Posts of Christmas Past

I've been stretched a bit thin in real life this year, and except for the Harry Potter Project, to which I made a commitment and to which certain well-disciplined project partners/friends keep me accountable, there's not been much new material on the blog since the summer.  It's a real pity to me and something I intend to improve in the new year.

In the meantime, I thought I'd gather together all the Christmas and wintery posts and link them--some of them you may have forgotten in a year's time or never read them, if you're new to SSiG.  Seasons each have their own distinctive magic, and the winter season's is sharp and clear.  A perfect time for internal scrutinizing and looking back on things in the ice-blue distance.

I wrote on the theme of winter dreaming last night:

. . . I do dream of white Christmases, and dreaming is memory--at least, they must come from the same place in the soul.  And even though I now live in a sub-tropic clime, I'm a child of Midwestern winters, and the hard, warm snow that fell on flat, dry grass, lending its porcelain silence to a drab and weary backdrop. 

I remember waking in the dark of early morning, breath held.  Even if no word came from the television that school was canceled due to snow-blocked roads, I still thrilled to step out into the white-and-black world.  Snow makes stars sharper, somehow.  I'd bundle up and go out early to wait on the corner of the street.  My feet were the first imprint; it was surreal, like crossing finest sand on a beach no human soul had touched on another planet.  Everything was suddenly closer, the world made smaller; you know, sharper, like when you twist your camera lens and everything comes into focus, so that you can see each tiny grain of glass.   As if the light reflected drew the sky down to gaze at her own reflection.   I stood there for ten, fifteen--twenty minutes well before I had to; before the other children--noisy, shoving and joking, oblivious--came out to wait with me; before the squat bus lumbered over the road toward us, and broke my shimmering bubble of infinite yet self-contained existence. 

I mean, there's more than one reason it's called a snowglobe.

That's a taste of where I write from when I write about this lightless season; though it really doesn't lack light of all.

On the Snow Queen, Part I

On the Snow Queen, Part II

Merry, Magic Christmas

Father Christmas as Fairy Tale

On the Snow Queen, Part III

Snow Apple

Enjoy.  And thanks for sticking with me.

What are some of your favorite thoughts on winter?

Autumn Abundance

Autumn brings forth abundance--it is a productive season for me, and I have come across more than one poet or artist who agrees.  This time last year, Meredith Wise, editor of the poetry journal Dappled Things, wrote

It’s October as I write, which seems to be a poetry-writing season for me and possibly a lot of people—off the top of my head: Dylan Thomas, Sylvia Plath—and I wonder why that is. Is it because we finally give up on the lie of eternal summer and accept that we have limited light to work in (easy thing to forget, when poetry is something you can procrastinate on until you die without inconveniencing anyone)? 

If you are one of these people and you are thinking about your neglected poetry or fiction again, you are probably praying for inspiration right now. In addition to praying, I must admit that I always revisit a handful of poems that have a quality best captured by the Welsh term “hwyl” (hoo-ill?)—a kind of high-handed mastery, a sense that the poet has just been ordained and that power has been poured into him. . .

The article, "Welsh Starlight," can be read in full here.  What's higher than highly recommended?  That's my recommendation that you read this article, especially in the season of the waning sun.

There is also a new publication from a fairy tale acquaintance, affectionately referred to as Mr. Pond: New Fairy Tales, a collection of poems and essays.  In addition to Mr. Pond (John Patrick Pazdziora), it includes contributions by another acquaintance, Josh Richards, and Katherine Langrish, of Seven Miles of Steel Thistles, worthy author of West of the Moon, Forsaken, and others.  It can be purchased from Amazon here.

Goblin Fruit's late summer edition includes a poem of mine written in the season last year, more toward the dead-end of autumn.  You can even listen to a recording of me reciting the poem!  And the most recent issue of Dappled Things features a poem of mine as well.

