No Title At All (Yet)

22 Saturday Mar 2014

Posted by la Clarina in Scribbling

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Short story

Finishing the first/third draft.

Very late last night.

And no title at all – yet.

Leaving it sit ths morning (also because I’m having eight people over for lunch…)

Going through it one last time this afternoon, then handing it to my Readers Three.

And what about the title?

Pestering the Readers Three until they’ve told me what they think.

Polishing it up.

Going through one last How Could I Write This How Could I Ever Think I Can Write crisis.

Finding a dratted title.

Sending it away in the nick of time.

Sounds like a plan, doesn’t it?

The Sci-Fictional Serendipity of Scribblings

20 Thursday Mar 2014

Posted by la Clarina in Books, Scribbling

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Connie Willis, Galaxy Quest, Lyon Sprague de Camp, New England Science Fiction Association, Science fiction, Scribblings

Science fiction and I, now… Well, it’s slightly awkward.

The short version is, I was accidentally exposed to several dangerous quantities of ugly and/or distressing science fiction as a child, and had nightmares for years, and remained very, very wary of the whole genre, barely able to watch Star Wars without getting uneasy. Yes, Star Wars. Like the dog of the story, scalded with hot water, I was sure I hated all that had to do with sci-fi.

Then, in recent years, the startling fact was brought to my attention that time travel is indeed science fiction – and I have a cautious liking for time travel stories, provided the destination is the past, and not some dystopian, or apocalyptic, or post-apocalyptic, or pre-apocalyptic future, thank you very much. So I ventured to read Connie Willis‘ To Say Nothing of the Dog – and loved it, but I remain a sci-fictional wimp, and will likely die so.

So, tempting as it is to pretend I did it on purpose, I may as well confess that it was not only a surprise, but also something of an irony to find out that my new blog shares a name with a collection of works by L. Sprague de Camp. And yes, I know, LSdC was not exclusively a science fiction author, but it happens that Scribblings, the book, was first published by the New England Science Fiction Association for one of its conventions* – so, honestly, how un-sciencefictional can it be?

I haven’t decided yet whether I’ll even try to procure and read Scribblings, the book. Even before I consider the chance, I’d need detailed certainty there is nothing I don’t want to read in it. For instance, where (or rather, when) does the Drinkwhiskey Institute travel to? Or do I even want to know what fate awaits the Elephant in the poem of the same name? All else apart, it wouldn’t be terribly smart to give myself nightmares for the sake of my blog’s namesake book, would it?

So far, the only part of Scribblings, the book, I clapped eyes on is the table of contents – and I must say I like it. It sounds quirky and intriguing, and that’s one (however unintended) kinship I will claim. Who knows, some day I might read past the table and face the contents – but until then, I’ll hold Scribblings, the book, as a reminder to keep Scribblings, the blog, as quirky and intriguing as I can.

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* And say what you will, I cannot read or hear “science-fiction convention” without thinking of Galaxy Quest.

“Time Traveler’s Almanac” features sci-fi heavyweights and acclaimed Colorado authors (denverpost.com)

Boomstick Award

17 Monday Mar 2014

Posted by la Clarina in Uncategorized

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Boomstick Award

The Boomstick is an independent award created by the folks at the Italian blog Book and Negative, to highlight and promote tough and deserving bloggers.

And then every year, in a sort of ripple effect, each of the seven original awardees can pass the torch to seven more bloggers…

And this is how Scribblings proudly comes to be awarded the Boomstick Award 2014.

Many thanks and congratulations to Davide Mana over at Karavansara / strategie evolutive * who got the award for the second year in a row, and then included Scribblings in his list of “ripple” Boomstickers.

We will strive to measure up.

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* Yes, no capitals. (DM pretends not to, but it annoys him no end when I do this…)

The Wicked Stage

15 Saturday Mar 2014

Posted by la Clarina in Theatre

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New York Times, Rob Weinert-Kendt, theatre

The day my plays cross the Pond…

Yes, well, it’s still rather far away, right now, but a girl can dream big while she is at it, can’t she?

