Yes it sure feels great! Just like she says in that song by Linda Ronstadt, or somebody. She is the one whom I've heard sing it. Yes, as I've been telling many of my friends here at ScribblersCorner.com, it sure does feel like home. That was quite a site, Thought Café! I sure felt comfortable posting stories of all kinds there. I really loved the camaraderie that was found there. I really pray the same can be found here at ScribblersCorner.com I am going to be sending out a monthly newsletter. I have decided all by my little own self to call it Light Unto The Masses. This meaning, it will try to help all in all that can be done as far as writing goes. I want all of us to take part in the writing of this newsletter. That means, I may ask some of you, at any time to write an article for this. That way, you can tell your friends-maybe your kids that you are helping to provide some Light, or direction to your fellow writers.

The Poetry Corner

A warm welcome, to the readers of the ScribblersCorner.com newsletter.

Let me introduce myself first: I am Bianca, 37 years old, married, and mother of three children.

We live in The Netherlands, north of Rotterdam. One of my hobbies is writing poetry. Not only Free Verse, also other fixed forms of poetry do have my interest. While studying these different forms of poetry I discovered that there were many forms to explore. And also that sometimes the explanations of these forms were hard to find on the Internet. And that is why I started to write explanations on how to write different forms of poetry.

In the Poetry Corner, our goal is to share a form and its explanation for you to try. It would be wonderful if you take the time to try the form and I would be honored when you send a link to your poem to me. We might select a few, to be published in a future issue of the newsletter.

I would like to begin this series with a form I recently discovered on the website of Jan Haag... that lady has written a poem in almost every form that is known in the English language. Believe me, compared to her I am just a starter! People who know math will certainly recognize this one:

Pi.

You probably know that Pi is the 16^th letter of the Greek Alphabet.

Pi is built up in words and follows the mathematical number that stands for Pi:
PI = 3.141592653589793 *

In lines:
line 1: 3 words
line 2: 1 word
line 3: 4 words
line 4: 1 word
line 5: 5 words
line 6: 9 words
line 7: 2 words
line 8: 6 words
line 9: 5 words
line 10: 3 words
line 11: 5 words
line 12: 8 words
line 13: 9 words
line 14: 7 words
line 15: 9 words
line 16: 3 words.

An example:

The Magic Paintbrush
chooses
bright colours to paint
a
landscape in the style of
Vincent van Gogh; many sunflowers in a field...
Or abstract
like the works of Pablo Picasso,
he uses red and blue
for his masterpiece.
Maybe the Magic Paintbrush is
choosing brown and green to paint a forest,
a deer, hiding between the trees just got noticed
by birds, playing hide and seek again.
It adds a few coloured mushrooms in a corner,
a landscape finished.

Until then!

Bianca

* Of course Pi (the ratio of the circumference of a circle to it's diameter) is an irrational fraction with as many decimal places as you wish to calculate, but you probably would not want to write that many lines. ...wm.

Who Made the Rules?

by Victor Buhagiar

Writers of short stories and novels should know that there are some basic rules that must be observed in their writing. All stories should have a beginning, a middle and an end. The beginning should introduce the main characters, give the setting of the story and explain clearly what is the problem the main character must solve.

The middle which is the story really should show our main character face complications to that problem.

The end is a resolution to that problem.

Who made these rules? Consider the story below. As indicated it was written before Christ was born. It is a Roman play and so expect the story line to be rather old fashioned, although even today these types of stories have a habit of recurring.

THE WOMAN OF ANDROS by Terence 166 BC Phamphilus, a young gentleman of Athens, has seduced Glycerium, supposed to be the sister of a courtesan from Andros, and is devoted to her. His father, Simo has arranged a match for him with the daughter of his friend Chremes. But Chremes has heard of the relations of Pamphilus and Glycerium and withdrawn his consent to the match. Simo conceals this, pretends to go on with the preparations for an immediate marriage, and hopes by this means to put an end to the amour. Pamphilus, learning from his cunning slave, Davus, that the intended marriage is a pretence, temporizes and offers no objection. Simo now persuades Chremes to withdraw his objection; and Pamphilus is reduced to despair. At this stage Glycerium bears a son to Pamphilus, and Davus arranges that the fact shall become known to Chremes, who now finally breaks off the match. An acquaintance just arrived from Andros reveals to Chremes that Glymrium as a child was shipwrecked at Andros in circumstances which show that she is a daughter of Chremes. Chremes and Simo consent to the marriage of Pamphilus and Glyerium, and all ends happily.

