, 2011

2011-11-29T13:21:00.000-08:00

This Day In Writing History

On November 29th, 1832, the legendary American writer Louisa May Alcott was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania. She had three sisters, Anna, Elizabeth, and Abigail, and would base her most famous novel on her experiences growing up with them in New England.

Louisa's father was Amos Bronson Alcott, (who called himself Bronson) a famous teacher and transcendentalist philosopher who belonged to Ralph Waldo Emerson's Transcendentalist Club. In addition to his spiritual beliefs, Bronson shared Emerson's ferocious abolitionist convictions. The Alcott family would host a runaway slave in their home.

In 1840, when she was eight years old, Louisa's father moved the family to Concord, Massachusetts. Growing up in a liberal, intellectual family, she was tutored mostly by her father's friend, legendary writer and philosopher Henry David Thoreau. She also received instruction from Ralph Waldo Emerson and family friends Nathaniel Hawthorne and Margaret Fuller.

Louisa would write of these experiences in an early newspaper article, Transcendental Wild Oats. She would also write of the brief time her family lived in the Utopian Fruitlands commune co-founded by her father. The commune would fail not only because of the members' philosophical extremes, but also due to the severe New England winter for which most of them were unprepared.

Economic hardship would require Louisa to go to work at a very young age, and she worked at such various jobs as governess, seamstress, domestic servant, and occasionally, as a teacher. What she really wanted to be was a writer. Her first book, Flower Fables, was published in 1849, when she was seventeen years old. It was a collection of short stories originally written for Ralph Waldo Emerson's young daughter, Ellen. A year later, she began writing for Atlantic Monthly magazine.

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Louisa served as a Union hospital nurse, caring for wounded and sick soldiers in Georgetown, D.C. She wrote vivid detailed letters home chronicling her experiences. These letters would be revised and published in the Commonwealth newspaper. When they appeared in book form as Hospital Sketches (1863), they brought their author to the attention of critics, who praised her talent.

While she worked to build her career as a writer of traditional fiction, Louisa also wrote sensational, passionate stories and novels strictly for money. They were published under the pseudonym of A.M. Bernard. These early novels were torrid Gothic potboilers with titles like Behind a Mask, or A Woman's Power, A Long Fatal Love Chase, and Pauline's Passion and Punishment. One novel she published anonymously was called A Modern Mephistopheles.

When her collections of children's stories became successful, Louisa was able to devote herself to traditional fiction. In 1868, she published her most famous novel. Originally intended for young adult readers, it would prove to be not only a critical and commercial success, but also one of the great classic works of American literature.

Little Women told the story of the four March sisters, (Jo, Meg, Beth, and Amy) growing up in Concord, Massachusetts, was based on Alcott's experiences growing up with her own three sisters in Concord and Boston. Louisa modeled the character of Jo after herself.

Fifteen-year-old Jo March is the second oldest of the sisters. Intelligent, outspoken, and tomboyish, Jo longs to be a writer. An early feminist, Jo finds herself at odds with the restrictions placed on women in the late 19th century, including not being able to go to college and being pressured to marry.

Through the course of the novel, the March sisters become friends with Theodore "Laurie" Laurence, the handsome, charming, affluent boy next door. An orphan, Laurie lives with his grandfather. He becomes especially close to Jo. They get into various scrapes as Laurie joins in the March sisters' adventures.

The sisters also struggle to overcome their particular character flaws (Jo has a temper, Meg is vain, Beth is shy, and Amy selfish) in order to live up to their parents' expectations and become, well, little women.

The first part of Little Women became a huge hit with both critics and readers, and an overnight sensation, selling over 2,000 copies in 1868. Louisa May Alcott received many letters from fans (and visits from them at her home) clamoring for a sequel.

So, in 1869, Alcott published the second part, Good Wives. Although her fans were begging for Jo to get married - especially to Laurie - she initially resisted the idea, believing that Jo should remain a "literary spinster."

