Anna Karenina, Costumes and Textiles

If you know and love a book, if you happen to have read it two or three times, if you have taken more than one college course because you saw the title in the course description, then you may be on the same page with me when it comes to Leo Tolstoy's great masterpiece, Anna Karenina.

My first reading took place in the summer when I was fifteen years old and able to spend several days in August, in a hammock strung between two trees, nestled under the whispering pines of northern Ontario.  Lulled by the sound of water lapping against the shore, I was totally enthralled with Tolstoy's Russia. The characters of Anna and Count Vronsky were so real to me, I felt as if I knew them well. My mind, to this day, can conjure up whole scenes, and if given the task, I do believe, it would be great fun to costume this beautiful drama. After all, it is a story that can be danced and has been done masterfully by the great Bolshoi Ballet.  

Years ago, after giving friends the second draft of a work in progress, the first assessment to come back to me was that I had changed my character's outfits. It is but too true. I amuse myself by dressing my imaginary friends, and they well may get new costumes as time goes on. When I think of the great books brought to the screen, when I first see the trailer and have a look at a tremendous actor inhabiting the role, it just takes my breath away to see them in costume.

If an audience can walk by the life size posters in theaters and know immediately, that a new version of Jane Eyre, or Anna Karenina is about to be released, if the casual viewer can know the story at first glimpse of the costumes, then I say the writer clothed his characters in such a way as to allow us to see them. Even if certain liberties have been taken with the original descriptions, but the feeling is still there, then it just puts me right over the moon.

As writers, we don't often think in terms of costumes; there are so many details to keep in mind that dressing the protagonist, is often seen as an afterthought. Not so. This is your chance to be a designer. If you long to see your work on the silver screen, then think of it in terms of the trailer. If another artist, or actor, can see how to flesh out this role, or how to design the set, or what the color palette should look like, it is a credit to the author. Some writers, such as Tolstoy, had a knowledge of textiles and color and because of this, designers can recreate it.

Tolstoy's novel, Anna Karenina, released in the years 1873-1877, was published serially. Russia was in a time of reform and there was much detail of the amalgamation of agrarian life and the emerging merchant classes. Adultery, and the inherent risks taken regarding social convention make up the theme, but part of what lingers in the mind regarding Anna Karenina, is her appearance and her dress. As it turns out, it played a part in the creative process itself.

Sophia Tolstoy, Leo's wife, kept notes as he was hard at work. This passage tells us a great deal of what was on her husband's mind as he wrote, Anna Karenina.

"I was sitting downstairs in my study, examining the white silk embroidery on the sleeve of my dressing gown, and I thought how beautiful it was. And then I wondered how it occurred to people to invent all these designs and decorations and embroideries, and then I realized there was a whole world of fashion and ideas and hard work that make up women's lives, and women are so fascinated by all of this. And it naturally led my thoughts about the novel to Anna and suddenly this piece of embroidery on my sleeve suggested a whole chapter to me. Anna is cut off from all the joys of this side of a woman's life for she is alone, other women spurn her and she has no one to talk to about all the ordinary, every day things that interest them."

So there it is, captured for posterity and available to all of us, the workings of the great man's mind. Take a look at a work in progress and imagine yourself the costume designer. Think of the color pallet and call to mind some of the best films in terms of color and pattern. Do not limit your writing to black and white; give it all the best elements of great design. If you are writing in another era, spend an afternoon in the library and familiarize the dress patterns down to the actual year. Learn about dyes, weaving techniques, berries and flax, cotton and wool. What do the clothes sound like when they move? Who can forget the image of Scarlet O'Hara's mother, Miss Ellen, rustling as she passed by with the scent of lemon verbena wafting through the hall.

If you set your story in another era, then please do, just for me, include a ball. You would be doing me the distinct honor of imagining the costumes.

Who Loves Short Shorts?

