Lucky 13: Women Writers about Attitude.

"The excursion is the same when you go looking for your sorrow as when you go looking for your joy."
- Eudora Welty

"If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude. Don't complain."
- Maya Angelou

"The knowledge that we are responsible for our actions and attitudes does not need to be discouraging, because it also means that we are free to change this destiny. One is not in bondage to the past, which has shaped our feelings, to race, inheritance, background. All this can be altered if we have the courage to examine how it formed us."
- Anaïs Nin

"The only real stumbling block is fear of failure. In cooking you've got to have a what-the-hell attitude."
- Julia Child

"I happen to feel that the degree of a person's intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting attitudes she can bring to bear on the same topic."
- Lisa Alther

"Never be limited by other people's limited imaginations. If you adopt their attitudes, then the possibility won't exist because you'll have already shut it out...You can hear other people's wisdom, but you've got to re-evaluate the world for yourself."
- Mae Jemison

"Don't be a pawn in somebody's game. Find the attitude which gives you the maximum strength and the maximum dignity, no matter what else is going on"
- Anne Rice

"I think the passion for an extraordinary life, and the courage to pursue it, is what makes us special. And I don’t even think of it as an “extraordinary life” anymore so much as simple happiness. It’s rarer than it should be, and I believe it comes from creating a life that fits you perfectly, not taking what’s already there, but making your own from scratch."

- Laini Taylor

"If you can't change your fate, change your attitude."
- Amy Tan

"Reverence is an emotion that we can nurture in our very young children, respect is an attitude that we instill in our children as they become school-agers, and responsibility is an act that we inspire in our children as they grow through the middle years and become adolescents."
- Zoe Weil

"If there's one thing I believe, it's that I don't know anything and anything can happen"
- Amy Lee

"Novels don't contain only exceptional situations, life or death choices, or major ordeals; there are also everyday difficulties, temptations, ordinary disappointments; and, in response, every human attitude, every type of behavior, from the finest to the most wretched. There are books where, as you read, you wonder: What would I have done?"
- Laurence Cossé

"Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"
- Mary Oliver

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Photo 'stare' by Sandra Lara, available under a creative commons license. © 2008, Sandra Lara.

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Lucky 13: Women Writers about Imagination.

“There are two ways to reach me: by way of kisses or by way of the imagination. But there is a hierarchy: the kisses alone don't work.”
- Anaïs Nin (Henry and June)

“When I read a book, I put in all the imagination I can, so that it is almost like writing the book as well as reading it - or rather, it is like living it.”
- Dodie Smith (I Capture the Castle)

"I have crossed over to a place where I never thought I'd be. I am someone I would have never imagined. A secret. A dream. I am this, body and soul. Burn me. Drown me. Tell me lies. I will still be who I am.”
- Alice Hoffman (Incantation)

“You will recognize your own path when you come upon it because you will suddenly have all the energy and imagination you will ever need.”
- Sara Teasdale

“A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.”
- Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”
- Sylvia Plath

“I doubt that the imagination can be suppressed. If you truly eradicated it in a child, he would grow up to be an eggplant.”
- Ursula K. Le Guin (The Language of the Night)

“You are lucky to be one of those people who wishes to build sand castles with words, who is willing to create a place where your imagination can wander."
- Anne Lamott (Bird by Bird)

“The imagination needs moodling,--long, inefficient happy idling, dawdling and puttering. ”
- Brenda Ueland

“Writing is a job, a talent, but it's also the place to go in your head. It is the imaginary friend you drink your tea with in the afternoon.”
- Ann Patchett (Truth and Beauty: A Friendship)

“Imagination is a good servant, and a bad master.”
- Agatha Christie (The Mysterious Affair at Styles)

“Are we all living like this? Two lives, the ideal outer life and the inner imaginative life where we keep our secrets?”
- Jeanette Winterson (Sexing the Cherry)

“Those who fear the imagination condemn it: something childish, they say, something monsterish, misbegotten. Not all of us dream awake. But those of us who do have no choice.”
- Patricia A. McKillip

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Photo 'Reach' by Keith Garner, available under a creative commons license. © 2011, Keith Garner.

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Lucky 13: Women Writers about Inspiration.

“Inspiration usually comes during work rather than before it.”
- Madeleine L'Engle

“I learned...that inspiration does not come like a bolt, nor is it kinetic, energetic striving, but it comes into us slowly and quietly and all the time, though we must regularly and every day give it a little chance to start flowing, prime it with a little solitude and idleness.”
- Brenda Ueland

“We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.” 

- Maya Angelou

“Romance is the glamour which turns the dust of everyday life into a golden haze. ”
- Elinor Glyn

“stand often in the company of dreamers: they tickle your common sense & believe you can achieve things which are impossible.”
- Mary Anne Radmacher

“The inner fire is the most important thing mankind possesses.” 

- Edith Södergran

“Five tender apricots in a blue bowl, a brief and exact promise of things to come.” 

