Good Grief This is So Terribly Boring!

Okay. Time for a renovation of this blog! It is so boring that it has put all 14 of my followers, and myself, to sleep! ZZZZZZZZZ!!!!!!! Anyone who would stop by must be bored to death! :) So I pledge one thing: I will earnestly try to make this an interesting, informative, frequently updated blog. Okay? Writing is a passion of mine, so why is this blog so...unpassionate? Because I haven't been paying any attention to it! So here we go! I will try to update this 3 times a week, and you all get to pick the catagories...okay?
Here we go! Pick at least 3 please! All you followers, and any visitors who just look on! :)

An original new poem I wrote
Fun facts about famous authors
Thoughts on books I've been reading
Updates on m writing and stories, including excerpts of them
Character studies of my characters, including backgrounds of who I was inspired by to create them ;)
Writing tips
Quotes from famous authors
Bios about famous authors
And any other suggestions?
I hope this helps, along with the new background for freshness!!! :P
-Rachel

Write What You Know?

I have a topic for all us writers to debate:
In one film version of Little Women, Jo March says to her sister Beth, "The first rule in writing Mr. Tupman, is never write what you know!" (Emphasis mine) What has always intrigued me about that particular line, is that it is contrary to the advice authors give nowadays. The classic tip is writing these days is: "Write what you know!"
I have atheory about this dilemma: I think the script-writer in the Little Women movie decided to add that line to show Jo's immaturity in her writing, and set the stage for Proff. Bhaer later on to tell her to write from her heart.
But what do you all think? What are your interpretations of the advice: "Write what you know"? Mine are as follows:
Write, not always from your own experience, but from a similar setting to that which you live in. For instance, I have unlimited stores of creativity for family-centered stories, since I live 24-7 in a large family. It would be like having an underground lake of oil and never drilling it, if I disregarded the extreme resource such a unit is. I don't have to write about my family, or even modern times, but I understand the family unit from living in it, and I can seriously tell you that a book written by me, set in a family, would be far better than a book written by me about....spies, or something! ;) As far as things like allegories go, I would pretty much beg leave to say that the more spiritually mature a person is, the better the allegory would be. So...maybe leave the allegory idea till you are a bit older.
As far as fantasy goes.... do use a bit of your own knowledge of things to write your book. I personally have never "dabbled" in that genre, so I am not the best judge of that sort of thing! Anyway, tell me your ideas! :) -Rachel

You guessed.....another story! :)

Fellow Scribblers: So sorry I have not been keeping up with this blog! I am shocked at myself! I have been extremely busy with hardly a spare moment to write, but that is no matter- I should not make excuses!:) In the meanwhile, I have inkled up a new story. The storyline that some of you may have read about on Google Buzz needs a Gaskell, or an Austen to handle it smoothly. It was not coming out of my pen the way it rattled around my head, so I laid it aside! :P This story will center around the small town of Halstead, in England. I am quite determined to make it different than Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford, or Jan Karon's Mitford, or any other story about a town and it's people. For one thing, the inhabitants of Halstead insist that it is a village, not a town. Of course there will be similarities between my story and some others, simply because a story about a town, naturally is about people, and my experience about people, is that their nature does not change so drastically from one place to the next. But I am excited about it! This story came about from several little scenes bobbling about my brain, occasioned by some experiences of my own! :) I started this one a bit differently: by making up my cast of characters. I decided to start this way: "What sort of people does a small town need?"
and then I listed everyone:
A rich old man
A mysterious neighbor
A banker
A doctor
A beauty or two
A seamstress
A few young men
A clutch of 4 or 5 gossips
Several old maids
A farmer or two or three! :)
A few tradesmen, etc.
And then all I had to do was name them and plug them in here or there! Well, I must go!
-Rachel