Tahlia Merrill of Diamonds and Toads, the used-to-be sister site of Enchanted Conversation, has inaugurated a new fairy tale webzine of her own: Timeless Tales, now open for submissions.  What's neat about these fairy tales it that you can listen to them--there is an audio version of each issue!

As for me, I hope to settle down into the harvest season and reap some new inspiration myself.  What about you?

Miscellaneous

In which I collect tidbits that don't belong elsewhere

1.  

I just want to remind you all that Spinning Straw into Gold welcomes and is actively seeking guest posts.  So if you have something you think would fit the theme, do contact me.  I don't don't want this blog to subsist entirely of me lecturing!

2.  

Here is an imperative, inspirational video all writers and lovers of storytelling should watch.

Thanks to Myth & Moore for sharing.

3.  

The 2013 Winter edition of Goblin Fruit is here!

Oh, how I love this journal.  I dream of it being in print one day.

4.  

Kristin of Tales of Faerie explores the mysteries of The Twelve Dancing Princesses here and here, with help from the Surlalune series.

5.  

I haven't forgot about The Snow Queen series, I've just got a lot of other projects running at the same time.  More installments to come.

6.  

This is related to writing, though not fairy tales.  My short story "The Debt," which received an honorable mention in the 2012 Tuscany Prize for Catholic Fiction Short Stories category, is now published in digital format.  Hard copy publications are forthcoming in the next couple of weeks.

I can personally attest to fiction of the highest quality in this collection, and it is very affordable.  It would mean so much if you supported us, either by purchasing or spreading the word.

7.  

I'm planning for more Fourth Friday Fairy Tale Prompts in the future, after a brief respite, so thanks to those who have participated in the past, and for those who haven't, look here.

Share it with those whom you think would enjoy participating.

Guest Post: Familiar Otherness

By Edward Gardner

[Edward invited me to read his blog-published wonder-story, The Black Dionysia, which touches on so much of what we speak about here on Spinning Straw into Gold, so of course I asked him if he would like to contribute a guest post.  You can read The Black Dionysia for yourself here. -- Christie]

The strongest enchantment fairy stories cast over me is that feeling of 'familiar otherness' I have when I read them. It's that feeling so many readers have had of being transported half out of the ordinary flow of time and into a different sort of time we somehow feel we know, or half know. Maybe it is a time nestled back in our childhoods when the world was still infinitely vast and full of both wonder and dread, when night was still possessed with mythical awe and we believed the summer sunshine eternal.

But what we are familiar with about this fairy tale time is precisely the kind of otherness we encounter there, and it is a profound otherness. We are always put off our guard when we enter Faerie. We feel there a tangible presence of threat, a lurking possibility of real harm because something very big has to be at stake for any mortal who goes there. Children can be lost forever in fairy stories, or altered beyond recognition. I don't think of these stories as comforting, not at all. Rather they are by nature unsettling, and address unsettling realities of life, even if what some of them have to unsettle is our capacity to bore ourselves to death in a predictable and disenchanted world.

Anyway, I've heard great writers talk about this phenomenon of familiar otherness (I hear vague echoes of Tolkien and Chesterton talking about it now), so I'm under no illusion of having profound new insights to offer. Mostly what I'm here to do is talk about how this familiar otherness was my guiding principle when I wrote the prologue and first chapter of The Black Dionysia.

Michael Pape, Grace - Mute Swan, source

The book begins by revisiting that familiar old confrontation between clever weakling and threatening beast. In this case we enter the scene from the perspective of the beast, which is a Leopard. This Leopard has become hungry, but her appetite is for something she cannot quite express, a kind of complex longing that defies her every attempt to explain it. She sets out in search of this object but after long and fruitless hours she becomes exhausted, morose. She drops the hunt and looks for a quiet out of the way place to curl up. Yet just when she finds it the Leopard discovers something unexpected and yet familiar waiting for her. She finds an animal she could easily devour, a Swan, but who holds the possibility of giving her what she was looking for in the first place, an involved and complex story that will contain the Swan's true name.