- Frances Mayes (In Tuscany)

“Do stuff. be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration's shove or society's kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It's all about paying attention. attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. stay eager.”
- Susan Sontag

“A deadline is negative inspiration. Still, it's better than no inspiration at all.”
- Rita Mae Brown

“Why must people kneel down to pray? If I really wanted to pray I’ll tell you what I'd do. I'd go out into a great big field all alone or in the deep, deep woods and I'd look up into the sky - up, up, up - into that lovely blue sky that looks as if there was no end to its blueness. And then I'd just feel a prayer.”
- L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables)

“There is no place for grief in a house which serves the Muse.” 

- Sappho

“I ask not for any crown 

But that which all may win;
Nor try to conquer any world
Except the one within.”
- Louisa May Alcott

“Out of the red and silver and the long cry of alarm to the poet who survives in all human beings, as the child survives in him; to this poet she threw an unexpected ladder in the middle of the city and ordained, 'Climb!”
- Anaïs Nin

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Image: 'Aprikosen / Apricots' by Thomas. Available under a creative commons license. © 2009, Thomas.

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Lucky 13: Women Writers about Character.

“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.”
- Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)

“The sisters and brothers that you meet give you the materials which your character uses to build itself. It is said that some people are born great, others achieve it, some have it thrust upon them. In truth, the ways in which your character is built have to do with all three of those. Those around you, those you choose, and those who choose you.”
- Maya Angelou

“Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands.”
- Anne Frank

“What we call our destiny is truly our character and that character can be altered. The knowledge that we are responsible for our actions and attitudes does not need to be discouraging, because it also means that we are free to change this destiny.”
- Anaïs Nin

“I can't decide whether I'm a good girl wrapped up in a bad girl, or if I'm a bad girl wrapped up in a good girl. And that's how I know I'm a woman!”
- C. JoyBell C.

“Whatever you are physically...male or female, strong or weak, ill or healthy--all those things matter less than what your heart contains. If you have the soul of a warrior, you are a warrior. All those other things, they are the glass that contains the lamp, but you are the light inside.”
- Cassandra Clare (Clockwork Angel)

“But what man does out of despair, is not necessarily a key to his character. I have always thought that the real key is in that which he seeks for his enjoyment.”
- Ayn Rand

“When anyone asks me about the Irish character, I say look at the trees. Maimed, stark and misshapen, but ferociously tenacious.”
- Edna O'Brien

“There is a curious thing that happens with the passage of time: a calcification of character.”
- Jodi Picoult (My Sister's Keeper)

“Her beauty satisfied [his] artistic eye, her peculiarities piqued his curiosity, her vivacity lightened his ennui, and her character interested him by the unconscious hints it gave of power, pride and passion. So entirely natural and unconventional was she that he soon found himself on a familiar footing, asking all manner of unusual questions, and receiving rather piquant replies.”
- Louisa May Alcott (A Long Fatal Love Chase)

“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.”
- Helen Keller

“Don't separate the mind from the body. Don't separate even character - you can't. Our unit of existence is a body, a physical, tangible, sensate entity with perceptions and reactions that express it and form it simultaneously."
- Susanna Kaysen

"character--the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life--is the source from which self-respect springs.”
- Joan Didion

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Image: 'where did rachel "gun show" get her guns?' by sean dreilinger. Available under a creative commons license. © 2011, sean dreilinger.

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Fear of Writing.

Just a thought today:

'Fear of writing is like when you're fresh in love, and every time you see that person, you freeze. Not because you don't have anything to say, but because you want your words to be deep and meaningful. 

So instead you stand there and choke, or - if you see them coming - duck behind a postbox.'

How do you deal with fear?

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Image: 'Postbox: London, Great Britain' by Chris Wronski. Available under a creative commons license. © 2011, Chris Wronski.

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The Better Story Wins.

In writing, for us mere mortals, the quality of our stories and characters is key.

The following TED video made me wonder for how many other aspects of life this might be true.

In his 2009 talk, novelist and politician Shashi Tharoor (himself a fascinating character) looks at India's success and emerging popularity from a cultural point of view. He discusses the 'soft power' with which Indian culture, food, technology and music influences people's hearts and minds.

There's a lot of food for thought in this video. It made me wonder about the notion of world leadership, about the effect technological revolutions can have on people in different kinds and layers of society, and once again about the power of stories in our lives.




A few of my favourite passages:

'But, with this increasing awareness of India, with you and with I, and so on, with tales like Afghanistan, comes something vital in the information era, the sense that in today's world it's not the side of the bigger army that wins, it's the country that tells a better story that prevails.'

'Governments aren't very good at telling stories. But, people see a society for what it is, and that, it seems to me, is what ultimately will make a difference in today's information era'

'But, the whole point is that India is the nationalism of an idea. It's the idea of an ever-ever-land, emerging from an ancient civilization, united by a shared history, but sustained, above all, by pluralist democracy. That is a 21st-century story as well as an ancient one. And it's the nationalism of an idea that essentially says you can endure differences of caste, creed, color, culture, cuisine, custom and costume, consonant, for that matter,and still rally around a consensus. And the consensus is of a very simple principle, that in a diverse plural democracy like India you don't really have to agree on everything all the time, so long as you agree on the ground rules of how you will disagree.'

