Walking The Lakes with Wordsworth

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I've wanted to visit England's Lake District since my university days, when I took a course in Romantic Poetry. The Lake Poets, my professor said, turned to nature as a reaction against the country's industrialization, not unlike the hippies of our time. No poet was more associated with the bucolic lakes than William Wordsworth, who was born in the region, travelled away for awhile and returned to marry and live the rest of his long life. Last spring I learned why he loved The Lake District so much when I spent a week there.   

A walk near Grasmere - in The Lake District everywhere you look is a picture

On one of those fine days, my husband and I visited two of Wordsworth's homes in the village of Grasmere. We arrived early at Dove Cottage, William's starter house when he married, and got a private tour before a busload of tourists crowded the small rooms. The guide pointed out the poet's favourite artifacts, which included a cuckoo clock that made William and his sister Dorothy laugh hysterically each time the bird popped out. Life was simpler then.   

Dove Cottage, where we learned that during his lifetime Wordsworth was always referred to by his first name

William's funny cuckoo clock

 

William built a terrace in the garden behind Dove Cottage to get a view of the lake, now obscured by houses and trees. 

William earned some money from poetry and worked as a Distributor of Stamps, but much of his income was inherited from his father and an acquaintance who died young and left the poet money to support his talent. From Dove Cottage, we walked a 40 minute path to Rydal Mount House & Gardens, William's more upscale home, where he lived from 1813 until his death in 1850. Here he wrote and revised many of his poems and published his most famous one, 'Daffodils.' The Wordsworths rented the house until his wife's death in 1859. Their great great granddaughter later bought the property, opened it to the public in 1970 and still uses it for family gatherings. 

Rydal Mount

I liked that the living room looks lived-in

Rydal Mount grounds

Rydal Mount's huge garden looks much as it did in William's time. William often said the grounds were more his 'writing room' than his office in the house. He was known to recite his poems aloud while revising them and often did this on his solitary walks through the countryside. William was born before the invention of trains and wasn't rich enough to own a horse and carriage. He thought nothing of walking five hours to the northern Lake District town of Keswick, to visit his friend and fellow Romantic poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 

Writing, walking, wandering through gardens. What a wonderful lifestyle.   

Willam's and his wife's grave in Grasmere lies next to that of his sister Dorothy, who lived with them and inspired many of his poems. Dorothy's diaries reveal that she could almost be credited with composing the first draft of 'Daffodils.'    

We were too late in the season for William's daffodils, but we walked past fields of bluebells. 

   

Walk With Me in the Rain

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WALK WITH ME IN THE RAIN

           I write when the house is quiet; when even the dogs lie at my feet in slumber and there is nothing to interrupt the flow of my words. Then I create a world only I can see.  Sometimes, I don’t understand the emotional entanglement that occurs when I become immersed in that creative process. I ache for my characters; cry for their heartbreaks and laugh with their joys.

            And I walk with them in the rain.

            I close my eyes and visualize a world quite different from the concrete one in which I live. As I shuffle beneath an autumn canopy, bursting with crimson, mustard yellow and dusty brown, I long to sit down among the crackling leaves and listen as the wind echoes through the branches. I write the words to help me remember this day -- the gentle caress of the breeze, the call of a bird, distant laughter.

            I look above me but I don’t see trees. I see a young sapling or a towering oak; or an orchard rich with fragrant blossoms. For when others read what I have written, I hope they become part of the world that I created especially for them.

            I hope they walk with me in the rain.

            I drive down the road, wanting to capture the feel of furnace blasts of heat which throw tumbleweeds across the path to make the trip less tedious. I need other words for “hot” because my story takes place in summer and it is hot.  I take hints from the wilted fields; brown pastures which should have remained green another month.  Is it sweltering?  Torrid?  Bone melting hot?

            Before I can decide, the summer heat is drowned by the rain -- an earthshaking thunderstorm, lightning ricocheting across the sky before it turns into a warm, soft, summer rain. Rain is a deluge, a torrential downpour, a miracle, a disaster, a respite.  It is the angel of life for barren fields during a drought, or it can wash away a lifetime of hopes and dreams in an instant.

            Can you recall riding through a puddle on your bike as though it were a great sailing ship, lifting your feet high but getting soaked anyway? Do you smell the clean earth and feel the mud squish up between your toes?

            Are you ready to walk with me in the rain?

Have you ever visited a town where no one lives but where the ghosts will speak if only you will listen? Will you dress up in old fashioned clothes and pretend to be an outlaw’s girlfriend, getting a tintype taken in an old time saloon?

            This is how I write; caught up in dreams of another time.  There is an insatiable need within me to create worlds in which I know I can’t belong, but to which I am allowed a visit--for another hour; for ten more pages; for tonight. 

           

Do you underline book titles? by Rita Karnopp



In my book, Kidnapped, I found myself drawing on the fact my husband and I were strugging to have a child.  So Laura became a character I truly related to. I cried while writing the final courtroom scene.  My husband stopped at my desk and asked, "Are you okay ... what's wrong?"  I answered, "It's so sad."  I truly believe if we the writer are brought to tears by the words we type ... then our reader with most likely cry when they read them.

 

Laura and Aaron Palmer’s marriage is over, but they have newly adopted daughter, Amie, to consider. If they split up now, young Amie could be taken away from them both forever.

 

Life is complicated, but it takes a turn for the worse when Laura finds Amie’s picture listed in an ad for missing and abducted children. But are the people who claim to be Amie’s biological parents really what they seem, or is something more sinister at play?   

 

Alienated emotionally from each other, and paralyzed with fear, can Laura and Aaron find a way to save their marriage and protect their adopted daughter? This story entwines your heart with the bonding love of a child.

    4 Nymphs ~ This is a truly engrossing tale for anyone who has ever wondered about the stories behind those faces on the milk cartons. Author Karnopp does a great job revealing the stress of a couple unable to conceive. Her characters are all well developed and understandable, even the supporting cast. The story tugs at your heartstrings, without being saccharine or maudlin. I enjoyed it. ~Sphinx Minx

    4 Star Thriller…Kidnapped by Rita Karnopp is a thriller. The characters have their own distinct voice. You could see the flaws in Aaron and Laura, and as the story progresses you see them mature and grow. This is a plot that could easily be ripped from the headlines. Kidnapped is an entertaining read. ~ Debra Gaynor for ReviewYourBook.com

Do You Underline Book Titles?

I’ll bet each of us has paused when we’re ready to write/type the title of a book … back in the day all book titles were Underlined … and then later they were all CAPITALIZED or italicized … but things have changed. 

 

How do you handle book titles?  Put them in “quotes?”  The truth of the matter is … whether it be a book, online, a newspaper, a proposal, or a magazine article, the writing of titles are handled in so many ways.  But, which one is correct?

The answer is: probably all of them.  Today how you handle book titles is a style choice not governed by grammarian law.

 

According to the Chicago Manual of Style and the Modern Language Association, titles of books (and other complete works, such as newspapers and magazines), should be italicized. 

 

Opposite, the AP Stylebook suggests that you use quotation marks around the names of books (with the exceptions of the Bible and catalogs of reference material, such as dictionaries and almanacs, which should not be styled in any way). 

 

Some publications also follow their own style guides.  Just so you know, an editor will edit your story to fit her/his style preferences anyway. 

 

So, what does that mean to you and me? It means: Don’t worry about it too much. Just pick one style and stick with it for consistency purposes.