The South Bridge Vaults, Edinburgh.
Read my list over on Nova's blog! It's part of her really fun Halloween guest series, "What Scares You?"
October 2011 Archives
The South Bridge Vaults, Edinburgh.
Read my list over on Nova's blog! It's part of her really fun Halloween guest series, "What Scares You?"
Who told you that there is no true, faithful, eternal love in this world! May the liar's vile tongue be cut out! Follow me, my reader, and me alone, and I will show you such a love!This is going to be one of the shorter 100-great-book appreciations I write, not because I didn't love Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, but because I loved it enough to write about it elsewhere (you'll see). I have vague memories of three Irishmen recommending this book over afternoon pints, all on separate occasions, six or seven years ago. I put it on my great books list, tried to read it, and lost interest midway through the second chapter. Then I met Amy at Squam, who said it was one of her favorite novels of all time and that I must read it PRONTO. (The Volokhonsky/Pevear translation, mind!) So I gave it another chance, and I'm so glad I did.
'Everything will turn out right, the world is built on that.'
The Devil pays a visit to Moscow; mayhem ensues. Naked women run shrieking through the streets, money rains from a theater ceiling, men vanish out of their offices and apartments (one literally becomes an empty suit), a clubhouse full of hack writers goes up in flames, a fat man in a lilac suit gets stuck in a barrel of herring, a pig flies, a cat boozes and swears and shoots a pistol and rides a streetcar. A fanged minion gives our heroine a face cream that allows her to soar above the apartment buildings, so she can go skinnydipping in a far-off river under the full moon. There are only sane men in the madhouse, Satan throws a helluva party, and all the city's hypocrites (which is nearly everyone) are gleefully exposed. (Crooked bureaucrats are systematically removed from their positions with particular relish.) Best of all, a good woman loves a good man and gets to go on loving him for the rest of eternity.
...with sorcery, as everyone knows, once it starts, there's no stopping it.
The pandemonium in modern-day Moscow is juxtaposed with wonderfully vivid scenes from ancient Jerusalem, which are excerpts of a novel written and burned and re-written (see below) by the eponymous Master (the aforementioned good man). The Master and Margarita is a big glorious "eff you" to Stalin and his repressive regime, and even though Bulgakov had to write it in secret and the book wasn't published for more than 25 years after his death, he managed to create a work that revels in its own "artistic and spiritual freedom" (as the back cover says). Irony has never been quite this much fun.
Jill eats meat and Kate does not, hence the goofy poses.
During Ramadan, practicing Muslims don't eat until after sundown. We think this must be part of why it was so hard to find places to eat when we were staying in smaller towns (like Eskişehir and Afyon). It wasn't even a vegetarian thing--Jill was as frustrated as we were.
But in Eskişehir (ess-keh-she-HEER) we stumbled upon this marvelous little hole in the wall where the owner, Mohamet, and his wife Esme were very friendly and accommodating and loaded us up with eggplant dip and roasted vegetables and salad and the best kind of bread and some majorly tasty salsa. Esme (who was finally sitting down to her own dinner) kept telling us their son was working at a hotel in "Finlandia," and we eventually realized she meant Florida.
This meal was awesome for another reason. We stuffed ourselves until we couldn't eat any more (and that hardly ever happened elsewhere--we often left the table feeling like we could keep eating), and the bill came to 15 Turkish lira. That's three dollars a person. We felt downright guilty for paying so little, especially when the meal was so satisfying.
Next up: photos from our travels in the Phrygian Valley.
(Ideas, part 1.)
Go on, laugh! (If you know me, you know that I have absolutely no business offering organizational tips, because I am an incorrigible slob. HOWEVER, with three published books under my belt I figure I must be doing something right. Right?)
So here's my 'system,' and I'm telling you about it partly to jump-start my own tush into actually using it again.
1. The Moleskine Notebook.
This is always the first point of capture--I never go anywhere without a notebook. I like Moleskine notebooks because they've got a pocket in the back for collecting loose notes, little inspiring things I find in my travels, or just things I like to keep with me (vintage postcards, a strangely-shaped leaf, my grandfather's prayer card).
(Gee, I could really use a couple more for Christmas...haha.)
2. The Rolly File.
I wrote about the rolodex here. I haven't actually used this system in awhile, but I'll definitely be returning to it for my next adult novel. There are simply too many bits and bobs (period details, funny turns of phrase, historical anecdotes, &c.) to keep track of any other way.
3. The Brain Dump.
This is when you take a big sheet of paper (I used newsprint left over from a drawing class I took at Parsons a gazillion years ago), label it with your working title in the center, and start filling in the page with characters' names and their relationships to one another, their histories and motivations, along with anything else that occurs to you--plot points, epigraphs, research reminders or cross references...anything at all to do with your story. The brain dump is loads (har, har) of fun, not to mention a 'map' of sorts that you can refer back to again and again as you write. (I'll talk about how I outline in a future post.)