 - Shashi Tharoor, TEDIndia, Nov 2009

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Simplify.

I've been a bad blogger this month, but I have an excuse:  I have been (trying to be) good somethingelses, mainly at work and at home.

A few weeks ago, I started my new job. It's stimulating and demanding and I love it.

It's causing big changes in my life, though. So far none I hadn't anticipated - an advantage of taking the whole summer to weigh pros and cons - but it's still interesting to observe and experience the effects.

Changing your surroundings, circumstances or lifestyle has a way of confronting you with where you're at in life. As you develop new routines and grow into them, it's easier to see how far you've come and what you need to focus on for the future.

The most mundane but possibly most significant change for me is that I have a lot less 'free' time. That doesn't sound like a good thing, yet I feel more relaxed, in control and mentally free than I have in years. It was clearly time to stop fretting, hoping and assuming, go out on the fields and bring in the harvest.

What has changed?

I always thought I was unable to simplify my life. I'm the kind of person who's potentially interested in anything and everything. That is still the case - and I'm happy because it's a good skill for a writer - but I seem to have learnt to prioritise along the way. Who'd have thought?

Most importantly: giving up a number of things (or making them less prominent) doesn't make me feel like I'm missing out. To the contrary. I am less worried and more productive. I know that what's important will still stand out, possibly more so than before.

As a result, I have set myself a deadline for my novel. I have a (small) list with the final changes I want to make, and then I'm going to unleash my baby.

Whatever happens next, I'll live and learn - and change again.

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Image: 'Harvest time' by Steve Schnabel. Available under a creative commons license. © 2009, Steve Schnabel.

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Lucky 13: Women Writers about Wine.

"Wine is the refined jewel that only a grown woman will prefer to the sparkling trinkets adored by little girls."
- Muriel Barbery (Gourmet Rhapsody)

"Only a fool tries to reconstruct a bunch of grapes from a bottle of wine."
- Jeanette Winterson (Art & Lies)

"Wine talks; ask anyone. The oracle at the street corner; the uninvited guest at the wedding feast; the holy fool. It ventriloquizes. It has a million voices. It unleashes the tongue, teasing out secrets you never meant to tell, secrets you never even knew. It shouts, rants, whispers. It speaks of great plans, tragic loves, and terrible betrayals. It screams with laughter. It chuckles softly to itself. It weeps in front of its own reflection. It revives summers long past and memories best forgotten. Every bottle a whiff of other times, other places, everyone...a humble miracle"
- Joanne Harris

“There are days when solitude is a heady wine that intoxicates you with freedom, others when it is a bitter tonic, and still others when it is a poison that makes you beat your head against the wall.”
- Colette

"What I do, and what I dream include thee, as the wine must taste of its own grapes."
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Sonnets from the Portuguese and Other Poems)

"...and I get refill number three or four and the wine is making my bones loose and it's giving my hair a red sheen and my breasts are blooming and my eyes feel sultry and wise and the dress is water."
- Aimee Bender (Willful Creatures: Stories)

"All Creatures know that some must die
That all the rest may take and eat;
Sooner or later, all transform
Their blood to wine, their flesh to meat."
- Margaret Atwood

"I am a connoisseur of fine irony. 'Tis a bit like fine wine, but it has a better bite."
- Lynn Kurland (Princess of the Sword (Nine Kingdoms, #3))

"Language is wine upon the lips."
- Virginia Woolf

My writing is an overflow of the wine glass of my life, not a basin in which I wash out my ideals and expectations."
- C. JoyBell C

"Your divine should not have used water. It just doesn't hold the attention properly. Wine. Or blood, in a pinch. Some liquid that matters."
- Lois McMaster Bujold

"You are trying to lure us into revealing information you're not entitled to? With chocolate and wine? Are you amateurs?"
- Moira J. Moore (Heroes at Odds)

"I have dreamt in my life, dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they have gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the color of my mind."
- Emily Brontë (Wuthering Heights)

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Image: 'A Glass in The Hand...' by clappstar. Available under a creative commons license. © 2010, clappstar.

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Celebrate good times ...

I've been quiet on the blog this week, but I had a good reason. About a month ago, I applied for a new job, which I hadn't done in a long time.

After a strenuous bilingual interview yesterday, I got the call earlier today: I've got the job and I'm starting next week.

The new job is at the university where I've been working for the past fourteen years, but it's still a big change. I'll have a lot more responsibility, it involves more travelling and international networking (yay!) and - the biggest change of all: I will no longer be teaching.

Over the summer I had considered all the pros and cons. In the end I decided to just follow my instincts. This is something I am cut out to do, and something I really want - a job that will push me out of my comfort zone and provide the challenges I need to grow as a person, a job where I'll need to take more (calculated) risks and deal with the consequences of my decisions, a job where real-world results will determine whether or not I've been successful.

The decision will affect my writing. This autumn I will not be able to take a sabbatical to write full-time, like I've done the past two years. I'll have fewer holidays and will be away more often.

Yet I'm more excited than worried. I tend to be more productive when I have a lot going on, and this will give me the opportunity to see more of the world and meet more people, which inspires my writing. My novel is also at a stage where I can afford to do this, and the future lies wide open.

