Maggie's Writer Musings

Writer of fiction. Contributor for HelloGiggles. Tea drinker. Game of Thrones mad. Leonard Cohen's muse. A blog dedicated to writing, dreaming and literature. Find me on twitter @maggiejank

[pinupgalore-lanadelrey]

“Lolita gets lost in the ‘hood.” “When I was 15, I had this teacher, who is still my good friend,” begins Lana. “In boarding school, to become a teacher you don’t have to have a Masters. I was 15 and he was 22, out of Georgetown. He was young, and at school you were allowed to take trips out at the weekends. On our driving trips around the Connecticut counties, he introduced me to Nabokov, (Allen) Ginsberg, (Walt) Whitman. He read us Leaves of Grass and we read Lolita in class, and it changed my world, which was a really solitary world. I didn’t have a connection to anyone in class and when I found these writers, I knew they were my people. He was my gateway to inspirational culture. Those inspirations I got when I was 15 are still my only inspirations.” . 

[maxkirin]

Neil Gaiman’s 8 Rules of Writing, a remake of this post. Source.

Want more writerly content? Make sure to follow maxkirin.tumblr.com for your daily dose of writer positivity, advice, and prompts!

[psliterary-deactivated20190419]

The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.

Albert Camus (via psliterary)

[cheshirelibrary]

Honest Book Titles

[via Buzzfeed]

[themutantgene]

Of all creatures that have breath and sensation, we women are the most unfortunate. First at an exorbitant price we must buy a husband and master of our bodies. [This misfortune is more painful than misfortune.] And the outcome of our life’s striving hangs on this, whether we take a bad or a good husband. For divorce is discreditable for women and it is not possible to refuse wedlock. And when a woman comes into the new customs and practices of her husband’s house, she must somehow divine, since she has not learned it at home, how she shall best deal with her husband. If after we have spent great efforts on these tasks our husbands live with us without resenting the marriage-yoke, our life is enviable. Otherwise, death is preferable. A man, whenever he is annoyed with the company of those in the house, goes elsewhere and thus rids his soul of its boredom [turning to some male friend or age-mate]. But we must fix our gaze on one person only. Men say that we live a life free from danger at home while they fight with the spear. How wrong they are! I would rather stand three times with a shield in battle than give birth once.

Medea in Euripedes’ play Medea, lines 230-251. Greece, 431 BCE. (via themutantgene)

Ancient Greek feminism - Medea

[tragicophelias]

Hades hath no fury like a woman who is left with the image of a man who has left for another when he had her dangled in his face as though a lure. Elysium hath no glory like a woman who has taken control of the world that is left giving curses and tragedy and death with a smile that tastes like ashes. Hades hath no fury like a woman with the power of the universe in her hands that she has woven into your cloak and your burning crown. Elysium hath no glory like a woman with blood in the crevices of her skin and her smile as she orchestrates the destruction of her long borne lives.

’FURY/GLORY’ or ’Medea’s Revenge’ by e.l/m (via arabellastrangely)

[the-library-and-step-on-it]

FROM THE VAULTS:

Tuberculosis in Literature

Les Misérables, Victor Hugo

[Fantine’s] whole person was trembling with an indescribable unfolding of wings, all ready to open wide and bear her away, which could be felt as they rustled, though they could not be seen. To see her thus, one would never have dreamed that she was an invalid whose life was almost despaired of. She resembled rather something on the point of soaring away than something on the point of dying.

Nicholas Nickleby, Charles Dickens

There is a dread disease which so prepares its victim, as it were, for death; which so refines it of its grosser aspect, and throws around familiar looks unearthly indications of the coming change; a dread disease, in which the struggle between soul and body is so gradual, quiet, and solemn, and the result so sure, that day by day, and grain by grain, the mortal part wastes and withers away, so that the spirit grows light and sanguine with its lightening load, and, feeling immortality at hand, deems it but a new term of mortal life; a disease in which death and life are so strangely blended, that death takes the glow and hue of life, and life the gaunt and grisly form of death; a disease which medicine never cured, wealth never warded off, or poverty could boast exemption from; which sometimes moves in giant strides, and sometimes at a tardy sluggish pace, but, slow or quick, is ever sure and certain.

