Friday, December 31, 2004

Write away

If only writing were as easy as reading. Have started Coastliners by Joanne Harris, author of Chocolat. Good story, interesting setting, descriptive without being too descriptive - you know when the author describes so much that the images in your head are constantly being challenged?

Someone said though- was it Stephen King?- that to be a writer you must be a reader so I guess I have a start. But I have two of the four difficulties described by Dorothea Brande. I am an "occasional writer" who "at wearisomely long intervals" comes up with something good which is as she says "hardly enough to satisfy either body or spirit" and I am also an "uneven" writer who sometimes writes a story so "drily and sparely that all its virtues are lost". So I have a lot of work to do.

Thursday, December 30, 2004

Inspiration

Yes, I am a fan of Emily Carr's, a painter who was also a writer. And a dreamer. And I am a dreamer though not yet a painter or writer but I remind myself that Emily never felt she had "arrived" either. She seems an appropriate model. And "house of all sorts" seems right for this blog- a place where all sorts of ideas, thoughts, comments can be lodged happily together. I did also consider the house of small ( but I am trying to think BIG!)

Oh, you want to know why I am canary. Well, Emily wrote a charming little piece about the bishop and the canary. It appealed.

I have lately rediscovered Dickens. During our recent power outage of 2 days- yes, 2 days, that is not a misprint- we sat by candlelight and I read Great Expectations aloud. There is something about his language that just flows off the tongue. I later tried Jane Eyre but I found Bronte's language more awkward to read aloud. Rosebud disagrees. I love the book, always have, but I think Dickens read his aloud and I think this made a difference in how it "speaks". Anyway, while I am mentioning Jane Eyre, I am thrilled to have found, after years of searching, the tv series of Jane Eyre in the 1973 version with Sorcha Cusak, sister of Seinead, as Jane. There is no version like it. It is not commercially available, if it was we would be willing to pay alot for it, but I found a kind person on the net who has a video version which she copied for me and sent by mail. Awaiting it now. Can hardly wait for it to arrive, to watch it and to tell my daughter. We have been telling her about this version for so long and I think she hardly believes it exists as no one else seemed to remember it.
Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Romania.
Dorothy Parker, Not So Deep as a Well (1937)