Word Wenches

Letting My Characters Lead

Susanna here, sitting in my writing room and waiting for my characters to lead me where they will.

I remember once listening to a famous Canadian literary writer (and no, I won’t name names) say adamantly, during a radio interview, that characters were mere creations, and as such, were under the complete control of the writer at all times, with the writer firmly laying out what the character would say and do, and the character falling into line—and so any writer who claimed that their characters took on a life of their own was a liar.

Ask A Wench: What We're Doing

This month, the wenches are recovering from the holidays and chatting about what they’re doing now!

Pat here: Oh, I’m slowly going crazy—make that crazier. I’m trying to work with the cover designer for the next Crystal Magic book, AZURE SECRETS, while attempting to finish the draft on the book after that, tentatively called AMBER AFFAIR. And at the same time, I’m supposed to be packing for our trip to Costa Rica. I’ll be on the plane as you read this, knock wood. We’re going with what turns out to be a not very well organized group, which means I didn’t even know what luggage I could bring until just the other day. So I’m frantically rearranging my intended wardrobe and narrowing down to basics to fit into a carry-on. Try that some time. We just received the itinerary and we’re digging in to see what sights are accessible around the hotels we’ll be staying at, checking weather to see if we have all the necessities, looking for wi-fi in hopes we’ll not be too out of touch. . . My list keeps growing instead of getting shorter!

Three Good Things, Redux

Three Good Things

by Mary Jo   

Because of extreme busyness, I'm exercising the Word Wench prerogative of rerunning an older post--from 2006, our first year of blogging!--partly to fill this space, but also because it's a post I like, and good thoughts to make us feel better are never out of place.

The original blog was written just before Christmas, while this rerun is shortly after the holidays. Stress, however, knows no boundaries!  Enjoy this old post to which I've added some new pictures of cats and snow.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

There’s lots of warm fuzzy sentiment in the air just now, most of it generated by the multiple holidays at this season.  (Happy Winter Solstice to everyone!)  There’s lots of gatherings with family and friends, often presents and parties, and waaaaaaay too much unhealthy but delicious food and drink on offer. 

It’s a good season—but for many of us, stress levels are off the scale.  I had my hair done today, and my lovely and efficient hair stylist was dealing with the considerable demands of being a business owner, wife, mother, grandmother, serious church volunteer, providing refreshments for clients and providing a holiday meal for her staff. 

She was two clients behind when she finished me, and it was still morning. Part of this was because a long time client had to be squeezed in because of a death in the family.  My stylist will survive and even enjoy the holidays, but relaxed?  Not hardly!

And there are worse stresses, like the client who had just lost her nephew.  Like the writer friend who posted that her family has just found out that her son-in- law’s return from Iraq has been moved further away—and his unit will redeploy there after six months back in the States.   

 

by Mary Jo   

Because of extreme busyness, I'm exercising the Word Wench prerogative of rerunning an older post--from 2006, our first year of blogging!--partly to fill this space, but also because it's a post I like, and good thoughts to make us feel better are never out of place.

The original blog was written just before Christmas, while this rerun is shortly after the holidays. Stress, however, knows no boundaries!  Enjoy this old post to which I've added some new pictures of cats and snow.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

There’s lots of warm fuzzy sentiment in the air just now, most of it generated by the multiple holidays at this season.  (Happy Winter Solstice to everyone!)  There’s lots of gatherings with family and friends, often presents and parties, and waaaaaaay too much unhealthy but delicious food and drink on offer. 

It’s a good season—but for many of us, stress levels are off the scale.  I had my hair done today, and my lovely and efficient hair stylist was dealing with the considerable demands of being a business owner, wife, mother, grandmother, serious church volunteer, providing refreshments for clients and providing a holiday meal for her staff. 

She was two clients behind when she finished me, and it was still morning. Part of this was because a long time client had to be squeezed in because of a death in the family.  My stylist will survive and even enjoy the holidays, but relaxed?  Not hardly!

And there are worse stresses, like the client who had just lost her nephew.  Like the writer friend who posted that her family has just found out that her son-in- law’s return from Iraq has been moved further away—and his unit will redeploy there after six months back in the States.   

 

Celebrating a special Birthday Week

Hello, Melissa here!

This is a special week for us Wenches.  We have, not one, not two, but three wonderful birthdays to celebrate this week!  

 

We celebrate Anne on January 14th, and then on Jan 17th we have a double birthday.  Joanna and Susanna share a birthday.  How special is that?  Please join us in wishing the three lovely ladies a very happy birthday, and share our cake with us!  This one is a white cake with buttercream icing.  Do you have a favourite?

 

The Willow Pattern

Anne here. Occasionally I post photos of food on FaceBook or my blog, and often it’s displayed on this little plate — an old willow pattern plate. It has a tiny chip but I don't care — it's one of my favorite plates. I bought it years ago from a charity shop when I was a student. I love old crockery and all my dishes back then were mismatched, but each was beautiful in its own right. But the willow pattern plates were always my favorites.

