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About Shawna Downes | Chasing the Muse

http://shawnadownes.com/author

Notes on art, life, writing, and travel freshly penned five times weekly. My name is Shawna and I like to arrange words into stories, blogs, poems, lists, and things. I live in fabulously weird Portland, Oregon, USA with my husband, Matthew. He’s a Biology major and a polyglot; I’m an English major and a graphic designer. It makes for strange conversations. We both grew up in the Pacific Northwest and have wanderlust for foreign places. Subscribe to receive updates via RSS feed. From Austen to Vigée Le B...

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21 days in a carry on | Chasing the Muse

http://shawnadownes.com/carry-on

Notes on art, life, writing, and travel freshly penned five times weekly. 21 days in a carry on. I’m headed across the pond for 22 days with nothing except one carry-on, one personal item, and one TSA regulation 3-1-1 bag. Here’s how. I’ll be lugging along the smallest one, which meets the standard regulation size limit of 22 x 14 x 9 inches. I recommend a rolling suitcase over a duffel bag or a backpack (unless you are actually backpacking). Good Now let’s move on to:. What else is staying home? The bas...

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From Austen to Vigée Le Brun | Chasing the Muse

http://shawnadownes.com/london

Notes on art, life, writing, and travel freshly penned five times weekly. From Austen to Vigée Le Brun. The way I see it, there were two approaches I could have taken for my one and only full day in London: I could take it easy and limit myself to a normal daily itinerary, or I could go crazy. Guess which one I chose. Every traveler experiences that moment of doubt: the moment. They wiggle the knob to what they think is an at-least-semi-warm-but-not-scalding temperature and press the button, but. Even af...

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Sitemap | Chasing the Muse

http://shawnadownes.com/sitemap

Notes on art, life, writing, and travel freshly penned five times weekly. What I’m Reading. Travel Series: Finding Ithaka. 8220;Curious Incident” on stage. 8220;I read because I was trying to save my life.”. 21 days in a carry on. Breathing in foreign places. Capturing every idea, every time. Chicago schools ban Satrapi. From Austen to Vigée Le Brun. How to miss a flight in Philly. In defense of Persepolis. Letter from your characters. Materialism makes you miserable. My minimal packing list, revisited.

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Travel Series: Finding Ithaka | Chasing the Muse

http://shawnadownes.com/travel-series

Notes on art, life, writing, and travel freshly penned five times weekly. Travel Series: Finding Ithaka. 8220;Hope the voyage is a long one. May there be many a summer morning when,. With what pleasure, what joy,. You come into harbors seen for the first time.”. 8221; by C.P. Cavafy, trans. by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Letters home from distant places. Coming soon: Myanmar, Wales, Germany, Czech Republic, Spain, Greece, and Italy. Curious Incident on stage. The saga of the coffee cup.

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Searching for Shakespeare | Chasing the Muse

http://shawnadownes.com/stratford

Notes on art, life, writing, and travel freshly penned five times weekly. It was a good thing that I was awake at a completely absurd hour, because it gave me plenty of time to get my bearings in the train station. Most of my knowledge about train stations came from. 8221; he said. “Sorry, I thought you were a student.” He was right on two counts, but explaining that didn’t seem necessary. I stayed at Adelphi Guesthouse. I don’t know how to describe that moment. As I stood there, realizing that. The rich...

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Shut up and write | Chasing the Muse

http://shawnadownes.com/shut-up-and-write

Notes on art, life, writing, and travel freshly penned five times weekly. Shut up and write. I didn’t realize that it was possible to let my characters tell me the story until I participated in National Novel Writing Month in 2009. Writing a 50,000 word novel in a month forced me to reconsider the standards of ‘perfection’ I had for a first draft. On November 1st, I sat down and typed an absolutely. 8220;Theodore walked to the door,”. 8220;THEODORE WALKED TO THE DOOR.”. Nothing happened. Finally I ga...

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Accessibility | Chasing the Muse

http://shawnadownes.com/accessibility

Notes on art, life, writing, and travel freshly penned five times weekly. This website has been designed to comply with the W3C’s accessibility guidelines. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact me. The following access keys are defined on every page:. Access key 1: Home. Access key 2: Skip to Content. Access key 3: Sitemap. Access key 4: Search. Access key 6: Accessibility Statement. Access key 9: Contact. Additional navigational aids are provided. A sitemap is available. Shut up and write.

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Chasing the Muse

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Notes on art, life, writing, and travel freshly penned five times weekly. How to miss a flight in Philly. My trip to the British Isles almost went drastically, drastically wrong. Don’t mistake me; I woke up on time, I was impeccably packed. Fly through the air. At an absurd speed for quite a few hours. Under my seat, next to my seat, over my seat, or may in fact. My seat, which is exactly the sort of clear, simple instruction I like to have on hand in an emergency. 8220;Hope the voyage is a long one.