Louisa changed her mind, and in Good Wives, married off not only Jo, but Meg and Amy as well. However, in a surprising twist, Jo marries Friedrich "Fritz" Bhaer, the poor German immigrant and professor who encouraged her to be a serious writer, while Amy eventually marries Laurie.

Louisa would later write, "Jo should have remained a literary spinster, but so many enthusiastic young ladies wrote to me clamorously demanding that she should marry Laurie, or somebody, that I didn't dare refuse and out of perversity went and made a funny match for her."

As for her own spinsterhood, in an interview with literary critic Louise Chandler Moulton, she joked that the reason she herself was a spinster was because she had "fallen in love with so many pretty girls and never once the least bit with any man."

In reality, while traveling through Europe, she'd had a passionate romance with a young man named Ladislas Wisniewski, whom she called Laddie. He was a Polish freedom fighter she'd met in Switzerland. She would base the character of Laurie on Laddie. Though Louisa had written of her affair with Laddie in her journal, she tore out those pages prior to her death.

Little Women would be followed by two sequels: Little Men (1871) and Jo's Boys (1886). Louisa would write more memorable novels including Eight Cousins (1875), Under The Lilacs (1878), and Jack and Jill: A Village Story (1880).

Louisa May Alcott suffered from chronically poor health in her later years, which she attributed to mercury poisoning from a typhoid fever treatment. She ultimately died of a stroke in March of 1888 at the age of 55. Although her early biographers had agreed with her assessment of mercury poisoning, a more recent analysis of her chronic illness indicated that she most likely suffered from lupus.

Quote Of The Day

“Keep good company, read good books, love good things and cultivate soul and body as faithfully as you can." - Louisa May Alcott

Vanguard Video

Today's video features writer Susan Cheever discussing her biography of Louisa May Alcott. Enjoy!

This Week's Practice Exercise

2011-11-27T07:02:00.000-08:00

Caught in the Act
Prepared by: Alice Folkart
Posted on: November 27, 2011

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In 400 words or less write a scene in which someone is 'caught in the act.' Focus on the emotions of the person who discovers what is going on and of the person who is caught. Your scene could rely heavily on description and inner dialogue, or it could give you an opportunity to use dialogue to provide back story. You could open your scene with the 'catching,' or build up to it.

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The 'act' can be something good or something not so good: a child swiping a cookie from the cookie jar, someone doing an anonymous good turn, or a jewel thief helping herself to diamonds, the church secretary taking a cut of the tithes. The scene could show a wife catching her husband in an act that is not what she expected to find—she might be suspecting that her husband is fooling around with her best friend, but when she confronts them, she finds that they're planning a surprise party for her.

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In 400 words or less write a scene in which someone is 'caught in the act.' Focus on the emotions of the person who discovers what is going on and of the person who is caught. Your scene could rely heavily on description and inner dialogue, or it could give you an opportunity to use dialogue to provide back story. You could open your scene with the 'catching,' or build up to it.

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In your critique, consider whether the writer elicits your sympathy for any of the characters, and whether the surprise of catching someone at something is well set up. From the details of this short scene are you able to imagine what went before and might come after. Would you read more?

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 November 25th, 2011

2011-11-25T15:05:00.000-08:00

This Day In Writing History

On November 25th, 1952, The Mousetrap, the famous play by legendary British mystery writer Agatha Christie, opened in London at the Ambassadors Theatre.

The play, a murder mystery, was Christie's adaptation of her own short story, Three Blind Mice. It was first adapted as a radio play, performed on May 30th, 1947, in honor of the 80th birthday of England's Queen Mary.

For the stage version, Agatha Christie had to change the title because there was another play running at the time called Three Blind Mice, and the author of that work, Emile Littler, didn't want Christie's play confused with his.

The title The Mousetrap was suggested by Christie's son-in-law, Anthony Hicks, who observed that it was Hamlet's metaphoric description of the play he uses to "catch the conscience of the King."

In Agatha Christie's deliciously macabre play, a young couple, Giles and Mollie Ralston, have turned the old Monkswell Manor into a successful hotel. One winter day, the Ralstons find themselves snowed in with some guests and a stranded traveler who ran his car into a snowbank.