 We are pleased to offer this guest post by, Lila Bolme

I love short shorts.
No, I'm not talking about clothes, I'm talking about stories – like WNI's short, short story contest – "A Picture is Worth 500 Words".
But squeezing a story into a five hundred word manuscript is a little like shimmying into a pair of short shorts:

• You have to be bold
  
• You have to be lean
  
• You have to be careful how you move
  

It can also make you a better writer.
Last year, WNI offered a contest to write a short mystery, just six sentences long. That's about as short as you can get. I wondered if I could do it. I didn't plan to submit – but I did.
It turned out to be an incredible writing experience.
So how do writers go about writing something so short? Here's the process I went through to develop that contest entry. (My thoughts during the process are in italics.)

Put Both Feet In

I started with basic questions:

1. What does a story need, to make it a story?
   

A protagonist and a problem. An antagonist would be nice, but no sense setting the bar too high at the start.

2. Who is my protagonist?
   

A guy. Yup, I only had a picture in my head - a drunk in a trunk. I had just watched Water for Elephants.

3. What's the character's problem?
   

He's drunk.

Shimmy, Shimmy

4. But I need a mystery.
   

A drunk man is no mystery. How about a drunk woman?
Voila – I had a drunk woman.
Then I remembered some writing advice I read somewhere that said – throw your protagonist off a cliff.
So I did.
Presto! I had a drunk woman falling off a cliff.

5. How did she get there?
   

Kidnapped...Skiing...hmmm...OK, maybe she doesn't fall off a cliff, maybe she falls off a train...an elephant...her bed – Her bed (lots of giggling) Wait – To a drunk with bed spins, falling off a bed might seem like falling off a cliff.
Now I have a drunk woman falling off her bed.
That's not a mystery but...what if I don't tell the reader she's drunk till the end. Ta Da! Wait – Is that a mystery? I knew I should have looked that up. OK, what if I don't tell the reader she's drunk till the end AND I don't tell the reader it's a bed that she falls off of, until the end? – SHA-BAM!
That was my story kernel.

Work It

Time to get the story moving, but short, shorts only cover so much. I needed a plan.
Here's how I laid it out:

• Sentence 1 & 2 - Introduce the character and the problem.
  
• Sentence 3 & 4 - Make the problem huge and the character struggle .
  
• Sentence 5 & 6 - Let the character win or lose and reveal the mystery.
  

Squeezing into the story limits forced me to drop flab and muscle up my words. I started with my character already in crisis. The character struggled, then lost, revealing the mystery.
What I Learned:
Everything that I thought was a limitation, actually helped me write better.

• Each sentence had a specific job.
  
• The conflict had to be inflated immediately.
  
• Every word had to be deliberate.
  

I challenge you to enter this contest. Try some short shorts for yourself. Who knows? You might decide you love them too.
If you like, you can see how my Six-Sentence Mystery, turned out, right here on Writing North Idaho.

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The Best Food Ever Book Club Reads The End of Your Your Life Book Club

Written by Will Schwalbe, this novel pictured above, covers the author's journey through his mother's bout with pancreatic cancer. While I believe most editors would say that one cannot write a book about someone who gets sick and then dies, Schwalbe manages to do this quite successfully.  While it certainly feels like a story to anyone undergoing such an event, it is typically not enough to sustain fiction; something else needs to be added to the mix. How this author manages to hold our interest involves the device of discussing the books he read with his mother while she was undergoing the full course of chemotherapy. At the same time, they also discuss years of reading and other books they loved and shared.

In the end, the approach does work and people have been reading it in droves. The author's mother had an interesting life that keeps the reader engaged, as we are invited to look back on her years of helping refugees. A working woman ahead of her time, she managed to keep the home fires burning and make lively and interesting friends from all parts of the world. Her desire to build a library in Afghanistan make her admirable and the fact that she accepts her fate with grace, only adds to her strengths.