The Idiot, Fyodor Dostoevsky

[Mary]’s consumption was so advanced, and she was so weak, that she used to sit with closed eyes, breathing heavily. Her face was as thin as a skeleton’s, and sweat used to stand on her white brow in large drops. I always found her sitting just like that. I used to come up quietly to look at her; but Marie would hear me, open her eyes, and tremble violently as she kissed my hands.

The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann

And life? Life itself? Was it perhaps only an infection, a sickening of matter? Was that which one might call the original procreation of matter only a disease, a growth produced by morbid stimulation of the immaterial?

Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCourt

Theresa Carmody answers the door. She has the consumption and they’re afraid of catching it from her. She’s seventeen and out of the sanatorium, and she’ll never see eighteen. The boys at the post office say sick people like Theresa know there’s little time left and that makes them mad for love and romance and everything. Everything. That’s what the consumption does to you, say the boys at the post office.

“No Pain Whatsoever” (Eleven Kinds of Loneliness), Richard Yates

When he bent forward to take the match the yellow pajamas gaped open and she saw his chest, unbelievably thin, partly caved-in on one side where the ribs were gone. She could just see the end of the ugly, newly healed scar from the last operation.

Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë

“I am very happy, Jane; and when you hear that I am dead, you must be sure and not grieve: there is nothing to grieve about. We all must die one day, and the illness which is removing me is not painful; it is gentle and gradual: my mind is at rest. I leave no one to regret me much: I have only a father; and he is lately married, and will not miss me. By dying young, I shall escape great sufferings. I had not qualities or talents to make my way very well in the world: I should have been continually at fault.”

“Metzengerstein”, Edgar Allan Poe

The beautiful Lady Mary! How could she die? - and of consumption! But it is a path I have prayed to follow. I would wish all I love to perish of that gentle disease. How glorious! to depart in the hey-day of the young blood - the heart of all passion - the imagination all fire - amid the remembrances of happier days - in the fall of the year - and so be buried up forever in the gorgeous autumnal leaves!

[fakenewsjunkie]

[maggiewritesmoderndread]

Edith Piaf, you gave beauty to ugliness.

Frida Kahlo, you loved fiercely and you shared your wounds with the world.

Patti Smith, you persevered and lived for art.

Thank you, brilliant women.

[book-caps]

Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

[maggiewritesmoderndread]

Sharon Tate, Briggite Bardot, Catherine Deneuve

[maggiewritesmoderndread]

Five books to teleport you to Paris

"Howis anyone ever gonna come up with a book, or a painting, or a symphony, or a sculpture that can compete with a great city?" Owen Wilson's sentimental idealist, Gil Pender wonders in Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris. 

Paris is Hemingway's "movable feast;" a colossus of history and culture; a proverbial haven for dreamers and lovers. For decades it has beckoned artists and idealists, feeding them with inspiration and salvation. Paris has offered these seeking pilgrims a second home and many greats, like Jim Morrison and Oscar Wilde eternally rest in Paris.

I am an eternal Francophile, obsessed with the laissez-faire culture, French history, food and most of all, the magnificence of the 60s.

I was lucky enough to spend a portion of my honeymoon nestled between Montparnasse and St Germain. Although I wish to soon return and stroll down the boulevards and along the Seine, these books about Paris make me feel like I’m still there.

 How to Be Parisian Wherever You Are: Love, Style, and Bad Habits.

This guide to style, beauty and culture is co-written by four Parisian women: model Caroline de Maigret, film producer Sophie Mas, screenwriter Audrey Diwan, and  writer Anne Berest. The Parisian mavens deliver commands with sass and unapologetic frankness. “Enjoy the face you have today. It’s the one you’ll wish you have 10 years from now.” Great read before a big shopping trip, but remember Parisian women surprisingly don’t advocate logos. “You are not a billboard.”

Almost French

The memoir by Australian journalist Sarah Turnball is a spectacular story of love and cultural clashes. After unexpectedly falling in love with a Frenchman, Turnball navigates through her new life in France, candidly recalling the highs and lows. Almost French is a self-deprecating and witty story of an easy-going Australian stumbling through strange new customs of couture fashion and being fashionably late, by ninety minutes. “France is like a maddening, moody lover who inspires emotional highs and lows. One minute it fills you with a rush of passion, the next you're full of fury, itching to smack the mouth of some sneering shopkeeper or smug civil servant.”