On another note, this is also the first anniversary of my blog - yet another reason to celebrate. So get yourself a glass of your favourite celebratory drink and join me in the happy dance!

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Image: 'Champagne' by iko. Available under a creative commons license. © 2004, iko.

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Lucky 13: Women Writers about Courage.

"It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else."
- Erma Bombeck

"I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what."
- Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird)

"Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I'll try again tomorrow."
- Mary Anne Radmacher

"One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We cannot be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest."
- Maya Angelou

"Everyone has talent. What's rare is the courage to follow it to the dark places where it leads."
- Erica Jong

"One is not in bondage to the past, which has shaped our feelings, to race, inheritance, background. All this can be altered if we have the courage to examine how it formed us. We can alter the chemistry provided we have the courage to dissect the elements."
- Anaïs Nin

"Why do they always teach us that it's easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves? It's the hardest thing in the world--to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage. I mean, what we really want."
- Ayn Rand

"There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me."
- Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"[Responsibility to yourself] means, therefore, the courage to be "different"...The difference between a life lived actively, and a life of passive drifting and dispersal of energies, is an immense difference. Once we begin to feel committed to our lives, responsible to ourselves, we can never again be satisfied with the old, passive way."
- Adrienne Rich

"With enough courage, you can do without a reputation."
- Margaret Mitchell (Gone with the Wind)

"There must be courage; there must be no awe. There must be criticism, for humor, to my mind, is encapsulated in criticism. There must be a disciplined eye and a wild mind...There must be a magnificent disregard of your reader, for if he cannot follow you, there is nothing you can do about it."
- Dorothy Parker

"HELPED are those who find the courage to do at least one small thing each day to help the existence of another--plant, animal, river, or human being. They shall be joined by a multitude of the timid."
- Alice Walker

"I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn."
- Anne Frank

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Photo 'Jumping in the waves' by TheGiantVermin, available under a creative commons license. © 2004, TheGiantVermin.

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Lucky 13: Women Writers about Friendship.

"There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature."
-- Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey)

"If all the world hated you and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved of you and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends."
-- Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)

"the world is not a pleasant place to be without someone to hold and be held by."
-- Nikki Giovanni

"Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to let go and allow people to hurl themselves into their own destiny. And a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it's all over."
-- Gloria Naylor

"Constant use had not worn ragged the fabric of their friendship."
-- Dorothy Parker

"He was the strangest of strangers in that he was also her oldest friend."
-- Ann Brashares

"Like so many plain cups on the shelves. You can reach for them, use them without thinking. Most of them don't matter. Sometimes you lose your grip on one of them and it falls and smashes to piece, and you shrug and say to yourself, what a pity. Then you reach for the cup that you use every day, one that you love and use so often that as you stretch out your hand it is already making the shape that fits its curve. You are certain that yesterday it was in its proper place, but now there is nothing. Just air. You have lost something that was so familiar, so much a part of your life that you were not even looking for it. Just expecting it to be there, as always."
-- Rosie Thomas (Iris and Ruby)

"I am treating you as my friend, asking you to share my present minuses in the hope that I can ask you to share my future plusses."
-- Katherine Mansfield

"This is what I miss, Cordelia: not something that’s gone, but something that will never happen. Two old women giggling over their tea."
-- Margaret Atwood (Cat's Eye)

"My mind is a neighborhood I try not to go into alone."
-- Anne Lamott

"It takes much bravery to stand up to our enemies but we need as much bravery to stand up to our friends."              
-- J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone)

"The friend who holds your hand and says the wrong thing is made of dearer stuff than the one who stays away."
-- Barbara Kingsolver

"Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born."
-- Anaïs Nin

(to my friends)

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Photo 'friends' by Ferenc Pohly, available under a creative commons license. © 2006, Ferenc Pohly.

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Inspired.

I've spent the last few weeks travelling through England and part of Scotland. Now back home, I feel different, refreshed and above all ... inspired.

What had been intended as a final research trip for my Cotswolds-based novel, has become much more. Travelling tends to do that: you start off with an idea of where you want to go and what you'd like to do, and somewhere along the way the real journey takes shape.

We hadn't had much time to prepare in advance, but at least the bare essentials were sorted: a base of operations in my oh-so-beloved Cotswolds, a schedule half filled with meetings with friends and family, and a long list of things to do and places to see. We could wing it from there.

During those weeks we explored many Cotswolds towns and villages; we drove up to the North of England, the Scottish Lothians and the Kingdom of Fife; we spent time with family in Lancashire and Yorkshire, then drove south again to Wiltshire where we visited Stonehenge and Avebury, impressive prehistoric tombs and (more recent) hill figures.

Back in the Cotswolds, a day trip to the Forest of Dean lead us into Puzzlewood, which is said to have inspired Tolkien's Forest of Fangorn.

Inspiration is everywhere, all the time, but it seems more apparent when we're travelling. Whether that's due to a vacation mindset, to having more time, to being more relaxed and aware or to the fact that we're in an unfamiliar environment, the fact remains: away from home our senses feast on details we would normally overlook.