While reading, I felt I wanted to see a bit more of her flaws. We have had this discussion for the last twenty-two years  in my reading group, made palatable because we are the 'best food ever book club.' It seems to me that defects and faults make characters more interesting. Fellow readers will say they do not care for a novel, no matter how well written it is, if they do not like the character. It is one of those avenues where we agree to disagree. I am waiting, with baited breath, to see how this age old difference of opinion will play out. If one person agrees with me, and says they would like to know about at least a few faults in this admirable woman, then I can say, “Aha.” However, I know full well that it will not change anything.

What are character flaws? Because of the age we live in, I turned to Google for the answers. From About.com: Ten Ugliest Character Flaws

1. Arrogant, argumentative
2.Dishonest
3.Short tempered-combative
4.Need to always be right (conceited)
5.Perfectionist, nit picking.
6.Being a victim, always blaming the other guy
7.Selfish, miserly
8.Stubborn, rigid
9.Vain, prideful (haughty)
10. Humorless, inability to laugh at oneself

When my husband was studying for his post graduate degree, his class was asked to write a list of the ten worst traits in humankind. They all scribbled furiously, slammed the pencil smugly down and looked up at the professor. He said, "Now, take up the piece of paper and look at your self portrait."

Carson Reeves put together another great list that is even more straightforward in Script Shadow. He adds well known movies where we can see this exhibited.

1. Puts work in front of family and friends. Zero Dark Thirty
2. Won't let others in. Good Will Hunting.
3.Doesn't believe in one's self. Rocky Balboa. King George VI in The King's Speech.
4.Doesn't stand up for one's self. George McFly in Back to the Future. Cameron in Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
5.Too selfish. Bill Murray in Groundhog Day.
6.Won't Grow Up. 40 year old Virgin.
7. Too uptight, too anal. Pretty Woman.
8.Too reckless. James T. Kirk in Star Trek.
9. Lost Faith, Mel Gibson in Signs
10. Pessimism/ cynicism Sideways.

Reading this list, it is easy to see how some flaws lend themselves beautifully to tragedy and others to comedy. It is our weaknesses that make us real and indeed, at times, lovable.When describing a heroic type, he better have some defects, or we will not relate. The same can be said of antagonists. A guy who blows his stack and kills his wife, but loves his dog, is believable. No one is all good or all bad- we are a complex soup of both.

If you are looking for something to read this summer, you get two for the price of one with The End of Your Life Book Club. You will enjoy the story and get a reading list to boot. As I tend to read my way through life's trials and have for as long as I can recall, I particularly enjoyed the certain truth, that if you are put to bed with an illness, it is the perfect time to read and read and read, until the book falls on the floor and you are at the end. Hopefully, we all  still have many volumes ahead. 

Father's Day

    For Christians, God the Father holds a vital importance  - the first person of the Blessed Trinity,creator of all,   in  the book of Genesis  the Lord tells Abraham he will be  father of many generations, and Americans refer to George Washington as the father of their country.

    The name father has always held a special significance.   One who is protector, provider,  role model, counselor, guide - one who disciplines , but also forgives; One who helps their children be the best they can be, and loves unconditionally.

     I was surprised to learn Father's Day was founded in Spokane, Washington  at the YMCA in 1910 , but wasn't until  1966 , President Lyndon  B. Johnson issued the first presidential proclamation honoring fathers, designating  the third Sunday in June as Father's Day, and   wasn't until  six years later President Richard Nixon signed it into law in 1972.  

     This Sunday as we commemorate Father's Day, I think of my own father, Ronald W. Cooney,  and   the positive way he has influenced my life.  I am his oldest child, in some ways you might say we have grown up together,  sharing the twists and turns of an unpaved road., marking our own way as we drove along. No matter my age, or what I was doing dad always encouraged my endeavor and told me I could succeed if I persevered , like he did when reaching out his hand to me when  I was still a toddler taking first steps off our front porch. I felt confident knowing he was there.

