Mythic Writers Blog

Sometimes myths and fairy tales and all things mythic can get a bit heavy—steeped in history, filled with tradition, offering glimpses of mysteries. But today I’m visiting the lighter side.

I can’t help myself. This week, thanks to the wonderful Tara, I am obsessed with faerie houses. And arbors. And doors (oh how I love the doors!). And little, tiny furniture and plants…I want to build a faerie realm in my studio. I already have some lovely fairy dolls, although they are too large in scale for the houses and furniture I’ve been looking at, so I may need more (oh darn?). And I’ve already made plans for a high shelf to hold my various decorative treasures, like my miniature cottages. What could be more perfect than adding some decorative silk vines and hiding faerie houses and furniture in the middle?

Then there are the faerie wings. I am serious contemplating taking another class at Joggles to learn to make faerie wings so I can tuck them in amongst the foliage and maybe hang them off the edge of the shelf, too. (And, oh yes, there will be photos when it’s done.)

So, none of this has anything to do with mythic fiction or myths or fairy tales or even writing. Or at least that’s how things seem at first glance. But actually, this does have a lot to do with my writing. I am creating a space in my studio that is playful and whimsical and fills me with glee and visions of faerie and other mythic creatures. And what better starting place could there be for writing mythic fiction?

On that note, I will leave you with something much closer to my usual mythic fiction topics: J. Corsentino’s Time of the Faeries. Beautiful, edgy, urban faeries just waiting for the next story to happen.

And now I’m off to look at more faerie houses. Enjoy the links!

Once again, I find myself needing to apologize for skipping posts. My schedule—or rather my lack of ability to organize it efficiently—kept me overly busy.

For the time being, I am going to change my posting schedule. I am planning to take some time to make contacts and build a readership, and then I will return to the twice weekly posting schedule. Meanwhile, I will be back to regular posts but on a once-a-week schedule starting next week on Wednesday.

Not much of a post today. More of a thought for the day—my allergies are acting up so I’m headachey and tired and feeling quite unimaginative. Not a good combination for writing clever, interesting things.

Still, I did have an intriguing thought. You know the saying that all myths and legends have a kernel of truth in them? It almost seems to me like writing mythic fiction is sort of like bringing things full circle. First, you have the reality, the thing that happened in the real world. Then a myth builds up around it and makes its way through the ages, changing, morphing, growing away from the original truth. And then we take that myth and write a story where that myth or some part of it happens in the real world…Full circle.

That’s it. Nothing more to it, at least not at the moment. Still, it was an interesting thought and something I might want to toy with in future, so there you have it.

Hmm…I just noticed that I didn’t post my vacation notice for last week. Oops! So…I was on vacation last week. I’m back now. Ahem…

On Saturday, I went to see The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. It was a great movie—I enjoyed it immensely and came out filled with visions of epic battles, towering ruins, soaring cliffs. All the good things a movie should leave you with. I also came out with a question or two about myths and mythic fiction.

Prince Caspian fills the bill for mythic fiction. Magic, magical creatures, people crossing between worlds. It should clearly be in the mythic fiction category, right? Probably. I can’t quite give an unequivocal “yes.” What gives me pause about putting this into the mythic fiction category i the time period the protagonists are from. Obviously, they were modern people at the time C.S. Lewis wrote the original book. But for me, right now, their 1940s era British world is nearly as much of a mythical place as is Narnia. Can something that might be considered mythic fiction grow outdated because of one of its elements and no longer fit into the mythic fiction category? Or if something is mythic fiction, is it always going to be mythic fiction? (I know. Here we are, back at that definition thing again. I can’t help myself. I just enjoy poking at it.)

So, on to my opinion. I can go two ways with this. One way tells me that the important part is the crossing from some sort of acknowledged “real” or mundane world into a mythical realm or having that mythical realm or its elements cross into a real world. This seems like a fairly reasonable part of the mythic fiction definition, and if this is the way of things, then obviously Prince Caspian is mythic fiction.

But what if people cross from a futuristic world filled with artificially intelligent robots and flying cars into a faery realm? Would that still be mythic fiction? What if they cross from a realm where magic spells work but there are no magical creatures into a realm where there are dragons and faeries and trolls but no magic?

These are actually really intriguing ideas. I don’t really have an opinion one way or the other, at least not yet, but seeing the movie stirred all of these ideas in my head, so I thought I’d share. I may keep poking at these ideas later, but for now that’s all I have.

More on Wednesday…

On Monday, my beloved brought me a lovely present—two books to add to my writing research collection! One of them is a very nice, heavy volume of The Complete Grimm’s Fairy Tales. (Which is not going to stop me from getting The Annotated Brothers Grimm, by the way.) I’m so excited! I’ve been meaning to get one for the longest time.

So, I curled up on the sofa with my prize and spent some time poking through the very long table of contents, reading random stories when a title struck me as particularly interesting.

