War & Peace (& Love) (& Heartbreak)
I’m watching the new BBC adaptation of War and Peace on the Lifetime network. This is my first foray into the story and I’m hooked. I’m always a sucker for costume dramas set in that era anyway, but I’ve been really blown away by how lovely and complex this story is. My only other experience with Tolstoy is Anna Karenina, which I read excerpts of in school, and then I recently saw the 2012 adaptation starring Keira Knightley. I enjoyed that story a lot, but I’m enjoying War and Peace so much more. I’d love to read them both someday.
Collecting Words
I keep a big hardcover notebook on my writing desk for recording pretty words, favorite quotes, plot ideas, and descriptions. Usually I scribble things down on scraps of paper and stash them between the pages to save for later. Sometimes I think I should be more mindful and take the time to record them directly rather than dumping them off so unceremoniously. But then, once in awhile, I pull out the notebook in an idle moment, and out falls all these disparate little scraps covered in wonderful scribblings–and it’s kind of magical!
Today I added the words asunder and tumbling to my “beautiful words” list, as well as gelid and ice-kissed to my “winter words” list. Afterward, as I read through the amended lists, I realized the little scraps of paper are part of the fun–a little treasure stash of words I love but had completely forgotten, just waiting to be discovered whenever it occurs to me. I think I’ll stick to the scraps after all.
Web Site, Take Two
On January 1st, 2016, I bolted out of the gate and created my author web site, blog, and social media pages. This was a huge accomplishment for me, given that I’d been putting it off for years. I was feeling very impressed with myself until today, three days later, when a text from my cousin announced that my new web site and blog was mysteriously missing. After what can only be described as frantic race through Target to finish my shopping, I got home to discover that my beloved blog had been deleted by Blogspot due to spam. There was no explanation of what the spam was, where on my site it was located, or how it got there, and I was given no access to my blog to see for myself. My only recourse was to appeal the deletion, but as far as I could tell that wouldn’t accomplish much besides some random person at Google confirming that there was in fact spam on my site. I just honestly don’t have time for that sort of tomfuckery, so I deleted myself from all of Google and migrated over to WordPress. And let me tell you, despite the tremendous pain in the rump it has been to start all over again, it has turned out to be serendipity. I’m so much happier with my new site! Now, back to editing…