It is no accident that the prologue of The Black Dionysia is a fable, or that it recreates a scene found in so many fables. We are already so familiar with the magic of fable, are we not? I find even mentioning the word fable awakens something very old inside me. Already that other time of Faerie is stirring, peeking through at me with animal eyes. Probably many of us can recall from childhood Aesop's fable of the Lion and the Mouse. One of my favorite recent adaptations is Huevos Rancheros: A Mexican Tale, in which a hen convinces a coyote not to eat her by scrambling up a delicious breakfast every morning. Whenever we see this encounter between the two animals, something inside alerts us that we have witnessed strange scenes like this before and we are drawing close to Faerie.

In the case of The Black Dionysia, the Swan is weary and forgetful and cannot offer any guarantee that her story will be very entertaining, let alone worth the Leopard's hunt. But of course the Leopard accepts the offer of a story, and of course we know she will. The powerful beast always listens. Besides, when one finds a beautiful creature sleeping in a four-poster bed in a remote cottage one already knows from various promptings and indications in the fairy tradition that a remarkable story is about to unfold. We are familiar with the scene already. We expect to hear how the Swan is really a princess, and perhaps how an enchantment was set upon her by a witch, maybe how she still has a family somewhere but cannot return in her present condition. Perhaps the reader is surprised when the Swan begins to tell her story in Chapter 1 and we find that she grew up in New England.

M.L. Ecclestone, Leopard, source

But although the Swan's story defies expectation, it remains quite remarkable and there are familiar elements within it. In the first place it involves finding a monkey in her grandmother's attic. Not that many of us will have had this experience, but something about it seems strangely familiar, does it not? Perhaps we have witnessed scenes like it in books or movies, scenes invariably set in England during the early part of the last century in which children find artifacts brought back by their eccentric uncles from expeditions to Egypt, India, or Borneo. Or perhaps we have explored attics ourselves and found odd things from other cultures that seem to have imported with them something of the spirit (or spirits) of that far away place.

In any case we, like the Leopard, probably expect the monkey to be one of these stuffed artifacts. It is not. It is alive. In fact it isn't even a monkey at all but a chimpanzee. And it speaks. The presence of this talking chimpanzee alerts us to the fact we are still in the strangely familiar realm of fable. But if we failed to see this, the chimpanzee himself has a fable to tell. And now we have the first framed story of the book, at which point we will at once recognize the familiar but exotic scenario of A Thousand and One Nights in which Scheherazade spins a maze of stories, adding a new layer each night to prolong her life.

There are many more framed stories to encounter in The Black Dionysia, even though they are not delivered in such a linear fashion as in A Thousand and One Nights. Indeed, we can from one perspective read the book as made up entirely of framed stories that take turns framing each other. But this first framed story is told by the 'monkey' for a reason. The story of a primate behaving like a human is obviously a special kind of fable, and one very familiar in popular culture ever since the work of Charles Darwin. I'm not even sure all that it means, or can mean, but my point is that the 'monkey' (which is how popular culture categorizes all primates) as a fabulous character is both familiar and strange. It is both human and other, and for that reason we might feel both welcoming and uneasy about it.

Actually, the potential of the 'monkey' first occurred to me while sitting at the Nimbus brewpub in Tucson, Arizona. For years Nimbus has been using the 'monkey' (usually a chimpanzee) as its mascot, in the process commissioning all sorts of fascinating art that replaces the human subject in classical and pop art with a chimpanzee. So the chimp appears as Michelangelo's David, as Che Guevara, as Neil Armstrong, etc. It was this sort of thing that gave me the courage to put the chimpanzee into a suit of samurai armor, which is itself a kind of pop culture symbol.

