Memoirs

One of the things I enjoy best about keeping a blog is that I get to write. I've always been a writer at heart. When I was in grade school I would write snippets of scary stories that had no beginning and no end. When a friend of mine asked to read the complete story, I told her "that's all there is." She was so mad at me that she slugged me in the arm. "I want to know what happened," she screamed.

I wrote crazy little poems and long paragraphs. Sometimes I would just write a wonderfully descriptive sentence. I never kept the stories or the poems, at least not until I was a grown woman with a computer. Even so, a lot of my stories have been lost over the years, due to old floppy disks that can't be read anymore. I have a few files stuffed with things I've written over the past 13 years and now I'm much more careful about preserving my writings.

I've sent a few query letters out to publishers and a short story to a magazine, but I've always been politely rejected. My friend Phil and I wrote a 95 page screenplay, sent out query letters to 5 or 6 production companies and never got any kind of reply. Not tenacious enough, we gave up.

I derive a lot of pleasure by writing this blog. It has given me the opportunity to set aside some time each day (or at least every other day) to write. I set up a little writing corner in my living room with two bookcases behind me and one on the side. Pens, paper clips and post it notes are scattered on the desk. My writing reference books are close at hand. I have a drawer full of printing papers of various colors and weights. It's the perfect place to work and most of the time, when I'm at home, that's where I can be found.

There's a story that's been swirling around in my head for awhile now and I think I'm finally going to start writing it. Working on this blog has trained and conditioned me, so now I'm going to set time aside for both the blog and my story. When I go to bed, I'm going to map out the story line, which is really going to be a memoir of my life growing up in Detroit in the 60s. I just haven't figured out where I'm going to go with it. But, I'm starting it. I'll see where it takes me.


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