A policeman, Detective Sergeant Trotter, arrives on skis to warn everyone that a murderer is on the loose and headed for the hotel. When one of the guests (Mrs. Boyle) is killed, the others realize that the murderer is already there. Detective Sergeant Trotter begins his investigation.

Suspicion first falls on the obviously troubled Christopher Wren, but soon it seems that any one of the snowed-in group could be the murderer. As the play progresses, we learn that the murderer's first victim was a woman who served time in prison for abusing the three foster children placed in her care.

The body count continues, the plot thickens, and red herrings abound. Detective Sergeant Trotter plans to set a trap for the killer. Finally, in a shocking surprise twist ending, the murderer is revealed to be...

What, did you think I was going to tell you and ruin the play? Traditionally, after the play ends at the theater, the audience is asked not to reveal the identity of the murderer to those who haven't seen the play. I'm going to observe that tradition. You'll have to see the play for yourself to find out "who done it" and why.

The Mousetrap holds the record for the longest initial run of any play in history, with over 24,000 performances and counting. When the play made its debut in 1952, the original cast featured Sir Richard Attenborough as Detective Sergeant Trotter and his wife, Sheila Sim, as Mollie Ralston. In 1974, after 9,000 performances, the production was moved to St. Martin's Theatre, where it still runs today.

Quote Of The Day

"I specialize in murders of quiet, domestic interest." - Agatha Christie

Vanguard Video

Today's video features the promotional trailer for a recent production of The Mousetrap by the Spotlight Theatre Company in Denver, Colorado. Enjoy!

Notes For November 24th, 2011

2011-11-24T11:44:00.000-08:00

This Day In Writing History

On November 24th, 1859, The Origin Of Species, the famous scientific textbook by Charles Darwin, was published. Its full title was On The Origin Of Species By Means Of Natural Selection, or The Preservation Of Favoured Races In The Struggle For Life. When the sixth edition of the book was published in 1872, the title was shortened to The Origin Of Species.

Charles Darwin was a brilliant English scientist, a former medical student turned biologist who had previously published textbook studies of subjects such as fossils, volcanic islands, and coral reefs. With The Origin Of Species, he laid down the groundwork for his theories of evolution, which, although accepted by the scientific community, remain controversial to this day.

The main theme of The Origin Of Species is natural selection - the process of evolution whereby organisms acquire heritable traits that make it more likely that the organisms will survive and reproduce - traits that allow organisms to adapt to their environment. This was nothing new to science; theories of natural selection go back to the ancient Greek thinkers and philosophers, from Empedocles to Aristotle.

What made Charles Darwin's study of natural selection revolutionary - and controversial - were his theories of evolution concerning common ancestry of species. In the late 18th century, Darwin's grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, proposed a similar theory of how, through evolution, one species can become another.

In 1809, French scientist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck took the idea further with his theory of the transmutation of species. But it was Charles Darwin's landmark study that defined this aspect of evolution as we know it today.

In the mid-19th century, when he published The Origin Of Species, the scientific community in Britain was closely tied to the Church of England. Reactions to Darwin's book were sharply mixed.

Liberal clergymen accepted Darwin's theories, declaring evolution to be God's plan of creation. Conservative (fundamentalist) clergymen decried evolution as blasphemous, taking the Bible's book of Genesis to be the literal truth and scientific fact, calling this "science" creationism.

Creationism and evolution would clash most famously in the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925. John Scopes, a high school science teacher from Tennessee, had been charged with violating that state's Butler Act.

The Butler Act made it unlawful to "teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals" in any state-funded school or university.

Despite a brilliant defense mounted by legendary attorney Clarence Darrow, Scopes was convicted and fined $100, the equivalent of about $1,200 in today's money. The case was appealed to the Tennessee State Supreme Court, which affirmed the conviction, but threw out the fine on a technicality.

