Trisha Sugarek's Blog, page 126

Honored on InspireMeToday.com

                                Inspire Me Today.com has honored me today by featuring my words of wisdom on their home page.

I hope you will have time to visit this wonderful and uplifting web site.  WE ALL NEED A LITTLE INSPIRATION!!

 

 

Welcome to everyone Visiting from InspireMeToday

  Welcome to my Web Site.  I hope you enjoyed my 500 words of wisdom.  It took a lot of years and tears…and yeah, some blood and sweat too!  Wisdom doesn’t come easily does it?

Life has been and is being very good to me.  The writing is pouring forth….and happiness and gratitude seem to have taken up permanent residency here!

I would love to hear from you……so leave a comment, won’t you?

Best regards to everyone!

Trish

 

 

 

 

Melting away the shame…

When I was in the final proofing stages of my novel, “Women Outside the Walls”  I was working on the ‘acknowledgments’.

One woman, in particular, had shared so much about her life outside the walls and I wished to thank her but still maintain her anonymity. I asked her if I could print just her first name and last initial. Would that protect her, I asked, and keep her clients from knowing about her personal life. Her reply to this question was this:

“It doesn’t matter if your readers figure it out and discover that it’s me….your book has taken away all the shame…”

My Web Site has an Exciting new Look!

[image error]Recently I took a long hard look at my own web site and realized that it was static, lifeless and tired.  And I had loved it for so long! So began my journey for a web consultant that could bring me into real time with shopping cart, shipping, animation, and far better communication with my readers!

I began by asking an old friend in the computer industry for a referral….and found Leon.  What a treasure. He’s clever, funny and patient!  As an added bonus he has a degree in theatre from NYU, so he really gets me.  While my site isn’t completely finished, while Leon continues to build and polish it I am able to come on line and ‘play in my cyber sand box’!

The new software is friendly and easy to learn. I think it really shows off my books and scripts with beautiful illustrations (a nod to my wonderful team of illustrators) and is easy to navigate.  I hope my readers and theatre family enjoy it as much as I do!

That special room to write in…

I think one of your tools, as a writer, should be a special room.  Do you have an extra room? Even, if its all you have, a large closet will serve.  Somewhere you can call you own, a space that will, I promise you, become a creative oasis (in time). Where no one enters except  by invitation.

I’ve always had the luxury of a spare bedroom to call my studio.  On my walls I am surrounded by my own water color paintings, framed letters from my publisher, photos of theatre productions and a framed peice that I read at least once a week.  It says:  ‘the most creative force on earth is the post-menopausal woman with zest!‘

In one corner is my desk and a comfortable chair.  My desktop computer has the place of honor as I do all my writing there.  I simply can’t write long hand as I cannot write fast enough when the spirit is on me!  I type seventy five words a minute and sometimes that’s too slow.  lol

In the corner by a window sits my drafting/art table.  Just this morning I was re-writing one of my children’s books and painting a watercolor greeting card for a special friend.  All at the same time because that’s what I felt like!

Let it flow……….don’t give yourself messages like, ‘I must write two hours a day’….’I don’t have time to write today’… what if you have nothing to say on any given day and you’d rather be writing a blog, or painting, or scrapbooking, or singing or cooking? Relax and breath.   But find a space; a room, a closet, an attic, the barn…. that’s just for you and your creative spirit!

Researching Fairy Tales [1 of 3 in series]

While creating the third children’s book in my fabled forest, “Bertie, the Bookworm and the Bully Boys”  I wanted to pay special homage to the classical fairy tales, that we all grew up with, by having some of the characters appear in my story and chat briefly with my friends in the Fabled Forest.  As seen here in this illustration, Druscilla, Cinderella’s stepsister, has stumbled into the Fabled Forest’s clearing.

Variations of these classic stories, such as Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Snow White, and many others, have been recorded throughout the world since the first century. The French tale of Cendrillon was written in France in 1697 by Charles Perrault. Later in the eighteenth century the Brothers Grimm in Germany adapted the tale again.

Little Red Riding Hood, also known as Little Red Cap, is a European fairy tale about a young girl and a very bad wolf. The story has been changed considerably in its history and subject to numerous modern adaptations and readings. The story was first published by Charles Perrault in Histoires ou contes du temps passé in 1697.[

This blogger was fascinated by these little known facts and shall continue with more next week…………..

Don’t forget to go back and enjoy what you’ve written!

