Since I started this blog back in January 2016, I’ve posted a handful of pieces that I’ve called “Random Writings,” my original, finished work that isn’t (necessarily) dragon-related. I thought it was time to set up a page so people could more easily find it, so here you go! You’ll notice a lot of these were various class assignments, because I have always worked better with hard deadlines… 🙂
From Swift to Star Wars to Steampunk: The Funny Dark Sides of Celtic Geek Musician Marc Gunn
One of the articles I’m most proud of (and one of the first I posted on this blog), this is an interview with an amazing musician I’ve followed for many years. I was so honored when he agreed to an interview for my school project!
… Marc Gunn is champion of indie Celtic music, an award winning podcaster, a monthly live streaming internet concert player, a Renaissance Faire and geek convention performer, and even a tour guide – he travels every summer to such places as Scotland or Ireland or, this year, Cornwall, England to lead his Celtic Invasions Vacations tour group…
Forever Home
A short story for young readers from the perspective of my (then) youngest child, Chiru, pictured above, about when I brought her and the rest of my older furkids home to live with me.
Mommy and Daddy are packing boxes again, I can’t believe it. I heard Mommy say we were finally going to our “forever home,” but I didn’t know what that meant, so I went to find Rei-momma to ask her….
Essay: How “Wisdom of the Mythtellers” by Sean Kane Helped to Shape My Novel
An essay I wrote for class in 2012 about the book Wisdom of the Mythtellers that helped me identify some of the concepts I’m continually working to incorporate into my novel-in-progress, Finding Dragons.
… Kane writes early in the book that “Adventures involve the crossing of boundaries — in this case, the boundaries that separate us from the mythtellers, and that separate the mythtellers from each other” (Kane 15). I knew that I wanted my protagonist to travel from her Paleolithic hunter-gatherer society and move forward not only through the world but somehow through time, encountering gradually more advanced societies as she went and crossing these boundaries, but I wasn’t sure how to accomplish that yet….
Willful ignorance of trans* issues has real consequences
Another class assignment, this was an op-ed piece I wrote that focuses on trans student safety and other issues facing the trans community. I was limited to 750 words, but sadly, I could have gone on for hundreds more.
While there have been many positive trans* stories in the news lately …, there has also been a corresponding uptick in the number of people choosing to be willfully and even maliciously ignorant about the realities of trans* life, especially when it comes to trans* students….
Finding Dragons in blank verse
The task was to write an emotional scene from our current writing project in blank verse in order to get a new perspective on the work. This was one of the earliest scenes I can remember imagining for Finding Dragons, and it’s still one of my favorites.
The great beast took off
Possibly more startled
Even than we were
To have come
Face to face with a legend
Face to face with its doom…
The Last Unicorn Presentation
This is a presentation I did for class on an author and book that inspired me to become a writer — Peter S. Beagle’s The Last Unicorn. I love doing PowerPoints and I thought this turned out beautifully, thanks to all of the amazing images and fanart I borrowed! Although I notice I still haven’t posted the image credits… oops! I’ll have to update that soon…
… You may be more familiar with the animated movie of The Last Unicorn, and I’ll admit that’s how I was first introduced to the story, but while the movie is amazing, as is usually the case, the book is better…
Amara’s Poem
This is a deeply personal poem I wrote in 2015, as I dealt with the death of my beloved daughter Amara, pictured above, after she lost her battle with cancer.
The easiest thing I’ve ever done
was to hold you in the palm of my hand
on the day you were born…
The Harp, inspired by Harris Burdick
This was an interesting challenge — we were asked to write a short story (no more than 1,000 words) based on any of the images from the famous art book The Mysteries of Harris Burdick by Chris Van Allsburg. I’ve always considered this an early example of the adventurous feeling I’d like to convey in my novel, Finding Dragons.
The Prince had come to the end of his long journey when the most expected, yet unexpected, thing happened… … [He] had seen what no other person in his kingdom had ever seen before, as he searched for his heart’s desire.
L’Inferno di Dante by Michael Mazur – Exhibit Notes
While reading Dante’s Inferno for another class, an amazing exhibit came to the Minneapolis Institute of Art based on the work, so now you can enjoy some of the series and my thoughts on the art!
In the early 14th century, Dante Alighieri wrote The Inferno, one of the most celebrated poems of all time. … In a project that extended through the 1990s, painter/printmaker Michael Mazur and poet Robert Pinsky collaborated on the production of a new illustrated translation of The Inferno. … In a shift from the practice of earlier artists, Mazur did not show Dante travelling through hell; instead, he showed his interpretation of what Dante saw….
The Slide Incident
Another piece from a creative writing class, this time trying my hand at memoir. This is a story from my childhood that involves a slide exactly like the one pictured above.
The Slide Incident has become a legend in my family, a tale of harrowing adventure and drama that is revisited every couple of years, on the rare occasions when my sister and I are getting along and feel like teasing our mother. It’s the most bizarre thing – you’d think that a mother would remember the time her seven-year-old kid, my sister, fell from a fifteen foot slide and nearly cracked her head open, the same way she’d remember her child’s first steps or first day of school, but not our mother. Well, that’s not exactly accurate — our mom does remember it, but she remembers it completely wrong….
Irish Magic
This is a poem I wrote while travelling through the United Kingdom — we’d just arrived in Ireland, and even if no one ever believes me, I know what I saw.
…
And the first thing I saw
serene and gleaming
alongside the way
looking right at meA white mare
… or not.
Image credits:
+ My daughter Chiru, photo by me
+ Women Digging for Honey Ants by Christine Poulson
+ Transgender Pride Dragon by Kaenith at The Land of Ink and Charcoal
+ Black raven dragon by Alvia Alcedo
+ The Last Unicorn image from the combined graphic novels (hardcover edition)
+ My daughter Amara Weigt, photo by me
+ The Harp by Chris Van Allsburg, from The Chronicles of Harris Burdick: Fourteen Amazing Authors Tell the Tales, photo by me
+ Canto III – The Gate of Hell from Michael Mazur‘s exhibit The Inferno of Dante, Minneapolis Institute of Art 2011, photo by me
+ Slide image from We the Lost, a Pan Fandom CRAU Game on DreamWidth Studios
All of these posts are copyright © Jamie Lyn Weigt. All rights reserved. Please do not share without credit and a direct link back to the individual post and my site, writingdragonsblog.com.
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