The Butler Act would remain on the books in Tennessee until it was voluntarily repealed in 1967. A year later, in the precedent-setting case of Epperson vs. Arkansas, the United States Supreme Court ruled that state's law forbidding the teaching of evolution unconstitutional.

The hotly contested battle between creationism and evolution, which began with the publication of The Origin Of Species 150 years ago, continues to this day.

Quote Of The Day

"The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an agnostic." - Charles Darwin

Vanguard Video

Today's video features a reading from Charles Darwin's The Origin Of Species, performed by British writer Richard Dawkins. Enjoy!

Notes For November 23rd, 2011

2011-11-23T15:45:00.000-08:00

This Day In Writing History

On November 23rd, 1874, Far From The Madding Crowd, the famous novel by the legendary English writer Thomas Hardy, was published in London. It appeared in a serialized format, published by Cornhill Magazine, which at the time was the main rival of All The Year Round, the literary magazine founded by Charles Dickens.

Far From The Madding Crowd is not only one of the greatest love stories ever written, it's also a classic tale of rural English life during the Victorian era. It tells a tale of true love complicated and delayed by stubbornness, pride, and circumstance.

Gabriel Oak is a successful sheep farmer nearing thirty years of age who falls in love with Bathsheba Everdene, a proud, vain, determined, and independent woman eight years his junior who has come to live with her aunt.

Bathsheba grows close to Gabriel - she even saves his life - but when he proposes marriage, she refuses, as she values her independence more than his love. She moves away miles out of town. When Bathsheba and Gabriel are reunited sometime later, things have changed drastically for both of them. Gabriel is ruined when an inexperienced sheepdog runs his flock over the edge of a cliff.

After being forced to sell off all his possessions to settle his debts, Gabriel wanders about looking for work. He happens upon a dangerous fire ravaging a farm and helps to put it out. When the owner of the farm comes over to thank him, it turns out to be Bathsheba, who inherited her uncle's estate. In need of a capable shepherd, she hires Gabriel, although it makes her uncomfortable.

Bathsheba has another admirer - a lonely, repressed, middle-aged farmer named William Boldwood. She decides to play a joke on him and sends him a valentine with the words "Marry Me" written on it. Boldwood, not realizing that it's just a joke, proposes marriage.

Bathsheba doesn't love him, but toys with the idea of marrying him. Despite his shortcomings, he's also affluent and the most eligible bachelor in town. However, she puts off giving him an answer and plays with his affections. When Gabriel finds out, he chides Bathsheba for her thoughtlessness. She fires him.

Later, when bloat threatens to kill all of her sheep, Bathsheba is finally forced to swallow her pride and beg Gabriel for help. He saves her flock, she hires him back, and they become friends again.

Soon, however, Bathsheba falls for a dashing soldier, Sgt. Francis "Frank" Troy. Gabriel tries to discourage her from marrying him, telling her that she'd be better of with William Boldwood. In love with Troy, Bathsheba elopes with him.

When they return from their honeymoon, Troy is approached by Boldwood, who offers him a huge bribe in exchange for Bathsheba. He refuses, and Boldwood vows revenge.

Unfortunately for Bathsheba, her gallant husband soon shows his true colors - he's a compulsive gambler in love with another woman, Fanny Robin. He was going to marry her, but she accidentally went to the wrong church. Humiliated and mistakenly believing that she jilted him, he called off the wedding, not knowing that Fanny was pregnant with his child.

Months later, Troy meets Fanny on the road. A destitute wreck about to give birth, Troy takes pity on her and gives her all the money he has on him. He plans to support her and their child, but she dies in childbirth, along with the baby.

Gabriel tries to conceal all of this from Bathsheba, but she finds out and has the coffin brought to her house. She opens it and sees both mother and child. Troy kisses Fanny's corpse and tells Bathsheba, "This woman is more to me, dead as she is, than ever you were, or are, or can be." Then he leaves her.

Troy takes a long walk to the coast, strips off his clothes, and bathes in the ocean. A riptide carries him out to sea and he's presumed dead.

