Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Of MotorMouths


 

I seem to gather talkative people the way perfume draws the bee. So one day I complained to my therapist of my inability to repel them. 

"I thought I had the perfect solution," I told him. "Years ago, in the bad old Sixties, my friend, Karen, had normal speech patterns until we smoked marijuana. Then, as we sprawled on her double bed, she would talk and talk and talk. Incessantly.

"Meanwhile, I'd space out, but struggle loyally to pay attention to her word stream. 

"Then one day I had this dope-induced epiphany: 'Just because she talks doesn't mean I have to listen.'

"What a strategy! 

"After that we spent many blissful hours, Karen talking and me frequently not listening."

My therapist chuckled and uttered a few textbook comments about smoking dope.

"I used that strategy for years," I told him, "but now it no longer works. My most recent friend is not only a motormouth but even worse, he's an ex-professor. He quizzes me on everything he says. 'You don't remember? But I told you that last Wednesday.' What am I to do?"

My therapist, as usual, had a few ideas to share. He talked—and talked and talked. 

My eyes crossed, a sure sign that I had spaced out. 

After a long while, he asked, "Is that helpful?"

Caught! 

I curbed my reply: "Well, I'm not sure I understood it all."

"What part didn't you understand?"

Cornered, I said, "What made you think I was listening?"

Who knew that a therapist would double over laughing.

from:  a JoLt of CoFFeY 
 An Intermittent Newsletter
by Marilyn June Coffey
"BitterSweet Rebel"

For earlier blogs, go to http://marilynjcoffey.blogspot.com/


some BitterSweet books 

written by Marilyn June Coffey

www.marilyncoffey.net


MAIL-ORDER KID: An Orphan Train Rider's Story www.mail-orderkid.net

MARCELLA: A NOVEL To be reprinted Fall 2012.

GREAT PLAINS PATCHWORK: A Memoir 

MARCELLA and GREAT PLAINS PATCHWORK are out of print 
but can sometimes be bought from Amazon or other on-line book dealers.

A CRETAN CYCLE: Fragments unearthed from Knossos is a rare book. 
To buy it, search eBay or other on-line book dealers.











More Scars


 Recently I wrote, "I'll Show You My Scar if You'll Show Me Yours." And below are some scar stories you showed me. Enjoy!

Wow! What a powerful story. Mine is a boring ol c section scar :) -- Sally Deskins

The first scar on my six-year old body was on my right knee.  A tornado was coming and the family had safely made it to the outdoor cellar, but my mother kept me with her until the last, and we saw the funnel cloud.   As we were running through the storm, I tripped on a shovel blade and opened a gash on my knee (or cut it). She must have wrapped it but I don't remember anything about it except that I had a rather wide scar, which has since disappeared into my now old knee.  We stayed in the earthen cellar all night--or so it seemed.  Luckily, my older sister Margie had brought her wind-up record player to the cellar along with a record that she had just bought that day and she played all night.  It was "Sunrise Serenade" by Frankie Carle. -- Sharon Ahrens

I fell off a scaffold in '03, broke my right heel and left wrist. The details are sketchy due to trauma, shock, pain and heavy sedation. I'm sure it was sufficiently dramatic but maybe more so for the medical responders, witnesses, et al, than to me. I was just the catalyst….-- Bill Reece

Also a tumor, but it was supposed to grow behind the knee cap. But this poor thing did not know any better. I was 5 years old, it was summer, and the tumor was growing huge on the side of my knee. It was 1955 and about 19.55 in the household budget. Nobody worried about it that much, until it got to the point that I could not walk and had to be carried. Since we come from that earlier time, we know the doctors were not overly skilled in the beautification of the job, but just get it out and stitch it up. To this day I hardly ever wear shorts outside. But I am trying to get braver in my old age.--Marsha Stribley

Like the lady in "Talking With," I've been marked by life, but have no interesting scars.--Sue/Ruth Firestone

