Reading Notes: English Fairy Tales, Part A

In the story "Mouse and Mouser," a mouse and cat have a conversation while the cat is spinning. The mouse asks the cat what she is doing, and she replies that she is spinning breeches. The mouse tells her that he hopes she wears them a long time, and she says that she will wear them and tear them. The mouse says he was cleaning his room and the cat replies that he is cleaner. The mouse says he found a sixpence and the cat says that he is now richer. The mouse says he want to the market and bought a pudding, then put it in the window to cool. The cat starts snarling, and the mouse timidly says a cat came and ate the pudding. The cat pounces on the mouse, saying she will eat him, and she does.

This story is written as a back and forth conversation. Each comment is written as a repeating sentence, such as "I was sweeping my room, my lady, my lady, I was sweeping my room, my lady." I think it would be difficult to write my entire story in the style, but it may be interesting to do for part of it.

Mouse from Max Pixel

Story source: English Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs with illustrations by John D. Batten (1890).

Comments

Story Lab: TED Talk Videos

For this Story Lab, I watched Ted Talks about stories and storytelling . The first video is the TED Talk of a woman named Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie from Nigeria. From a young age, she has been a storyteller. She read foreign books for much of her childhood and based the stories she wrote based on what she read in these books. She eventually discovered books and she learned that writers could look like her. When she came to university in the United States, her roommate was surprised to learn Nigeria has English as an official language and that she was familiar with many of the comforts of American life. She believes people like her roommate have a view of Africans because of writing that portrays them as living in a dark place. When Chimamanda wrote a book, her professor told her the book was not "African enough" because the characters were similar to him, a middle-class man, and they drove cars. When she visited Mexico, she realized she saw the people there as poor immigran...

Tech Tip: Word Counter

This word counter is so helpful! I usually go to a word counter website and write my text in there, then copy and paste it. This extension makes it easy to just write where I will posting my text so I don't have to flip between tabs. I usually am worried about meeting the minimum word count, but I usually don't have an issue hitting, I am just afraid that I won't. I think I am generally bad in estimating numbers in general, so I probably would be very off in my estimate if I just tried tried to guess how long my writing is.

Time Strategies

For this class, I think what will be most helpful is setting "class times" for myself. Since there are no set meeting times, I can give myself times set aside solely for this course instead of just working on it during my homework time. The first article I read was Amanda Oliver's " Time Management Tips Just for Creatives ." While most tips in this article were written for creative careers such as artists or designers, many of them can be applied to an academic environment. A couple that stuck out to me that I think I will be able to use in my classes this semester are to manage your energy instead of just managing time and to start with the most daunting task while ending with your favorite task. I also read the article " 11 Ways Unsuccessful People Mismanage Their Time ." The best tips that are applicable to this course are to schedule and prioritize. The article that resonated with me most, however, was " How to Beat Procrastination ." Th...

Shea's Myth-Folk Blog

Search This Blog