Fiction verson Non-Fiction

March 19, 2009

Lots going on around here. Keeping me busy, but providing lots of fun. There was a problem with this blog feeding into my website for awhile, but I believe that's been fixed, so we're all back on board for now. But, with these computers, one never know.

So, what's been happening since the end of Feb. Lots! On the 28th, I made a trip up to Laughlin with friends. We stopped on the way to visit my mother's grave. Her birthday was the 29th. The visit got me to thinking about writing fiction versus non-fiction. Non-fiction is so darn hard for me. Over eleven years ago, I started a memoir about the women in my family. Because I knew my great grandmother quite well, I thought it would be interesting for my newly born granddaughter to learn about the women in her ancestry from a first person point of view. It's pretty much completed and contains stats and memories of great grandma, grandma, mom, me, my daughter and my granddaughter. But, it was a labor. Not fun. Oh, the women are all great and writing about them brought good memories, but dealing with truth is not near as much fun as my fiction characters. I've made a goal for myself to get it done and have to them for Christmas. Well, at least it's a goal.

On March 10th I did another blog radio interview. This time is was with Destiny Debbie who originates in England. It was great! It started at 6:00 a.m. Ariz. time and lasted two hours. And, we had call ins! One in Florida, one in Pennsylvania and a guy from Canada who only wanted to know if we believed in Jesus. But, the others all had interesting questions regarding copyright and publishing. It went by so fast! And, I've been invited to do it again in July.

On the 12th, the local college had a short program on Irish songs and humor. Prof. Dr. Montbriand, who teaches English/Shakespeare at the college played the ukulele, guitar and sang. Quite a few of my local writer's group attended.

Then, that night my Four Goddesses book club met for our monthly crit session. I had submitted an excerpt from my novel in progress 'The Woman Between'. Got some great positives and some very helpful negatives on it. By the way, I wrote 'The End' to the novel on Sunday.

'The End'. For me, it's the hardest part of the whole process. Does it settle everything? Or, do I leave the reader hanging. I had intended to have a reunion of the two main characters after a number of years had passed, but when the heroine accepts a certain responsibility and then is given blessing by those who had held back any friendship, warmth or acceptance, it seemed the perfect place to stop. I also ended it so that the first word of the novel has her saying 'yes' and the last word of the novel is 'yes'. Dave is critting it, so I'll know if it worked or not in a couple of days.

But, now with 'The End' written, I'm left feeling at odds. I love novels/sagas, so I need to start again. Soon. I did manage to write a short story 'Pastrami versus Tuna Salad' for my on-line groups and I'm getting great feedback. One man said he was reading Robert B. Parker and he thought mine writing was a good. I liked hearing that.

Coincidentally, on the 14th, my book club met and we discussed Robert B. Parker. It was lively. The biggest complaint was his over tell of descriptions of how people were dressed. Also, his relationships with women made his seem sleazy to me. The dialog was top notch. One of the last questions I ask is whether they would read him again. The yes votes outnumbered the no votes by only one.

On the personal side, I've been having dinner out a lot. Went to see 'Slumdog Millionaire'. It was alright, but didn't measure up to 'Gran Torino' in any way. Then we went to see 'The Reader'. Very deep, very good. I agree that Kate Winslet deserved an oscar. Still it didn't measure up to 'Gran Torino', in my opinion. Saw 'Taken' with Liam Neeson. Other than enjoying his looks, the picture was a bore of over killing and unbelievable plot. Although, the one scene where he's talking to his daughter on a cell phone when she's abducted, brought a chilling memory of the time my daughter Kim called me from a phone booth in London. It was like four in the a.m. there and dark outside. A man tried to break into the booth. She was screaming and I had visions of hearing my daughter killed 5000 miles away from me. That part of the movie was pretty effective. Although, he was far more focused than I was.

Adios for now with my opening remarks on memoirs, I'll leave you with this quote that is so true of my of my feelings about my female ancestors. "The secret of a good memory is attention, and attention to a subject depends upon our interest in it. We rarely forget that which has made a deep impression on our minds." Tyron Edward