     Dad's motto is not to wallow in misery and past mistakes, but strive ahead and make the next day better. It's a motto that has served him well, and has been a good example for me.

     For writers of memoir,  stories about fathers are a wonderful avenue to pursue.

     Through the years many  books have been written extolling the virtues of fathers , including :

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. While the author tackles the topic of race relations,  she also depicts,  in an inspiring way the loving relationship between father and daughter.

Little House on the Praire. Laura Ingalls Wilder tells of the hardship of pioneer life while exploring the bond between the girls and their pa.

Fatherhood by Bill Cosby , the  1987   bestseller shares the authors tales of his life being the father of five.

    And one of my personal favorites, Life with Father by Clarence Day, Jr., first published in 1936.  I have read Day's account of   his exacting, humorous father more than once, and have watched the beautifully adapted movie staring William Powell  and Irene Dunn  several times. It is pure joy.

      In 2007 my dad gave me a book titled How to Write Poetry and inscribed it with many notations,  among them , 'To Kathy, my favorite poet" ( see what I mean about dad giving me encouragement ?)  Then he wrote :

I read in this book: "Sometimes a few beautiful  well-constructed lines are more powerful than any thousand page novel could possibly be."  So this book challenges you to always seek  the  "few beautiful well-constructed  lines."      My love, Dad

                                               

                Happy Father's Day, Dad ! With love and gratitude  from  your daughter, Kathy.
     


 
   

    

A June Wedding, Graduation & Anthologies

     Yesterday morning my cousin, Elizabeth posted a picture of her parents on facebook . It is one of those wonderful   photos from a time long gone showing a young couple clearly in love with one another. In my opinion this is one of the great  photos, and  without prejudice think  Aunt Myrtle (Suzy) Cooney and Uncle Bob Breedlove look movie star glamorous !  They were childhood sweethearts growing up in Council Bluffs, Iowa,  and married June 11, 1941. Along with their three children, Aunt Suzy and Uncle Bob shared an exciting life together - living in Germany, New York, Maine and Mexico.

     My aunt and uncle were soul mates, and by all accounts their marriage was one made in heaven, they were a very dear couple,  perfectly suited to each other.  Perhaps ,  that's why they chose the month of June to make their vows.  June is named for Juno , Roman goddess of marriage. Ever since  Plurarch in the ancient  days of the Roman Empire  implied June was the most favorable month for weddings,  June has been considered 'bridal' month.

     June was also  considered  commencement month in years past,  when seniors  graduated high school.  After breakfast this morning  I  pulled  The Treasure Chest from my book shelf - an anthology of 1,064 familiar and  inspirational quotations, poems, sentiments, and prayers from great minds of 2500 years.  It's a book I often   browse through , but this day I took extra time in reading the inscription, Kathleen Cooney Graduation gift from Grandma Cooney  June 13, 1968. 

   The first thing that came to mind was, "Oh, my!, can it really be  45 years since I graduated high school!".  The next thing I studied was the inscription written in my  grandma's own hand, and how familiar her cursive writing  was to me. I  thought about her love of poetry, and her  joy in  sharing that love with others, especially her children and grand-children.  It's  a rich heritage she left to us.

    From The Treasure Chest are two  that touch my heart.  I'm pretty sure they would be favorite's of my grandmother, too.

To reach the port of heaven we must sail, sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it 
- but we must sail, not drift or lie at anchor   Oliver Wendell Holmes

    My Creed  by Howard Arnold Walter

I would be true, for there are those
who trust me;
I would be pure, for there are those who care.
I would be strong, for there is much to suffer,
I would be brave, for there is much to dare.
I would be friend to all - the foe, 
the friendless;
I would be giving , and forget the gift.
I would be humble, for I know my weakness;
I would look up  - and laugh - and love - and lift

    According to Wikipedia,  anthologies became important in the twentieth century as a part of poetry publishing, i.e. for English poetry, the Georgian poetry series was trend-setting; it showed the potential success of publishing an identifiable group of younger poets marked out as a 'generation'.   Some publishers  found anthology publication a more flexible medium than the collection of a single poet's work.  I have several in my personal library:  Anthology of American Poetry, A Treasury of GREAT POEMS English and American compiled by Louis Untermeyer, Idaho's Poetry A Centennial Anthology edited by Ronald E. McFarland and William Studebaker.

