The Invisible Mentor

Posts Tagged ‘Fairy Tales’

Do you ever enter contests? For the past 2 1/2 years I have been entering competitions and I have won a few. I have lost more than I have won, but for the writing competitions, just by entering, my writing has improved. No one likes losing, including me, but I still enter them.

In September 2009 I saw a notice to enter a contest to rewrite Sleeping Beauty for the launch of Enchanted Conversation, a blogazine. I went to the website and there were various ways to rewrite the fairy tale and I chose to rewrite it from the perspective of the villainess. While I was working on my submission, I was laughing and enjoying the experience and I understood what Joseph Campbell meant by following your bliss. I enjoy writing and I get better as I practice my craft. What are your thoughts, is this the same for you? Are you following your bliss?

I was one of the winners of the contest and the Enchanted Conversation website went live on January 1, 2010. Read my version, Sleeping Beauty Unplugged and let me know what you think. Do you enter competitions. If yes, why do you enter them? What are your best sites to find competitions?

If you’d like to enter a few competitions, here is a website that I frequent:

Prize Magic

Also, Hope Clark has a weekly ezine where she announces competitions, and freelance opportunities, see her website at http://www.fundsforwriters.com.  And, Gary McLaren also announces competitions in his ezine  Worldwide Freelance http://www.worldwidefreelance.com/

Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please comment. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the left side) by email or RSS Feed. I created a Mini Learning Toolkit and you can grab a copy by clicking here.

Photo credit: Via Apture

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Are we hardwired to automatically place limits on ourselves? We set limits on our earning potential, on how much we can accomplish in life. We are either too young or too old, have too much or too little education and the reasons go on and on about why we cannot do something. Many of us suffer from excusitis. And, I was no different until I started to pay close attention to the stories I tell myself about why I did not honor commitments to myself.

Setting limits have been around for a long time. Take the popular story Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp, in recent versions of the story there are only three wishes granted, but in the original story of Aladdin, which is a Middle-Eastern folk tale (found in Arabian Nights: One Thousand and One Nights), there were no limitations on the number of wishes granted. Whose great idea was it to limit the number of wishes granted to three?

A common story that I would tell myself is that I am tired and it is late so I cannot perform a critical task. But when I reframe the story and instead tell myself, yes it is late but the task is important, I find that I get a sudden burst of energy and I am able to perform the task. As soon as I remove the self-imposed limit on how much I can do, my productivity soars and I also accomplish so much more in any given day. The truth is that we can do and be much more than we tell ourselves.

So the next time when you perceive barriers that prevent you from going where you need to go, pause and evaluate the situation to determine if the barrier is a true one, or one you imposed on yourself. You will be surprised how many of the barriers are self-imposed and can be easily removed.

What are your thoughts? Let us keep the conversation going, please leave a comment.

This is a contribution to the Group Writing Project What I Learned from Limits and an entry to contest on Whitney Hoffman’s blog post The Difference Between Listening and Hearing.

Photo credit: Public domain via Wikipedia, Image of Aladdin in the Magic Garden.

Book Review: Best-Loved Folktales of the World by Joanna Cole

Reviewed by Avil M. Beckford

When was the last time you ventured into the land of make believe? Best-Loved Folktales of the World by Joanna Cole allowed me to do just that. As an active reader, I was really engaged and found myself getting really annoyed at some of the characters. For example, I became so frustrated with Snow White because she kept on making the same mistakes over and over again, because she thought it would be different, she kept on getting fooled by the disguises of the evil step-mother. Why was I frustrated? Is it because her actions are a metaphor for life, my life, your life, where we seem to find ourselves in the same undesirable situations over and over again until we finally get it.

Some people may think it is a waste of time to read folktales, but for me, I thought it was very worthwhile because it reminded me of simple life lessons such as persistence pays, there is no need to be greedy because there is enough for all of us and instead of competing, why aren’t we creating?

Though Best-Loved Folktales of the World by Joanna Cole is nearly 800 pages in length, it is still appropriate for people with short attention spans because 200 folk tales are included. Because the stories are so short, and there are so many of them, the reader can start reading at any point in the book. You’ll find familiar tales you read as a child such as Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, Sleeping Beauty, Rumpelstiltskin, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves or unfamiliar ones such as East of the Sun and West of the Moon, Crab, Chelm Justice, Baby in the Crib, Salt, The Bunyip, and Faithful Even in Death. As an adult, you’ll approach these stories much different from the way you approached them as a child. You’ll view them with a different set of lens all based on your life experiences. You may find yourself sympathetic toward a character in a tale while you could be frustrated with characters in other tales because they keep on making the same mistake over and over again.

I enjoyed reading this book because I was introduced to stories from all over the world, the majority of which I had never heard about. And, it was amazing to find the same story with a different spin because of cultural differences, such as Rumpelstiltskin and Tom Tit Tot. The folk tales reinforce that we are not as different as we think. The author organizes Best-Loved Folktales of the World by regions and if you are like me, the first section in the table of contents that I rushed to was the Caribbean and was delighted to see an Anansi story from Jamaica among the 200 stories. There were other Anansi stories that originated from the Ashanti Tribe in Africa. For those of you who may not be familiar with the Anansi stories, Brother Anansi is a trickster.

Another good thing about the way the book is organized is the Index of Categories of Tales, which allows the readers to quickly see which tales are appropriate for children, wonderful to read aloud, have a moral, are for women and girls and so on. If you like drama, adventure, romance, mystery, horror or fantasy, there is a tale for you. After reading Best-Loved Folktales of the World, you’ll be reminded of the following:

• Share what you have with others because there is enough for everyone
• Persistence pays
• Operate with honesty and integrity: do not claim the work of others because the truth has a way of coming out and the consequences can be dire
• Asking for help shows strength
• Dream big
• Appreciate what you have instead of pining over what you don’t have

I recommend Best-Loved Folktales of the World by Joanna Cole because it’s not only a page-turner, but it allows you to tap into your inner child and have some fun. When reading Best-Loved Folktales of the World , read it not only in the context of providing entertainment, but also in the context of what lessons you can learn to apply to your life. So, take a step back in time and remember when….

Excerpt from March 2008 Ambeck Edge http://www.ambeck.com/newsletters/nl_200803.html