The Monster Captcha

Hello, readers,

The day has finally come. I've been moderating away, but after getting well over a hundred spam comments on Monday's post alone, I've decided to enable Captcha.

I know it's frustrating. I'm sorry. I hate it, too.

The Picture-Perfect Blogger... and Me

Easter nail polish!

It's a sunny Holy Saturday as I write, shaping up to be the warmest and prettiest Easter I've experienced in the Pacific Northwest, and I spent most of the day away from my computer. It felt like a good day to pot some of my little seedlings and a pair of avocado trees, paint my fingernails—which happens just twice a year for this gardener/guitarist: on Christmas and Easter—and pound out a Chopin prelude on the piano with intense expression and, unfortunately, coffee jitters.

Lou and I plan to spend the evening at his parents', eat the traditional oyster stew, and then head over to church for Easter Vigil—the most beautiful night of the liturgical year. By the time this post goes live, the Triduum will be over and Easter will have begun. I love the whole Easter season. But there's nothing else in all of life for me like Holy Saturday.

This week, Masha and Christie and I have a three-way blogalectic topic: whether we three artsy Catholic bloggers ought to try in any way to resemble the suddenly popular Mormon mommy bloggers, who were recently examined and praised by a self-described feminist atheist over at Salon.

And as I've sat down to write, I've realized that it's an almost irrelevant question for me. I have all kinds of respect and affection for the LDS church and its members, thanks to my being an Orson Scott Card/Shannon Hale/Stephenie Meyer fangirl and having had a few lovely Mormon friends and acquaintances. But I'm not a Mormon. I'm also not a mommy.

Holy Saturday sunshine and transplanting.

What I am, what I do have in common with these young women, is that I'm a personal blogger with an artistic bent—though I'm bookish and not at all craftsy—and that I belong to a faith tradition that affects every area of my life. The question for me, then, is simply: how open should I be about faith and/or life hardships on my blog? Since both can turn away readers?

The twenty-something LDS mommies are mostly pretty subtle about their religion; it shows up in a link to mormon.org in the sidebar, in references to Utah and the temple. If they talk about faith, it tends to be unspecific but generically Christian in mood and wording. Some of them—again, not all—keep the blogs pretty positive and clean-scrubbed as far as life goes, so that after paging down through a few of them, my own first reaction was sort of like what happens when you watch a commercial and half-believe that drinking Coke will make you sexy. If I were Mormon, says that little niggle, would I be be a pretty 26-year-old wife with a couple of cute toddlers instead of a 35-year-old who had to wait till 30 to get married and still hasn't managed to have a kid, but does have gray hairs coming in? Nope. But I envy those girls their youth, their fashion sense, and their children.

Masha talked about over-share on Catholic mom blogs (gory clinical details of childbirth, anyone?) and finding a balance between posting all happy thoughts and spending too much time working out deep dark issues in public. Christie spoke of feeling never good enough in the presence of the picture-perfect young moms, and of treating a blog as a way to encourage others.

I... could go a million directions, but it seems best to just answer the question.

When the subject of faith wants to come up on my blog—in a book review, in a Friday post's interaction with the liturgical calendar, etc.—I don't hide it, but I do try to keep my readers in mind to some extent. Most of you that I know by name are not Catholic, and some of you aren't Christian at all. The golden rule seems appropriate here; for myself, I'm not generally troubled by people talking about their beliefs as long as there's no apparent attack on my own, so I do my best to make the references organic and honest but non-confrontational.

If this weren't a personal blog—if I were out to meet some public niche interest—I'd just keep faith offscreen, as I nowadays do for politics. But it is a personal blog.



All dressed up for Easter Vigil.

And because it's personal, the matter of how open to be about my imperfect life is a personal decision. For myself, I've learned that on an ordinary day, I'm happier just not thinking about what I don't have or can't do. So I don't talk about childlessness or chronic depression or adrenal exhaustion much. I focus on what I do have and what I can do, and that's what comes out on the blog. And blogging optimistically, in its turn, helps me live a more cheerful daily life.

As for what I have to offer: I try and do for guests at my blog just what I do for guests at my home. If you come here, I hope you find friendly conversation and a place to rest surrounded by books and beauty.

Easter Monday postscript: I feel more like a mommy blogger than usual today, having spent most of the day with my two- and five-year-old nieces. It was a heck of a lot of fun, but I don't know when I'd blog if I had kids that age. Since they went home, I have got the furniture mostly put to rights and the egg off the kitchen floor—the five-year-old helped me make her favorite "doubled eggs" for lunch—but I haven't gotten around to scrubbing the apple juice off the table yet. I'm exhausted. :P

Happy Easter!