I have memories of my grandmother serving up a roast dinner with vegetables on a big old willow-pattern platter, and I think she also had a willow pattern soup tureen and also some cups and saucers. I don't have any of those, only my op-shop (charity shop) plates and this lovely jug and sugar bowl set that I was given for a birthday present one year.

Life Lessons in Writing

 

Headed in to do the job with a light on my forehead as if I'm a particularly powerful elf

Joanna here: I have decided that repairing an old house is a lot like writing.

Many of the things I do seem to be a lot like writing, frankly. For instance, driving a car is a lot like writing because even when you know where you’re going you have to worry about what you’re doing this exact moment so you don’t hit the curb or a pedestrian or something and you do make progress but you’re too busy driving to notice.

But back to fixing up a house.
This is not unlike delving back into a manuscript you haven’t looked at it in a while. It puzzles you. It displeases you. And you see the manuscript needs a lot of work.

The intense purple of this room.
In the middle distance lies the intense pastel turquoise of the next room.
I have lots of work ahead.

As it happens I have acquired a house where the front bedroom is painted Grape of Violent Disposition. It is the color of Kool-Aid. (Kool-Aid, for those outside the US, is a packaged drink powder composed entirely of artificial ingredients.) It is the color of a chow chow’s tongue.

Chow chows. They really do have purple tongues

Mere photos cannot convey the intensity of this purple in real life.

Somewhere there is a paint sample named  “Mystery Plum” or “Midnight Manic Violet.” That’s what the former owners chose for this little room.
Let us be charitable and assume it belonged to a kid.

The other Wenches take you to see gardens in England with 300-year-old rhododendrons or romantic warm Tropical Isles or ruined castles in Scotland. I let you watch me paint a bedroom.

Okay. The first way working with an old house is like writing a manuscript is that most of the actual work is preparation. You go through many fiddly bits before you lay color on the wall.

 

We begin. You can see some cracks I've joint compounded

So you cover the floor with tarp. You tape plastic up over the mopboards so they don’t get splatted with paint. You protect the doors with blue tape and removed electric outlet covers, (being sneaky, sneaky careful doing that.)
You take home 3450 paint samples and narrow it down to seven nearly identical ones and then you agonize over them and keep changing your mind.

You can see how this is also the approach to the unsatisfactory draft of a manuscript.
In your draft manuscript you have somehow created good words or been handed them by the boys in the basement. You carefully preserve that blessed lagniappe of perfect-pitch language under tarps. If you got it right the first time, you leave it alone. 

In a house the next step is you wash down the walls and ceiling. A big, wet, exhausting job.

Because paint will not stick if the walls aren’t clean.
I have discovered this.

In a manuscript you strip away the sticky film of excess descriptors and adverbs and buffer language and unnecessary whifflejiffery.

Though admittedly in writing this gets done in little chunks instead of a whole room at a time, but I will not let this stand in the way of a good metaphor.

A Sense of Memory

Nicola here, musing about the atmosphere of particular places. Today I’m taking us back a long way in English history, beyond the Regency, beyond those ubiquitous Tudors, to a time before the Norman Conquest when England was split into the Anglo Saxon seven kingdoms. The village where I live has a recorded history that goes back to this distant time – there are actual documents from the era relating to events that happened in this very place over a thousand years ago and I find that mind-blowing. As I walk along the footpaths and over the hills I frequently imagine how it might have looked in that time and try to see all the way back through the mists of history to think myself back there.  I can be pretty successful at this; when it’s quiet and I’m standing on the Ravens’ Fort and all I can hear are the birds singing and I feel the breeze on my face I can persuade myself, for a split second anyway, that I have travelled in time. Then an aeroplane flies over and I think perhaps not after all.

The Twelfth Night

Susan here ... is your tree down, the ornaments packed away, your wreath off the door, the cookies and goodies all gone? Hang on, the party's not over yet ... it's Twelfth Night! 

At least it's Twelfth Night for some. January 5th marks the twelfth day (or night) after Christmas (counting Christmas as Day #1 - some count December 26, Boxing Day, as Day #1 after Christmas, making Twelfth Night Jan. 6, as if it wasn't complicated enough!). January 6th, for many, is the feast of the Epiphany, when the Magi visited the child in the stable and recognized in baby Jesus the manifestation of prophecies of the Divine. 

 

But first - a party! 

