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1:57 p.m. - 2006-05-03 For a while I considered myself as having a talent for writing and was amassing a portfolio to apply to an MFA program. Then I met a group of genre writers and they convinced me that my writing left a lot to be desired. I wish I could overnight a large font copy of my paragraph and Ploppy�s sentence to all of them, that would show them, wouldn�t it? I guess I could extrapolate on the Quoted posting and say that I have been published, do you think? HA! So there! What bothered me the most about that group was that they all thought they were so talented and they pooh-poohed all writers of literary fiction and don�t even bring up chick lit. Their opinion was that it was useless. I can�t imagine Barbara Kingsolver being called useless; I think her prose is lyrical. How about Sue Monk Kidd? I�ve read The Secret Life of Bees many times and The Mermaid�s Chair made me cry. I thought the genre stories were excessively violent and too often used women as an image of victim. The female characters were not necessarily weak just always victimized in some way. I have heard Stephen King�s writing referred to as �junk food for the brain.� Now don�t get me wrong, I like me some King every now and then and thought Bag of Bones was an eerie masterpiece, but to exclude an entire group as useless was too much for me. Eh, let it go and walk humbly. I need to start chanting my mantra again. As for my own writing, I have thought a lot about it and have reframed my talent. I believe that I am a storyteller, not really a writer. I have an image of myself sitting on my porch in a rocking chair, barefooted, with a cat in my lap and a frosty whisky slush in my hand. There are children at my feet and I�m watching the fiery-orange sun slip between the hills as evening is settling over the north Bullitt County woods. Which story should I tell? The one that always made #3 cry�Where�s My Tail-y Bone? Or, should I let them know the secret of our own sock-eyed spirit who lives on the road near the falling-down sawmill? It doesn�t really matter which one I pick because they�ll ask for another one tomorrow. That�s the beautiful thing about having a vivid imagination, a love for the sound of interesting words as they roll off my tongue and a great gift of gab. They always want more.
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