I carry two crosses on my body: one on the inside of my left elbow, one on the inside of my right ankle. Not tattoos. Maybe because of the enforced markings, I choose not to add others. The crosses are both about an inch long. Midway between the two, on the left side of my waist, there's a scar about an inch long, as though someone stuck a knife in my side, then stitched up the cut from the inside, causing that spot to indent about a half inch into my body, regardless of my weight.
These are the places where three feeding tubes provided me nourishment for several days after my open heart surgery when I was five years old. I can still see the tubes ascending from my body, ending in what appeared to me to be huge plastic bags filled with fluid. 
The scar from the surgery itself runs from directly under the middle of my left breast around to my back, where it rises up to meet the place where a wing would go, if I had one. It's a deep, puckered, ugly scar. I never wore a bikini, a halter top, or a backless dress in my entire life.
I remember the tests and prep work I had to endure prior to the surgery. One test was performed twice, at two separate trips to the hospital. They laid me out on a flat metal table and attached wires to my veins. I was told to lie completely still as the test was performed. That took all of my reserves of Nordic stoicism because it felt as though electricity coursed through my veins. Of course, I didn't comprehend the concept at that time. To me, it felt like thin worms were squirming through my arms and legs. Uncomfortable doesn't begin to describe it. I thought the wires had embedded into my skin and ran through my veins. Of course, no one explained the test process to me, leaving me to my imaginings to deal with the torture. All I could do was grit my teeth, flatten my body to the table, and wish it over soon.
I don't remember going into surgery, or in fact, even checking into the hospital.
I don't know how soon after surgery this happened, but I recall swimming up to consciousness, seeing my daddy looming over me, urging me to eat. I couldn't speak, though I could see he appeared nearly desperate to have me take a bite of something from the molded plastic segmented hospital food tray. He would hold up various items - - I remember a sliced-in-the-skin third of a banana - - and all I could do was lightly shake my head. The room seemed to me to be a yellowish white and completely empty except for a stand where the food tray sat. I'm sure that's wrong, but that's how it seemed to me at the time.
First I was in a room alone. Next I remember a couple of roommates: a girl who was maybe ten or twelve and very kind, and then, after she went home, a girl about my age who was not kind. She had a box of blocks that could interconnect, and no matter how nicely I begged, no matter that she seldom played with them, she would not let me even touch them. I asked my parents if I could have some of that kind of blocks, but though they wanted to give me anything I wished for, they couldn't find them anywhere. I remember getting a doll wearing a hospital gown with a naked bottom. I felt sorry for her but also embarrassed by her. Visitors would laugh at her, and that made me ashamed, because I wore one of those gowns too. I felt powerless and small. I never played with her.
I would still like to have a set of those blocks. I've never seen their like again in my life.
Then came the day when I could stand, then walk, with help, to the bathroom, and then, also with help, walk briefly down the hall. I bent over double, leaning left, like an old woman. I spent more than six weeks out of school. The lapse, and my new difference, contributed to years of social ineptitude. At home, ever after, my parents treated me with kid gloves, while my brother resented me.
It's been more than four decades since the surgery. All its signs - - physical, emotional, social - - have faded. I don't pay much attention to any of these scars anymore, but when I see one of my crosses - - the more noticeable scars - - that image of the feeding tubes immediately pops into my head, and then I see my daddy trying to persuade me to eat something. 
Then I think about how that surgery saved my life, and I know they're a small price to pay.--Carla Barber

 

 

from:  a JoLt of CoFFeY 
 An Intermittent Newsletter
by Marilyn June Coffey
"BitterSweet Rebel"

For earlier blogs, go to http://marilynjcoffey.blogspot.com/


some BitterSweet books 

written by Marilyn June Coffey

www.marilyncoffey.net


MAIL-ORDER KID: An Orphan Train Rider's Story www.mail-orderkid.net

MARCELLA: A NOVEL To be reprinted Fall 2012.

GREAT PLAINS PATCHWORK: A Memoir 

MARCELLA and GREAT PLAINS PATCHWORK are out of print 
but can sometimes be bought from Amazon or other on-line book dealers.

A CRETAN CYCLE: Fragments unearthed from Knossos is a rare book. 
To buy it, search eBay or other on-line book dealers.


