Tag: Creativity

Literary Foods: Jane Austen and an English Tea

On By CandaceIn Baking and Cooking, Creativity and Inspiration, On Being a Writer, Thoughts and Life2 Comments

If there is one author I have read who I would love to go back in time and have tea with, it would be Jane Austen!

Tea features so prominently in her books that it is not hard to imagine the author herself sitting with a cup as she penned her novels! If she wasn’t sipping while she wrote, I am sure the kettle was always sitting ready on the parlor hearth.

Jane Austen and her family were not extremely wealthy like some of the characters she writes about, but her family always had a constant supply of good tea from one of the best tea merchants in London, Twinings. Since Jane was in charge of making her family’s breakfast every morning, she also kept the keys to the tea chest and the sugar in her charge. I am sure she knew just how to make the perfect, proper cup to go along with the toast and muffins!

I recently came across this fascinating book  about the history of tea in Jane’s day and highly recommend it! If you have ever been interested in the importance of tea in Regency England, and particularly Jane Austen and her family, you will greatly enjoy it!

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The Case for Research…

On By CandaceIn Creativity and Inspiration, On Being a Writer, Thoughts and Life3 Comments

I want to start out this blog post with the premise that research can be fun! (Trust me for a minute here!)

You just have to make like Sherlock Holmes and repeat over and over to yourself, “Elementary, my dear Watson!”

Just kidding. 🙂

Please don’t tell me that I am the only one out there that absolutely loves research for my novels, stories and short stories. My family laughs at me when I am researching because I have so many eureka moments! 🙂 Enthusiasm is definitely key to enjoying the research when you would rather be writing. But if you like what you are writing about, the research can be nearly as fun as the actual writing!

my all time favorite detective:

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What would they have thought?!

On By CandaceIn Creativity and Inspiration, On Being a Writer, Thoughts and LifeLeave a comment

Sometimes, when I am discouraged with my writing, to distract myself, I like to think about what a famous author of the past would have said if they were alive today and could see how we write now days.

George Washington: What do you mean you no longer practice penmanship in schools? How can one even think of doing away with such an important accomplishment?

Jane Austen: Emails? But what about love letters?! *Gasp*

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Naming Your Characters

On By CandaceIn Creativity and Inspiration, On Being a Writer2 Comments

Naming my characters is one of my most favorite parts of being a writer. You get to pick out the names of your best friends! (Some would say imaginary friends, but we know better 😉

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The Things that Inspire Me: Bookshelves

On By CandaceIn Creativity and Inspiration, On Being a Writer, Reading, Thoughts and LifeLeave a comment

I have always loved bookshelves. Partly because of the treasures they hold in the form of the books on their shelves, but also because of the beautiful way they beckon to explore other worlds.

This imaginative homeowner made good use of some unused space in his Kennebunk, Maine attic. Creating a library/study using old furniture, simple bookshelves, oriental rugs and other items to make this space a cozy and interesting place to read or just hang out and relax. Sometimes it doesn't take much, just a little creativity.:

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Literary Foods: A Cottage Picnic on the Moors

On By CandaceIn Baking and Cooking, Creativity and Inspiration, On Being a Writer, Thoughts and LifeLeave a comment

literary-foods_-currant-buns

“From that time the exercises were part of the day’s duties as much as the Magic was. It became possible for both Colin and Mary to do more of them each time they tried, and such appetites were the results that but for the basket Dickon put down behind the bush each morning when he arrived they would have been lost.

A Childhood Classic That Should Be Read Again and Again | Off the Shelf:

But the little oven in the hollow and Mrs. Sowerby’s bounties were so satisfying that Mrs. Medlock and the nurse and Dr. Craven became mystified again. You can trifle with your breakfast and seem to disdain your dinner if you are full to the brim with roasted eggs and potatoes and richly frothed new milk and oat-cakes and buns and heather honey and clotted cream.”
The Secret Garden, Chapter 24

 

I don’t know about you, but roasted potatoes with butter, oat-cakes and buns with clotted cream and honey and with milk to drink sounds like a wonderful picnic to me! Perhaps a breakfast picnic. Especially on the windswept, foggy moors of an English manor house.

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