Myth-Folklore Blog

  ("Typewriter" by dr. shordzi via Flickr ) For my Week 14 Story Lab assignment, I read through some quotes on Jon Winokur’s Advice to Writers website. The first quote that really interested me was called “ The Golden Hours ” by Hilary Mantel. It basically says that even if you are busy with work, you can still put a few hours aside and if you are undistracted, you can accomplish a lot. I completely agree with this statement because if I honestly put my mind to writing, I can finish a lot quite fast. Even if I am busy with other schoolwork, I can always put aside an hour or two to do some writing for this class and if I am completely focused, which does not happen often, then I can accomplish a lot in that time period. The next quote that I related to was a quote by John McPhee called “ Writing is Selection ”. This quote is about how each part of writing is part of a selection process. As a writer, you choose the next paragraph, next word, next sentence, and more. I c

  ("Androcles and the Lion" by John Batten via Myth UN-Textbook ) The story that I chose to focus my reading notes on for this post is “ Androcles and the Lion ” by Joseph Jacobs (1916). I chose this story for a similar reason that I chose the other story for this week’s reading as I have also heard this story before. However, the first version of this story that I read was extremely short and lacking in detail compared to this one. This story is basically about a runaway slave called Androcles who helps a lion by taking out a thorn in its paw to which the lion showed its appreciation by giving affection and food to Androcles. However, Androcles got captured by his former master who turned him into the authorities and Androcles was sentenced to death for running away from his master. The emperor decided to make him fight against a lion, but it turns out Androcles was fighting against the same lion that he rescued. The lion ended up stroking Androcles with his paw and on

  ("Beauty and the Beast" by John Batten via Myth UN-Textbook ) The story that I chose to focus my reading notes on for this post is “ Beauty and the Beast ” by Joseph Jacobs (1916). This story caught my eye because I thought it would be interesting to read a story of something I am familiar with and to see how it differs from the story that I am used to. This story definitely differed from the version of “Beauty and the Beast” that I am familiar with, but I did a little extra research and found that there are so many different versions of the story with all of them differing in many details. This story reminded me of another story that I read this semester called “The Three Roses” because in both cases, the parents picked a rose from where they weren’t allowed to and had to give up their daughters in exchange. Then at the end the creature, the beast in “Beauty and the Beast” and the basilisk in “The Three Roses, ended up turning into a handsome prince or youth. The form

Author’s Note: The original story that I based my story off of was based around a Johnny-Cake that escaped the oven and ran away from all the people chasing it. It ran away from the family of three cooking the cake, two well-diggers, two ditch-diggers, a bear, and a wolf until it eventually got caught by a fox that outwitted the Johnny-Cake rather than trying to chase after it. Based on the original characters, I made my story to be similar to interview statements from the perspective of some of the characters that Johnny-Cake outran. Therefore, I kept the same characters and end result of the people chasing Johnny-Cake but just changed how the story was seen through the perspectives of different characters. If you were not familiar with johnnycakes, a johnnycake is a cornmeal flatbread similar to a pancake.  ("Johnnycake" by Wanchen Tai via  Flickr ) “Never in all my year would I have thought I would see a johnnycake up and running but there it went with my little boy ch

  ("Johnny-Cake" by John D Batten via MYTH UN-Textbook ) The story that I chose to focus my reading notes on for this post is “ Johnny-Cake ” by Joseph Jacobs (1890). This story is based around a cake that escaped the oven and caused everyone to chase after him until in the end, he was eaten by a fox. This story seems like an accumulative story which I saw in last week’s readings as the story is somewhat repetitive but keeps on building on top of itself. It seems like an accumulative story as the story continues with the same lines where Johnny-cake is running away from everyone until he meets someone new and tells them who he has outrun. Then he bets that he can outrun them too and the people he meets ends up chasing him. This same plot and lines are the same throughout the entire story with the only thing changing is exactly who is chasing him. In the end, Johnny-cake gets caught by a fox who outsmarts him by saying that he can’t hear Johnny-cake causing Johnny-cake

  ("Mouse and Mouser" by John D. Batten via Myth-UnTextbook ) The story that I chose to focus my reading notes on for this post is “ Mouse and Mouser ” by Joseph Jacobs (1890). This story is about a cat and a mouse where the mouse tells the cat about everything that it does while the cat always encourages the mouse by saying that it makes the mouse better to eat. This story is broken up into two lines for each “paragraph” with it switching between the cat and mouse speaking. The cat is denoted by having CAT before the paragraph while MOUSE is always above the paragraph in which the mouse speaks. The first line of each paragraph typically ends with the mouse saying, “my lady” or the cat saying, “good body”. This ending usually appears twice at the end of the first sentence of each paragraph and the second line in the paragraph usually gets rid of one of the saying for example if the first sentence ended in “my lady, my lady” the second sentence would end in only “my lady”

