Isaias and Old Books

As I’m typing this morning, the remnants of the eye of tropical storm Isaias, which I neither know how to spell nor say, is passing about a hundred miles to the east. Yesterday and last night in particular, it dumped a massive amount of rain on my house, and this morning I woke up early to the sound of some of that rain dripping inside my house.

I live in a house built in the 1950s, so it’s old and quirky. It needs new shingles, and there are a couple of spots on the roof that need repairs, but that’s an expensive proposition and I can’t afford it right now. I thought I had plugged all the leaks I was aware of, but apparently there’s a new one. Nothing is damaged beyond repair, but it’s annoying and a constant source of stress in my life.

Fortunately, the wind and rain is dying down outside even as I type. Now we play the waiting game to see if the power goes out later today.

On another topic, yesterday’s Promptapalooza topic started with Roger, and asked What type of content do you feel is severely underrated? I couldn’t think of anything to say about that one. I suppose a flippant answer would be “good” or “interesting” content.

Now that I’m writing, though, I just thought of something. The other day I amused myself by reading a few stories from an old copy of Grimms’ Fairy Tales I had on my Kindle account. Specifically, I believe it’s a text-only version of a 1922 illustrated book called “Grimm’s Fairy Stories.” The two stories I read, at random, were called “The Little Brother and Sister” and “Oh, If I Could But Shiver!” I had never heard either story before and found them entertaining, although both had terribly rushed endings with no payoff (“and then all the bad stuff was undone and everyone lived happily ever after”).

I thought it might be a fun creative writing exercise to re-tell one or both of those stories with different characters and settings and more satisfying conclusions.

The underrated content I’m talking about, to tie it back to Promptapalooza, is old books out of copyright. Writing from a different time period is always interesting to peruse, and there could be a wealth of material just sitting out there to draw upon.

It’s eerily quiet and still outside now.