    Another favorite anthology is one belonging to my mother, Lenora - one  given to her by Grandma Cooney  in the early years of her marriage to my dad -  books she still cherishes, and reads.    Memorial Edition Anthology of the World's Best Poems compiled by Edwin Markham Vol 1-6  . I was still a very little girl when mother  would read poems  to me each night from  one  those  small maroon  books with the  gold leaf binding. It was from her sweet voice,  I first   learned of Eugene Field's Little Boy Blue, and  Wynken, Blynken,  and Nod, and  The Duel staring the gingham dog and calico cat who side by side on the table sat, and was completely  enthralled.

 

    Anthologies shouldn't be overlooked as a source for writers - they provide a wide range of expression and writing style. The anthology may be a collection of essays, short stories, poems, or plays, and are a worthwhile addition to any home library.




      
   

    



   

   

   

Painting With Words Like Painting With Color

    This past March I decided to paint the interior rooms of my house.  My husband and I have lived in our home for eight years and I was tired of the same drab nondescript creamy white walls  greeting me in bedroom, kitchen and hallway, and longed for color.

    I spent hours looking through  House Beautiful , Cottage Style, and other decorating magazines for ideas,  and days going  back and forth from my home  to Lowe's to discuss color with the expert  Emily in the paint department. When I finally decided each room would be a different color, I had to laugh at myself , and was reminded of Myrna Loy's character in Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House  painstakingly  telling the contractor  the precise shade of  color she wanted in each room. After all her thoughtful description,  the contractor turns  to the painter and says,  " You got that ?"

  " Huh-huh",  replies  the painter, " Red, green,yellow, blue and white".

    Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House , a  comic  novel delightfully  written by Eric Hodgins in 1946, the scene I refer to is wonderfully highlighted in this youtube video.

 

    Perhaps  I  wasn't quite as precise as Mrs. Blandings,  but  I did  carefully and clearly   state I  wanted  the kitchen and family room yellow. Not a bright  lemon yellow, but a soft buttery yellow.  And the master bedroom and study I wanted  green, not a hunter green or pea green, but a rich colonial green. And on it went with each  color in each  room. Thankfully, Emily  was very patient, and helpful in making sure the colors were to my liking - even if she had to remix two or three times.

   While going through the exercise of choosing color and painting rooms of my house , I  thought about a book I read last year titled Word Painting  A Guide to Writing More Descriptively by Rebecca McClanahan. Just as I was trying to make the rooms of my home more descriptive, and interesting to visitors, so I strive to do with my writing - make the words more descriptive,  and interesting  to readers.  I must admit, painting seems the easier process with a  more consistent and better outcome; even so I write on!, and like paint that has to be mixed and remixed to find just the right shade and hue, so it is with the words we write,  they have to be written and rewritten before the completed story can be  finished.

   In her book, McClanahan tell  us The characters in our stories, songs, poems and essays embody our writing. They are our words made flesh. Sometimes they even speak for us, carrying much of the burden of plot, theme, mood, idea and emotion. But they do not exist until we describe them on the page. Until they are anchored  by our words, they drift,  bodiless and ethereal. They weigh nothing; they have no voice. Once we've written the first words our characters begin to take form. Soon they'll be more than mere names. They'll put on jeans or rubber hip boots, light thin cigarettes or thick cigars; they'll stutter or shout, buy a townhouse on the Upper East Side or a studio in the Village; they'll marry for life or survive a series of happy affairs; they'll beat their children  or embrace them. What they become is up to us. 