William Boldwood still determines to marry Bathsheba. This time, out of guilt over all the pain she's caused him, (and others) she agrees to marry him in a few years, when she can have her husband declared legally dead. What she doesn't know is that he's still alive.

When Troy learns that Boldwood has forced Bathsheba to marry him, he returns on Christmas Eve to claim her. He finds her at Boldwood's house and she screams in horror when she sees him.

Boldwood, refusing to give her up, shoots Troy and kills him. He attempts suicide and is later sentenced to hang. Boldwood's death sentence is commuted on the grounds of insanity after his friends petition the Home Secretary for mercy.

Through all of her tribulations, Bathsheba came to rely more and more on her oldest and dearest friend, Gabriel Oak. But one day, he gives notice that he's resigning from her employ. She presses him for an explanation and he reluctantly admits that he's quitting to protect her good name, as people are gossiping that he wants to marry her.

Bathsheba finally realizes that he is the only one who ever truly cared about her - the only one who really loved her. When he summons the courage to ask for her hand again, she accepts without hesitation, and they quietly marry.

A huge hit with Victorian readers and critics, Far From the Madding Crowd would become an all-time classic novel, adapted for the stage, screen, radio, and television. Thomas Hardy would write more classic novels, including Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891) and Jude the Obscure. (1895)

Quote Of The Day

"The business of the poet and the novelist is to show the sorriness underlying the grandest things and the grandeur underlying the sorriest things." - Thomas Hardy

Vanguard Video

Today's video features the original theatrical trailer for the acclaimed 1967 feature film adaptation of Far From the Madding Crowd, directed by John Schlesinger, featuring Julie Christie as Bathsheba Everdene and Alan Bates as Gabriel Oak. Enjoy!

Notes For November 22nd, 2011

2011-11-22T15:56:00.000-08:00

This Day In Writing History

On November 22nd, 1819, the legendary English novelist Mary Anne Evans, best known by her male pen name George Eliot, was born in Warwickshire, England. Growing up, she had more formal education than most girls in the Victorian era. She was an intellectually gifted child and a voracious reader. Her father invested in her education partly because he feared that her homely looks would most likely prevent her from landing a husband.

Mary Anne's father was the manager of Arbury Hall, a magnificent estate belonging to the aristocratic Newdigate family. Because of his position, she was granted access to the estate's formidable library of books, which she used to educate herself from the age of sixteen. Her visits to Arbury Hall exposed her to the stark contrast between the lives of the rich and the poor, which would influence her writing.

Around this time Mary Anne's mother died, so she served as her father's housekeeper and cook. When her brother Isaac married, he and his new wife took over the family home. Mary Anne and her father moved to a new home near Coventry. There, she was introduced to Coventry society, and struck up a friendship with Charles and Cara Bray, a wealthy couple known for their philanthropy and reputation as progressive free thinkers.

Through the Brays, Mary Anne Evans was introduced to the great philosophers and writers of the day, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Owen, Harriet Martineau, and Herbert Spencer. She also met liberal theologians with whom she explored her simmering discontent with the conservative, evangelical Anglican beliefs her father raised her with. When she began questioning the literal truth of the Bible, her father threatened to kick her out of his home.

Mary Anne's father never followed through with his threats. She continued to serve as his cook and housekeeper until he died in 1849. She was 30 years old at the time. A few days after his funeral, she accompanied her friends the Brays on a trip to Switzerland. She decided to remain in Geneva rather than return home with the Brays. There, she was befriended by French artist Francois d'Albert Durade and his wife, Juliet. Francois painted a portrait of her.

The following year, Mary Anne returned to England. Sometimes known as Marian, she began using the name Marian Evans. She determined to become a writer. She stayed with her old friend John Chapman, a radical publisher. She would become the assistant editor of his liberal literary magazine, The Westminster Review. It was unheard for a woman to become a magazine editor during the Victorian era, and her living arrangement with John Chapman would add more fuel to the fire of scandal. The worst was yet to come.