One of the tales I read was “Simeli Mountain.” In this story, a group of thieves hide their treasure inside a mountain. And to get into the mountain, what do they do? They chant, “Semsi mountain, semsi mountain, open.” (Simeli Mountain is an incorrect pronunciation that causes the main character’s brother all sorts of trouble, but you can read the story to find out just how much trouble. Go ahead. It’s short.) What especially strikes me with this story is “Semsi.” Sesame? As in “open sesame”? I have nothing to back up this idea, at least not at the moment (you see, I do still need that annotated volume!). But isn’t it intriguing? Especially with the thieves hiding treasure in a mountain. I am going to have to get my hands on a good copy of The Arabian Nights (I believe that’s where “open sesame” is found—in “Ali Baba and the Forth Thieves” I think), preferably an annotated version. But in the meantime, I thought I’d throw this fascinating tidbit out there for everyone else to ponder. Enjoy!

You may have noticed there was no post yesterday.  (Did you notice?)  That would be because yesterday was Memorial Day.  A Monday but not a workday.  So all day I thought it was Sunday.  And of course I don’t post on Sundays!  So I didn’t post.  And today I realized that it’s Tuesday…My mental calendar is very mixed up. :)  I’m going to go try to reset it.  More tomorrow…

“The boundaries are always there—between the graveyard and the world beyond, between life and death, and the crossing of them.” - Neil Gaiman (found on the page for The Graveyard Book)

Here’s another piece of the mythic fiction puzzle. Boundaries. More specifically, crossing boundaries. Taking a quick, mental inventory of my favorite books and stories, it seems that they all involve crossing boundaries. The humans cross into some otherworld. The faeries cross into the human world. The ghosts cross into our world. The humans die for a short time and cross into the afterlife. It’s all about crossing boundaries.

And it all comes back to that idea that there are other worlds, other dimensions, other places besides our ordinary, everyday world to cross to and from. Is that other place (or maybe there’s more than one?) where myths and gods come from? Or is it where they’ve retreated to when we became too difficult to live with? I don’t know, but I always hope and at least half believe that it’s there, it’s just waiting for us.

I think this is going to be another placeholder post, because now I’m rather excited by the idea of making a list of favorite books and stories and movies that involve the theme of crossing over or boundaries. If you think of any, please leave me a note in the comments so I can add it to what I hope will be a continually growing list.

I’m back, earlier than planned since something beautiful caught my eye today. I’m hoping I’m a bit more organized and on target this week. Last week just got away from me, and I couldn’t get the time back under control. This week looks to be better, though.

I have to say upfront that this post is a bit of a placeholder. It’s an idea that came to me as I read a newsletter, and I wanted to write a bit about it to remind myself that I’d like to go a bit more in depth with it at some point. Now, with that caveat, on to the post.

Some turns of phrase just leave me weak in the knees. Like this Sir John Betjeman quote from his poem “Cornish Cliffs” in today’s Today in Literature newsletter: “And in the shadowless, unclouded glare Deep blue above us fades to whiteness where A misty sea-line meets the wash of air….”

Does this make anyone else’s heart twinge with that melancholy flutter of homesickness for someplace you’ve never been? Some turns of phrase can just melt me that way, fill me with joy and sadness and longing all at once and leave me wanting more (and I can’t wait, now, to read more of Betjeman’s poems).

I think this is one of the major attractions of mythic fiction for me. So much of what it touches leaves me weak in the knees and all aflutter. So much of it lets me just briefly, softly brush against things I long for, things I can’t even quite articulate most of the time. They bring me to the edge of Grace and Beauty and possibly Truth.

That’s really what I wanted to say today. In future, I hope to gather a collection of phrases that stir me this way and share them here with you. But for now, I’ll leave you with that quote. And a wish that Grace will touch you and give you that longing that will keep you reaching for more. And a hope that we will all reach out together and touch more of the Beauty out there and maybe bring some of it home with us to share.

Sorry I didn’t manage a post yesterday as planned. See below for more on that.

The following is cross posted to Kim’s blog:

Sorry I’ve been off track with my posting. It’s just a crazy week, and since it’s nearly finished, I’m obviously not going to pull it back together to salvage things before the week is over. I am dog sitting and preparing to go away for the weekend, plus I have had several extra errands to run this week (but hurray for getting a second vehicle so it was easier to do!).

I will get back to regular, real posts next week. I’m planning to give myself some recuperation time, so just look for one post next week instead of two, probably on Wednesday. I’ll return to the regular, twice-a-week posts the following week.

Have a great weekend!

Just in case anyone missed me yesterday…the day completely got away from me.  Sorry!  I will be back with a regular post tomorrow.  Meanwhile, check out Sur la Lune for some great stuff to read.   Annotated fairy tales, with histories and notes on similar tales from different cultures…very good stuff.