Mina Witteman – author | editor | teacher of creative writing

Posts tagged “Shakespeare

To Be or Not To Be?

Posted on March 17, 2016

There’s some Shakespeare in the novel I’m working on. I’ve mentioned it before. Hamlet, to be precise. He pops up in the more troubling scenes and every now and again the bard and his word play throw me off course and make me loose track of what I want with this story (well, not entirely, just a little).   In any case, I needed a bit of guidance and I needed it quick – I have my crit buddies pounding on my door. What better solution to force a breakthrough than to meet up with one of the bard’s greatest interpreters, the playwright George Isherwood. We had a riveting conversation about death, which is a big thing in the story, and about life. Equally big in the story, I…

Gone Writing – Day 8

Posted on January 9, 2016

Shakespeare wormed his way into my manuscript. I already had a connection with the Bard and chances that he would knock on my novel’s door were big, if only because one of my main sparring partners for this project is the playwright George Isherwood, who wrote Shakespeare’s Greatest Hits back in the 70s, and recently the one-man version of Othello and the hilarious one-man-and-a-rope version of King Lear, which I saw in tryout before I left for San Francisco.   The knock came and there he was. The Bard. With Hamlet in his hand, no less. Or rather, Ophelia. Of course we all know about Ophelia’s fate. Not pretty. Not pretty at all and when she slipped into the novel, my initial thought was: couldn’t you’ve dealt me a more uplifting…

Daily Distraction: Spring Has Arrived

Posted on March 15, 2014

The tenderest yellow-green glow of the elms lining the canal in front of my house. That’s my cue that spring has arrived. When the buds catch a ray of light they turn a deep golden green. It makes me think of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 98. From you have I been absent in the spring,When proud-pied April dress’d in all his trimHath put a spirit of youth in every thing,That heavy Saturn laugh’d and leap’d with him.Yet nor the lays of birds nor the sweet smellOf different flowers in odour and in hue Could make me any summer’s story tell, Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew;Nor did I wonder at the lily’s white, Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;They were but sweet, but…