A Movable Feast

Ernest Hemingway spent his 20s in Paris with other expat artists and writers, like F. Scott Fitzgerald and James Joyce. A Movable Feast is a memoir of Paris in the post-war 1920s. Published posthumously, the memoir consists of Hemingway's personal accounts and stories, as a young and struggling writer. He provides specific addresses of cafes, bars, hotels, and apartments, some of which can still be found in Paris today, like The Ritz Hotel and Le Deux Magots. "If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a movable feast."

The Sweet Life in Paris

You can’t think of Paris without thinking of the decadent cuisine. Paris' premier expat pastry chef David Lebovitz has written about his immersion in French culture and more importantly, French cooking. The Sweet Life is part memoir and part recipe book. It is a mouth-watering read, have chocolate or macaroons close by.  

Paris: The Novel

This epic novel by Edward Rutherfurd is not to be taken lightly.  The 805 page historical juggernaut moves across the ages, from the early days of the Sorbonne University, the French Revolution, the building of the Statue of Liberty and the present. The saga follows several families; there are brothers from Montmarte slums, revolutionaries, disgraced nobles and labourers. As the novel speeds through decades and centuries, it reveals family secrets and introduces readers to ancestors and descendants of key characters. The star of the novel is of course, Paris.

[maggiewritesmoderndread]

A writer in good company. Edith and Anjelica.

[maggiewritesmoderndread]

COMIC BOOK CHALLENGES MENSTRUAL MYTHS

TEDxBangalore speaker Aditi Gupta’s menstrual cycle caused her to feel inadequacy, confusion and shame about a healthy and normal bodily function.

“I got my first period when I was twelve. I was told to keep it a secret from others, even my father and brother, as if it were some kind of unspeakable sin.” Gupta says.

“I was not allowed to sit on the sofa or on other family members’ beds. I was branded impure and was forbidden from worshipping, becoming part of festivities and social events.”

The shaming brought about by her menstrual cycle, drove Gupta to pursue dangerous hygiene habits.  Unfortunately this wasn’t a unique case. Many young women in India put their bodies at risk because they have unanswered questions about their bodies and often cultural taboos prevent them from seeking external help.

Growing up in a conservative culture of silence, the advice she received about her changing body were based on half-truths and myths.  “Such an outlook is humiliating and damages the self-esteem and the self-confidence of a young girl in her early formative years.” Gupta says. As an adult, Gupta has decided to put an end to the generational passing of misinformation, by being a voice for young girls.  

Now, the women’s health advocate is changing perceptions and starting a conversation through her creation Menstrupedia, an educational 90-page comic book aimed at young girls. Together with health- advocate Tuhin Paul, the duo hopes to introduce girls to the concept of menstruation and healthy hygiene practices.

A recent study by AC Nielsen had found that 70% of women in India cannot afford sanitary napkins and are reduced to using including ashes and husk sand. According to the same study inadequate menstrual protection compels adolescent girls, aged between 12-18 to miss around five days of school in a month, or 50 days in a year. Around 23% of these girls drop out of school once they start menstruating and three out of 10 girls in India don’t learn about periods before they hit puberty.  Women are likely to contract a Reproductive Tract Infection (RTI) due to unsafe practices, perpetuated by misinformation and a lack of appropriate supplies.

Young women are vulnerable members of society and those in rural areas and below the poverty line are the most helpless. Sadly, these women can be easily persuaded to undertake sterialization in a government-approved sterilization camp, as part of a program set up to control India’s population problem.

“This is the story of millions of girls in India who suffer in silence due to the widespread menstrual myths. During my work in spreading awareness about menstruation, I came across stories where girls have to eat and wash their dishes separately … in some households they are even secluded from other family members.

Menstrupedia unravelles menstrual myths, provides hygienic management tips and ties in the psychology of puberty in an accessible and appropriate manner. Gupta’s aim has been to make girls and women able to accept and understand their bodies, while also providing the antidote to a cultural taboo.