Holidays are the perfect time to say 'yes' to opportunities as they arise. I'm glad we let others decide part of our agenda or we wouldn't have discovered the fascinating historic sites around the famous Wiltshire stone circles – or enjoyed a delicious Thai banquet in the old Roman city of Cirencester.

If we hadn't accepted a lift from a friendly driver on our walk to Woodchester Mansion, we wouldn't have met Jim, the passionate archaeologist, who drove us through the mud and up the hill to show what he was working on and explain it to us with verve and vigour.

Inspiration truly is everywhere – for the eyes to see, for the heart to touch and for the mind to explore.

Over the next few weeks, I will share plenty of stories and photographs of the places we've visited (and maybe throw in a few clues about how some of them tie into my novel), but I want to start off by pointing out a few sites and sights that have inspired other writers (and film makers) in the past:

1. Puzzlewood

Puzzlewood is a 14 acre woodland in the Forest of Dean near Ross-on-Wye, Gloucestershire. It is one of the remaining ancient woodlands in England, and said to have been an inspiration for J. R. R. Tolkien's forests of Middle-earth.

It has also been used as a setting in the BBC series 'Merlin' and 'Doctor Who'.

2. Gloucester Cathedral

Gloucester Cathedral is an architectural masterpiece that has been used in several Harry Potter films. Parts of the historic cloisters, for instance, served as Hogwarts' corridors.

It has also featured in the 2008 Doctor Who Christmas special, and I have no doubt the building has inspired countless of other visitors in their creative endeavours.

3. Woodcarving in Ripon Cathedral

While his father was a canon at the cathedral in Ripon, Yorkshire, Charles Dodgson (better known under the name of Lewis Carroll) might have been familiar with the intricate woodcarvings in the cathedral's 15th century misericords.

One of them depicts a rabbit caught by a griffin while another rabbit disappears – you guessed – down the rabbit hole.

4. Rosslyn Chapel

The Midlothian village of Roslin in Scotland is home to one of the most impressive and inspiring buildings I have ever seen: Rosslyn Chapel.

It was already mentioned in Sir Walter Scott's early 19th century poem 'Rosabelle' (here's a reading on YouTube), but has probably become most famous because of Dan Brown's 'Da Vinci Code' and the 2005 film.

Which sights, sites, trips or tidbits have inspired you?

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About Good Girls, Bad Girls and Why We Write.

A few days ago, I read Justine Musk's article '"Well-behaved women seldom make history": redefining what it means to be bad' on her website: Tribal Writer.

It deals with how our culture defines women, how women define themselves, the emphasis on desirability and attractiveness on the one hand, and traditional dictates of quiet, pleasant and unobtrusive behaviour on the other.

I don't agree with everything that is said, and I believe we sometimes confuse personality issues with women's issues, but the article is an interesting piece of writing, with insightful comments by both women and men. If you have some time, I would highly recommend reading it.

These past few days, much of what Justine and her readers wrote has been whirling around in my head. This is a topic close to my heart - and as it happens, to the title of my blog.

Ever since I started writing again, I've been confronted with this good girl / bad girl dichotomy on a daily basis. Writing makes it much harder to ignore or suppress parts of you that 'don't fit in', because it's exactly that wonderful source of 'self' we need to tap into to let our stories take root and to make our characters grow.

I was raised to be a Good Girl, yet trying to be one drained my energy for the bigger part of my life. Along the way I've discovered that I'll never be a Bad Girl either. I might not have many boundaries in my mind, but I keep my behaviour on a short lead, which is probably why I'm still alive and well.

This contrast fuels my writing and much of my life, and I've come to love it. It's hardly ever dull in the borderlands where a wild heart and an exacting mind co-exist.

In her article, Justine writes:

'I once said to someone, “I don’t know if I’m a good girl with a bad streak, or a bad girl with a good streak.” But I was being ironic. My real point was that, like any other woman (or man), I am both and neither.'

I think she hits the nail on the head there: women as well as men are complex and diverse creatures. We live on a planet and in communities that don't necessarily have our individual best interests at heart, and we try to get by and live meaningful lives - whatever that means for us individually.

In living our lives, we need to understand that culture - like statistics - focuses on large numbers and quantifiable majorities. As a result, social norms and widely held views will rarely reflect or respond to minorities' needs.

That does not mean we need to accept this, shrug and keep silent.

To the contrary - we need our role models, our Maya Angelous, our Isabel Allendes and our Margaret Atwoods. We need our Neil Gaimans and Amanda Palmers to fly their freak flags proudly. We need them, not so much to confront majorities with an alternative, but to show those who don't fit in the standard moulds it's okay to be who you are.

I couldn't help wondering if this is partly the reason why so many of us are drawn to being a writer, blogger, photographer, teacher or artist, or why we share our work, our thoughts or emotions on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, ...

I'm sure we first and foremost respond to a need within ourselves to create and to share with others. But could the driving force underneath our work be that we know first-hand what it feels like not to fit in?

Could that be the reason why we want to put our work out there – as beacons that might have given us strength, hope or courage at a given point in our own lives?