Jonathan Vair Duncan, Sun Wukong, source

But there was also something older and more authentic behind my eastern warrior 'monkey'. While researching world legends in search of inspiration I came across the character of Sun Wukong in the Chinese epic The Journey to the West. Sun Wukong is an immortal being of fascinating powers who is punished by the Buddha for rebelling against Heaven. However, after his 500 year punishment he joins the monk Xuanzang on a journey towards enlightenment and atonement for his past sins. Some elements of Sun Wukong's character come through in my own 'monkey' fable and I believe this contributes a layer of mythic feeling to the story. Not that most readers would recognize Sun Wukong himself, but I think when writers feel the great span of time behind a character they can reach into the legend and write with a borrowed authority or consciousness.

As for the rest of The Black Dionysia I'll say only this: It is an unusual book encompassing a range of literary styles, all of them imaginative and some informed more by the classic elements and experience of Faerie than others. I am only now in the process of sharing it publicly and am eager for feedback, criticism, and conversation, so read this as an invitation.

NaNoWriMo Series, Part 2

Why write a book in thirty days?  I mean, isn't it a waste of time?  Writing 50,000 words on paper or a word processor doesn't make you a novelist, or even a meaningful storyteller.

In fact, I'm pretty sure that it's a good excuse to write a lot of junk.

But you have to start somewhere.  That is, I think, what the National Novel Writing Month event is about.  Getting people started.  Telling them it's okay to dive in and not worry (yet) about the end result, to let go of their expectations.  

Because if they don't, they'll never start.  They'll be crippled by the magnitude of the huge task before them.  And then they'll never accomplish anything.

Some quotes, to keep you afloat during this second half of the marathon.

From Stephen King:

Writing a book is like finding a brilliantly colored string in the grass and following it to see where it might lead. Sometimes the string breaks and leaves you with nothing. But sometimes--if you are lucky, if you are brave, if you persevere--it brings you to a treasure. And the treasure is never the money you get for the book; the treasure is the book.

And from Ray Bradbury:

Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or flower you planted, you're there.  

"It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something form the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and the real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there for a lifetime.

And because I forgot to share it when it was published, an interview with me at Red Poppy Review.

Read the other interviews, too, to get some insight from inspirational poets.  Some of them dabble in fairy tales and speculative fiction as well.

As for NaNoWriMo, f you're in this with me, hang in there!

NaNoWriMo Series, Part 1

3 Things I Think Have Made Me a Better Writer

1.  Writing fanfiction.  

This is one I've seen had to be defended against "proper" writers.

Whatever anyone might say, fanfiction is a literary genre.  And you know what?  I think it's excellent practice for the writer-in-training.  Well-formed characters, go-to back-stories, and (for the most part) culturally rich settings.  Given the fact that the author is probably a devoted fan of the series/book/program, there's very little research required.  All she has to do is focus on crafting the story: plot, style, and characterization.

Honesty time: I think my teenage, junk-food-fueled fanfiction has prepared me well for my would-be career as an author.

2.  Keeping a journal and/or personal blog.

Journaling is an easy way to practice telling a story.  You or someone you know is the main character, you've experienced the setting first hand, and you have immediate access to all the internal goings-on of the narrator, who is you.  Sometimes, keeping a journal doesn't come in a fluid beginning-middle-end story format, but what it does do is train the would-be writer in how to remember and record details in surroundings, conversations, and actions.

I credit blogging all through my college years to my memory for re-telling anecdotes and conversations almost word-for-word.  Because God knows I can't remember what day of the week my doctor's appointment is on.

Bonus: you've got your memories recorded for yourself and future generations, whether they be fond, funny, or melancholy.  You might even return to them much later as inspiration for a novel or memoir.

3.  Reading literature.  

The best writing teacher I know told me, "I teach my writing class like I would a literature class."

Reading fine writing, noting what works and what doesn't, even subconsciously allowing the author's manner of words and storytelling to influence you can condition you to form good habits.   The best way to learn how to do something well is to find a good example of it that has already been well done.

What do you think has improved your writing or made you a better author, artist, or poet?

NaNoWriMonth?

Hey fairy tale writers, guess what time of year it is?