A few years later, in 1854, Mary Anne Evans moved in with George Henry Lewes, a philosopher and critic whom she had met three years earlier. She had finally found her true love, but there was a catch: Lewes was married. He and his wife Agnes had an open marriage. They also had seven children, four of which had been sired by Agnes' lover, Thornton Leigh Hunt. Since Lewes had named himself as the father of Hunt's children on their birth certificates knowing that they were not his, he couldn't divorce Agnes. If he did, he would be considered an accomplice to her adultery and subject to criminal prosecution under British law.

Although they never did marry, Mary Anne and George Henry Lewes considered themselves husband and wife, and lived together as such. Mary Anne even used George's last name. After enjoying what she considered to be her honeymoon in Germany, she resumed her career, editing and writing for The Westminster Review. What she really wanted to be was a novelist. Knowing that women writers in the Victorian era were either derided or not taken seriously, she took the pen name George Eliot.

Mary Anne's first novel, Adam Bede, was published in 1859. Her tale of a handsome young squire in a rural English town caught up in a love "rectangle" who finally realizes who his true love really is became an instant hit. Suddenly, everyone was talking about this new and talented writer named George Eliot whose true identity was a mystery. Speculation about who he might be spread like wildfire. When a failed writer named Joseph Liggins claimed that he was George Eliot and took credit for her work, Mary Anne Evans came forward and proved that she was the real George Eliot.

It wasn't long before word got out about Mary Anne's scandalous relationship with George Henry Lewes. While most of her readers were shocked, her popularity wasn't affected. Neither was her talent, as she continued to write great novels. Two of her best known, classic novels were Silas Marner (1861) and Middlemarch (1871-72).

Silas Marner told the story of the title character, a weaver living in a small town in Northern England in the early 19th century. When Marner is falsely accused of stealing from the Calvinist congregation he belongs to, he's kicked out of Church. His fiancee breaks up with him and marries another man.

Heartbroken, Marner leaves town and settles in the village of Raveloe, where he becomes a bitter, miserly recluse obsessed with gold coins, which he hoards in his home. When someone breaks in and steals all of his gold, Marner sinks into a deep depression. Then, one cold winter night, he finds something far more precious than gold - a golden-haired two-year-old girl who wanders into his home. He follows her tracks in the snow and finds her mother dead of exposure.

Silas Marner decides to adopt the orphaned little girl and names her Eppie after his mother and sister. In raising his loving daughter, Marner's broken heart finally heals. Eppie grows up to be a fine and respected young woman. When the secret of her true parentage is revealed, Eppie's biological father offers her a life of luxury as a gentleman's daughter. She politely refuses, telling him that she could never be happy without her real father - Silas Marner.

Middlemarch would prove to be "George Eliot's" magnum opus - a 900+ page epic novel published in several volumes. The English historical novel, which takes place from 1830-32, would establish the author's reputation as one of the most accurate chroniclers of rural English life in the early Victorian era. This brilliant, classic novel remains to this day one of the most popular works of English literature ever written.

In 1877, five years after the publication of Middlemarch, Mary Anne Evans was introduced to one of her biggest fans, Princess Louise - the daughter of Queen Victoria. Her admiration and acceptance by the royal family squelched the flames of her scandalous personal life. She would court scandal again in 1880, when, two years after the death of her lover George Henry Lewes from illness, she married John Cross, a man twenty years her junior.

Her new husband was supposedly mentally unstable, and when he had an accident during their honeymoon in Venice - he fell off their hotel balcony into the Grand Canal - some speculated that he had attempted suicide. Whatever the cause, John Cross survived. He and Mary Anne returned to England and settled into a new home in Chelsea. Unfortunately, she soon fell ill with a throat infection. She had been suffering from kidney disease for a few years, so the throat infection took a toll on her frail health.

Mary Anne Evans, aka George Eliot, died on December 22nd, 1880, at the age of 61.

Quote Of The Day

“The responsibility of tolerance lies in those who have the wider vision.” - George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)

Vanguard Video

Today's video features a reading for George Eliot's classic debut novel, Adam Bede. Enjoy!