Top Ten Tuesday: Best Introductory Posts to Me, My Blog, and I

Today's topic would have nothing to do with books if we all didn't blog about them so much. But then, I suppose that's the idea. :)

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish! Do come join the fun...

Welcome to A Light Inside, the blog of an eclectic reviewer and novelist-hopeful! These ten posts should thoroughly introduce you to the proprietor, the site itself, and the friends thereof.

If you're looking for the fun side, you'll perhaps want to start here:

• "The Modern YA Novelist", a parody of Gilbert & Sullivan's Modern Major-General song, complete with pictures and internet memes. I stayed up all night making this one, shamelessly cracking myself up the entire time.
• "Pride and Prejudice and Facebook", in which Elizabeth Bennet tries to deal with the standard frustrations of social media over-share. Will make more sense if you've read P&P, or at least seen one of the movies.
• Some of the lovely commenters around here helped me come up with this fantasy cast for L.M. Montgomery's The Blue Castle. I'm still proud of us for that list.

For more serious posts, in which I usually discuss writing as Art, sometimes in conversation with other bloggers (especially a couple of my literary besties: Masha, who lives in a yurt and makes flavored vodka, and Mr. Pond, who studies fairy tales in grad school in Scotland), try these:

• "You Raise Me Up: The Religious Artist and Secular Art", in blogalectic* with Masha, on the importance of reading quality work regardless of one's own moral or religious perspective.
• "What's in Your Heart", in blogalectic with Mr. Pond, on why it's worth making sacrifices to make art.

For sample book reviews, here's The Great Gatsby for general audiences and The Scorpio Races for YA readers.

If you want some basic details on me, here's "Raindrops on Roses", a list of a few of my favorite things. Also, Friday posts tend to be all about life in my own little world, and "Failing Silence and other stories" gives a good picture of my relationship to the garden, the cat, and music, which are frequent topics of choice.

And finally, for the romantics among us, here's how a book nerd announces her engagement. At least, this book nerd. It was four years ago and I'm long since happily married, so no particular need for congratulations, but it's still one of my favorite posts. Though I do wish I could've found a less awkward picture of Anne and Gilbert.

That's ten!

What's your favorite post on your own blog? Leave me a link in the comments, and I'll try to come by.

* blogalectic |blaw-guh-LEK-tihk| n. a dialectic between two or more bloggers, in which each participating blogger hosts his theses on his own blog.

Thursdays

Much as I hate to do it, for the sake of making better progress on my novels, I think I'll take Thursdays off blogging for awhile. That is, unless I actually have something worth saying that can be written up in an hour or less. Or unless you really, really like this sort of thing:

Currently reading: The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander (The Chronicles of Prydain book 1)
The Narnia Code by Michael Ward

Out from the library: The Great Hunt by Robert Jordan (Wheel of Time book 2) and two Kate DiCamillo books, because I'm crazy enough to think I can get all of this read in three weeks, along with Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop, which I have to read for book club.

Currently writing and revising: That old career make-or-breaker, the query letter. Also, still working on revisions to the novel.

Never fear, though! I do plan on keeping the other four days a week going as scheduled. See you tomorrow.

The Reading Writer's Quandary

YA Highway's report of a recent discussion in the blogosphere left me, another lowly aspiring writer who blogs and gets into Goodreads, with a lot to think about. Their link aggregate is excellent, but for those of you who don't want to put in the half hour to read every one of the articles, I'll summarize:

Aspiring writers who read and review books can find themselves in trouble with potential agents and editors by posting negative statements about books. Further, should the aspiring writer find some success, especially NYT bestseller-list success, their words about books liked and disliked suddenly carry much more weight and can actually affect other authors' careers. Some bloggers have chosen to go on hiatus because of this conversation; others are moving forward cautiously; still others intend to keep their straightforward modes of expression.

For me, the discussion only exacerbates the concern I already feel at making negative statements online, even without reference to my desire to get published. The internet is public and permanent. My policy has already been that I don't review a book unless I found it enjoyable and valuable in some ways, even if something about it didn't quite work for me.

But writing real thoughts on books, anything beyond a list of the five best books to take to a desert island, requires sometimes saying something negative. I've said negative things about books by authors whose success is spectacular and deserved, authors whom I greatly respect. I've fussed about the overwhelming horror in Mockingjay—but Suzanne Collins created Peeta Mellark, one of my favorite characters in fiction (and one of the most redemptive). I've said that Coraline left me with a strange cold feeling—but Neil Gaiman rarely writes a sentence that I don't sit back and admire. Heck, I think J.K. Rowling overused the word 'screamed' in Deathly Hallows, and you know how I feel about Harry Potter.

There's not one of these writers that I wouldn't meet with trembling hands and a sudden tendency to stammer. Not even if my writing got successful.