So, the day my plays cross the Pond, I hope that Rob Weinert-Kendt will review them. Which is dreaming even bigger, because RWK writes for the American Theater Magazine and the New York Times amongst many others, but…

It’s a wish I conceived a few years ago, when I came across his review of I don’t remember what production of Hamlet – and it was so deep, and perceptive, and wonderfully written, that I wished someone would write like that about a play of mine, someday…

As I said, that is far, far, far away in the future – at the very best. Meanwhile, one can read Mr. Weinert-Kendt’s great theatre blog, The Wicked Stage – which is what this little Saturday post is about, in the end.

Playing With History

13 Thursday Mar 2014

Posted by la Clarina in Books, History, Stories

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christopher marlowe, Historical fiction, History Play, Rodney Bolt

If I were to tell how I became a Marlowe enthusiast – and I’m not speaking too hypothetically, either: I was asked yesterday – I should go back to when I read, over one day and one night, Rodney Bolt’s History Play.

How I came across the book at all, I don’t remember – it’s been quite a few years, but come across it I did, and bought it from Amazon. I had already a taste for all things Elizabethan, back then, and was reading like mad about the period, and Shakespeare, and his fellow poets, but knew next to nothing about the authorship question.

In hindsight, it is strange that, up to that point, I knew so little about Marlowe, and stranger still that, of all the books about him, I should pick just this one. But I did, and I remember, on a summer afternoon, sitting in a marginally cooler spot on a marble staircase, putting aside the dustjacket, and plunging. And it was… odd.

It started off as an especially antistratfordian life of Marlowe, a very well-written and rather convincing one, too. And then… then it oh so subtly veered into academic parody, and then less subtly, and by the time I realized half the footnotes were fabrications, and half the sources made up, the thing had metamorphed again to alternate history novel, and I was not only hooked, but delighted at the clever trick that had been played on me.

Because this book was not what it seemed at a first glance, and then not even what it seemed at a second, and all the time played fast and loose with historical accuracy in a very clever way, showing how both history and fiction could be manipulated to look like the other, and shaped, and mingled, and combined, and masked – and it all came complete with gorgeous writing, a neatly twisted plot and great characters, especially Kit Marlowe.

Indeed, I might even say that Marlowe was almost a collateral effect, because after fully enjoying the game, I wanted to know what kind of rings exactly had been danced around my suspension of disbelief. So I started on a reading spree: Marlowe’s works – of which there isn’t an awful lot – and a deluge of biographies, articles, essays. And I fell in love – enough that, in time, I crossed the border into fiction, novels and plays about Marlowe, and I started writing about him, and he is still my current obsession.

So, isn’t serendipity wonderful, that made me buy this book so filled with ideas about history and fiction, and find a new obsession in the bargain? You never know what you might find between the covers of a book.

Happy 450th birthday to William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe (theguardian.com)

Five Characters For A (Wild) Night Out

06 Thursday Mar 2014

Posted by la Clarina in Books

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Anthony Burgess, christopher marlowe, Connie Willis, Georgette Heyer, meme, shakespeare, Stevenson

There was this meme, once upon a time… Suppose it turns out you can summon characters out of books. And frankly, if I could summon characters out of books, I’d do it all the time, and spend inordinate amounts of time with them… er, yes – I’m that far gone. But for the moment, let us stick with the meme: which five characters would I want as company for a wild night out?

Well, I was reminded of this meme when my friend G. told me about a wonderful RPG she plays at college, involving randomly assigned literary characters. On being reminded, I sought and found the answer I wrote, once upon a time, on my Italian blog, and realised that, if I were to do it again, I’d choose different characters – at least most of them. After all, one wild night is one wild night, and a girl doesn’t have to want to hang out with the same crowd forever, right?

So, considering that my notion of a wild night, out or otherwise, includes (but is not limited to) endless and occasionally argumentative talk on a variety of subjects, impromptu theatre games, nonsense galore, and a certain quantity of eccentric mischief, here is my round of invitations:

1) Beatrice, from Much Ado About Nothing. Unbeatable at wordplay without being too waspish. Merry, witty company – and she sings too.

2) Sarah Thane, from Georgette Heyer‘s The Talisman Ring. A woman with a taste for absurdity and the right turn of phrase – and a prodigious liar when the occasion requires it. I’m sure we’ll go along very, very well.

3) Kit Marlowe – Anthony Burgess‘ version – strikes me as the sort who can be relied upon for vertiginous conversation about almost anything. And all the theatre one could wish for. The trick will be to keep him from becoming nasty when in his cups.

