Accidental Spring

Accidental Spring
"Accidental Spring" This began as the background for painting other papers, but became something else!

Monday, February 8, 2010

feedback from my Followers requested

Hey, gang.  I was wondering whether those of you who have read most if  not all of my entries, might give me your opinion. I am wanting to enter a narrative nonfiction contest.  It's time.

I want to base it on one of my entries, but am not sure which to choose and would like your opinions--NOT my last one, however.  That sort of difficult subject I am just beginning to deal with in terms of writing publicly.  As I have said, I do not feel that it's a matter of healing there--it's a matter of learning how to write about it beyond shock value, to weave it into a larger story.

But perhaps one of my entries, or a combination of two would stand out to you as something to work on and make into a cohesive whole for this contest. I can submit several entries. They even have poetry.  The tone of the winners seems something my style would fit, and some subjects are even a little dark, though NOT like my last entry!

Thank you for your wonderful feedback on that last entry. No, I've not disappeared. Simply had a a cold that moved into something yuckier... but, as I said on my other blog, sometimes it's a relief to have simply whatever plague is "going around," nothing huge. Not my back. Not a cause for alarm. Just simply been sick and yucky, as is most everyone from time to time.

Life gets better, regardless of my emotional "nutties" from time to time. Overwhelming and I do not know how I shall get to the point of selling my home and moving into an apartment, but... I need to believe.

I trained something in my left leg! Yet another new nerve path so I can make my foot point FORWARD, not slightly skewed to the left. My right foot, when the nerve gives out, turns inward. My left turns outward. So I guess this means that when I am tired and the new nerve paths say, "nope. We're done" I will walk in a perpetual circle to the left!

Anyway, if any of you have the time to delve into my blog and give me your opinions, either here or to my e-mail, I would be grateful. I HAVE to start taking the plunge. After all, I sold a painting, so maybe I should oughta, as a friend said, try to sell my writing, too!

Sorry I have not visited your blogs in the last four or five days, but I will be back to that within a day or two as well.

I was telling my aunt in Alaska about this blog, and about how much support I have been given in the last months... She said she wished she could see and it was the first time in a long time she wished that! She said that she'd just been "too damned old" to learn how to use a computer, but thought that it was a wonderful thing, all this technology.

"Oh, I'm always hearing about the dangers and how people don't bother with real conversation... but you have contacted me more because of it and your emails are real letters.  And it seems to me, with the amount you've had to be shut in and not moving? It has saved your life in several ways." NINETY-FOUR, and one of my best friends, who is my age, REFUSES to learn all she can about using this technology. She has health problems that incapacitate her, too, and is far more isolated, but has decided ALL virtual communication's phony.

No matter what I tell her, she gives one of those condescending--oh, YOU know the kind of look. She simply refuses to see that there is real communication here.

To me? When I read about Life in eighteenth and nineteenth century England and the US? It seems to me that many of us use the virtual world the way they used snail mail, as we call it now.  It CAN be superficial and meaningless, but it can also give us contact with people we'd never have known.

That's my way of saying once again, how much I value all of you--your sticking with me, giving me such wonderful words of encouragement and advice (YES, Jo, I am speaking to you here, along with Donna and Carl and Linda Lou and Sparkle and Nancy and Erika and Dave and ... and ... it's twenty-four people long now! those are just a few. And a few new folks on Jetty Reconstructed as well.)

Okay. Enough mushy stuff.

I appreciate any suggestions. Of course, I still want to find somewhere to send "I ate a Pluot," but we'll see!!

4 comments:

Shattered said...

From my own experience, I think the best thing you can do is just write. Don't try to censor or filter your words; just write to tell your story. There is always time later to edit, explain, justify, etc. The true beauty of our stories seems to be born out of the roughest words.

P.S. All of this is my own opinion of course...

JeannetteLS said...

I'm not looking for editing suggestions at all! I did not mean to give that impression. I'm simply looking for suggestions about favorite entries on my blog. Perhaps I'm cheating--looking for a shortcut to making a choice!

I am a writer by profession anyway, so I edit--not to censor, but to give my best work, in my opinion. I simply don't feel that my last blog entry was the stuff of entering a writing contest.

I wholly agree that a story in its rough form can be the most powerful sometimes, but what you read in my last entry was not unedited, nor my rough draft. My blog IS where I simply tell my story, with minimal editing.

BUT, a writing contest IS the place where I will edit--NEVER justify, though. I only explain or justify on my blog, to warn those who don't want to read the harsher stories, that they are coming. I had never written quite so graphically except in journals. Thanks, shattered. I hope others don't misunderstand my request.

Carl said...

Hi-
I want back and re-read most of your blog. It is a bit of a cop out, but I really like all of the narrative stories. Maybe the Christmas story? I find all of them so moving and am sure anyone else who reads them will too.

Carl

Donna B. said...

Two of your blogs that popped into my memory were the juicy Pluot (made me go out and get one to try) and that scary one...where the man came over to you....that scared the dickens out of me! You wrote on the level of Stephen King and Dean Koontz!! I really mean it...my heart was pounding! (I wish you had labels on your blog to make it easier to go back through your blog...just a suggestion)