I'll Show You My Scar if You Show Me Yours


And I'm not talking about the tiny half-moon scar on my knee that I acquired when I was eight, racing a big red wooden wagon down the sidewalk, careening around a corner, tipping, squalling, listening to Mama's "Didn't I tell you?" No story there.

No, I'm talking about the long unsightly scar that you've never seen unless you caught me in a skimpy bikini. That scar.

Here's the story.

It's 1959. I've taken my 22-year-old body (straight hair, big ears) to Iowa to visit "Pat," my brightest girl friend. My menstrual periods had stopped; I was certain I was pregnant. I hoped she might know what to do.

She did. When we left the doctor's office, I was both relieved and scared. Relieved I wasn't pregnant, but scared to learn I had a tumor about the size of a grapefruit riding on an ovary.

Home I headed, wondering how in the world I could explain to my father how I discovered that tumor without mentioning my halted periods, my suspicion of pregnancy. Either I succeeded or he was kind.

"You have two choices," he said. "You can go, by yourself, to Rochester's Mayo Clinic and have that tumor removed by an excellent surgeon. Or you can have it removed by a doctor here in Lincoln. Your Mom and me will keep you company."

I chose the butcher in Lincoln, Nebraska. Why? Maybe I didn't think I deserved a Mayo surgeon. Maybe I was scared. More likely I thought Dad wanted, from the way he expressed his two choices, me to stay at home.

The butcher successfully removed the nonmalignant tumor without sacrificing my ovary. But he left an awesome scar: eight inches long, an inch wide at its widest point, bifurcating my belly. 

"Caesarian," I tell my lovers, and let it go at that.

And you? How did you get your scar?



from:  a JoLt of CoFFeY 
 An Intermittent Newsletter
by Marilyn June Coffey
"BitterSweet Rebel"


some BitterSweet books 

written by Marilyn June Coffey

www.marilyncoffey.net


MAIL-ORDER KID: An Orphan Train Rider's Story www.mail-orderkid.net

MARCELLA: A NOVEL To be reprinted Fall 2012.

GREAT PLAINS PATCHWORK: A Memoir 

MARCELLA and GREAT PLAINS PATCHWORK are out of print 
but can sometimes be bought from Amazon or other on-line book dealers.

A CRETAN CYCLE: Fragments unearthed from Knossos is a rare book. 
To buy it, search eBay or other on-line book dealers.



Face to Face



Watching writer Patricia McCormick speak last night at Kaneko, I felt as though I saw myself in a mirror. We have walked such similar paths to writing our latest books.

McCormick and I both received journalism degrees, worked as journalists, and then earned MFA's in creative writing.

Consider the way we applied that dual learning, we both wrote books about people no one knew: she wrote about Arn Chorn-Pond and I about Teresa Martin.

In both cases, the worlds our subjects occupied made them significant. Her book, NEVER FALL DOWN, is based on the true story of an 11-year-old boy who survived the Khmer Rouge. My book, MAIL-ORDER KID, is based on the life of an orphan-train rider, a child given away.

We both, like journalists, interviewed our subjects at length. Then, like creative writers, we spun their stories.

The primary difference between the way we wrote our works is that McCormick took her story into novel form, but I didn't. Her NEVER FALL DOWN recreates the voice of the 11-year-old boy as he struggles to stay alive. She did a magnificent job. His words are so clear and exact they become poetic.

I chose to present Teresa's story as her biography, but oddly enough, I did consider writing her story in first person, as McCormick has done. In my case, Teresa's voice eluded me, so I wrote a biography rather than a novel.

If you get a chance to pick up NEVER FALL DOWN, on sale May 2012, do read it. It's a chilling story beautifully written.


from:  a JoLt of CoFFeY 
 An Intermittent Newsletter
by Marilyn June Coffey
"BitterSweet Rebel"


some BitterSweet books 

written by Marilyn June Coffey

www.marilyncoffey.net


MAIL-ORDER KID: An Orphan Train Rider's Story www.mail-orderkid.net

MARCELLA: A NOVEL To be reprinted Fall 2012.