4) Alan Breck Stewart. A man with a dancing madness in his eyes, who can improvise extempore ballads at the least provocation sounds far too perfect to leave out. He has enough of a temper to cause trouble, and of course Scotland, England and Scotland and England as conversation topics are out of the question, but I’ll be careful.

5) Ned Henry, Connie Willis‘ historian-cum-time-traveller. He can be a tad scatterbrained, especially when time-lagged, but adorably so – and he is one of the nicest imaginary persons I know. Plus, he is a time traveller, and really, nothing would make my wild night like some time travel .

Well well well, considering that my first choices were Nicholas Christopher‘s Veronica, Emily Brontë*, Puck, Sidney Carton and Kit Marlowe, I’d say that this time I’ve equipped myself for a far jollier wild night, wouldn’t you?

And what about you? Which five characters would you invite out of books for a wild night?

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* Yes, I was cheating. You could say I cheated again with Marlowe, but I mean Marlowe-as-a-character. Or else I just cheat at memes, so sue me.

Glenn Gould On Writing (Fugues)

01 Saturday Mar 2014

Posted by la Clarina in Stories

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Glenn Gould, so you want to write a fugue, writing

No, not really – but this is the incredible So You Want To Write A Fugue (thanks M. for telling me about it!) and I can’t help thinking how well it applies to non-musical writing…

So you want to write a fugue.
You got the urge to write a fugue.
You got the nerve to write a fugue.
So go ahead, so go ahead and write a fugue.
Go ahead and write a fugue that we can sing.

Pay no heed, Pay no mind.
Pay no heed to what we tell you,
Pay no mind to what we tell you.
Cast away all that you were told
And the theory that you read.
As we said come and write one,
Oh do come and write one,
Write a fugue that we can sing.

Now the only way to write one
Is to plunge right in and write one.
Just forget the rules and write one,
Just ignore the rules and try.

And the fun of it will get you.
And the joy of it will fetch you.
Its a pleasure that is bound to satisfy.
When you decide that John Sebastian must have been a very personable guy.

Never be clever
for the sake of being clever,
for the sake of showing off.

For a canon in inversion is a dangerous diversion,
And a bit of augmentation is a serious temptation,
While a stretto diminution is an obvious allusion.

For to try to write a fugue that we can sing.

And when you finish writing it
I think you will find a great joy in it.

or so…
Nothing ventured, nothing gained they say
But still it is rather hard to start.

Well let us try right now.
Now we are going to write a fugue.
We are going to write a good one.
We are going to write a fugue … right now.

Oh, and a happy March, everyone.

No Desert Islands, Thank You

27 Thursday Feb 2014

Posted by la Clarina in Books

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Books, Desert island, Kindle, reading list, Snow

I have this recurring fantasy of being snowbound somewhere, with my Kindle and little else…

Yes, I know, usually it is a desert island, but I’m not partial to desert islands. For one thing, being ridiculously phobic, I don’t want to even begin imagining the insects… Then, how do you recharge your eReader on a desert island?* I’m most definitely not the Crusoe-ish sort who devises a power-cell with a bowl of fruit and a pair of sunglasses – which also raises questions of more immediate survival, such as shelter, food, water… Frankly, unless it were a very Shakespearean island, complete with a practical-minded Ariel, odds are I’d be dead long before recharging the Kindle became a concern.

Snow, on the other hand… You can be snowbound in lots of very nice, well supplied places, most of them sporting a fireplace and a working generator, just in case. Plus, I love snow and snowfalls to distraction.

So, as I said, I have this fantasy of being snowbound somewhere nice, with my Kindle, plenty of tea, and little more. I have it every time I consider my arm-long To Read List. And every time I am either given a book, or tempted to buy one.** And every time I receive a parcel from the HNR. And every time I unearth from the Internet Archive something I’ve desperately wanted to read. And every time I can give myself one little reading afternoon. And every time I finish a book and peruse the list wondering what next…

All of which means that, more or less, I daily dream of being snowed-in – and I’ll be the first to admit it doesn’t sound spectacularly sane. But I so want to read more, and you know those So Many Books – So Little Time thingies you find by the cartful on Pinterest? Well, they have ceased to be funny. Long ago.

I don’t suppose there is any point in asking, do you have reading lists of biblical proportions – because yes, of course you do… The question then is: have you worked out how to deal with yours – especially if you live in a place where it snows once in donkey’s years?

