Moving Day

I’ve gotten my act a little bit more together, and have moved this blog over to a new website at betsywhitt.com. Eventually, eawhitt.com will point there as well, but the domain is currently in transition, so don’t try it now – you’ll only be disappointed.

I also decided to associate my LJ reading journal with the new website, so you can find follow the links there and find my book reviews. I’m sure everyone’s thrilled!

I’ll leave this up for a while longer, to direct stragglers to the new site, but please head over to betsywhitt.com from here on out!

(Wo)man Overboard!

I’ve been swamped. Matt’s been sick, youth group kids are having crises, there’s writing and editing goals and deadlines piling up, and the house is a mess, which doesn’t help anything.

As such, I’ll make it clear right now that this post contains very little in the way of original thought and analysis. However, I will leave you with another tidbit of the excellent From Homer to Harry Potter:

What comes to mind when you think of a spell? For most people, it has the connotation of magic or enchantment… The World English Dictionary defines a spell as: “a word or series of words believed to have magical power, spoken to invoke the magic.” For those in a Christian tradition, therefore, a spell is thus likely to be viewed as a thing of evil…

In the Old English, however, the word spell had a somewhat different meaning. Originally the word spell meant “story.” Hence, gód spell is “good story”–the close translation to Old English of the Greek evangelion, or “good message.” Thus, when Christians came to England, they called the evangelion the gód spell, which later became the gospel: the good story.

So how did the word change meanings? How did a story become magic? The change is not so dramatic as it might first appear. After all, a good story (or Old English spell) really does cast a spell (in the more modern use of that word). The best sort of story enchants the listener or reader; while he or she is hearing the tale–listening to the “series of words” used to tell the tale–the characters seem real for a time. Indeed, the mark of a successful writer is the ability to make characters so real to us that we care about them.

Discuss as you will. This stuff fascinates and excites me.

For Sale: Belgium

That’s right.

It’s not such a bad idea, really…

Just In Case Anyone Thought My Life Was Getting Too Dull…

We just realized our kitchen sink leaks.

Rather, the garbage disposal is leaking, which means it’s not just water, it’s nasty brown food particles that turn into sludge in the under-sink cabinet.

Oh, and apparently it’s been happening for some time.  The dishwasher detergent box shows signs of having absorbed two inches’ worth of liquid, though it’s dry at the moment.  Other various bottles and boxes are thoroughly wet and/or covered in the food sludge that’s been dripping.

Lovely.

The cabinet has been cleared, the worst of the sludge wiped out, and a pot placed under the offending area of pipes.  It will keep until morning.

We’ll see how quickly the maintenance people reply to sludgy food-water dripping under our sink, as opposed to rusty water dripping into our bathtub from the emergency a/c drainage (two weeks and counting on the latter).

I am SO ready for bed.

Life on the Boundary

I mentioned a few days ago that I’m reading From Homer to Harry Potter, which I neglected to mention before is written by Matthew Dickerson and David O’Hara, and which looks at the tradition and importance of myth, legend, fairy tales, fantasy, whatever you want to call all of it.

I’ve only read about 65 pages (in part because I keep putting the book down to process everything they’re saying) but already there is so much that I find both relevant and… not so much enlightening as seeming to put into words the things I have always felt and thought about fantasy stories. I keep telling myself I’m going to put together a ‘real’ post about all of this, but so far I haven’t had time, so perhaps I’ll turn it into a little series of bits and pieces.

So, for today I’ll start with a quote from philosopher Peter Kreeft, as quoted by Dickerson and O’Hara:

Death is the most natural thing in the world; why do we find it unnatural? … We complain about death and time…. There is never enough time. Time makes being into non-being. Time is a river that takes everything it brings: nations, civilizations, art, science, culture, plants, animals, our own bodies, the very stars–nothing stands outside the cosmic stream rushing headlong into the sea of death. Or does it? Something in us seems to stand outside it, for something in us protests this “nature” and asks: Is that all there is? We find this natural situation “vanity” ["meaningless"]: empty, frustrating, wretched, unhappy. Our nature contradicts nature.

