Literally Blogging

First, I want to give a big welcome to my wonderful friend Adelle Tilton, who is now writing here at Literally Blogging! You’ll love Adelle…trust me, you just can’t help it! Hooray for Adelle!

And now, on to our topic. I was listening to Bang Go the Bells in the car the other day, a song so glorious it’s nearly impossible to believe that Babylon A.D. never produced another noteworthy song. In my opinion, anyhow. Of course, I am the Rock Goddess, so my opinion is right.

It’s not an original story; the road to fame is littered with the broken bodies and scratched albums of One Hit Wonders. No matter how many times it happens, it still seems staggering: how can a person or group with enough talent to light the sky on fire and enough charisma to dampen the panties of young girls all over the world possibly dry up and blow away so easily?

Maybe the music is that much more powerful, and poignant, because we know that song is the Only One.

Truly heartbreaking is when the One Hit Wonders happen in the world of literature. It’s bad enough when your favorite author doesn’t write books fast enough for your taste, or you’re sick of waiting for the next Harry Potter installment, but what about when someone writes a book that goes straight to your heart…and then they never write again?

The writer I always think of here is Harper Lee, author of the heart-breakingly beautiful To Kill A Mockingbird. To write a book that so touched the world, that instantly became part of the tapestry of our culture and history and human nature…and then never write again…is almost incomprehensible.

There are the cynics who claim it’s because Lee never wrote the book, that her friend Truman Capote did, and that’s why there was no second attempt. But this is bull; anyone who reads Capote would see how different the styles are, and anyone who knows anything about Capote would know his ego would never had let Lee get the credit for such a success.

Was there one moment of magic, when Harper Lee was able to pull back the curtain that separates this world from the world of divine thought, when the characters and the steamy South suddenly sparked alive in her, heating her fingers, brain, and heart as she typed frantically to get the story onto paper?

Was that one story she told, those marvelous characters she created, so wonderful and significant that nothing else would really matter after that? Did she quit because she thought anything else would be futile, that she could never top her first creation? Was she all out of words and inspiration, or was she meant to change the world with just one book? Is one book enough to fulfill a life’s purpose?

I think it must be…actually changing the thoughts of people and the ways of the world with one beautifully written, starkly honest work of literature has to mean more than shooting out a hundred books.

So, thank you Harper Lee. You’ll always rock on.

Hello! My name is Adelle and I am so excited to be here as a part of “Literally Blogging.” I can think of few things I love and enjoy more than books. Classics, contemporary lit, science fiction (hey, we all have our weaknesses), non-fiction… my list of favorites goes on and on. I am really interested in hearing what your favorites are!

I have been writing professionally for about a decade now. In my “previous life,” I was a nurse but fortunately, I also studied journalism and have had an interest in literature, both American and European, since… well, forever. When I left nursing, I decided to just chase my own dream and stepped out on the proverbial limb and began writing for a living. There are days I can’t believe how fortunate I am and there are days I fight for every word. I have written freelance for several publications, a textbook publisher and have one book on the market about autism. I now am blogging about the things that I love the most and wish to share.

I define myself as a woman, a widow who was once a wife (and still is in some sort of spiritual sense), a mother, a daughter, and a friend. I enjoy reading, knitting, my cats, sewing, violin (I’m just a beginner though) and a myriad of other things that I never have enough time to do. I enjoy good music, ice cream, hot summer days, and snowy winter nights, and my favorite time of the year is autumn when the days are crisp and the memories are crisper.

I am looking forward to sharing with you our love for literature; I love the exchange and hearing from readers, and I hope you will comment and/or email me. I am sure this blog will evolve over time; a blog is merely a reflection of the individual writing it and people change, so it stands to reason that our blogs will change with us. I hope to inspire you, tell you about books you may not know about, share a wee bit of literary gossip, and touch your life in some way that makes for enjoyable reading.

Adelle Tilton Biography

While I was growing up, one of my favorite authors was the wonderful Mark Twain, his writing full of wit I was too young to appreciate, and full of adventure I always longed for.

Tom and Huck, those classic icons of boyhood, still color my perception today of what childhood should be like: sunrises and fishing trips, wholesome packed lunches and adventures with schoolyard chums.

Sometimes I longed to be Becky, receiving a first kiss of such awkward sweetness. But mostly, I wanted to be Tom, and Huck. I wanted to whitewash fences and flee down the Mississippi on a makeshift raft. I wanted dangerous caves and hidden treasure and running barefoot. In short, I wanted to be an adventure novel boy.

During my tenth summer, I refused to wear anything except my red-and-white Little League baseball uniform, long hair tucked under a red cap, black cleats kicking up dust as I roamed the broken countryside, looking for buried treasure.

Whenever anyone mistook me for a boy, my heart would give a wild leap of triumph. Being a boy meant spirit and independence. Being a boy meant fun.

The ‘girl’ stories I loved then and still cherish, did not offer these adventures. Their triumphs were found not in outsmarting villains, but in pleasing society.

Even the spirited ones never ventured far from home, mixing delightful bouts of tomboy-hood with sewing patchwork squares. Even the wildest, the Jo Marches and Caddie Woodlawns, ended up corseted and hairpinned, usually on the arm of some handsome suitor.

Years later, I gained a new appreciation for both my girlness and those girl characters I spent so many happy hours with. Theirs weren’t adventures of body perhaps, but they did share adventures of mind and spirit.

The tomboys, especially, those who fought against society’s limits, even if only for a few years, were heroes in their own way.

One of my favorite paintings is a portrait of Alice Liddell, the little girl who inspired Lewis Carroll. Carroll made his storybook Alice much more subdued and feminine, with her long wavy hair and starched dress and pinafore. But in the portrait, the real Alice’s spirit blazes through, with her challenging stare and ripped clothes, a wild, unbroken, spirited tomboy.

I hope she never outgrew that.