Art and Shakespeare

.
It's been a while since I posted for Art of the Week. Everything else I've been clamb'ring to learn caused art to slip my mind. So here goes.

My favorite art movement is the Pre-Raphaelite. It appeals to my love of melancholy, drama, beauty, and history, I suppose. A favorite subject for these 19th painters was Ophelia, the tragic heroine of my second favorite play by Shakespeare (my first being Macbeth). Many a Pre-Raphaelite artist had a unique vision of this fragile, lost little soul, but nearly all these visions revolve around her death, described in lurid and lovely detail by Queen Gertrude in Act 4, scene 7, of Hamlet.

"There is a willow grows aslant a brook
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream.
Therewith fantastic garlands did she make
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples,
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them.
There on the pendent boughs her crownet weeds
Clamb'ring to hang, an envious sliver broke,
When down the weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide,
And mermaid-like a while they bore her up;
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes,
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and endued
Unto that element. But long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death."

Three paintings to contrast:

OPHELIA, AND HE WILL NOT COME AGAIN
Arthur Hughes, 1863

OPHELIA
Alexandre Cabanel, 1883

OPHELIA
John Edward Millais, 1852

I had not seen the Cabanel painting before today. I love it for catching Ophelia in the actual fall. For still more paintings to compare and admire, there's a wonderful entry >HERE< at blogspot.

.

Progress Report, 3-28-11, and Stress

TODAY'S PROGRESS
Project: Falcons Rising
Pages Rewritten: 4 1/2
Pages Cut: 1
New Scenes: 0
Bad things that happened: a secret lurks
Good things that happened: nearing the emotional climax now! While this bodes bad things for the characters, it means excitement for readers. Well, it does for me anyway. :)

It's Monday, thank God! That sounds backwards, doesn't it? This weekend was so stressful and nasty that I have to get to Monday for recuperation. Not sure I'll go into detail, but I was . . . not well. Physically, emotionally, or spiritually. It was rough. Really rough. But I am on antibiotics now and have had a good talk with the Lord Almighty.

He is faithful. And this bedraggled little writer is on the mend.
.

Progress Report, 3-25-11, and Poetry Readings

TODAY'S PROGRESS
Project: Falcons Rising
Pages Rewritten: 6
Pages Cut: 3 (so much disgusting, useless content. Ugh!)
New Scenes: 0
Bad things that happened: a manhunt!
Good things that happened: that harp comes into play again and wins a second chance for Kieryn

Six days until Margaret Atwood speaks at USAO, my alma mater! I heard she was coming, way back last fall, like September or something, and I've been counting the days. When I lived in Indiana, I got to hear Naomi Shihab Nye read, now I get to listen to Ms. Atwood. There's nothing like hearing a poet read their own work and talk about the craft they love.
.

Progress Report, 3-24-11, and a Red Rider

YESTERDAY'S PROGRESS
Project: Falcons Rising
Pages Revised: 2
Pages Cut: 1 (Yep, I cut more than half the content)
New Scenes: 0
Bad things that happened: Elves have killer, cold glares. *shiver*
Good things that happened: nothing yet, and it's about to get worse.

I got a late start writing yesterday, but I was able to squeeze in a couple of pages. Today won't be any better, I'm afraid. Still trying to learn the ins and outs of Twitter (along with taking care of LF and other networking business). Twitter is really very simple; it's just that one name leads to a thousand others, not to mention the # marks and lists to explore. Once the birdie is old hat, I'll be able to fly through and get on with writing.

On a sidenote:

Here's an absurd picture for you. Yesterday, a gorgeous spring afternoon with a sky unhazed by field dust and pollen, and this prissy, country-girl writer, sitting on her back patio with her pages to revise; alongside her, a new Red Rider BB gun. A pink Red Rider. Oh, yes, they make them, just for prissy country-girls like me. I filled the barrel with shiny steel BBs and waited, lurking under the trees, looking, oh, so innocent with my novel pages propped on my knee, in my lime green high heels and frosty pink toenail polish. Then lo! and behold, those pesky, loud, hungry cowbirds flocked overhead, landing in the elm tree, thinking they were so clever that they found a sucker who is still feeding the finches. Those pesky, loud, hungry cowbirds cleaned out my feeders in one blinkin' day! So, as I say, they flocked in and landed for another course. Down goes the pencil and up comes the BB gun. My dad taught me excellent form. Those BBs must sting like hell, 'cause off flew those pesky cowbirds for another treetop. That wasn't far enough -- *pop pop* -- and off they flew to some other sucker's bird feeders.

