Episode 8: The one where we talk about Christmas and story

This is the Fable and the Verbivore’s all things Christmas episode, where Bethany and Laura talk about their favorite holiday narratives found in books, movies, and music. From A Christmas Carol to Die Hard, we reflect on what we enjoy about this time of year and what Yuletide themes and ideas personally resonate.

We also discuss breaking free of the myth that there are already enough people writing about the concepts and core ideas that we are interested in persuing with our own works in progress. Bethany talks about the strong themes that holiday works tend to have, and discusses finding the theme in her WIP. Laura describes how she records her random ideas that don’t yet have a story to call home in a separate writing journal, so that they are not lost to time and a short memory.

We hope you all enjoy this episode as you follow your own traditions, and have a wonderful Christmas and holiday season!

Into the woods,
Fable & The Verbivore

Notes:

The Verbivore mentions that A Christmas Carol helped construct how she saw the world and humanity while growing up. Here is the Charles Dickens quote she was specifically referencing:

“I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round, as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.”

Fable mentions the poem “The House By the Side of the Road”, and originally attributed it to Longfellow. The author is Sam Walter Foss, and the collection of poems is titled Dreams in Homespun. Here is the poem’s last stanza:

Let me live in my
house by the side of the road
Where the race of men go by-
They are good, they are bad, they are weak, they are strong,
Wise, foolish- so am I.
Then why should I sit in the scorner’s seat
Or hurl the cynic’s ban?-
Let me live in my house by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.

The Verbivore mentioned the concept of “the catcher in the rye” (from the book of the same name written by J. D. Salinger). Here is the quote she is referencing:

“Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be.”

The one off Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol song that the Verbivore mentions is actually called “Winter Was Warm”.

The idea the Verbivore mentions of writing random story thoughts, characters, and scenes on a notecard comes from Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. She describes keeping one in her pocket at all times, just in case.