Studying the structure of the story line one can see it has a beginning, with a very serious problem for Pamphilus. Its middle is full of complications for Pamphilus but I the end, his problem is solved. In today's idea of a story one expects Pamphilus to solve his own problem rather than let fate solve it for him. However this is a product of its time where fate always played a role.

Still the rules for story writing are there. So you can see that these are well established rules that go back far in history. Times have evolved these rules to the extent that you can play around with them. You can start a story from its ending and go back to the beginning. Or you can find a point in its middle and start from there. Even these are not so modern. The Romans considered such a stratagem as "in media res", in the middle of things.

One modern rule has been given great importance. Point of view of a story should be consistent. If possible it is always best to write a story with one point of view. This restricts you in that your main character would not know what is going on behind his back. Pamphilius did not know what his father was doing, but the author introduced Davos to help him out.

Final word. Nothing is new under the sun. Stories succeed or fail by the way you treat the story. Your personal touch is therefore all important and the best stories succeed when they come from the mind and the heart.

Poor ole Bradley. He has been waiting for this lady to get an article to him, so he can publish his first Scribbler’s Corner Newsletter. Now, Bradley has adopted calling me a Domestic Diva, but for the life of me, I have no idea what that could possibly be. Anyone in my home at the present time would understand that quite well. The floors are in dire need of vacuuming, the dust on my desk will soon be a ¼ inch thick and I have no time to clean it up as I am running to keep up with deadlines. Heck, if my husband, Jim, didn’t help out with the laundry every once and a while, I would be running about "bare-assed" and don’t you go thinking that that wouldn’t scare the living B-jesus out of them. Yikes, a truly scary thought.

But, if Bradley is calling me a "Domestic Diva" because I can cook, I should also point out that I can use a table saw, a scroll saw, a artist’s paint brush and a computer, all very effectively and efficiently. If it says "Creative" in any part of the title, than you definitely do have me….but domestic???? Cleaning - sorry wrong person! Only do it when I cannot get out of it.

Today, I have finished and posted my monthly magazine "Living Well" which gives helpful hints and tips for cooking, running a business, money saving and much more, which is why I am behind getting Bradley his article for his newsletter. Like most things this past month, the magazine was done in a hurry as I had promised a gentleman in Africa that I would sent him a catalogue of my artwork, which I did today as well, but that put me behind on everything else.

So, I guess the thing that fascinates people about what I accomplish can be chalked up to great time management skills. I learned twenty years ago when I was running a printing and publishing business that the only way to accomplish an insurmountable amount of tasks was to employ excellent time management skills, and I still practice this regularly.

My average week runs something like this….

Monday – Make breads and bake for tea room, prepare the art lessons for the week, and write and submit any articles for the writing group, plus do grocery shopping.

Tuesday – Make fresh soup, biscuits, etc. for the tea room, which I run from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Close tea room and pack up art supplies for classes in Oil Springs, Leave home at 2:45 and teach from 3 p.m. to 5, return home, have dinner, and then complete any work required for the next day.

Wednesday – same as Tuesday only I prepare the local online newspaper for publication, teach art from 2:30 to 4 p.m., have dinner, and then chair a writers meeting from 7 to ?

Thursday – Same for tea room, prepare art lessons for private class that evening, work on illustration work for children’s books until dinner, eat, and then teach art from 7 to 9 p.m.

Friday – Same for tea room and then illustration work during afternoon and usually we have company or go out Friday evening.

Saturday – Work on children’s books, complete articles, plan the notes for the next meeting I am chairing and/or visit with my grandchildren.

Sunday – Complete absolutely everything that didn’t get done from Monday to Saturday.

So, as you can see it is more time management than anything else. Recently I have had a piece of art accepted into the Look 2004 international art show, sold some paintings to a gentleman in Africa, and have had some new writing accepted for publication.

Now before you start huffing and puffing, as you try to keep up with me, I should point out that although I am busy beyond belief some day, I truly love what I do; therefore it doesn’t seem like work. I just strikes me as another creative adventure in the world filled with artistic driven Type A personalities like me.

To learn more about me or to view some of my art, visit my website at

To download my most recent magazine:

To view my weekly newspaper "The Brookston News"

Wishing you all a happy and healthy month of May.

Trickster Witch – the not Domestic Diva

The newsletter is generated as an html document, and you have accessed it as such. Most browsers will print it in this format. If we receive enough requests for a downloadable pdf format, we will do our best to make a pdf format available (we just have to figure out how). ...wm