GREAT PLAINS PATCHWORK: A Memoir 

MARCELLA and GREAT PLAINS PATCHWORK are out of print 
but can sometimes be bought from Amazon or other on-line book dealers.

A CRETAN CYCLE: Fragments unearthed from Knossos is a rare book. 
To buy it, search eBay or other on-line book dealers.




The Farm Twins

1940's 

Before I was old enough to read, my mother read to me every night at bedtime. I loved to hear her voice create words out of squiggles on the page.
My favorite book then was THE FARM TWINS by Lucy Fitch Perkins. A big fat book with a stiff yellow cover, it featured drawings of the twins on the cover. It ran 200-pages long, like a real grown-up book, and I adored it.
I never tired of the story: Someone left twin babies in Mrs. Tilly's laundry basket in her back yard. Everything that happened to them--playing with chicks, getting lost in the corn field, pulling the cat's tail--was an adventure. Yet Mr. and Mrs. Tilly and the twins and the farm and the horse and the dog and the cat seemed so real, as real as the world I lived in.
"Read it again!" I'd beg, and mother would. 
She read it over and over and over, seven or eight or twelve times, before she refused to read it.
"You can read it yourself when you're old enough to read and old enough to have your own library card."
My own card! I knew that would be heaven. Mama told me frequently about the day she got her first card. Grandma had walked with her to the still almost new public library in our town, Alma, Nebraska. It was one of the most exciting days of her life, she said.
I knew what she meant when it was my turn to walk, with my mother, to the library, brick and two stories high. To get to the books, I had to climb a long flight of cement steps, cross a cement porch, and push open the heavy door. Then the smell of books enclosed me as I watched the librarian create my card. The very first book I checked out was THE FARM TWINS. I read it over and over again.


1970's

After spending most of my adult life in New York City, I came back to visit my hometown again. I looked at the tiny house where I was born and the two-story house where I grew up. I stopped in the Methodist church basement to test the knives Marcella had used to stab herself and found them as dull as I remembered. Then I went across the street to visit the library. The cement steps weren't quite as high as I remembered, but the book smell enveloped me as always. I walked around, looking at books on display. Some I'd loved, some my mother cherished. I sat at a table in the children's sections and read a thing or two.
On my way out, I noticed several large boxes full of books on the porch. The library, cleaning house, had them on sale for cheap. I nearly walked right by them when I saw a large book, it's yellow cover familiar. THE FARM TWINS. My breath shortened. I'd never expected to see it again.
The twins were sketched on the plain cover. I flipped the book open. "Well, I never did!" said Mr. Tilly in italics as he held a baby. 
There it all was: birthday parties and lost in the rain. Old Dobbin with his mouth full of oats. Snip, snip the scissors. The squawking rooster on the clothes line. Sparks of fire dancing up the chimney.
"I could buy it," I thought. "It isn't much. But it's a big book, and heavy. Where would I find room for it in my luggage? Besides, I won't ever need it."
I laid it back on the pile.

2012

I'm living in Omaha, Nebraska, now and thinking about THE FARM TWINS. I'm thinking, "Boy, was it stupid of me not to buy that book when I had the chance." It's not the first time I've entertained that thought.
As time passed, I realized that THE FARM TWINS had given me certain goals in writing. The desire to write a book. The desire to write about common ordinary things and common ordinary people. I'd begun to wonder if I would have written MAIL-ORDER KID if I hadn't loved THE FARM TWINS so much.
I wished so hard that I could read THE FARM TWINS again that Amazon popped into my mind. Amazon often features out-of-print books. What if they have THE FARM TWINS?
They did. Collectible: $139, $92.95, $70, and then at the bottom a couple for $6.30. School Editions, whatever that meant. 
It took forever for the book to arrive. And it wasn't the big yellow book I remembered; instead, it was smaller and brown. But there stood the twins, their hands in their new pockets, just as I remembered. I opened the book. 
My first surprise was the list of books that Lucy Fitch Perkins also wrote: 24, each with "twins" in the title. Dutch twins, Eskimo twins, Puritan twins. She was all over the 
globe: Chinese, Swiss, Filipino, Irish, Belgian, Japanese, French, Norwegian, Scotch.
My second surprise was what a delightful couple Mr. and Mrs. Tilly are. Their love and support of one another is clear.
Mr. Tilly often tells his wife, "You are right; you are almost always right." 
And his wife says, "Mr. Tilly, you are a very clever man."
Both are full of good humor. So is their home: "The sparks danced up the chimney. The teakettle sang on the stove. Little puffs of steam came out of the nose of the tea kettle and floated up to the top of the room."
No wonder I cherished this book!

