Libraries and fairy tales
I recently signed up for alerts from The Chronicle. 99% of the titles that sound interesting are for subscribers only (which, right now, is too expensive for me to justify), but I still find a few gems in free articles, like these videos.
Old Spice Guy...
and a response/parody...
The Chronicle is also where I found out about Freecycle. Think craigslist but no buying/selling; everything's free.
In other news, last night I got the best sleep I've had in a while. I woke up at 8:00 only because my alarm went off, waking me from a dream just when everything got frightening but interesting. It was a dream-interpretation sort of D&D, I think, although not ever having played D&D I'm not really qualified to compare it to that. It involved several members of my team sprawling out on the side of a hill at midnight with magic tokens or whatever. The dream took place in a reality with slightly more magic than ours, and there was an aura of us playing the game yet affecting reality at the same time. Sort of accidentally doing magic, if you will.
I know I'm not doing the dream justice. It was really interesting, and I sort of wish I knew what was coming up next. But that's always the way of dreams, I guess.
[insert appropriate and clever segue]
Part of the problem with reading a collection of fairy tales, aside from the physical heft of the book (though I still prefer books to reading from a screen), is remembering all the inspirations I get from reading the stories -- as well as the basic plot and details of the stories themselves.
So I've started reading the complete Grimms again, while at the same time keeping a fairy tale journal. I've told myself that I need to read at least one story a day (though more is encouraged; and no making up for no tale tomorrow by reading one today business, either), and for every story I read, I have to write something about it, whether it's an inspiration for a poem or story (Farla-related or not) or even if it's just a simple plot summary of the tale. I've been doing it for three or four days now, and have quite a few ideas racked up. In fact, I might write some drafts of things today. I'll post if I do.
I'm excited about this project because, well, I've stuck with it for a few days and even though I was exhausted last night, I still forced myself to read and write about one story before turning out the light. Plus, it's got a sort of "encouraging Anna to write" feel without the requirement to write out full stories quite yet. That was part of the problem with previous efforts, I think. I'd sit down to write a full story and find myself unable to do so, so I quit. This is a better baby step back into writing, I think. I hope it works.
To further motivate myself (evidently I need lots of motivation), I've added a "Grimmometer" to the sidebar in order to track my progress in reading the Brothers' tales. The green percentage is calculated by progress page-wise; the red percentage is calculated by progress story-wise.
Old Spice Guy...
and a response/parody...
The Chronicle is also where I found out about Freecycle. Think craigslist but no buying/selling; everything's free.
In other news, last night I got the best sleep I've had in a while. I woke up at 8:00 only because my alarm went off, waking me from a dream just when everything got frightening but interesting. It was a dream-interpretation sort of D&D, I think, although not ever having played D&D I'm not really qualified to compare it to that. It involved several members of my team sprawling out on the side of a hill at midnight with magic tokens or whatever. The dream took place in a reality with slightly more magic than ours, and there was an aura of us playing the game yet affecting reality at the same time. Sort of accidentally doing magic, if you will.
I know I'm not doing the dream justice. It was really interesting, and I sort of wish I knew what was coming up next. But that's always the way of dreams, I guess.
[insert appropriate and clever segue]
Part of the problem with reading a collection of fairy tales, aside from the physical heft of the book (though I still prefer books to reading from a screen), is remembering all the inspirations I get from reading the stories -- as well as the basic plot and details of the stories themselves.
So I've started reading the complete Grimms again, while at the same time keeping a fairy tale journal. I've told myself that I need to read at least one story a day (though more is encouraged; and no making up for no tale tomorrow by reading one today business, either), and for every story I read, I have to write something about it, whether it's an inspiration for a poem or story (Farla-related or not) or even if it's just a simple plot summary of the tale. I've been doing it for three or four days now, and have quite a few ideas racked up. In fact, I might write some drafts of things today. I'll post if I do.
I'm excited about this project because, well, I've stuck with it for a few days and even though I was exhausted last night, I still forced myself to read and write about one story before turning out the light. Plus, it's got a sort of "encouraging Anna to write" feel without the requirement to write out full stories quite yet. That was part of the problem with previous efforts, I think. I'd sit down to write a full story and find myself unable to do so, so I quit. This is a better baby step back into writing, I think. I hope it works.
To further motivate myself (evidently I need lots of motivation), I've added a "Grimmometer" to the sidebar in order to track my progress in reading the Brothers' tales. The green percentage is calculated by progress page-wise; the red percentage is calculated by progress story-wise.