(No pesky, loud, hungry cowbirds were killed in this battle. Though I hope their bottoms sting)

Ah, back to writing...

.

Back Into The Swing

Time to get back to it. The novel. Submitting stories.

Head cold is all but over, "Dreamflier" is revised and in the mail (yes, some mags still take snail mail the old-fashioned way), and I've started resubmitting "The Bone Harp" as well. The latter needs a new home. Realms, bless it's papery heart, saw only two issues before it was absorbed into another mag. Then that mag, too, has been shoved into the closet as Black Matrix focuses its attention on publishing books instead of short stories. Ah, well. I knew it was time to try for a reprint when I attempted to find that old copy of Realms at Amazon and got nothing. At first. Then I had to get fancy with the search to turn up the right mag. In other words, no one will find it unless they know what they're looking for, have a hefty dose of determination, or stumble upon it by accident.

Submitting is the part of writing that I dislike most. Trying to decide if this story or that story is a right fit for this mag or that mag, getting my hopes up, only to receive a rejection. The letters that are worst say, "This story just isn't the right fit." Ack! But I spent all that time reading sample stories and weighing YOUR description of YOUR mag against others! Fine, on to the next mag in the line-up. Tedious. One must have an endless supply of hope hidden in the deep recesses to keep at this job. Hope balanced with little expectation is how I've learned to cope with the minuscule chance that a mag will favor my story over the hundreds of others.

On the flip-side, there's nothing like waiting in anticipation for that acceptance.
.

The Little Birdie Gets Around

Two posts ago, I reported how I had set up a fanpage on Facebook. Thanks to those who have responded by visiting and clicking Like. You give me hope that this effort is not a waste of my time.

Now, in conjunction with that, I have also set up an account on Twitter. I do not understand the point behind Twitter, but I do hope it will be a valuable marketing tool in the future. So if you Tweet, post your account username here and I will be happy to follow you, and please return the favor. As of this morning, I have exactly one follower, which is a positive beginning, I suppose. Gotta start somewhere, right? :)

You'll find me here: @Court_Ellyn

Last but not least, I must admit I have no idea what I'm doing. I think I'll be able to figure most of it out, but I'm still flabbergasted about things like those "#" tags that follow some tweets but not others. So any tips for comprehension and productive use of this thing will be most welcome.
.

Dreamflying and Head Colds

.
The title may make it sound like I've been taking too much cold medicine, but I haven't. Promise. In fact, I've hardly slept soundly enough since Saturday to have dream cycles at all. Why do colds wait to strike me in March? I was clean, all through the bad winter months, but now that spring is just about to burst free and the weather is too gorgeous to stay inside, I get laid up on the couch with a head cold. Go figure. Whenever the cold medicine begins to work its benumbing magic, I know it's pretty useless to try to focus on the bigger writing projects. Does anyone else suffer short-term memory loss when taking cold medicine? Well, maybe it's more short-term memory fuzziness.

Point is, I dragged out a short story that's been lurking on the desk for a few months and decided it was time to give her a thorough going-over. A critiquer and an editor agreed that there was too much backstory dumped in the opening pages, so I'm trying to speed things up a bit, weave the important details in later and more gradually. So here's the progress report for yesterday and today:

TODAY'S PROGRESS
Project: "Dreamflier"
Pages Revised: 22
Pages Cut: 1 (goodbye, my darlings! *sob*)
Bad things that happened: A team of dreamfliers get lost in the realm of dreams
Good things that happened: Ambryn, our heroine, is allowed to help rescue them

I'm still happy with most of this story, obviously, and was able to speed through much of the text without altering too much. The tale was inspired by a contest prompt at LegendFire last summer. Unfortunately, I was reading Amy Tan at the time, which means I wanted to write a gorgeous, flowing narrative that bloomed as gradually as a lotus, and opened this piece in that style. But it's wrong for the rest of the story, which is quick-paced, frantic, and bizarre. Had I been reading Gaiman or Martin, perhaps, I might've made a different stylistic choice. But I still have high hopes for this piece. I just have to weave the narrative differently.

If I could choose an artist to illustrate this story, it would be Josephine Wall. Her paintings capture the color, movement, and bizarre imagery I see in the dream realm of this story. A picture is worth a thousand words.

QUEEN OF THE NIGHT

by Josephine Wall

.