And you? Do you have a childhood favorite?




from:  a JoLt of CoFFeY 
 An Intermittent Newsletter
by Marilyn June Coffey
"BitterSweet Rebel"


some BitterSweet books 

written by Marilyn June Coffey

www.marilyncoffey.net


MAIL-ORDER KID: An Orphan Train Rider's Story www.mail-orderkid.net

MARCELLA: A NOVEL To be reprinted Fall 2012.

GREAT PLAINS PATCHWORK: A Memoir 

MARCELLA and GREAT PLAINS PATCHWORK are out of print 
but can sometimes be bought from Amazon or other on-line book dealers.

A CRETAN CYCLE: Fragments unearthed from Knossos is a rare book. 
To buy it, search eBay or other on-line book dealers.



Jack Loscutoff

This interview might interest you. Author Glenda Fralin puts her questions to my multi-faceted partner, Jack, asking him about his writing.

 

 

Interview of Jack Loscutoff

 

 

This month I introduce Jack Loscutoff who refers to himself as "sage in bloom, author and poet." Born in San Francisco of what he refers to as humble Russian peasant stock, Jack alludes to his Grandparents immigration as a factor by geography and politics that affects his view of life. 

 

Jack's pursuit of education moved him by increments from San Francisco to our beloved Nebraska. He earned a PhD focusing on English and American Literature. Jack worked as an instructor, critic, and at 58 realized his love of words could become a new kind of career. Jack started writing.

 

Jack's multi-faceted character enchanted me. I leave it to Jack to charm you.

 

 

Q. Jack, when I read your biography, on your web site, one thing that struck me immediately was that your Russian heritage does affect your unique writing style.

 

Would you give us some insight into that influence?

 

A.  Any Russian influence on my writing came from having read the works of a few of the great Russian writers. Since I don't read the language and have relied on translations, what I've gotten is what any reader and writer, with or without a Russian ancestry, could.  Here is some of it.

 

Checkhov said something like this about short story writing. "If at the beginning there is a rifle hanging over the fireplace, it must be fired before the story ends." He meant that there must be no unnecessary information in a short story. Everything must contribute to its point.  

 

Dostoyevsky wrote a novel, The Brothers Karamasov, in which Jesus returns to earth. Most people do not recognize him. The "authorities" regard him, at best as a nuisance, at worst as a criminal. I guess the lesson there is don't try to write about Jesus.

 

Tolstoy wrote, at over a thousand pages, War and Peace. Many critics believe it is the greatest lo-o-ong novel ever written in any language. What I've learned from reading it is to keep mine as short as possible. 

 

End of lecture.

 

 

Q. I've read some of your poetry and prose. To me you have a unique style. Case in point is your short story No Cross for Jesus. Some may say its science fiction, or some could say it's philosophical. I see both. Your novel THE CLOUD OF DOOM is listed as science fiction, but you told me it crosses other genres. It is hard to decide a single genre to list a book. What would sell your book and stories to philosophers, adventurers, or any interest?

 

A.  The last time I was at Barnes and Noble (and I hope they're still there), they had a section of books labeled "Fantasy/Science Fiction." Those books could also be called "speculative fiction." One reason why "speculative" can be applied to sci-fi is that most SF writers "speculate" about the future. Because no one has experienced the future and thus cannot know it, we can only speculate, or imagine, what it might be like. When I wrote my book I wanted the emphasis to be heavy on the "science" and light on the "fiction". In it you won't find dragons, eight-legged humanoids or a setting two thousand years in the future. My novel is set in 2035. Every animal, plant or machine in it exists in the present or is accepted as a possibility among the scientific community of today.  

