The thought of becoming a blogger makes me feel green. As in a little sick to my stomach. Like putting your underwear out on the line, it exposes the intimates. We all have opinions. I have a good deal of them and though I think they have merit, someone else may think they’re total bunk. Or stupid. Maybe just plain idiotic. Well. I may think the same of yours. However, in the spirit of civil discourse (of which there is little these days), I will keep my mind open and my heart soft.
The act of writing, whether in a journal or a full-length novel, exposes the soul of the writer. A writer pours herself into the work. If the work becomes public, the creator is on a stage, like it or not. I don’t particularly like it, but neither do I want my work to gather dust on a shelf.
Writing has been evolutionary for me. In the beginning (the beginning meaning early school days), I didn’t like to read. In fact, English was my most detested subject in high school. Words didn’t make much sense when put all in a line, strung together with verbs, nouns, adverbs, adjectives, tenses, blah, blah, blah. I’d listen to the teacher wax on about symbolism and allegory while I was way out to sea. WAY. OUT. TO. SEA. I mostly fudged my way through it, pretending to get it when I didn’t. Much later in life, I had a revelation. I am dyslexic. Not ragingly dyslexic, but enough that I struggled. It explained why I had such a terrible time spelling. Why I transposed letters and numbers. Why I confused right and left (tell me to turn left and I'd turn right every time. Why I could ‘read’ whole passages of literature, and be completely mystified over what the passage had said. Why I avoided books.
When I met my husband to be, I met a man who constantly and voraciously read books, magazines and newspapers. It made me realize I was missing something precious. I had to figure out how I, too, could enjoy the things he enjoyed. Truthfully, I was a little jealous. I picked up A Tale of Two Cities. Dickens seemed a good place to start, having missed pretty much the lot of the great writers of the English language. Something clicked. Instead of seeing words, I began to see images, as if I was watching a movie rather than holding a book in my hand. A vast world was suddenly and dramatically opened to me. I had discovered how to read. It may have been the way Dickens described scenes or perhaps it was simply that I was so frustrated by my inability to enjoy a book that I forced myself to figure it out. Sort of like I now force myself to do crossword puzzles.
The evolution is on-going. I now love reading a good book, can think of no other way more enjoyable to spend a lazy afternoon than with my nose inside a well-written novel whether it’s Victor Hugo or Amy Tan. So many books to read, so little time . . .
I write poetry for the most part. Right now, I’m seeking publication for a novel that grew out of a humorous premise for a feature film. I fell in love with my characters and the story, fleshing out the first draft in three weeks. That was last November. Enter the world of rewrites and edits and revisions and more revisions. I lost count of the drafts. Probably at least twenty. And I'm still finding little things to tweak. ARGH!!
Back to the topic of blogging. It’s sort of like public journaling. My goal in this undertaking is to inform, entertain, and, if I’m so fortunate, to put a smile on your face and leave the world a better place. (Hey, that rhymed!)
So that’s it. My first official blog. I hope you enjoyed it. Stay tuned for more.
