My Other Blogging Locale

It occurs to me that I meant to mention this, well, yesterday! Starting yesterday, I will be writing fortnightly* at Mormon Mommy Writers. Join me there for some Mormon Mommy Writing fun!

Here was my first post. Enjoy!

*My use of this word is all part of my personal crusade to bring "fortnight" back into common usage. Join me! Start saying "fortnight" whenever you can manage. No longer do you get a biweekly paycheck--now it's fortnightly! No longer do you wash the sheets every other week--it's every fortnight! And me--I don't just get cramping once a month; I get it every fortnight! Joy!** I'm sure you can think of some other wonderful places to say "fortnight." Come on, you know you want to.***
**At least mittelschmerz has some good uses, right?
***Did anyone else notice that my footnotes were significantly longer than the post itself?

Daughter's Review: Two Princesses of Bamarre, by Gail Carson Levine

 

The front of her "book report"
we did for homeschool.

I recently read this book with my two daughters (ages 5 and 2) over the course of a few weeks. I had read it before myself, and I loved the story, but I was curious to see how they would take it. Daughter #2 was, as predicted, not particularly interested—but it turned out good for getting her to fall asleep during several nights of bedtime reading. Daughter #1, however, was inspired by this novel. Shortly after finishing it, she rediscovered a pair of boots we had (that are too small for her at this point) and started calling them her seven-league boots. She would put them on, then prepare to step carefully—because once she stepped, she would zip away quickly in that direction. Shopping trips were very interesting for a few days there.

Next she determined that she needed to carry around her adventure supplies. First she was carrying them all in a little purse she had, but I finally took pity on her (because not everything would fit in her purse) and gave her one of my old purses to use. The contents of the purse are as follows: a spare pair of shoes (for wearing when she’s not traveling seven leagues per step), a change of clothes (you need spare clothing for adventures, of course), some moily herb (a healing herb from the book, representing by a couple silk flowers we had), a few odds and ends, and my personal favorite—Bloodbiter (the sword from the book, represented by a small stuffed Ewok). Now she was ready for adventure.

Answers to questions dictated by my daughter.

She carried the purse around with her just about everywhere for a week or two, calling it her “adventure sack.” She still has it hanging in her room, and it comes out once in a while. This is my daughter who is ready for everything. I love the way this book became included in her rich imaginary world. (Believe me, she is full of imagination. She is currently determined to invent both magic and a flying car that doesn’t require a driver or seat belts. These are merely her latest ideas.)

What I love most about the book, though, is the idea of this timid little Princess Addie discovering that other things—big things—were more important than her fears. What a fantastic message for my daughter (who probably doesn’t need it much, as she is not inclined toward ridiculous worries) and for me (who totally needs that message on an almost daily basis).

Wielding Bloodbiter.

Being strong and awesome, like Addie.

The book is fun, wholly grounded in items and creatures and ideas of myth and fairy tale—while playing with them in its own ways—and in my opinion, inspiring. It is a book that I would call “wise” (I hope to get to that idea in another blog post sometime soon, but we’ll see).

P.S. As per usual, Blogger’s formatting has defeated me, and I give up. 

In Which I Write Because I Should

Here we are, at the end of the day, and I have no writing to show for it. This, by the way, is exactly one day after I told my photographer friend that her 365-day project was inspiring me to maybe begin my own 365-day project again. Only I’m talking 365 days of writing because taking photos every day would not only point up my absolutely lack of photography knowledge and talent—but it would also make it quickly apparent that my house is rarely clean.

Supposedly because I’m a writer, and I spend my time writing.

So the point here is that I thought to myself, “I can do 365 days of writing at least a teensy bit every day, right? On Sundays, I’ll just work on my personal blog or write witty, brilliant, and insightful emails to friends and family. On the rest of the days, I’ll work on my books, my blog, my other blog . . . or that other blog.”*

I thought to myself, “If nothing else I can do 200 words per day.” Most days, far more of course** (I insert virtuously), but at least 200.

So here I am, and we’ve hit 268. Win!

Good night.

*It seems I have a lot of blogging to do these days.

**Because at 200 words per day, I would finish a novel once every . . . never.***

***Especially since those 200 would be spread over all sorts of projects and also because they’d all be first draft words (which, as we know, are statistically 95% junk).

Six Words

At a getting-to-know-you activity a while ago, I played a game called “Six-Word Eulogy”—essentially you sum up your life and how you’d like to be remembered in (what a shock) six words. And you only have five minutes to do it.