Jan Steen, Twelfth Night, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Twelfth Night was by custom an evening of raucous and rowdy partying, revelry, pranks and shenanigans, wassailing, role-playing and gender-swapping, all under the rule of a king (often called the Lord of Misrule) and a queen chosen at random by a bean and a pea, respectively, found in pieces of a Twelfth Night cake, usually made with candied fruits and nuts. Historically, Twelfth Night was celebrated with well-established traditions in the medieval era through the Regency and Victorian eras. It made it across the ocean to America, as the Colonials celebrated it too, but while it is still enjoyed today in many places, it's not much of a holiday in the States. Many of us see it more as Taking Down the Christmas Tree Day. Growing up Catholic, my family always kept the decor up until the Feast of the Epiphany, but I heard very little about Twelfth Night beyond Shakespeare. 

 

In fact, Shakespeare's famous play is not about Twelfth Night, although plenty of revelry, shenanigans and role playing goes on - very likely it was performed on Twelfth Night and its subtitle, What You Will, may have been its original title.

Jan Steen, Twelfth Night, 1662, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Twelfth Night had some of its origin in the rowdiest of parties, the Roman Saturnalia, and became part of the Christmastide tradition and was especially popular in Europe (or at least wildly popular with 17th century Dutch painter Jan Steen, who painted several scenes of Twelfth Night partying). Mary Queen of Scots was recorded to have celebrated it too - one of her ladies, Mary Fleming, found the bean in the cake, and instead of becoming king for the night, she was declared queen for the evening, and even got to wear something fabulous from Mary's own wardrobe.  

 

Lord of Misrule, book cover 1911, Poems by Alfred Noyes

A night of chaos and craziness, a night of misrule and fools and frivolity - just the sort of contrast that makes the following day, the Feast of the Epiphany and its miraculous mood, all the more special. And perhaps that was the point for the people of those earlier centuries - the contrast of chaos and misrule, and with the dawn, a new order and a sense of something magical and inspiring.

Gerard David, Adoration of the Magi, ca. 1515, National Gallery, London

 

And with the end of the holiday season, we Wenches wish you all the best in the new year!  

 

Was your holiday special this year, and did you make a wish list for 2019?

 

I didn't make any resolutions this time - I'm just looking forward to a better year than last year, with good luck, health, peace, and happiness for all! 

 

Susan 

 

The Party's Over!

The party is over. The glittering lights of the Decembers holidays have gone out with a bang on New Year's . . .The tree's ornaments have been carefully stowed away for next December, the confetti has been swept up, the empty champagne bottles have been carted to the recycling bin . . .

Andrea here, and I have to confess, it's quite depressing! Oh, yes. There are many good things about the new year, and starting, er, fresh. However the state of my fridge and pantry are not among them. Gone are the myriad cookies, the chocolate, the truffles, the brownies and blondies. Instead they are filled with all the things I SHOULD be eating. Sigh. I'm in a state of withdrawal.

I will cheerfully admit to having a sweet tooth. And the holidays are time that I rationalize that it's okay to splurge on all those buttery, sugar and spice confections. I mean, one can't be Scrooge-like and refuse to get in the spirit of season's excess, right? And we all know calories don't count from Thanksgiving to New Year's! (Quantum, surely you can up up with a quantum physics theorem that supports my scientific thinking on this . . .the tilt of the earth, the angle of the sun . . . how quickly you can scarf down the cookie . . .)

Over the holidays, I got in a bad habit of helping myself to goodies every day. And now it's time to stop. As I sit here feeling sorry for myslef I find myself fantasizing about what I miss most . . .it's a toss -up between the homemade Swiss biber (a gingerbread confection filled with marzipan) and my special blondie recipe studded with walnuts and golden raisins, topped with a lemon glaze.

What holiday goodie do you miss most after the clock strikes midnight on January 1? Or are you smarter than me and just say, "Party On!

 

 

Christmastide Train Gardens!

by Mary Jo

Christmas decorations are being packed away now, and that includes train gardens, which might be a custom unique to Baltimore. I was once told that they're done in Pittsburgh, an industrial city rather like Baltimore and not far away, but when I googled "train ," the only hits I got were for locations with them in the Baltimore area.

Basically, train gardens are train sets on steroids. I'm told they began at firehouses, where the firefights often had time on their hands so at Christmas they would build elaborate train environments for people in the community to come in and enjoy.

I don't know when this custom began--I'm not a native of these parts--but it is well established. Does it have anything to do with the fact that Baltimore is the home of American railroading? Haven't a clue!

The train garden I'm most familiar with is built annually at a small but lively local mall. It's enormously complex and I believe the assembly work is done by volunteers, and some of the mall merchants provide financial support.  Here's a picture of this year's from the mall's website:

Really, this is all hearsay! But one true fact is that EVERYONE loves the train garden, all ages from infants to oldies! Parents hold little kids on their shoulders. Slightly larger kids leave nose prints on the barriers around the exhibit. When I was there before Christmas,
a half dozen young people in wheelchairs were tootling around the edges and enjoying the show. Often one must wait for people to move away in order to get up to the glass wall around the exhibit.

So enjoy the train garden pictures. Do they have any such custom where you live? I'd love to know more.

In the meantime--toot, toot to you all!

Mary Jo