Category Archives: Related media

I Love You, Rilke

“We have no reason to mistrust our world, for it is not against us. Has it terrors, they are our terrors; has it abysses, those abysses belong to us; are dangers at hand, we must try to love them. And if we could only arrange our life according to that principle which counsels us that we must always hold to the difficult, then that which now seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust and find most faithful. How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants our love.”

Ranier Maria Rilke
Letters to a Young Poet[?]

Where the Wild Things Are

There are distinct differences between traditional fairy tales and fantasy short stories. When I teach my class, I ask my students to stick to the former and eschew the latter. I love fairy tales and I believe passionately in the discipline of writing to the traditional fairy tale form. Plus, in a six-week class, there’s not enough time to stray too far from the curriculum.

However, I love fantasy short stories and novels just as passionately. I love comics, too. Any story form that takes me out of the world I know and into a world of surprise and possibility is a story form that I love.

So it is with tummy-tingling, heart-glowy anticipation that I await the release of this movie:

Dave Eggers wrote the script, and while he may be the most maddeningly over-hyped hipster author in print today, he’s also one talented mother[shutyourmouth]. I can’t wait to see how the movie turns out!

FTF Reading and Drinking Party

Join us next Thursday evening (that’s April 23) from 7 – 10 pm at Vermillion to hear the latest crop of stories that’s come out of the Factory. Readings will start around 7:30, drinking and talking will go indefinitely!

Check out the event on Facebook.

Status report about the March class

The March ‘Intro to Fairy Tales’ class is going swimmingly, thanks for asking! We have six full-time students and one who drops in when he can take time away from working on his Ph.D. in mythopoetic studies at the Pacifica Graduate Institute (this is an unusual privilege – don’t go getting any fancy ideas). In terms of age, I think we’ve got a representative from each decade of life from the teens to the fifties (with a few doubling up in the 20s and 30s); in terms of experience, we span the entire spectrum, as well. And it works beautifully! Class discussions are funny, intelligent, and engaging thanks to the cool folks who came out to play this time.

Last night was the third class in this series, so we have officially hit the halfway mark. There’s no turning back now! With each class we move steadily closer to our goal of a complete, polished, original fairy tale for every student. There’s some great imagery on the table, and I’m looking forward to the stories that are in the pipeline.

Check back in three or four weeks (at the very least), when I will post student stories – if the students in question don’t get too shy!

Aimee Mullins on transformation

This video is not, on the surface, related to fairy tales or the creative process. But it is if you look under the hood. Aimee Mullins is a double amputee who has prosthetic legs of every variety – sprinting legs modeled after the hind legs of a cheetah (she broke a world record for speed in the ’90s), carved wooden legs like baroque fantasies, polyurethane legs that look like glass, and more. She talks about that ability that is imperative, vital for artists to have: true sight, the ability to see beyond the surface of things, the ability to breed seemingly unrelated ideas to create exotic, miraculous offspring.

Hopefully her short lecture will inspire you to see new wavelengths of creative light.

Women, Creativity, Stories

Delicious video of Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Toni Morrison, Jessye Norman, Judith Weir on the Charlie Rose Show talking about a collaboration they did called Woman.Life.Song. Interesting, funny, intelligent conversation about creativity, femininity, and more.