You can see here the piece of paper I wrote on, complete with the many alterations and edits required to polish it.* Even at the end, I was still trying to choose between “mess” and “chaos.” However, I think that I’m overall pretty happy with it. If someone used this as my personal eulogy, I would look at it and say, “Yes, that’s (mostly) how I want to be remembered.”**

Things I created: stories, children, chaos.

*Fortunately, when editing a book, I don’t spend almost a minute on every single word.

**I do feel like it is incomplete for not mentioning my husband or my faith. Also, I’m sure someone would take the “creating chaos” far too seriously. But ah well, that’s life (or, I suppose, in this case, that’s death).

Book Review: Mette Ivie Harrison's The Rose Throne

It has taken me weeks now to coalesce the thoughts in my head about this book. In fact, they are probably still scattered, but since some time devoted to the review is better than none (which is what I was doing, because I wanted the review to be just right), I’m just going to jump in.

This novel read, for me, very differently from Harrison’s other books I’m most familiar with (The Princess and the Hound series). The other books were more lyrical. This one was straightforward, direct, almost sparse. Unexpected, and it took me some time to get used to it. For some reason I’m sure someone else could analyze, I want to say it felt “German” (understand, please, that I have no reasonable explanation for why I say this; for the same reason I think lime smells like heaven, I suppose—which is to say, just because).

The princesses, too, took some time to get used to, but I liked them better for it. Ailsbet in particular was not your standard female character, far more reserved and almost passionless even as she spoke of things about which she was passionate. At first I found it off-putting, because I tend to be far more emotional—but then it became refreshing, freeing almost, to see through the eyes of someone who is not weepy and who does not overanalyze emotion. She just moves forward.

As far as the magic system goes, I am waiting to see. I loved Lissa’s use of it near the end. Brilliant. I wanted to high-five her, except that would be completely inappropriate to the world she is in. What I am not as jazzed about at the moment is the strong dichotomy of magics—but this is a personal thing, not a fault of the story. I just don’t like worlds in which the “manly” magic is a magic of death and pain. But, as I said, I’m waiting to see where it goes because—as is already apparently in some respects because of the ekhono (magic users who have the “wrong” kind of magic)—I suspect that there are going to be some twists and revelations regarding the true natures of the magics that will make me feel happier.

What I liked most, however, was the feeling that this book was part of something greater and more complex and more real. It’s fairly common for fantasy novels in particular to set up impossible choices and scenarios where it seems like the good guys can never win. But you know, after all, that actually everything is going to work out okay. (I should point out here that I read mostly YA, which is generally filled with that hope, which I do appreciate. I truly dislike the agony and suffering and darkness of some of the adult books I’ve read that, in my view, are utterly bleak—e.g., Robin Hobb’s Assassin’s Apprentice stories, which were well written but made me feel utterly depressed, sucking so much life out of me that though the stories were intriguing I was too emotionally drained to ever want to approach them again.) Also, these stories tend to feel like there is sort of one correct way of fixing things—really only one choice to make that will make everything work out.

But what this novel did instead was set up a world in which the characters may (and actually do) have to choose between multiple good options. Or at least multiple equally bad options. And the choices may require giving up something they want or care about. I love this! Love love love. I love the sense of reality and difficulty—and to me it is actually in some ways more hopeful than the books where everything works out perfectly in the end. Because a book like this says, “Hey, guess what? Sometimes life is tough and we don’t get everything we want. But there’s no point in moping about it.” I think it says, instead, that there is still beauty and fulfillment and possibility to be found beyond the difficult choices. It says something important, though perhaps uncomfortable, about real life.

Caveat: I must clarify, however, that some of that is still to come. Hard choices have been made in this book, as well as sacrifices. And we have yet to see where they go, but I have a pretty good feeling that wherever they go is somewhere I will want to follow. I suppose it’s possible that the next book/s in the series will suddenly be horrible and depressing, but I find it much more likely that they will find hope and beauty (and can I also hope for some epic magicky awesomeness?) and probably some more uncomfortable truth.

One more note: Lots of people have apparently complained that the ending was sort of a cliffhanger. Strangely, that didn’t bother me much. Maybe because I felt like the smaller episode was concluded quite nicely, and also because I think the next episode is going to include some great stuff. So yes, I’m looking forward to the rest, but I don’t feel cheated by the ending of this one. Just be warned that some people did.