   Just as I thought about writing while painting the rooms of my home,  the next time I sit down to write memoir, short story, essay or poem, I'll think about the process of painting and contemplate  how similar  writing and painting are in  the  need to prepare and plot out your storyboard before starting,   paying attention  to detail and sometimes making a bold choice in choosing  character and description, adding color to the story.

*** NOTE:  Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House written by American author, Eric Hodgins originally appeared as a   short story in the April 1946 issue of Fortune magazine.  If you are lucky enough to find a copy of the book in your local library or used book store, I recommend you grab it. Reading Hodgins is 'word painting' at its best, like walking into a colorfully painted room that helps describe the character and style of  home .
                                                                    

   

    

Somewhere in Time...

I recently came across some valuable advice regarding the writing of historical fiction. The cautionary note indicated that the writer should not get lost in the research.  Luckily for me, I am one of those people who like the process of creating something; the journey is fun and I do not really want to get to my destination. This may explain why I often sit in my car in the driveway when I am returning home from a trip to the market. History should never be top heavy in the story; it should be there, but not in the way. What we want to see is how the characters react to the changing times, not to read about every last parliamentary procedure, or tiresome debate in the Senate. We need to have a light hand with that ingredient, yet it is just as important as butter is to a good batch of shortbread cookies.One fantasizes about writing the definitive work, and the writer wants to know every single last significant detail about the time, but then it has to be as a thick, velvet curtain at the back of the stage.

When I set out to write a story set in 1630, I  wanted to capture, for myself most of all, what it would have been like to live in back in Boston when Europeans were new to the continent.  I read everything written on the subject and then some. Due to the fact that my characters traveled back to England in the midst of the civil war, I had to cover that as well. Once I began to grasp the enormity of losing every safeguard put in place, and seeing England fall into a military dictatorship, I did want to cover it in great detail. Too much history came the response from my first readers, and so I had to chop and chop. Still, the story of the struggle remains.

While I am not a big reader of the genre known as historical fiction, I do love reading a gripping tale when I feel as if I have been transported to another place and time. To me, that is the key.

Last evening, we set out in the boat from our dock here at the southern end of Lake Coeur d' Alene. Given that we were after hours to some degree, and needed to fill up on gas, we decided to try the town of Harrison. Having always been a fan of the place, I was happy to go over and take our chances. We were told to go up to the bar and find the man who could help us. It gave me time, while standing and holding the boat, to think.

 Harrison has all the makings of a place that time forgot. Handsome brick buildings suggest that it was a town on its way to becoming a small city back in 1890, when a branch of the O.R. And N. railroad put in a stop. A large sawmill, moved up from St.Maries, meant that a substantial operation had begun. However, a large fire broke out at the same mill, in 1917, and  destroyed most of the town. When the steamships discontinued service, they were all but cut off and the town ended up having a different future. It is one of those places, where when looking at it from the water, you sense that you knew what it was like to live there one hundred years ago. As I stood on the dock,  waiting for my husband to return from One Shot Charlies, the bar where the man who could pump the gas happened to be visiting, I thought of potential stories regarding the town and how I always feel that way when I am there.

An enchanted place can often spark the impetus to write historical fiction. Those wanting to know more about the era, will often be drawn to the story.

In the movie, Somewhere in Time, the late Christopher Reeve plays a man who being stumped in his efforts at writing, decides to take a small trip and travel to the famous Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, Michigan.  Once there, he becomes, captivated and obsessed regarding a photograph in the lobby. Desperate to know the hotel in its hey day and perhaps meet the person capturing his imagination, he accomplishes time travel and returns to 1917.  Of course, this is a metaphor for all writers and are we not lucky, that we have an imagination and picture what that may be like.

Time is running out to enter our contest here at writingnorthidaho. For details, read all about it in the sidebar.A picture can inspire 500 words.