As humans we stand with one foot rather literally in the mortal stew of time and decay and everything else, and yet there is some part of us that sees it as unnatural, as wrong, and struggles against it. Some part of us is eternal.

And, after quite a bit of discussion and inclusion of ideas from Tolkien, Lewis, and other luminaries, the two authors make this statement:

If man is indeed the spiritual animal, the creature who lives at once both in the world of the seen [mortal] and the unseen [eternal], then those stories that take place in both worlds–that is, on the borders of Faerie–will be far more relevant than stories that take place entirely in one world to the exclusion of the other.

It is after reading passages like these that I feel like jumping up and down and cheering. This is why I read fantasy. These stories touch on truths that illuminate and inform my everyday life, because I do not live simply in the material world. No other genre speaks so clearly to my walk-on-the-boundary life.

This is not a good ratio.

Minutes awake so far today: 600

Minutes spent sitting in front of the computer with the intent of writing:  270

Words written: 691

This is not a good ratio.

On the up side, I also went for a bike ride and took a shower, and I started reading From Homer to Harry Potter: A Handbook on Myth and Fantasy, which is my critical text for the term.  I like the authors already, and am really looking forward to getting into the meat of their book.

CSI: Miami

In my opinion, the best reason to watch CSI:Miami is to watch David Caruso over-deliver his lines.

Is it just me?

Contest Alert

I know I’ve been quiet – been reading most of the weekend away, though I should have been writing.  I’m getting things out of the way while I’m at work today, though, so I can write tonight.

I’d like to draw your attention to literary agent Nathan Bransford‘s Stupendously Ultimate First Line Challenge, in which all are welcome to submit the first line from a project in hopes of winning a partial manuscript critique.  I’ve entered, though I have to admit I used a line from a short story idea currently about four paragraphs long, and it wasn’t even the first line, but then I realized it ought to be the first line, so I kidnapped it and will rework the rest to fit it as I have time.  You know, all four paragraphs.  It’ll be torture.  And then, who knows? Maybe I’ll actually finish it.

Stranger things have happened.

Not often, but they have.

Vicks’ VapoTurp?

Did you know that Vicks’ VapoRub has turpentine in it?

Yep, that’s the same kind of turpentine you’d use for paint thinner.

It’s listed as an inactive ingredient, but it was actually used in ancient times, mixed with animal fat, as a primitive chest rub just like VapoRub.  So how inactive is it? I’m not willing to make a guess.

Incidentally, the famous Biblical balm of Gilead?  You guessed it: probably turpentine oil.

Crazy, the things you learn when you write a book…

Just for Variety…

Since I wrote last Saturday about how the creative muse drops off the face of my brain by 2pm (hah! I don’t even know how many mixed metaphors I got in there), I find it necessary to explain that there is a significant exception to that rule, and that is that on Wednesday evenings when I tag along with Matt to the church building while he helps run youth group, when I can hole myself up in the youth min office, I’ve had some of the more productive writing sessions of my writing career.

Given, most of the time I don’t write earlier in the day on Wednesdays, for one reason or another, but it is exceedingly odd.

Also, the car alarm has taken up its old hobby of going off for no discernible reason.  Excitement, excitement.  Actually, so far it’s been related to the almost dying in Kansas incident a year ago, but we thought we’d taken care of the last bit of problem back in June.  *sigh*

In other big news, our house is for sale.

No, we don’t own a house.

But we take lots of walks through nearby neighborhoods, and we have a few favorites, and the one we always walk past and say “yeah, if that one actually had a yard, we’d really really like it” is officially for sale.  And since we’re curious little buggers, we took a flyer from their box and it turns out there is actually a decent back yard.  Better than we thought there was, anyway, and all enclosed, which is nice in its own way.  Of course, we promptly looked it up on ReMax (I think this link should take you there) and found out that we have incredible taste.  It’s a bargain at only $910,000!  Hahaha.  Ah, but it’s fun to window shop.  I haven’t got a clue what I’d do with a house like that.  If I’m gonna have that much space, I want a real, old-fashioned farm house.

Anyway, still 300 words left to meet my daily word count goal (300? A trifle!) so it’s off to write, off to write…