 Follow for similar posts

[maggiewritesmoderndread]

A glimpse in the lives of North Koreans, through Instagram

Photographer David Guttenfeler has regularly travelled to North Korea over the past fifteen years. In 2014 he opened the Instagram account @everydayDPRK with the intention of documenting the lives and realities of everyday North Koreans. The account has quickly gained over 24,000 followers.

North Korea is considered  one of the world's most repressive and secluded nations and horror stories of the regime's  brutality have travelled all over the world. The recent Sony hacking shows their intimidation tactics towards the west. North Korea is considered to have one of the largest armies in the world and elections are held every five years, although ballots have only one option on them. People and entire families are sent to work camps for minor indiscretions, as a result of the "three generations of punishment" law. Parents, grandparents or children are sent to work camps, alongside with the violator. To us, it sounds like a bleak Orwellian dystopia and a place which sounds almost like fiction.

"It's not a cardboard movie facade, it’s a real place—people have lives, they get up and go to work.” Guttenfeler has said in an interview with the National Geographic. 

Guttenfeler's unassuming and oddly beautiful photographs are a reminder that despite the totalitarianism, North Koreans, like us, have normal lives with everyday routines and everyday struggles. These are the weather-beaten and oppressed people, who must carry on.  There is a bit of the extraordinary in the everyday acts Guttenfeler has captured and shared.

His photographs depict women buying shoes, brides in ruffled dresses, people walking to work, teachers playing a piano, vivid propaganda on street walls, people lining up in uniformity for a roller-coaster ride. These are everyday people undertaking everyday activities and humanizing our perception of North Korea.

Since its creation the Instagram account has added six other contributors, none of them being professional photographers. The rise in followers demonstrates our fascination with the normality in a society we perceive as being anything but normal. These are the faces with a story to tell. 

Follow for similar stories

[maggiewritesmoderndread]

[maggiewritesmoderndread]

✍ Finally, an ask-meme for writers! ✍

01: When did you first start writing?

02: What was your favorite book growing up?

03: Are you an avid reader?

04: Have you ever thrown a book across the room?

05: Did you take writing courses in school/college?

06: Have you read any writing-advice books?

07: Have you ever been part of a critique group?

08: What’s the best piece of feedback you’ve ever gotten?

09: What’s the worst piece of feedback you’ve ever gotten?

10: What’s your biggest writer pet-peeve?

11: What’s your favorite book cover?

12: Who is your favorite author?

13: What’s your favorite writing quote?

14: What’s your favorite writing blog? c;

15: What would you say has inspired you the most?

16: How do you feel about movies based on books?

17: Would you like your books to be turned into TV shows, movies, video games, or none?

18: How do you feel about love triangles?

19: Do you prefer writing on a computer or longhand?

20: What’s your favorite writing program?

21: Do you outline?

22: Do you start with characters or plot?

23: What’s your favorite & least favorite part of making characters?

24: What’s your favorite & least favorite part of plotting?

25: What advice would you give to young writers?

26: Which do you enjoy reading the most: physical, ebook, or both?

27: Which is your favorite genre to write?

28: Which do you find hardest: the beginning, the middle, or the end?

29: Which do you find easiest: writing or editing?

30: Have you ever written fan-fiction?

31: Have you ever been published?

32: How do you feel about friends and close relatives reading your work?

33: Are you interested in having your work published?

34: Describe your writing space.

35: What’s your favorite time of day for writing?

36: Do you listen to music when you write?

37: What’s your oldest WIP?

38: What’s your current WIP?

39: What’s the weirdest story idea you’ve ever had?

40: Which is your favorite original character, and why?

41: What do you do when characters don’t follow the outline?

42: Do you enjoy making your characters suffer?

43: Have you ever killed a main character?

44: What’s the weirdest character concept you’ve ever come up with?

45: What’s your favorite character name?

46: Describe your perfect writing space.

47: If you could steal one character from another author and make then yours, who would it be and why?

48: If you could write the next book of any series, which one would it be, and what would you make the book about?

49: If you could write a collaboration with another author, who would it be and what would you write about?

50: If you could live in any fictional world, which would it be?