If that is the case, it only makes it more important that in our writing or whatever it is we do, we stay true to ourselves, with pride, dignity and confidence - an authentic, living, breathing tribute to our own uniqueness and to human diversity.

We are lucky. We have a voice, energy and an audience, be it big or small. That gives us great opportunities to show how within, underneath and on the side of mainstream culture there are other, valid ways to get by, to do well and to live meaningful, fulfilling and creative lives.


What makes you unique?

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Photo 1: '365:299 Choices' by Jehane, available under a creative commons license. © 2008, Jehane.
Photo 2: '365:140 Fairy Liquid' by Jehane, available under a creative commons license. © 2007, Jehane.
(Check out her wonderful - and brave - photography project: 365 days (of me).

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Lucky 13: Women Writers about Truth.

"There's a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure truth."
- Maya Angelou

"And at last you'll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking."
- Audre Lorde

"With a secret like that, at some point the secret itself becomes irrelevant. The fact that you kept it does not."
- Sara Gruen (Water for Elephants)

"You can tell the deepest truths with the lies of fiction"
- Isabel Allende

"Why, if it was an illusion, not praise the catastrophe, whatever it was, that destroyed illusion and put truth in its place?"
- Virginia Woolf (A Room of One's Own)

"You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do."
- Anne Lamott (Bird by Bird)

"The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it." 
- Flannery O'Connor

"There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic." 
- Anaïs Nin

"It must have been then that I began to lose faith in reasonable argument as the sole measure of truth." 
- Margaret Atwood (Bluebeard's Egg)

"There is no truth on this island of yours. Rather, there are as many truths as there are stars in the sky; and every one of them different."
- Juliet Marillier

"The truth is not for all men but only for those who seek it."
- Ayn Rand

"Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised or a little mistaken." 
- Jane Austen (Emma)

"A scientist can pretend that his work isn't himself, it's merely the impersonal truth. An artist can't hide behind the truth. He can't hide anywhere."
- Ursula K. Le Guin (The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia)

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Photo 'how sweet it is to be loved by you' by eli santana, available under a creative commons license. © 2009, eli santana.

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Almost 100 Followers: Time for a Giveaway!

It's been almost 8 months since I started blogging, and I just hit 90 followers, which I am really happy with. Over that time my blog has grown and developed into something I am quite proud of - when I allow myself.

After a couple of months of slow but steady traffic, when 'The Woman Condition' was mainly visited by family and friends, it is now reaching a wider audience, and the A to Z blogging month of April has been a major step in the process.

What a journey so far, from my first tentative steps out of the safe(r) shadows of internet lurking, to discovering my online voice and connecting with others as 'me' instead of one of the many facades that get me through everyday life.

What blogging has taught me more than anything else so far, is that it's okay to be less paranoid. Probably. Most of the time.

Anyway, in order to celebrate the nearly-100-followers and thank you for sticking around, I want to give away a few presents.

If you're anything like me - and I'm sure we have enough in common - one can't go wrong with Amazon gift cards, so I will be giving away 3 gift cards of either £10 at amazon.co.uk or $15 at amazon.com, whichever you prefer.

If you want to take part in the draw:

1. Be a follower of this blog.
   (Old or new followers are equally welcome to take part.)
2. Comment on this post what you most like about my blog.
3. In your comment, mention which 3 posts on my blog you like/remember best.

This celebration giveaway will run until May 22, 2011, 4pm CET, which is exactly 8 months after I published my first blog post.

On the 22nd, an innocent hand (well, mine, but I give you my Leo Word of Honour that it will happen fairly) will draw 3 names from the qualifying comments. I will announce the winners here and inform them personally (via email, blog, FB, ... depending on what contact information I have).

Your answers should help me get a better idea of topics you'd like to see more of in the future, and (with any luck) I'll have a post to come back to every time I think my writing is awful and pointless and nobody could possibly be interested in what I have to say. I might be a Leo, but those days still happen. ;-)


Thanks for following, for your comments and your support!

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Lucky 13: Women Writers about Life.

"I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it."

- Maya Angelou

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage."

- Anaïs Nin

"Perhaps we are in this world to search for love, find it and lose it, again and again. With each love, we are born anew, and with each love that ends we collect a new wound. I am covered with proud scars."

- Isabel Allende

"That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet."

- Emily Dickinson

"Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swaps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all."

- Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)

"I knew it like destiny, and at the same time, I knew it as choice."

- Jeanette Winterson

"What am I living for and what am I dying for are the same question."

- Margaret Atwood

"Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining."

- Anne Lamott

"Ah! The terror and the delight of that moment when first we fear
ourselves! Until then we have not lived."

- Willa Cather

"So much working, reading, thinking, living to do! A lifetime is not long enough."

- Sylvia Plath

"I live in my own little world. But it's ok, they know me here."

- Lauren Myracle

"Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away."

- Maya Angelou

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

- Mary Oliver

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Image : 'Women on holiday' by Sweet Chi. Available under a creative commons license. © 2011, Sweet Chi.

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Z is for Zzzzz ...

Wow, I've made it. This is the last day of the A to Z blogging challenge. 26 mad days of posting every day, visiting tons of other blogs, commenting and connecting.