 

Even though the plot is rational, there is plenty of adventure. Among others, a trip to the planet Jupiter's moon Europa. There, in an ocean under the ice, my characters encounter strange animals and barely escape with their lives.

 

Philosophy? The reason the scientists go to Europa is the hope of finding a way of increasing Earth's food production. In 2035 more and more people on our planet are malnourished and starving because of food shortages brought on by over-population and global warming. I believe the dangers of those two trends are things some of us are waking up to, but too late to prevent their catastrophic results.

 

Q. What authors influence you most?

 

A.  That's a tough one. It's really a question for a critic. As I suspect it is with most writers, I lack the objectivity to answer it. But here are a few possibilities.

 

Some critic has said that in order to be considered a top poet you must be skilled at writing about death. I have done that. "Alas and Alack," below, is on that subject. Here are some others who may have influenced me in that regard.

 

Emily Dickinson. "Because I could not stop for Death,/ He kindly stopped for me."

 

Shakespeare. "This (old age and the impending death of the speaker) thou perceiv'est that makes thy love more strong/ To love that well which thou must leave ere long."

 

W. B. Yeats. "An aged man is but a paltry thing,/ A tattered coat upon a stick/ Unless soul clap its hands and sing/ and louder sing/ For every tatter in its mortal dress." (again, old age as a prelude to death.)

 

Note that both Dickinson's poem and mine choose to laugh at death rather than cry.

 

Among novelists, I would choose Vladimir Nabokov as one who taught me a lot about the uses of "point of view." POV for writers does not mean "opinion." It means who is telling the story and how he or she is telling it. In Nabokov's novel Lolita, the narrator, a character in the book, speaks in the first person ("I" rather than "he" or "she".)  That choice by the novelist means that a reader must take the word of Humbert Humbert, the child molester, that his victim, the teenager Lolita, is a willing participant in her own abuse. Although that idea sounds absurd when put the way I just have, it works in Nabokov's novel. The reason it works is that for three fourths of the book, the POV is Humbert's. As a result the reader begins to see and think about the abuse as Humbert does, that it is one big, delightful sexual adventure, especially if the reader is a man. This technique is called "unreliable narrator." Many others besides Nabokov have used it. I often employ it for ironic or humorous effect in my poetry.

 

 

 Q. Jack, I know you have a funny bone, or at least like to tickle our funny bones. I said before you are a multi-faceted author.

 

Humor is essential in writing. However, it is not easy to achieve. How would you advise me, for example, to develop humor in a piece? Are there particular authors or publications you would recommend? If you don't mind, I will include an example of one of your humorous poems.

 

 

Alas and Alack!

 

You are old, Father Jack,
and under sneak attack
by a junta of contagious diseases.  

 

So you give folks your back,
hunch and hiss like a cat
whenever somebody sneezes.

 

You should not do that.
You should keep it flat
till you die or till hell over-freezes.

 

Though to you it makes sense,
Annie's correspondents*
may, perchance, take offense
at your shunning their germ-laden breezes.

 

So your choice is a cinch:
be a snarling old grinch
or the cool, smiling corpse
whom your loverly last widow greevez.

 

 

*"Annie's Mail Box" is a social advice column in an Omaha newspaper.

 

  

 

A.  I guess the main requirement for "develop(ing) humor in a piece" is for the potential for humor to be already present. To make that happen is quite complex. It begins with the question of audience. Who are you writing for? Children will not laugh at adult humor, and vice-versa. Some of us old geezers may still laugh at jokes about women drivers, but most women, no matter their age, wouldn't. I could go on and on, but we don't have the space.

