writing skills/profession

My Story


For a middle-aged, Midwestern school teacher, my life hasn’t been too cursedly interesting nor has it been soul crushingly difficult, but despite my cat-footed landing of late, I don’t think I could give it away on Craig’s List.

I wouldn’t want to in any case, and I am surprised by this because there have been numerous moments when my fairy godmother could have offered me nearly any other life, and I’d have leapt.

I’ve resisted the urge to tell my story for the past year or more because I wasn’t convinced it was mine to tell. I was a supporting actress. The best friend friend, size 12 and quick with a witty quip not the willowy romantic heroine. And I didn’t really think that the story was all that compelling or extraordinary.

What widow doesn’t fancy herself as an author and dream of righting the unthinkable with words?

But I have never believed that if I tell the tale often enough I will be okay with the outcome. A metaphorical wallowing is still wallowing, and it’s still pointless.

Finally, I was just worried, afraid maybe, that I couldn’t. Tell the story. Big and gutsy and ugly and sad and amazingly and, in a perverse way, a blessing. The disguised kind that my yoga instructor is always reminding us to be on the lookout for and be grateful when we recognize them.

I am not a flamboyant personality. Gray really is my favorite color. And if “gutsy” is code for “tactless” then run me up a flagpole, but I suspect that this isn’t so.

I am determined past the point of being branded a mule, and I am as reliable as the changing of the seasons.

At my core however I am Ella, sitting in the cinders of the kitchen flue and dreaming of far away places and people who live only inside my own imagination.

Until a little over a year ago, any dreams I dared to commit to the world came at a huge expense to me personally. Silver spoons were as unknown as glass slippers until the day I married a man who looked me straight in the eye hours after we exchanged vows next to a raging river surrounded by mountains and family and friends and said,

“You can be anything you want to be.”

This is my story.

Blogging Idols are the Hump Day Hmmph


A blogger I read on occasion on the newspaper site in Des Moines announced he was giving up blogging. He cited his time constraints being a new father, and that he felt that to be a blogger a person must have an elevated sense of self-importance.

When I told my husband about this and asked his opinion of the latter statement, he believed that it was true. Read Full Article

Blog News and Writing Developments


I am far behind on my blog reading, so if you haven’t seen a comment from me this week I am reading and trying to catch up. 

Amazing how things accumulate in the “To Do” box even on short holidays. More amazing when one considers that as a writer who only really answers to herself (after husband and child’s care and feeding is seen to), I don’t really have to do anything, but I set myself tasks and feel sloth-like when they remain unaccomplished (or even begun) after a certain amount of time has passed.

First thing is that you may have noticed I didn’t post last weekend. Unless armageddon shows its four ugly faces (and I have it on good authority that won’t be until 2012) or Rob and I win the lottery (we don’t buy tickets, so this one is a long, long shot) or a woman is elected president of the United States (when hell freezes over folks), I will not be posting blog pieces on the weekend anymore. My blog stats tell me that the majority of you have lives and don’t stop by anyway, and it was just getting to be a bit more than I could handle. 

Next item is that I will be messing with the blogrolls yet again. Adding and deleting. I think it is time to review sites again too, so if I haven’t reviewed you or you aren’t on the roll. Let me know soon.

Moving on to personal writing issues, I began my memoir over the holiday. In longhand no less. At the suggestion of another writer, I have reconsidered fictionalizing my life. After all, most of it is barely believable biographically and going the fiction route was proving to be more biography than imagination anyway. 

One of the problems I have with long writing pieces is just keeping it up. I have dozens of stories in various stages of completion. I am such a scatterbrain that I get a great start and then another idea pops up and before you know it, there are too many of the little buggers screaming at me from the Word files for attention. My summer project is to finish off the more promising, but I will also be writing the memoir.

To keep me honest, I am toying with the idea of publishing a sort excerpt from the memoir the last Friday of every month. That way I can get feedback and instant gratification to keep me moving forward, and you can…….read it or not, I guess. What do you think?

At present I am shooting for a mere 300 words a day though I have gone over every time I set down to write. I am just writing, seeing where it will take me. 300 words a day is a novel in a year. I read that in Oprah, so it must be true.

In the meantime, I have another piece up over at Moms Speak Up. I am incensed about the whole media downplay of gender issues and sexism in America. I am sure that hasn’t escaped any of my regulars attention. I am also bit tired of being told that it’s not a big deal. Just because we are shielded by our middle-class existences from its full force is not a good enough reason to dismiss it completely.

Because I am also a bit behind in blog topics, I will be posting again before the day is over.

Thanks to all of you who check in and read, here or over at MSU and a Happy Memorial Day Weekend to all of you down in the lower 48.