Hobgoblins Hate Books

Reading Takes You Places 03

Julia spun around and saw a tiny green blur scurry across the bookcase.
A scrabble of feet, a tiny sneeze, something squeezed out of sight.
A book of fairytales flew off the shelf and hit the floor with a thud.
“Who’s there?” Julia imagined a spiky grasshopper.
Carefully, so carefully, she put the book back where it belonged.
A tiny hand, a papery scrape, a puff of dust and the book whizzed off the shelf again.
“Ouch!” It hit Julia right on the nose. “That wasn’t very nice.”
Zing, clunk, thump! She heard a chuckle as more books pinged off the shelf.
“Stop that.” Julia rapped on the bookcase. “Don’t you like books?”
“No!” a tiny voice squeaked. “Hobgoblins hate books!”
And out of hiding came a tiny green hobgoblin.
He had a gold buckle on his pointy hat and gold buckles on his pointy shoes.
She replied firmly. “Then please leave my books alone and go away.”
“Was planning to make a pile of books up to your window,” he grumbled.
Julia thought for a moment. “Use a chair.”
“Can’t move a chair all by myself,” he mumbled.
The hobgoblin watched as Julia pushed the chair under the open window.
“Difficult for me to get way over there,” he huffed, arms folded.
Quickly Julia gathered the books and stacked them like a staircase.
It wobbled but the hobgoblin skipped down as light as a feather.
He tapped his foot while she built another staircase up to the seat of the chair.
He scrambled onto the leather seat and stopped. “Can’t grab the window ledge.”
With a voice like her mother’s, Julia said “Try.”
Bounce, bounce! The tiny hobgoblin tried kangaroo hops.
Several books shook, but it didn’t work.
He changed his frowny face into a crooked smile.
He raised his tiny green arms. “Would be most grateful if you’d pick me up.”
Julia felt uncomfortable, she wondered if he might bite.
“Miaow.” Julia’s cat prowled into the room.
With a squeal, the hobgoblin jumped high in the air and flew out the window.
In a flash, the cat raced after him.
Julia ran to the window and saw the cat jump down as the hobgoblin flew up.
The hobgoblin’s tiny, shiny wings caught the breeze and he flew over the fence.
Julia looked down at her wide-eyed cat. “Well, that was a mystery.”
The window stayed open as Julia heaped her books higher and higher and higher.
She placed her favourite book of fairytales on top.
Meanwhile her cat sniffed at a speck of green on the window ledge.
It was a tiny pointy hobgoblin hat.
Julia snatched it up and something fell out.
A teeny tiny book with a gold cover.
She laughed. “He does like books after all!”
Something tiny and green hovered just outside her window.

♥ Gretchen Bernet-Ward

Simmering Manuscripts

My documentation is office-organised but my writing approach is organic. I will have four or five manuscripts simmering away then one will bubble to the top. That’s The One. I pursue it to the end. Sometimes those left simmering, sink to the bottom. Other times a new thought will be added and not even stirred into the mix, it will shine immediately and have my full attention.

You gotta love what you’re working on, right!

♥ Gretchen Bernet-Ward

Saucepan — “Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble”

The Shadow Bird

First Bird went peck, peck, peck.

Second Bird went peck, peck, peck.

First Bird is annoyed.

He looks in the window,

He hops along the path,

He sips from a water bowl.

And Second Bird is always there.

When it rains, Second Bird goes away.

But not for long.

One day First Bird flies straight at Second Bird.

Ouch!

First Bird is taken to the vet.

His beak hurts,

And he feels lonely.

First Bird looks out the window.

There is Second Bird looking back.

Second Bird waits until First Bird is released,

And they fly away together.

♥ Gretchen Bernet-Ward

Procrastination

Author Sally Piper’s quotation is a writer’s block-buster:
“Procrastination is a defence mechanism. It allows us to avoid the terror of other people reading our work. It protects us from criticism. It keeps us safe from failure” and I would like to add “it stops us from growing” so don’t let procrastination dictate the terms.

Mindfulness blogger David Cain of Raptitude wrote:
“It turns out procrastination is not typically a function of laziness, apathy or a lack of work ethic, as it is often assumed to be. It’s a neurotic self-defence behaviour that develops to protect a person’s sense of self-worth.” Don’t put it off, your writing is always better than you think!

♥ Gretchen Bernet-Ward

: In a minute…

‘My Name is Lucy Barton’ by Elizabeth Strout

Hmm . . . a puzzling book. Good, then it dissolves into vignettes.

It is a book which sometimes comes back to me in flashes. I didn’t love it but I didn’t hate it.

Lucy has an extended stay in hospital. I found the mother-daughter part of the story made me think. We all relate to our own personal experiences and I definitely got twinges when I related my mother’s attitude to Lucy’s mother – although my relationship was different. I didn’t like her father, troubled but not nice.

Much of Lucy’s early family life came out in tiny bits here and there. The trickle affect showed the reader the cruel hardship of her earlier life. Is that why Lucy was estranged? Why was she locked in the old car?

It was interesting how Lucy loved her kind doctor, she got no real love or compassion from her father or her husband. The author Sarah Payne was a great character, I wish she had been fleshed out a bit more. I liked her comment after that cutting PTSD remark “…And anyone who uses their training to put someone down that way – well, that person is just a big old piece of crap.”

After Lucy came out of hospital, the story took on the quality of snapshots as though author Elizabeth Strout saw or heard something and jotted it down then couldn’t quite flesh it out but wanted to use it anyway. There are very human insights but we don’t even know what Lucy wrote in her books.

Lucy’s relationship with her grown-up daughters was rather superficial but I liked the unnerving chapter about her brother, and also when she is bothered by the fact that friend Jeremy may have been the dying AIDS patient she saw in hospital.

The marble statue of Ugolino and His Sons by Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux in the Metropolitan Museum of Art fascinated Lucy but I couldn’t understand why. It’s graphic but to me just shows the agony of imprisonment.

Overall, I guess I’d give this book three out of five stars because I’m not poetic enough to read between the lines!

♥ Gretchen Bernet-Ward