That's right, it's NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, that magical time of year when the leaves turn crisp and abruptly fall off the trees, you start to consider candy a legitimate substitute for comfort food, and the hordes of would-be authors from America to Albania scramble to write a 50,000 word novel in a month.

Yep, it's just that good of an idea.

I'm actually participating in NaNoWriMo this year.  It'll be my first time.  If you're participating too, let me know in the comment box, and we can alternately share, encourage, and complain to one another.

If not, consider it.  It's still early, and if you've already got a few thousand words of that half-formed (fairy tale or otherwise) novel laying around, then you're probably already way ahead of the game.

Consider this: Marissa Meyer, author of the New York Time's bestselling Cinder, and one of our own fairy tale tellers, started as her 2008 NaNoWriMo novel.  So there you go.

If you scroll down and look at the right side of the screen, you'll see I've added a NaNoWriMo widget in the no-man's-blog-land between the search bar and the links.  'Cause no one likes accountability, and everyone knows how effective it is!

Because of me extreme-sport writing, and the busy holidays just over the horizon and around the bend (to Grandmother's house we go?), there won't be a Fourth Friday Fairy Tale for the next couple of months.  We'll use it as some time to (I hope) gather more readership and work on those novels.

Call for Submissions at Unsettling Wonder

A new publication titled Unsettling Wonder is calling for submissions, which close on December 1, 2012.  The theme for the fist issue is the folk motif of wonder voyages (the Odyssey is the first thing that comes to my mind).

The aim of Unsettling Wonder, or what I understand from their goose-flesh summoning introduction, is to tell tales for the love of story; to conjure the numinous in a way only a story-as-it's-being-told/read can; to keep the trade alive, from master to apprentice.  Come to think of it, storytelling is one of the oldest professions in the world.

Woods and princes, elves and fools, voyages and rolling cheeses, tricksters and righteous sages, kings dressed as beggars, stories told by thieves.  We want to tell these tales, not as deconstruction or subversion, not as nostalgia or sentiment, but in the same way these stories have always been told--spun out and re-imagined by the tale-teller in the moment of telling, for the ones who hear it, to reclaim the magic of story.

There is, after all, no real past in literature, just as there is no real future.  Any literary work lives, unalterably, in an eternal now--the moment the writer or the reader sees or hears the words on the page, and follows them to whatever unknown regions lie beyond.

There is also a pristine introductory article by Katherine Langrish of Seven Miles of Steel Thistles, author of Dark Angels and the Troll Mill series.  

I know already I'm going to relish anything put out by UW.  Here's to many future years bright with wonder and dark with mystery.

Defining the Fairy Tale

Marcia Lane defines fairy tales as stories (oral or written) with "a sense of the numinous, the feeling or sensation of supernatural or the mysterious."  She also notes that if the story happens in the past, it is a myth.  If it is about a real person, then it is a legend.  If it takes place in the future, then it is fantasy.

"Fairy tales," she writes, "are sometimes spiritual, but never religious" (Picturing the Rose 5).

I like these definitions.  

According to them, however, the re-tellings of "classic" fairy tales from the authors of our generation are almost overwhelmingly what would be called historical fantasy (sometimes modern fantasy or futurist fantasy/science fiction).

Gordon Laite, from The Blue Fairy Book

So, where does this leave the writer wishing to breathe new life into Cinderella (Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, Ella Enchanted, Cinder) or re-imagine Rapunzel (Bitter Greens, Zel)?  

Do we, by our reverence and desire to promulgate the longevity of the fairy tale, unwittingly destroy it?

And, how far can one stretch the definition of something before it loses its essence or identity?

Telling the Rose

I respect literary critics and am in fact trained as one.

Paradoxically, as an aspiring writer, I have a strong tendency to bristle when the critic passes final judgment, as if he or she could know better than the storyteller the meaning behind his story.*

So I find Marcia Lane's book, Picturing the Rose: A Way of Looking at Fairy Tales, an art-affirming approach to criticsm.

