Where There's Smoke

I just finished reading Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South, and like far too many books I read, where there is written word, there are ideas for fanfiction. These are my inspiration photocollages, the first one currently serving time as my desktop background.

Images used include:

Francesco Hayez, Portrait of a Venetian Woman

Sir Henry Raeburn, Francis Horner

Guillaume Caillebotte, Jeune homme à la fenêtre (Young man at the window)

Eva Gonzalès, La Toilette

and other various and sundry ephemera images -- a map of the Manchester workhouse, a bell scheduale for the Lowell Mills, engravings of mill yards and, in photocollage number two, several stills from the BBC adaptation of North and South featuring Richard Armitage and Daniela Denby-Ashe.

Inspiration, or Lack Thereof

Some days, writing is easy. You sit down, and by some act of god or the alignment of the cosmos or the fact that you're just having an awesome day, the words come. My inspiration has a lot to do with weather, and when it's about thirty degrees outside and then you get a new full blanket of snow (and then, of course, a snow day in which you would like nothing better than to write all day), trying to write a scene that takes place in a desert becomes a lot harder than you would think.

This wasn't any snow, either -- it was wet snow, the kind skiers hate because it clumps and sticks to everything and slows you down. I would know -- I went out and snowshoed in it. Powder, the light, airy kind of snow, behaves like sand -- it drifts, forms snow dunes. Looking at wind swept powder looks a lot like looking at a desert. Looking at wet snow...looks like looking at a winterscape. Not helpful at all.

I have a new chapter due this Friday (I use the word 'due' as an indication that I am giving myself deadlines, one new chapter a week, to make sure this story goes faster.) and I haven't edited it yet. Tomorrow I go to a conference on Medieval History in the Twin cities at the University of Minnesota. Topics being lectured on will include the following:

10:15am - Introduction to Exhibit of Medieval Books
10:30am - On the Road with the Crusades
11:15am - Food, Feasting & Fasting
1:15pm - Beowulf: Fact, Fiction, & Film
2:00pm - Exploring a Medieval City
2:45pm - Readers’ Theatre: The Chase: Harts & Hearts

Needless to say, I'm terribly excited, because most of these speakers (with the exception of Beowulf) have something to do with Song of a Peacebringer. I'm also the only CSB/SJU student going with someone from the HMML, who sent out a free range invitation to the entire history department. I'm the only one who responded, and I'm not even part of the history department! Hopefully more inspiration will strike after the conference is over.