What a ride it has been. I've met a bunch of people, who feel like they've become friends. I've discovered a number of blogs that inform me, entertain me, make me think or put a smile on my face.

My blog has grown and become more lively, with a lot more visitors dropping by and adding to the party. It feels like it's got more of a soul now, and will continue to thrive.

Over the course of 1 month, I've gone from a wonderful 10 followers (I owe you all at least one of those legendary caipirinhas!), to an even more fabulous 72.

And what I like most, is that those 72 followers all have a face to me, an identity of their own - even those I've never met in person. I've read pieces of their writing, I've exchanged ideas and information, and I feel like I know them a little bit - enough to want to learn more.

The Web is a huge place, where it's easy to feel tiny, insignificant or intimidated. What initiatives like the A to Z challenge do, is to fence off a piece of that vast universe and define the borders of a (temporary) playground.

All of a sudden the blogosphere doesn't seem so big any more. Even though there were over a thousand participants, the challenge we all had in common made it more manageable and accessible.

At first, you see just names and profile pictures, but soon, those names start looking familiar and turn into people. Then they become individuals you respect and appreciate.

With some, I feel I've connected on a more personal level, because we think alike or because we're complementary and can teach each other a lot; because we're all writers or because we share a love for particular books or genres; because we've been through similar experiences, or because we're drawn to the same people.

Whatever the future brings, I'm happy and grateful for this experience.

I would like to express my special thanks to Lee (Arlee Bird), word and idea juggler extraordinaire, for coming up with the A to Z challenge, and to science fiction guru Alex J. Cavanaugh, whose tweets informed me about the challenge in the first place.

And now it's time to relax, take a weekend off, catch up on some sleep, and then I'll be back with a whole list of topics, dealing with writing, life, love and my quest for authentic and worthwhile experiences.


See you around!


Funky fact: at a given point I had 666 unread messages in Google Reader, ànd 66 followers. I'm sure it was a sign, but of what?

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Image 2: 'web' by Brenda Anderson. Available under a creative commons license. © 2005, Brenda Anderson.
Image 3: 'Friends' by Leon Rice-Whetton. Available under a creative commons license. © 2010, Leon Rice-Whetton.

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O is for Openings.

In writing, as in dating, a lot of attention is paid to opening lines.

Do opening lines really have the ability to draw a potential lover reader into a relationship novel? Maybe, but the rest of the person story will have to live up to those expectations.

Here are 13 opening lines (from novels) that managed to grab my attention and set off my imagination:


'The building was on fire, and it wasn't my fault.'
Jim Butcher (Blood Rites)


'Some years ago there was in the city of York a society of magicians. They met upon the third Wednesday of every month and read each other long, dull papers upon the history of English magic.'
Susanna Clarke (Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell)


'If I am out of my mind, it’s alright with me, thought Moses Herzog.'
Saul Bellow (Herzog)


'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.'
Charles Dickens (A Tale of Two Cities)


'The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.'
William Gibson (Neuromancer)


'It was the day my grandmother exploded.'
Iain Banks (The Crow Road)


'It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.'
Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Love in the Time of Cholera)


'It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not.'
Paul Auster (City of Glass)


'All children, except one, grow up.'
J.M. Barrie (Peter Pan)


'It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York.'
Sylvia Plath (The Bell Jar)


'I looked at my notes and I didn't like them. I'd spent three days at U.S. Robots and might as well have spent them at home with the Encyclopedia Tellurica.'
Isaac Asimov (I, Robot)


'The night before he went to London, Richard Mayhew was not enjoying himself.'
Neil Gaiman (Neverwhere)


'When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton.'
J.R.R. Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings)


What are your favourite opening lines?

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Image: 'beware of dog' by Justin Lincoln. Available under a creative commons license. © 2006, Justin Lincoln.

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M is for MBTI.

MBTI - short for Myers-Briggs Type Indicator - is a psychology-based system that describes personality traits.

I've been using it for many years, in my job as well as my personal life, and it's proven so useful that it has become a part of my way of thinking about and dealing with the world.


MBTI

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is based on quite a complicated system, but it can be simplified for personal use or use in your writing, which is what I'll do here.

However, if you'd want to use the insights with other people, e.g. in a professional or therapeutic setting, I would advise you to study the system in more detail.

When I talk about the MBTI to my students, I compare it to the systems we use every day to describe what a person looks like on the outside:

'Hm, I can't think of her name right now, but you know who I mean: the tall woman with the short, blonde hair.'

For efficiency's sake, we focus on a limited set of observable characteristics, and describe them in the form of opposite pairs. E.g. short/tall, bald/long hair, pale skin/dark skin, etc. For each pair, some people will be on one end of the spectrum, and most people will be 'somewhere in between'.

Psychologist Carl Gustav Jung formulated similar 'opposite pairs' for personality. Later on, Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers developed this further into the MBTI system as it is now used, with 4 pairs of opposing characteristics.

Here, too, some people will show up on one end, with a more extreme preference, while most are 'somewhere in between', to varying degrees.