I'm not sure what all this means for me. I like talking about books. Having had my nose in one almost constantly since age four, there aren't many subjects I like better. If I'm going to blog at all, books will get mentioned, and honestly. I will continue to concern myself with keeping opinions respectful, but as I've learned in many an area of life, the desire to be perfect doesn't always win against the human capacity for failure. So I guess this is a risk.

Would you take it?

New Blog Design, Christians and Art, and Narnia

As you may or may not have noticed: This weekend I completely redesigned my site, thanks to Blogger's relatively-new Template Designer. It felt a little nervy to put both my name and face in the header (yes, that is me)... I'd already found it embarrassing enough to redirect my blog to jennasthilaire.com with everything inside me shouting YOU ARE NOT FAMOUS DON'T BE PRETENTIOUS. Oh well. Pictures personalize a website—at least, that's how I feel when other people put their own up. And that is my name.

Let me know if you come across anything in the new site design that needs fixing, and I'll do my best to oblige.

While normally I'd do my own writing about writing today, fellow Blogengamot member Arabella Figg put up a post at The Hog's Head discussing whether Christian films can be good. Her thoughts and the ensuing discussion on the relationships between Christianity, Christians, and art—including a contribution from Hollywood screenwriter Janet Batchler (who wrote Batman Forever, among other things)—fascinated me. I recommend that. The basic principles are applicable to the art of writing.

If you need further reading material, I just posted a review of the new Narnia movie, Voyage of the Dawn Treader, also at The Hog's Head.

Vampire Dates and other stories

Yesterday got by me, and at 10:30 PM I tried to post and gave up. To make up for that, I have two posts for you today: this one, and my review of the movie Eclipse over at The Hog's Head. (Loved it. I grinned my way through pretty much the whole thing.)

Special thanks to my husband, who not only has never complained about taking me to a Twilight film, but treats it like a date and even enjoys the show. He likes the Pacific Northwest scenery—it's hard not to when you live out here.

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This blog has a new web address: jennasthilaire.com. Don't worry, if you've linked to the old blogspot address in the past, the links will still work. But I've been planning, as part of my writing venture, to set up a professional website. Blogger seems to have realized that Wordpress has been beating the socks off it and it is undergoing vast improvements, offering a lot more options, and... we'll see what I come up with.

The beautiful Dark Forest theme that I've used for just over a year will go away soon, which makes me a little sad. I might take a screenshot just to keep for memory's sake. On the other hand, I do love graphic design and should be able to come up with something pretty. Give me time. If the template reverts to one of Blogger's standard offerings for awhile, never fear--that's just temporary while I try to work things out.

* * *

My grandparents left town Sunday, and I am still catching up on things. The house needs cleaning, I have my old computer booted for some work, my novel needs a lot more revision, and I've got a website to design. It's going to be a busy day.

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Writers, here's a set of links for you. Erin Healy has a great two-part guest piece at Rachelle Gardner's, on knowing and loving your reader:

Who is Your Reader: Part 1
Who is Your Reader: Part 2

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Sweet romantic piece of the week: Unwritten Love Notes by Farmer's City Wife. It's an excellent reminder of how to keep love alive.

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Funny line of the week comes from Denise Roper, talking about an experience at Mythcon:

I also loved this particular prayer of petition: “Remember Charles, Clive, John Ronald, and all who have died in the peace of Christ; remember those whose faith is known to you alone; and bring them all into the place of eternal joy and light.” I thought that it was so lovely that we prayed for the Inklings in this way, but I really think Clive would have liked it better if we had called him ”Jack.”

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I've got to get to work. Happy weekend, everyone!

Post #200: Blog Improvement

For my two hundredth post, I decided to do a major blog overhaul. As much as I loved the look of the old template, it felt too dark ... especially considering the blog title ... and the font size had to be unreasonably large to be readable. My parents' computer still didn't like it, even with the big font.

After several hours of searching today, I found this template, complete with all manner of beautiful things. I really hope it works on everybody's computer, because I love it.

New features include the "Go" search bar and the labels section, allowing for easier finding of old posts (it took me forever to track down the posts I linked last week). No, I did not add labels to all 200 posts, just the most recent and a few special ones. I will probably add them to more of the older posts eventually.

My testing of those functions went splendidly. Let me know if anything behaves with persistent stupidity and I'll have Lou give it an attitude adjustment.

It might be immortal optimism rising, but I'd like to post more often and more cheerfully. An evening last week spent stripping added color from some of my oldest posts reminded me of the original joy of blogging. Politics, thou shalt not wreck my blog! I have created a label for political essays, for the times when I cannot stop myself, but I started this little page to talk over life and love and beautiful things, not that which is wicked and awful.

Here's to happy thoughts and many of them. :)