Day 2 - Ugh, Getting Started

This all began for me when, last week, I began reading my friend Isabel's Bucher's first published full-length book. She's been encouraging me over the years to write something more than a paragraph. Being totally undisciplined and hating to spend more than 1/2 hour at the computer, her suggestion seemed ludicrous. I LOVE putting words together and totally capturing the moment with letters, much like an artist would convey a moment in time with paint, but keeping at it and forming more than a paragraph...more like a page would be in order? or horrors, a Chapter? That was more than I could ever dream! I just plain don't know how to develop and maintain a key thought and execute enthusiasm and momentum in a project. Does this make any sense at all?

My Mom was a writer, unpublished, and had a flair for drama. I heard from her friends what a writer she was, although I don't remember myself reading anything she ever wrote. Also, our son Jon is a writer. He wrote some scathing things in High School that almost got him expelled, and he wrote for his College Newspaper and received lots of "high fives" from many students for that work. He's a word-meister, something I really respect and try to aim for. His humor is dry and deliciously wonderful; someday he'll write a famous book and pay for our nursing home expenses.

Jon has tried to encourage me by buying me books of where I can send my little articles to. Once I sent in a short story to Guideposts and got shot down, never to send in another story to anyone. But write I did anyway - especially writing about the foreign places we lived.

I wrote several humorous stories about living in Germany, and adapting to the "German Way", i.e., traipsing to the Dairy with my dairy bucket, paying Milsch Marken coins to buy my fresh milk. And about the German Farmer-lady, ancient as she was, who surely, in the privacy of her own acreage, struggled off her tractor, threw up the back side of her dress, squatted and did her business. And in Aqaba, Jordan - writing about the Ferrel cats I adopted; the way the women's hair-stylist painfully trimmed eyebrows; oh, and the Arabic neighbor in our apartment who spoke German to us because we knew some German and no Arabic. In New Zealand I wrote about my little chick, and personal friend, Henny Penny, and our adventures together. I also wrote about the beautiful plants in my garden that were actually weeds and didn't show their "true color" until I began cleaning them out of my garden and trying to tolerate the stench they created. I adored writing about these places, so much fun! But they only ever got on my e-mail list to my friends, my fans, who begged for more.

But what fun is there to write about living in Mesa, Arizona! The suffocating heat, the way one watches their prized flowers not only wilt, but die to the ground in short time. What fun is it writing about mowing the small patch of grass you have in your front yard, having buckets of sweat slither down your face? So, I've been frustrated at best. But thanks to Isabel and reading her book, and seeing how one weaves words into interesting paragraphs, and paragraphs turning into Chapters, I had to investigate what now to do!

So I order two books from Amazon.com. I could have purchased these books from the book store 3 miles away, but no... I felt this was good, and anyway postage is free if you order $25.00 worth of books. I did not know, however, that doing the "One-Click-Ordering" did not get you postage-free books, so I ended up paying for shipping which frosted my buns.

I looked at my options of "getting started"-type books, and decided on two (adding up to $25). I ordered How Fiction Works, by James Wood, and How Novels Work, by John Mullan. You can see by the titles that I wanted to see how something like writing "works"!

I chose the smaller of the two books to begin my odessey, the James Wood book. I always read the very first pages of every book. I want to know who the author thanks, the preface, and introduction if there is one. I like to check out the Contents to see how many chapters I'm in for. And then I began reading my first chapter, titled Narrating.

After reading the second page I get distracted. I'm noticing the really cool binding on this book! I guess being such a small book the publishers had to do something really cool, so they put rough edges on the pages! I got sidetracked really good... I had to go back and count the smooth-sided pages vs. the saw-tooth-sided pages that gave it the look that caught my eye!

See what I mean? Too easily distracted. I'm very visual and love textures and color and stuff like that. But now, that this distraction is over, I need to knuckle-down and truly begin my lessons, or for the rest of my natural life I'll just be writing paragraphs, and never get to my first chapter. More later.