Richard S. Johnson

Ms. Lane is a storyteller--that is, a participator in that great oral tradition, an art that, until now, I have overlooked on this blog.**  Similar to writing and drama, yet distinct from both, oral storytelling offers its own valuable insights into the subtlety of fairy tales that are sometimes too easily overlooked by literary and anthropological criticism.

Ms. Lane wastes no time disclosing her intentions.  Her clear delight in fairy tales (risking accusations, I'd imagine, of unprofessionalism from some scholarly corners) delights me in turn.

From the Introduction (emphasis mine):

If I say to you, "Think of a rose," your mind conjures up a picture of a flower--but your picture is unique.  You imagine a new, tight bud, or a full-blown flower.  Everyone sees a different rose.  Take it by the stem and rotate it slowly and, second by second, it transforms right before your eyes.  Each time you look at it, it's different, but the rose is till there.  In much the same way, fairy tales tend to change as we live with them, examine them, and tell them.  Return to the rose.  Close your eyes and the perfume will resurrect the image of the flower.  Always the same, always changing.  These stories will blossom as you examine them; you can look and look, and they will never lose their ability to delight and enchant.  Such is their power!

[ . . . ]

For the two categories of people who matter most, all the books amount to linguistic excess.  Simply put, kids don't care about, and storytellers can't use most of what has been written about fairy tales.  For all the theorizing that has gone forth about the nature of story, and the ability of a child to perceive and internalize various aspects of story, the truth is, no one can know for sure.

I have a very strong feeling, just from reading the introduction, that Picturing the Rose will grow to become a companion of mine, and a handbook for me as I attempt to tell my own stories.

What book of criticism or writing handbook have you found helpful or inspiring in your writing endeavors?



*  Though I do try to remain neutral and professional as I look at those criticisms; and make every attempt to keep to the facts and away from emotional arguments, except when personal interpretation seems appropriate.
**  I use the word "storyteller" elsewhere on this blog to refer to writers who tell stories, as opposed to non-fiction authors, journalists, bloggers, etc.

On Submissions

I've no lack of poems and stories to contribute to the mythological tradition, but securing a spot in print for one's voice to be heard is not an easy task.  I've read enough of seasoned authors' advice to know that's more the norm than it isn't.

Still, it's hard to judge which is the right place or publication: which journal or e-magazine or blog is one with which I stand less of a risk, tremblingly pressing into its editors' hands my submission.  It's not an easy guess, especially if trying to stay true to one's own voice and finding that it is not the trend (either in style, tradition, or philosophy) for the genres in which the work is written.

Or that one's work simply isn't good enough (yet?).  Ouch.

Gustav Dore

Here's an interesting and practical reflection by poet Donna Lewis Cowan, author of Between Gods.

And here's a little glimpse at something I've submitted lately.

In the telling, they forgot
Achilles later had a sister
birthed through foam-flecked mourning.
Her mother labored, faint
as vapor, salt as sea, and pressed in her
a secret wound.  The wise
naiads sang, "Let her be fair
as apple's flesh, with a glance
of clouded mirrors, and let her be
cursed
to lie in idle love or waste
immortal minutes chipped from beggared fate
with words on her lyre and foxglove
on her fingertips."

Speaking of submissions, don't forget to make yours to Spinning Straw into Gold's fairy tale writing contest.  Practically speaking, I intend everyone to be a winner in one way or another.  So consider entering, if only (if only!) for other writers' fellowship.

Good Reads

If you have a moment for a little Sunday reading, I highly recommend these thoughts on fairy tales, magic,  writing, and mystery:

• Fantasy and Folklore: A Sense of Symbolism
• "The Little Mermaid" by Cassandra Golds
• Fantasy and Folklore: the importance of belief
• On Making Things

The Little Mermaid, artist unknown

The Secret of Kells and the Art of Making

I've only recently encountered this delightful animated film from 2009.  The Secret of Kells is about a boy growing up in the walled abbey in Ireland during the time of the Viking raids, while the Book of Kells was being penned and illustrated.  It was an instant favorite for my family, and we play this song to our little one all the time.