The Opposing Pairs

These are the 4 pairs of characteristics the MBTI takes into account:

• Extraversion (E) - Introversion (I)
• Sensation (S) - iNtuition (N)
• Thinking (T) - Feeling (F)
• Judging (J) - Perceiving (P)

Extraversion vs. Introversion

This pair of characteristics looks at where you direct your attention and where you draw your energy from.

Are you more focused on the people and the world around you (Extraversion), or on your inner world (Introversion)?

Do you get energy from interacting with people (E), or from being by yourself (I)?

Read more about Extraversion vs. Introversion.


Sensation vs. iNtuition

The second pair of characteristics looks at the kind of information you take in, and the information you naturally focus on.

Do you mainly notice information that is tangible, measurable, concrete and factual (Sensation) or do you focus on patterns, possibilities and 'the bigger picture' (iNtuition)?

Do you prefer to deal with the world as it exists (S) or are you constantly looking for ways to improve, to innovate and to 'boldly go where no one has gone before', at least when ideas are concerned (N)?

Are you a person who will most often ask questions beginning with: 'what', 'how', 'when', ... (S) or is your main question: 'Why?' (N)

(It is interesting to note here that the majority of people reside on the 'Sensation' side of the spectrum, so if you're undecided, statistically you're more likely to be on the S-side.)

Read more about Sensation vs. Intuition.


Thinking vs. Feeling

The third pair looks at what you base your decisions on.

As far as making decisions is concerned, do you place more value on logic, facts and objective truth (Thinking) or on people, values and personal or social concerns (Feeling)?

Do you consider truth more important than tact (T) or tact more important than truth (F)?

Do logical inconsistenties drive you crazy (T) or do you get nervous in situations where the harmony between people has been disturbed (F)?

Read more about Thinking vs. Feeling.


Judging vs. Perceiving

The fourth pair gives information about how you live your life towards the outside world, and how you structure your life and deal with your time.

Are you more comfortable after you have made a decision (Judging) or when all options are still open (Perceiving)?

Do you prefer to / are you more efficient when you plan your time and activities beforehand (J) or do you prefer to improvise and adapt your priorities according to the situation at hand (P)?

Do you like making / having to do-lists (J) or do those lists make you nervous (P)?

Read more about Judging vs. Perceiving.


The Letters

When you take MBTI-based tests, you usually end up with letters and scores. The letters are the ones I've used before: (I)ntroversion - (E)xtraversion, i(N)tuition - (S)ensation, (T)hinking - (F)eeling and (J)udging - (P)erceiving. If you get other letters, chances are you've taken a different test. ;-)

The Kisa test in the links below gives you scores for each end of the spectrum, so you get 8 scores in total, which helps to create a more complete picture.

I want to point out here that there are no 'bad' letters and no 'bad' scores. The diversity of our species is a strong factor in our success, especially when we learn to understand our differences and cooperate.

If you get low scores for certain letters, that's okay too. It usually means you don't have a strong preference for either of the characteristics - or you have a high preference for both. This, too, is useful in a team, family or community. These people can often take on different roles, depending on which skills are lacking and needed. They can also act as mediators between the more extreme team or family members to keep everyone focused and working together.


MBTI and writing

I use the MBTI in my writing in different ways:

• To build real and multi-layered characters.
  MBTI allows me to build 'real' characters efficiently. E.g. when I write down: "character X: INTP", it tells me so much more than those 4 characteristics; it summons a whole group of real, existing people in my mind, with real characteristics to pick and choose from.
• To keep my character files clear and concise.
  My character files contain names, basic practical data, and personality types. It's so much easier to type "INTP" than: "recluse; appears ice-cold to outsiders but has an incredibly rich inner world; hates being misunderstood and will do everything to establish clarity; has an extreme ability to focus; needs to be independent; distrusts emotions because they've proven to be unreliable in the past; if someone appears on their radar in a good way, they'll do almost whatever they can to make them happy; etc.". For me, the word "INTP" conjures that image, without extensive character worksheets or interviews. 
• To create tension and believable interaction.
  If I need a character to interact with another one in a certain way (antagonistic, soulmate, envy, distrust, practical misunderstandings, etc.), I'll pick a character with a particular personality type that tends to have that kind of interaction with the other character's type, and then I just stay true to the characters while I'm writing. Most of the time the desired interaction just happens.
• To avoid gender stereotyping.
  Personality types aren't gender-specific. There may be more women with a Feeling preference than men, but I don't want to fall in the trap of assuming this is the case for everybody. By setting the types for my characters, I can add more variation and keep their behaviour consistent.

I know it all sounds very mechanical, but through the years it's become an automatic and intuitive process.


Useful Links

• A number of my other posts on MBTI and related topics:
  http://thewomancondition.blogspot.com/search/label/MBTI
• One of the better online personality tests:
  http://kisa.ca/personality/
• The Wikipedia entry about MBTI:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mbti
• Website of the Myers & Briggs Foundation:
  http://www.myersbriggs.org/

Have you come across the MBTI before? Do you know your type? Have you used MBTI in your writing?


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Image: 'Diversity Cupcakes' by Clever Cupcakes. Available under a creative commons license. © 2008, Clever Cupcakes.

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