I have reached that stage in life where I pray that every student at Virgina Tech has a cell and could easily reach their parents
This is beyond belief. I used to believe in The Second Amendment for various reasons. I can’t anymore. IF GUNS AREN’T GOING TO BE OUTLAWED MAKE BULLETS VERY VERY EXPENSIVE
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Darianna nominated me for two bloggers choice awards
I don’t really believe in blogs competing against one another. I can’t even find my blog. And there’s a totally snarky category for “worst blog of all time.” Personally I find that offensive.
I do believe in bloggers solidarity. That all said, if you’re going to vote for me, when you get to the site put in courtingdestiny.com and it leads straight to my blog
But it’s a gray and dismal day. We had 6.5 inches of rain. What does that have to do with a blogging award? I always wanted to write “it’s a gray and dismal day.”
Thanks Darianna who is promoting one million blogs for peace a very worthy cause. They hope to have a million blogs by the fifth anniversary. I hope we’re out by then, but we do have an administration that believes in escalating the war.
G sent me Crate & Barrel’s Pia Vase page.
Yesterday I got particularly virulent spam from piatanidotcom. My middle name is Tani. It’s in the blog somewhere.
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This isn’t a day to be at the computer or so I tell myself. It’s been pouring since the middle of the night. It took me a long time to wake up and realize that the sounds I heard were rain drops, and longer too remember to get up and close a window that left open surely would have caused a major flood.
A Barnes & Noble, at Astor Place, is closing because their rent is too high. If it’s too high for B&N?
A small bookstore owner mentioned how B&N forced Shakespeare & Co in my hood to close. I would have loved Shakespeare’s if not for the people who worked there, and maybe that played a part in its closing.
They let you know if they didn’t approve of a book you were buying. Why sell it if they deemed it not worthy? The reason is obvious. The editorializing not necessary.
They had a good mystery section but the workers didn’t seem to think mysteries were worthy. I tend to buy books from different sections, some considered “intellectually worthy,” and some not.
Were they trying to sell books or manage a small club of underemployed MFA’s and other literary types?
I mentioned this once at a small party and two out of the other five people had the same experience.
Perhaps we began to shop at B&N because nobody types you. Perhaps we began to shop at B&N because we felt more comfortable.
Perhaps Shakespeare’s went under because it didn’t treat all customers with respect
I wonder how the workers at Shakespeare’s would have greeted the proliferation of chick lit? I especially wonder that today because the second book that had its beginnings in my writing class, three years ago, just came out.
I read an interview with my writing teacher. He talked about the types of mistakes wanna be writers make; telling not showing and the like. Then he talked about organization, and how people who can’t organize a thought can’t organize a page let alone a book.
It’s not as if I feel so important that I think it was directed at me. But if he thought that about my work, I wish he would have told me rather than telling me how he saved my submission for last because he knew would always enjoy it.
I wish that when I contacted him for individual help last summer, he told me that I just wasn’t organized enough, rather than telling me that he was too busy and inviting me in to his next class.
There’s honesty and there’s honesty. Denigrating a person’s choice in books they’re buying is stupid when it comes from the people representing the book store. Telling a person that this or that problem hinders their marketability is hurtful but ultimately could be helpful.
Most of this book is written, yet I don’t dare shop it around because I haven’t come up with a good beginning. Each time I think I do, I come up with too many stories in one, and have to go further back into my life.
Honestly, I’m just not that interested in coming of age in high school stories. While I had a more than slightly interesting Senior Year, and probably some unique yet universal experiences, I was a kid with a completely different mentality than I had at 25. I feel the same way about college and I know I had fascinating experiences.
I’m much more interested in slow blooming coming of age while technically an adult stories. Maybe I do need to tell the high school and college stories. I have written most of them for one workshop or another.
My sister decided that my niece is old enough to hear some of my stories. I went to the school Jacquelin is going to now. I told her the real reason I was kicked out of Driver’s Ed. It’s not a pretty story. Maybe i do need to write it.
Thing is I have written, and rewritten, edited, revised, rewrote these stories so many times, I feel like a robot when I write them. Maybe that dispassion is needed. Being kicked out of Driver’s Ed led the way to many things.
Only I wasn’t ready to see that until now. I placed the blame on me. I’m prone to that.
I told the real story to my parents 20 years after the fact. They were the only people in town who didn’t know. I’m not going to say the reason I was kicked out, but it wasn’t true.
I shouldn’t have been too ashamed to tell my parents. They would have advocated for me, as they knew I had hidden disabilities that very possibly made it hard or impossible for me to learn to drive. I assume that was the reason they were given. Maybe I had to tell them. I don’t remember.
This is the school district that let me at twelve decide whether or not I wanted to be in the Honor’s Program. I’m really not willing to take this memoir back to Seventh Grade.
It’s so easy for me to write a synopsis when it comes to other writings and keep to it. When I come to my own life, the one thing I should be most expert at, I’m lost.
I know the story too well. There are no surprises, nothing to keep me fascinated. But then I come to certain realizations and realize that if I hadn’t replayed the story from so many different frames I would have never truly understood why things happened.
Maybe that’s the key to a good memoir, it allows the author to understand.