This clip shows the highly stylized animation that evokes traditional Irish art.  Much could be written about these exquisite and deceptively simple illustrations.

The plot is straightforwardly simple, so much so that I was a bit surprised when the credits started rolling.  However, after stepping back from the experience of viewing to examine the whole, a clear theme emerged: that of the perseverance of human nature and its ability to create art in despite of trial.

The Book, not yet known as the Book of Kells, arrives in the abbey fortress with the famed illuminator Aidin, sole survivors of a Viking raid to the island of Iona.  Brendan is told by his uncle Cellach to keep away from the Book, and the forest that creeps up to the very threshold of their settlement.  Both are dangerous in different ways.

Cellach's intentions are worthy enough; day and night, he labors over the design and construction of an immense wall, intended to hold out the Vikings and defend the abbey and those who look to it for protection.

But the lure of the Book's mystery speaks to young Brendan.  Once he glimpses the fantastic illustrations, he longs to be a part of its making.  He risks disobedience at Aidin's behest and ventures into the woods to find berries for ink.  There he meets Aisling, a native faerie, who befriends him and teaches him the mysteries of the wood.  As Brendan's knowledge grows in the art of illumination, so does his appreciation for the art of the natural world.

The Secret of Kells is about pushing through adversity to continue making; about the human soul reaching out for beauty, and the way art transforms, even as men and women transform the materials around them into something new, especially works of art.  

In times of trial, we are tempted to point a finger at the dreamers and idealists; it is hard to see what the value of art is in a world of destruction.  Beauty and utility clash.  What good is a lovely song or a moving picture when death lurks at the end of every day?

This is the abbot's unspoken question in Kells.

Cellach, the abbot of Kells, was once an illuminator himself.  Jaded by hardship and worry, he forsook it and took up the task of building a wall to protect those under his care.  So desperately does he try to preserve life at any cost, he shuts out that which does not directly contribute to that aim.  He banishes his sense of wonder and refuses to acknowledge beauty.  One cannot eat a poem, he reasons.  A painting cannot stave off death.

What Cellach believes will protect him, however, ultimately proves useless.  Only, having shirked joy and the hope inherent in creating things solely for beauty's sake, he has failed to treasure the gifts and talents (and people) he had while he had them.  He has neither safety, nor hope.

Fortunately, the film doesn't end on the wasted Kells and the empty abbot.  Brendan, who, with a child's innocent wisdom, recognized in his own way the importance of the Book, facilitates his uncle's reconciliation with truth and beauty before the end.

It's a well-made, thoughtful movie, and I highly recommend it.  Whether intentionally or not, The Secret of Kells speaks to why we should still tell stories, especially fairy tales.   

Our voices matter, and our efforts are not made in vain; just as the aged monk's were not, who could not have guessed the profound richness with which he endowed humanity, when he first picked up ink and quill.

Contest Postponed

UPDATE:  The contest has been reinstated with a new deadline!

Due to lack of exposure and some personal life events, the fairy tale writing contest will be postponed until further notice.

I fully intend to re-open the contest at a later date, perhaps after Spinning Straw into Gold gets more regular traffic and I have the time and finances to give it the exposure it deserves.

So please keep checking back here, and in the meantime, I would relish any opportunity to share your fairy tale and ideas concerning Faerie here on this blog.

Do not hesitate to e-mail!

Man the Maker

Ann Anderson, The Frog Prince

Although now long estranged,
Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Dis-graced he may be, yet is not de-throned,
and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned:
Man, Sub-creator, the refracted Light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build
Gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sowed the seed of dragons—'twas our right
(used or misused). That right has not decayed:
we make still by the law in which we're made.

--J.R.R. Tolkien

 

I'm planning on hosting a link-up in which I post a picture or a series of words or a phrase for people to take away and write a fairy tale with.  If that sounds like something that would interest you, please stick around.  It's going to be fun.