 

 

Q. You've written plays that have been performed in Nebraska. My Heart's in the Highlands is a one-act play that won honorable mention in Writer's Digest. That is quite an accomplishment. For myself, and I'm sure the Nebraska Writer's Guild, I'm interested in letting the rest of the world know about Nebraska's fine arts culture. Theater is one of those areas, like film often unheralded for our state.

 

Do you have an opinion as to how we in Nebraska can bring more attention to the literary accomplishments of our authors and thespians?

 

A.  I'm sorry. I don't.

 

 

Q. I'm going to make one final pull to find "Who is Jack?" You said in your biography that it was at age 58 you realized you should be writing instead of teaching others how to write and working as a literary critic. In one of our email exchanges, you mentioned there were other times when your interest in writing accelerated. 

 

What do you attribute your love of literature and writing?

 

 

A.  I have always been fascinated by language. Before I started kindergarten, I would spread the Sunday comics page on the floor and puzzle out the words. In the second grade, I memorized "The Ride of Paul Revere." My high school English teacher told me I was the only student of hers who understood Shakespeare. As a teenager I read all of Joseph Conrad's sea-going short stories. 

 

I've heard that to be a poet, you must be in love with words. That is certainly true of me. Most of my growth as a playwright, writer and poet was gradual. However, there were a couple of periods in my life when it accelerated.

 

The three years when I earned a Master of Arts degree in English and American literature was the first period. The main set of skills I acquired in that time were those of a critic. I read the works of most of the great, as well as a few of the not-so-great writers in the English language from the beginnings of our tongue up to about the middle of the twentieth century. In addition to earning the degree, I emerged from my studies at San Francisco State College with a new set of skills. I could compare writers working in a particular genre and rate them against each other. That was a way of predicting whose works would continue to be printed and read and whose would not. In general, I could not only tell you which work was better and which was worse but also why. 

 

The second period of acceleration was more drawn out. It has covered the last twenty-three years of my life. On my fifty-eighth birthday I complained to my daughter that I was tired of "being a bridesmaid and never a bride." That is, tired of reading the works of the great playwrights, writers and poets and wishing I could do the same. She loaned me a book entitled "Writing the Natural Way." It was a beginning writing course between two covers, a "how to" package that got me started learning the skills of a playwright, writer and poet. Over the years since then, I've continued to develop those skills.

 

I'm still no Shakespeare, Nabokov or Yeats. However, my cluttered writing office is my "Holy of holies." On one of the walls is a list of "the immortals," my heros and heroines, the great playwrights, writers and poets. Above their names are the words "In the company of the immortals."  I no longer feel in impossible competition with them. Instead, they are my encouraging friends and mentors.

 

***

 

 

 Jack invited us, figuratively, into his office and what develops from his mind within his 'holy of holies'. Do I know Jack, no not really, but I know more about Jack. Like any author he has his own reasons for writing, personal to him. They are reflected by most of the rest of us. As authors we do love words and how they compliment each other. However, as unique as Jack's reasons and process is to him, so are the reasons for writing personal for all writers.

 

Jack's charm eminates from his unique lust for life, learning and legitimate search for meaning in what he does.  

 

 

 

Glenda Fralin aka G. K. Fralin
Author 
THE SEARCH: LUNIS FLOWER OF HIDDEN

Blogs

 



from:  a JoLt of CoFFeY 
 An Intermittent Newsletter
by Marilyn June Coffey
"BitterSweet Rebel"


some BitterSweet books 

written by Marilyn June Coffey

www.marilyncoffey.net


MAIL-ORDER KID: An Orphan Train Rider's Story www.mail-orderkid.net

MARCELLA: A NOVEL To be reprinted Fall 2012.

GREAT PLAINS PATCHWORK: A Memoir 

MARCELLA and GREAT PLAINS PATCHWORK are out of print 
but can sometimes be bought from Amazon or other on-line book dealers.

A CRETAN CYCLE: Fragments unearthed from Knossos is a rare book. 
To buy it, search eBay or other on-line book dealers.


Warm wishes,

Marilyn June

Marilyn June Coffey
BitterSweet Rebel

Author, 
best-selling
MAIL-ORDER KID
WINNER: "Special President's Award"