So the crux of this post is retellings of known Fairy tales. Do you like them or not and why?
I ask because I love the idea of taking an already known and loved story and making it your own. After all, verbal histories are vital. And one of the most obvious examples of this is telling stories and legends. My favorite 'classic' Fairy tale is Beauty and the Beast. But even when I was a young child, I hated the ending. I would get so angry when it got right down to the wire and Beauty professed her love to the Beast, only to have the Beast whisked away and replaced by a 'charming' Prince. Charming Princes are well and good in their own right, but I maintain that I prefer the Beast to any 'charming' Prince.
One of my current WIPs is a retelling of Beauty and the Beast. I've wanted to write one for years even assuming that it would never get published. Then recently Malinda Lo turned me on to two retellings of Beauty and the Beast by Robin McKinley, Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast, and Rose Daughter.
Let me digress and devote a moment to squeeing over Malinda Lo! She's the author of Ash a retelling of Cinderella. It is a totally awesome book, squee squee squee. But beyond the squee, Ash is beautifully written and one of the best reads I've had all year. By the end of the book I was in an utter state of madness over what might happen to the three main characters. I was SPASTIC. It was wonderful. I've seldom been so torn between characters and possible outcomes. Ash is a finalist for the William C. Morris YA Debut Award. Rock on Malinda Lo!
But back to retellings. After Ms Lo so kindly directed me to Robin Mckinley's retelling works based on Beauty and the Beast, I immediately read them both. I WANTED to like Beauty: A Retelling, especially because it's written in first person, which was something totally new. However, it so closely followed the original Fairy tale that I failed to get attached to the book at all. Rose Daughter on the other hand (and Ms Lo had said it was her favorite of the two) was a well done, unique version of the tale. Beauty isn't all that beautiful. Her sisters aren't awful at all, although they don't spend much time thinking about anyone but themselves at least to start with. And the Beast is wonderful in a beastly way. Then ending is perfect. I loved it.
There are many retellings of Fairy tales out there. But what makes them work, and what makes them fail? For me, there has to be a distinct difference in the retelling from the original, but it can't stray so far that calling it a retelling is a stretch. At the risk of getting thrashed by someone, I'll use Anne Rice's The Taking of Sleeping Beauty for an example of didn't work. Besides the fact that the books in that series are smut (I don't mean that derogatorily, that's how it's described, as 'tasteful smut') there is little plot BEYOND the smut factor. I've only read enough of them to be totally ickyfied. Anne Rice is an accomplished writer, and I love many of her books, but the Sleeping Beauty retellings... negative.
In my own retelling of Beauty and the Beast, Thornbriar, Lady Beauty is beautiful but spoilt. Her father is rich and she wants for nothing. Rather than exchanging her life for her fathers, she's betrothed to the Beast (although Beauty's own people presume that the King being a Beast is just a rumor) for a great sum of money. She's married to the Beast from very early on in the story and instead the pivot point is on her willingness to prove her love for him and his country. Accustomed to being admired and getting what she wants, Luminre (Beauty's real name) must grow and learn to take on responsibilities and think of others if she's going to discover how to break the curse that's been cast over her Beast husband and his kingdom.
What about you? What retellings are out there that you like? What ones don't you like? Have you ever written a new take on your favorite Fairy tale?
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Turkey turkey turkey...
Thanksgiving day story:
I was housesitting for a friend of the family who at different times has various sorts of animals which will be dinner at some point once they're grown. I myself can't raise animals and then eat them. Perhaps I could in certain situations but not right now. But I digress. At this point, the family had a flock of turkeys (about seventeen) which I needed to put up in pens for the night. Normally this was done by shaking a scoop of scratch and hollering 'Turkey turkey turkey!' I was shown the procedure. I witnessed the entire flock swarming amid gobbles (often performed in perfect unison) and filing into their pens. I was confident. Meanwhile, another friend offered me extra tickets to see Elton John. WOW. Awesome. All I had to do was stop off, change clothes, and put the turkeys up. One problem. There were no turkeys that night when I got in. Now, I'd been told that they foraged. But after an hour of screeching 'turkey turkey turkey' there were still no turkeys. I had single-handedly lost seventeen 25 lb turkeys. Well, Elton John was stupendous, but there were still no turkeys when I returned from the concert. I knew that the birds would be parked somewhere for the night, so I reserved looking for in the morning. Still no turkeys. I was just walking down the dirt road when an older gentleman neighbor drove by and stopped to ask if I was all right (chivalry in this day and age!). I explained my plight and he got a funny look on his face.
"So that's where those turkeys came from." He mused.
"Pardon?" I swallowed.
"We have your turkeys down at the church. They're dancing around in the middle of the yard sale putting on quite a show."
Please, kill me now.
"Come on I'll give you a ride down there miss."
"Thank you." It took all my fortitude to face my turkey fate and the crowd that was surrounding them, wondering where the hell they'd come from.