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ETA: It’s early afternoon, and two more books have just landed in my mailbox. Claire Groove and Stephen Wyatt’s So You Want to Write Radio Drama (and yes, I do), and a second/third hand copy of John Masefield’s Live and Kicking Ned. I clearly don’t have the smallest trace of sense…

Sigh.

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* And if you are thinking books would be a better alternative – as I did for a minute – think again: how do you get shipwrecked on a desert island with dry books?

** Which, considering my utter inability to resist temptations, usually results in one more book.

Books I’d Want on an Island{Top Ten Tuesday} (bookblogbake.com)
Deserted Island? Yes please! (notapunkrocker.wordpress.com)

Penny Plain, Twopence Coloured

22 Saturday Feb 2014

Posted by la Clarina in Theatre

≈ 2 Comments

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Lucia Contreras, Pollock, R. L. Stevenson, toy theatre, Victoria and Albert

I’m in a toy-theatre phase.

I go through this sort of things, and right now it’s toy theatres. Let me get my printer working again, and chances are I’ll make myself one in the weekend. Actually, last Saint Lucia I was given a lovely, Pollock-bought one, to cut and assemble, but it is so intricate I’m a litte in awe. It will take some guts just to start cutting. Meanwhile, I might try something easier…

But never mind. For now I thought I’d share a few TT-related links.

Here you can find R.L. Stevenson’s delightful essay from which I borrowed this post’s title. And of course, Pollock’s. Then there is Lucia Contreras’ site Teatritos, where you can read about paper theatres and view images from her wonderful collection. Should you have developed an urge to have a toy theatre of your own, here the V&A provides you with all the printables you need – including a play. And last, possibly the one reason why I might wish for an iPad: a TT app!

And have a nice theatrical weekend.

Visit to Pollocks Toy Museum (emmaharry92.wordpress.com)

On the Dangers of French Nannies

20 Thursday Feb 2014

Posted by la Clarina in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Anachronisms make me unhappy.

What can I say? Ancient Greeks using quills or Carthaginians mentioning the prodigal son give me headaches – all the more because I’ve been there, and know how easily this kind of thing can slip under one’s radar.

I once had a character admire the skyline of Mantua silhouetted against the sunset sky, with special mention of a dome that wouldn’t be built of a century and a half. Of course, nobody noticed until the book was out – and years later, I still can’t watch the darn dome without cringing. So yes, I know how it feels.

And of course there is a huge difference between sloppy research and accidents. Sloppy research is a sin against the deities of historical fiction, while accidents… well, happen.

But there is, to my mind, ad worse, worse, much worse sin than sloppiness, and it is the Intentional Psychological Anachronism.

Please notice the capitals: it is that bad. It is the unconventional heroine who will sport 21st Century sensibilities and notions, wear men’s garb because it is comfortable, despise the conventions, mores and beliefs of her time, refuse to conceive the notion of marrying for anything but love, and, because of all this, be depicted as immeasurably superior to all the other characters who act, think and behave in a manner fitting their century.

I say heroine, because this kind of pest mostly prospers in the female variety – but this isn’t to say there aren’t heroes of this ilk. I even have a not especially affectionate nickname for the phenomenon: the French Nanny Syndrome, after Bianca Pitzorno’s retelling of Jane Eyre, in which all the good guys are modern people in disguise, confronted by cardboard baddies* who hold to the views and beliefs of their time.

And this, Gentle Reader, I call a sin and a crime. It gives a distorted view of the past as a time when the good ones thought like us, while the mindset of the era was consistently unhuman and evil. It stifles any sense of historical perspective. It anesthetizes the all-important fact that right and wrong have changed across the centuries, that what we believe today has not always been around. It builds a false percetpion of history. It is wrong. It is ugly. It is dishonest. It is not, but not historical fiction.

And if you think I’m quite vocal about it – well, you may be right. Fiction is fiction, yes – but why bother setting your fiction in another century, only to falsify the setting like that? So, it is both a sin against history, and a corner-cutting, audience-winking strategy when it comes to storytelling.

I’m afraid that, to me, it hardly gets worse than that.

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* And yes, Jane-the-English-Governess is one of them. Or, if not totally bad, a silly woman incapable of human warmth, and slavishly besotted with the cruel, heartless Mr. Rochester. Does it show how much I loathe this book?