("Writing a Book" by Laura via Flickr ) For my Story Lab assignment, I looked through the Writer’s Write website and found an interesting article while looking throughout the page. The article is called “ Don’t Commit These 9 Fiction-Writing Crimes ” by Alex J. Coyne. This title really jumped out at me because I wondered if I made any of these so called “crimes” throughout all the stories if I have written in the class and if I have, is there a way to fix that. The first two points of this article go together as the mistakes are to either over-describe or under-describe scenes and setting. I completely understand this because if you under-describe a scene or setting, then it could be difficult to immerse yourself in the story and if you over-describe, it may seem like too much detail that pulls away from the main story. The third point is simply grammatical mistakes, but this can definitely be avoided by some proofreading. The next two points also go together as Alex d

  ("Story Time" by L. Leslie Brooke via Myth UN-Textbook ) The story that I chose to focus my reading notes on for this post is “Nursery Rhymes: Accumulated Stories” by Andrew Lang(1897). The first thing that I noticed when reading this section of the stories is that these stories are a lot longer than many of the other stories of in this reading. My guess is it is because of the nature of these stories. In these stories, the beginning always starts off simple but then something occurs that leads an event to happen. Then the event that just happened causes another event to happen and this goes on and on. This seems to be the reason why this section is called “Accumulated Stories” as each line of the story just keeps building off the last line. In terms of grammar, each line is not necessarily a complete sentence and as such ends with a comma rather than a period. Another thing is that since each line builds off of each other, many of the lines are repeated in each “par

  ("The Escaping Man" by L. Leslie Brooke via Myth UN-Textbook ) The section of the reading that I chose to focus my reading notes on for this post is “ Nursery Rhymes: Tales ” by Andrew Lang (1897). This section of the Mythology UN-Textbook focused on mostly nursery rhymes, but I chose to focus on the Tales section as I enjoyed the little stories told in each rhyme. As the name implies, each one of these the stories in this section rhyme. However, the way they rhyme differed between each story as one story could have one line rhyme with the very next line after it and another story could have one line rhyme with another line that is two lines after it. In general, the stories in this section are short in terms of a story but compared with the other nursery rhymes in the other sections, these stories are on the longer side. The punctuation of the stories is also quite interesting as the lines are not complete sentences and end with a comma rather than a period. I think

  ("Studying" by Steven S. via Flickr ) This last week was a busy week for me as I had a whole lot of homework assignments. I also had business to do with the club I am in as well as a midterm. Therefore, I was not able to spend a whole lot of time on this class but luckily, I did some extra credit assignments during the break week. It honestly helped relieve some stress as I know that I did not have to do much for this class and could focus on studying for my midterm. However, I did do some assignments for this week which included the readings for the Native American unit. I did both portions of the reading this week as they do not take much time to complete but I would say that the reading for this week was a little more difficult than the other weeks. The main issue I think that I had was all the new vocabulary as well as all the new characters that were specific to that culture. It made it difficult because if you are not familiar with these terms or these character

  ("Sun Worship" by Kevin Dooley via Flickr ) The story that I chose to focus my reading notes on for this post is “ The Worship of the Sun ” by Katharine Berry Judson (1914). This story is about a young boy named O-na-wut-a-qui-o who ended up meeting the Sun in the “Sky-Plain” and living with him for a while. The Sun was a mighty character that was worshipped amongst the people of the “Earth-Plain” and often interacted with the humans from the sky. The young boy lived with the Sun for a while and was able to see all the things that the Sun was able to do from up in the sky until eventually the boy grew weary of the place and asked to be sent back down. Similar to my other reading in this section, this story had some vocabulary that I was unfamiliar with such as “wigwam” however upon some research, I was able to find out what the words meant. The Sun and the Moon had a sort of magical presence in this story as they were presented as people that could practically do whate

  ("Polar Bear" by Tambako via Flickr ) The story that I chose to focus my reading notes on for this post is “ The Great Flood ” by Katharine Berry Judson (1914). I chose to focus on this story because I actually remember reading about this story at the beginning of the semester while researching Storybook projects so I thought it would be interesting to see the original story. This story revolves around the trickster Manabush and how he gets his revenge on the evil spirit beings called Anamaqkiu. While reading through this story, the thing I noticed the most was the number of unfamiliar words and characters. I would say that if you have no prior knowledge of characters from Native American stories or no background information at all, this story might be a difficult read as I know it was for me. I had to do a little background research in order to really understand the stories but once you become familiar with the characters that are mentioned, then the story becomes a w

  ("Royal KMM 'Magic Margin' Typewriter" by Seth Morabito via Flickr ) For my Story Lab assignment, I looked through Jon Winokur’s Advice to Writers site and found some interesting and relatable quotes. The first quote that kind of resonated with me is from Gabriel García Márquez and it talks about how the first paragraph is the hardest when writing to which I completely agree. The first paragraph for most of my stories, essays, etc. usually lays out the format or direction in which I want to go. After I finish that first paragraph, my writing usually gets a lot faster as the first paragraph lays out the framework that I follow when writing the rest of the paragraphs. However, I usually get stuck on the first paragraph because I find it difficult to provide a good introductory paragraph to kind of lead into my story or essay. Along with the first paragraph, I also find the final paragraph of a story or essay the most difficult because it’s hard for me to find a