Blast from the past.

Here's a  post from December 2009. Yeah, I've been here a while now!

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Gilgamesh and Enkidu

The most powerful myths are about extremity. They force us to go beyond our experience. There are moments when we all, in one way or another, have to go to place we have never seen, and do what we have never done before. (p. 3)

Bernini's Apollo and Daphne

[Myth] enables us to place our lives in a larger setting that reveals an underlying pattern and gives us a sense that against all the depressive and chaotic evidence to the contrary, life had meaning and value.

A Short History of Myth by Karen Armstrong.

Greatest Hits

Jane with Heather Locklear.

Once again, it is time to get into the Way Back Machine and discover what exactly is hidden in my blog's archives.


Published January 7, 2010, here is a writing game courtesy of Jane Porter.

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Several years ago, Jane Porter spoke at my local RWA chapter, the Rose City Romance Writers.

I'll be honest. Jane's blonde, gorgeous, petite, skinny, and looks about sixteen. I was consumed by envy. Then she gave a brilliantly inspirational speech about where your writing fits in the market.

I was expecting something very business-like, maybe a breakdown of the different publishers and what they tended towards.

Instead, she talked about the roots of your writing- the fables, myths, and fairy tales that consumed you as a child. What could you listen to over and over? What were those themes? What keeps coming up over and over for you?

The fairy tales didn't reveal that much about me, I thought. I picked.

1. The Seven Swans: I chose discipline, faithfulness, and sewing shirts out of flowers (transformation) as the themes I loved about this story.


2. Aladdin : Flying, courage, and risk.


3. Sleeping Beauty: Disguises, awakening to a new reality, and (what the hell) fairies with personalities.

I really flailed with these. No common themes seemed to emerge. Then we went to mythology. I chose:

1. Medea: Revenge, justifiable wrath, a woman who controls her life, a woman who kills, escape



2. The Golden Fleece: Powerful allies, justifiable wrath, travel



3. The Aenead: Rising from the ashes, travel, new starts

I suddenly realized why my attempts at light-hearted romantic comedy failed miserably. I had much darker stories inside of me.

I focused on the story that began, "She swam in an ocean of blood" instead of "Lola blinked." I'm pretty sure we can all tell which first sentence is far more attention grabbing. :)
(That's not the first sentence anymore, by the way ;).

Myths, fables, legends, and fairy tales are our playground. They provide the archetypes, the symbols, and the language for our lives.

Play the game with me. What are the stories that have haunted you? What themes do you carry inside of yourself?

When you are a writer, you never stop working.

Even though I've turned in my manuscript and I'm ostensibly taking this week off, I'm still working. I've started brainstorming on Book Three, for example. Most of all, I'm feeding my head.

Ok, I'll admit it, the manicure/pedicure and eyebrow wax today had nothing to do with work, but what I did after was very important.

I went to the Mark Rothko exhibit at the Portland Art Museum.
I'm a huge fan of Rothko's later works - his well known paintings of enormous blocks of luminous colors. So it was a treat to see his earlier works and to explore his fascination with myth, archetypes, and darker colors. 

If you'd like to know more about Mark Rothko, go on over to his page on Artsy.net, right here.

Tomorrow, I'm going to talk about the other exhibit I saw - the completely unexpected dark whimsy of John Frame.