I was working on my web site this morning, updating my products [books]. I realized as I cut and pasted excerpts from my writings that with all the flurry of editing, rewriting, deleting, (I have grown to love my delete key)  and proofing I rarely  stop to enjoy the final product. 

And when I do go back, it’s always with an editor’s eye and I am critical.  I could have done so much better!  Do you ever feel that way?

So I took a moment, as I was choosing and inserting excerpts, to just enjoy the poetry of the words, the dry humor in a line of dialogue, or a quip from one of my fantasy characters.  I highly recommend, to you, that after all your hard work, tears, and angst, go back and enjoy what you have created!

A new stage play, “Sins of the Mother”

Playwright, Trisha Sugarek, takes a dark and sensual turn in this new script for the stage.  She brings the roaring 20’s roaring back with speak-easies, roadhouses, flappers, hot jazz and cold gin.  

This full length drama is set in the roaring twenties  in San Francisco.  Violet, one of the sisters from “The Guyer Girls,”   has grown into a beautiful woman with children of her own.  In the intervening years she has had a successful athletic career and has since bought her own bar and grill.   She is a ‘flapper’ in every sense of the word; working all day and playing all night.  While her teenaged daughter raises her seven year old son, Violet is out on the town! Usually with her man de’jour.

Her second marriage is a stone around her neck and she is about to get rid of her loser husband who is a compulsive gambler.  She has the next husband all lined up.   But, Jay, her boyfriend, has eyes for Violet’s teenaged daughter.

A dark drama with comedic relief provided by the two children.

Cast:  5m.  3f.  1 boy

 

 

Review: CiJi Ware’s “Wicked Company”

Rating: (5 quills)

CiJi Ware’s “Wicked Company”  is a historic novel about theatre and female playwrights during Drury Lane theatre district’s heyday.

In 18th century London the glamorous Drury Lane and Covent Garden theatres were all the rage, beckoning every young actor, actress, playwright, and performer with the lure of the stage lights. But competition and back-biting between theatre owners, patrons, actors, and writers left aspiring playwrights with their work stolen, profits withheld, and reputations on the line. In this exciting and cutthroat world, a young woman with a skill for writing and an ambition to see her work performed could rise to glory, or could lose all in the blink of an eye.

For a female, things were harder still, as the chances of a “petticoat playwright” getting past the government censor was slim. Censor, Edward Capell was appointed by the British Parliament to review and censor all scripts before they could be produced on London’s stages. Indiscriminately, he could change, cut, or delete anything that he found objectionable both professionally and personally…..and he often did; censoring text based upon some personal tenant or belief.

As a twenty-first century “female scribbler” {as women were referred to in those times}

I felt a profound appreciation for my freedom of speech while reading about this historic time and the total power that censors, like Mr. Capell, wielded. It is unfathomable to me that a censor could slash any part of my novel “Women Outside the Walls”. A fiction that is near and dear to my heart because of the women that I interviewed who lived that life outside the walls. Or my collection of short plays which opens up a dialogue amongst young people about real life issues that they must face every day.

Few women writers were successful under their real names and often wrote under a male Pseudonym [pen name]. They wrote under secrecy and deceit in order to have their plays produced. Note: Jane Austen [1775-1817] broke this pattern by insisting that her publisher use her real name. ~~TS

COMING SOON: “Bertie, the Bookworm and the Bully Boys”

The third in the Fabled Forest Series, these children’s chapter books delight kids from ages 2–11. Read on…….

Bertie, the bookworm is the fabled forest’s elder and teacher. Every week he has a spelling and reading circle where everyone is welcomed. Slam, the badger and his gang of bully boys are forever teasing, disrupting, and bullying Bertie and the group of faeries and woodland creatures. Pansy, the pixie is a new character in this third of the Fabled Forest series. She is a defender of reading, truth, and Bertie. Cheets, our beloved elf from past books joins the wrong crowd and his friends are worried that he will become the newest member of the Bully Boys.

The story teaches gentle lessons about literacy, bullying and ageism.

The book pays special homage to the classical fairy tales with appearances by little red riding hood, the wicked stepsister, the three little piggies and many more as they wander through the Fabled Forest. Variations of these classic stories, such as Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Snow White, and many others, have been recorded throughout the world since the first century. The French tale of Cendrillon [Cinderella] was written in France in 1697 by Charles Perrault. Later in the eighteenth century the Brothers Grimm in Germany adapted the tale again. During his life time the master animator, Walt Disney [1901--1966] adapted the ancient fables to film.

Check back later….goes on sale here very soon!