Life, Interrupted

I was researching Llewellyn in its many branches and incarnations, trying to decide if an acquaintance's book might do well there. Apparently they have a long tradition of editing without author input or permission, and even cutting sections of anthologies when they feel their readership would not be receptive to the ideas. So...I need to talk to someone with more recent experience with them, but right now they are not looking like a good candidate for this particular book.

While doing this research I found a link to a list of the various essays in Chas S. Clifton's Witchcraft Today series. This series of books abruptly ended when Llewellyn rejected five essays for the fourth volume, Living Between Two Worlds. Clifton has four of the five essays posted on his site (many of them later published in other venues) and one of them was "Karma and Obsession" by Patricia Kennealy-Morrison. I had not dipped into her nonfiction work and thought I would see what Lewellyan had rejected.

If Lewellyan did not want something of this power, with this much of a mirror to check illusion at the doorway, then it's not the publisher for my acquaintance. She talks about the danger of rolling over from admiration into obsession and finally theft of someone else's creativity...to the detriment of your own creativity and karma.

Not for weekend witches, apparently.

"But what no creator ever intends, unconsciously or otherwise, is that the beholders of his or her art should attempt to co-opt that art simply because those beholders are too damn lazy of brain or sluggish of spirit to do any thinking or seeking or creating of their own. The Holy Grail (and, yes, there are many Grails . . .) was not found by sitting in front of the tube and obsessing on Trek; the world will not be changed by staring slacker-jawed at MTV; work and query are ever the watchwords. Whom, indeed, does the Grail serve?

What we have here is the tyranny of misapplied imagination, the profligate waste of creativity and insight, all squandered on something stolen. The evil of it cannot be overestimated, and it can be fatal, even epidemic, if left chronically untreated. J.R.R. Tolkien, who understood better than just about anyone else how this works, was blunt and plain-spoken about what our response should be: We are all in prison, he wrote, our spirits shackled by the money-grubbers and the soul police and the time-servers. If we are creative persons, it is our bounden duty to escape this, and we must take as many people with us as we can."

This essay finally ended up in Red Queen. It's not going to be to everyone's taste, but I found it interesting and revealing.

I'll be looking for more of her work.

Pat Wrede always has something interesting to say about writing. A recent post was on this topic:

"The advice was this: There are three main things that any scene in a book or short story can do. 1) It can advance the plot. 2) It can explain the background or backstory. 3) It can deepen the characterization. If a scene does none of these things, it isn’t actually a scene and doesn’t belong in the book (or perhaps doesn’t belong in this book). "

Pat's comments on writing are always insightful. She can put what we do in fiction into nonfiction, and does a great job of explaining it to others.

Check it out --

http://pcwrede.com/blog/the-big-three/

I didn't know a zucchini could do that!

http://www.gemueseorchester.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=46&Itemid=

Snitched from ozarque:

A man finds a creative way to control road rage.

http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/story/0,23663,21858266-5006012,00.html

His own site is www.honku.org

You must go look--even though you probably won't understand the words!

http://blog.joins.com/media/folderlistslide.asp?uid=bdaisy&folder=8&list_id=5105133