Well, the turkeys were not interested in going home. Two very nice men helped me herd them back through the woods, which cut off half a mile from the full mile they'd wondered. I shook the scratch but we ended up chasing them with switches more like a herd of goats. While we walked, one of the men explained that they'd appeared in his yard the night prior and made themselves right at home. When several of the smaller ones had flown onto his roof, he'd chased them off by throwing green tomatoes at them. That, however, only served to give the turkeys menu ideas and they had proceeded to strip all the green tomatoes from his vines. Thankfully the tomatoes were already ruined for humans by frost and he was more amused than anything else. I'm sure it helped that I was utterly mortified. Needless to say, I enjoyed my Thanksgiving turkey even more than usual that year...
And since everyone seems to be posting what they're thankful for:
My family
My friends
Everything I've learned this year
Writing
All the amazing people I've met (extra woot to the Sirens folks, and the authors who attended, you know who you are)
All the AWESOME folks out there blogging, spreading confidence and information to others
New babies
All the people and animals I've lost but won't ever forget
Life
I was housesitting for a friend of the family who at different times has various sorts of animals which will be dinner at some point once they're grown. I myself can't raise animals and then eat them. Perhaps I could in certain situations but not right now. But I digress. At this point, the family had a flock of turkeys (about seventeen) which I needed to put up in pens for the night. Normally this was done by shaking a scoop of scratch and hollering 'Turkey turkey turkey!' I was shown the procedure. I witnessed the entire flock swarming amid gobbles (often performed in perfect unison) and filing into their pens. I was confident. Meanwhile, another friend offered me extra tickets to see Elton John. WOW. Awesome. All I had to do was stop off, change clothes, and put the turkeys up. One problem. There were no turkeys that night when I got in. Now, I'd been told that they foraged. But after an hour of screeching 'turkey turkey turkey' there were still no turkeys. I had single-handedly lost seventeen 25 lb turkeys. Well, Elton John was stupendous, but there were still no turkeys when I returned from the concert. I knew that the birds would be parked somewhere for the night, so I reserved looking for in the morning. Still no turkeys. I was just walking down the dirt road when an older gentleman neighbor drove by and stopped to ask if I was all right (chivalry in this day and age!). I explained my plight and he got a funny look on his face.
"So that's where those turkeys came from." He mused.
"Pardon?" I swallowed.
"We have your turkeys down at the church. They're dancing around in the middle of the yard sale putting on quite a show."
Please, kill me now.
"Come on I'll give you a ride down there miss."
"Thank you." It took all my fortitude to face my turkey fate and the crowd that was surrounding them, wondering where the hell they'd come from.
Well, the turkeys were not interested in going home. Two very nice men helped me herd them back through the woods, which cut off half a mile from the full mile they'd wondered. I shook the scratch but we ended up chasing them with switches more like a herd of goats. While we walked, one of the men explained that they'd appeared in his yard the night prior and made themselves right at home. When several of the smaller ones had flown onto his roof, he'd chased them off by throwing green tomatoes at them. That, however, only served to give the turkeys menu ideas and they had proceeded to strip all the green tomatoes from his vines. Thankfully the tomatoes were already ruined for humans by frost and he was more amused than anything else. I'm sure it helped that I was utterly mortified. Needless to say, I enjoyed my Thanksgiving turkey even more than usual that year...
And since everyone seems to be posting what they're thankful for:
My family
My friends
Everything I've learned this year
Writing
All the amazing people I've met (extra woot to the Sirens folks, and the authors who attended, you know who you are)
All the AWESOME folks out there blogging, spreading confidence and information to others
New babies
All the people and animals I've lost but won't ever forget
Life
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
It'll be alright...
It is as I feared... someone showing interest in my manuscript is somehow more terrifying than no one having any interest at all... and at the same time, it isn't. *sigh* I wouldn't feel this way if I had just a scrap of firm footing, an agent telling me that it'll be alright, things are going your way... oh, wait, that's what I'm doing, trying to secure an agent so that I have one to tell me these things... which is why I'm pacing now... because an agent has my ms....
On the upside, in a strange way, it doesn't matter if THIS agent turns out to be THE agent (although he's been in the biz a good while and I'm sure I could learn oodles from him just through osmosis) because just the fact that AN agent wanted to read my entire ms validates my ms. Which I needed right now. Life has been wildly crazy, and not always in a good way, or even a 'well, I could write about it' way, and my writing had sort of stalled, not because I'd stopped but because it had reached a point where I really needed some sort of sign that I was doing SOMETHING right, even if it wasn't the something that was going to be my breakout ms.
Now I'm assured that it'll be alright. Even if this one agent doesn't turn out to be MY agent, he's someone I'm proud to say that I intrigued, even if just for the evening. Which tells me that I'm doing something right. Which is a pretty darn good feeling for a girl when the rest of her little orbit has been slung into the asteroid belt...
To all you other writers out there: It'll be alright! It will all work out!
And to celebrate, I've thrown in a random photo of me conquering a much more literal challenge... Okay, so I'm not actually hanging on for dear life, but like I could pass up that kind of chance to cheese?
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