(I'm not giving anything away by showing you this, since I doubt this story will ever make it off my hard drive.)
4. Scrivener
One of my Yaddo buddies, Cole, gave me a brief run-down of the features of this neat-o word processing and organizational program last year, and I eventually downloaded a copy of my own. It's got a virtual binder, so instead of having this unwieldy Word doc full of unfinished scenes, you give each scene its own page, so it's all that much easier to keep track of. I started another Scrivener project called "The Repository" and that's where I'm keeping my notes and ideas for all the stories apart from the one I'm currently working on. Infinitely better than a thousand Word docs across several dozen folders! (Also, it's going to make all the little pieces of Moon 2.0 SO much easier to manage--if I ever do get to write the second edition. SIGH. Still on hold indefinitely.) And there are a lot of other features I haven't even gotten around to exploring yet.
(Click for a better view.)
I swing back and forth between wanting everything in ink on paper (hard drive failure! DISASTER!!!) and having everything in a file on the laptop (too much gee-dee paper everywhere); it's like I always feel I could be more organized if I did it the other way from how I'm currently doing it. Ultimately the best method seems to be half and half: first scribbling each idea down in a notebook, then either inputting it into Scrivener (if there's already a place for it) or putting it on a rolly card for future use.
As disorganized as I am, I love hearing about how other people keep their ideas in order. Do you have a 'system'? Leave me a comment!
Go on, laugh! (If you know me, you know that I have absolutely no business offering organizational tips, because I am an incorrigible slob. HOWEVER, with three published books under my belt I figure I must be doing something right. Right?)
So here's my 'system,' and I'm telling you about it partly to jump-start my own tush into actually using it again.
1. The Moleskine Notebook.
This is always the first point of capture--I never go anywhere without a notebook. I like Moleskine notebooks because they've got a pocket in the back for collecting loose notes, little inspiring things I find in my travels, or just things I like to keep with me (vintage postcards, a strangely-shaped leaf, my grandfather's prayer card).
(Gee, I could really use a couple more for Christmas...haha.)
2. The Rolly File.
I wrote about the rolodex here. I haven't actually used this system in awhile, but I'll definitely be returning to it for my next adult novel. There are simply too many bits and bobs (period details, funny turns of phrase, historical anecdotes, &c.) to keep track of any other way.
3. The Brain Dump.
This is when you take a big sheet of paper (I used newsprint left over from a drawing class I took at Parsons a gazillion years ago), label it with your working title in the center, and start filling in the page with characters' names and their relationships to one another, their histories and motivations, along with anything else that occurs to you--plot points, epigraphs, research reminders or cross references...anything at all to do with your story. The brain dump is loads (har, har) of fun, not to mention a 'map' of sorts that you can refer back to again and again as you write. (I'll talk about how I outline in a future post.)
(I'm not giving anything away by showing you this, since I doubt this story will ever make it off my hard drive.)4. Scrivener
One of my Yaddo buddies, Cole, gave me a brief run-down of the features of this neat-o word processing and organizational program last year, and I eventually downloaded a copy of my own. It's got a virtual binder, so instead of having this unwieldy Word doc full of unfinished scenes, you give each scene its own page, so it's all that much easier to keep track of. I started another Scrivener project called "The Repository" and that's where I'm keeping my notes and ideas for all the stories apart from the one I'm currently working on. Infinitely better than a thousand Word docs across several dozen folders! (Also, it's going to make all the little pieces of Moon 2.0 SO much easier to manage--if I ever do get to write the second edition. SIGH. Still on hold indefinitely.) And there are a lot of other features I haven't even gotten around to exploring yet.
(Click for a better view.)
I swing back and forth between wanting everything in ink on paper (hard drive failure! DISASTER!!!) and having everything in a file on the laptop (too much gee-dee paper everywhere); it's like I always feel I could be more organized if I did it the other way from how I'm currently doing it. Ultimately the best method seems to be half and half: first scribbling each idea down in a notebook, then either inputting it into Scrivener (if there's already a place for it) or putting it on a rolly card for future use.
As disorganized as I am, I love hearing about how other people keep their ideas in order. Do you have a 'system'? Leave me a comment!
Aslan means "lion" in Turkish. Cool, huh?
(Above and below are pics from Hattuşa, the Hittite city.)
"People who have not been in Narnia sometimes think that a thing cannot be good and terrible at the same time. If the children had ever thought so, they were cured of it now. For when they tried to look at Aslan's face they just caught a glimpse of the golden mane and the great, royal, solemn, overwhelming eyes; and then they found they couldn't look at him and went all trembly."
--from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Aslankaya ("lion stone") in the Phrygian Valley. (The Phrygians were a seafaring race that conquered the Hittites and settled in Anatolia--way inland, which is odd, right?--possibly in the 12th century B.C.)
