Lori nudged us into our inaugural blog activity by posing this week’s question of “Who the heck are you?”. It’s a useful question for testing one’s existential limberness and self-knowledge, but I would submit that it’s also a question with potential use for sorting writers into their genres. Raise your hand if your first response to the question was not “Gosh, what a thought-provoking question!”; nor “How far back do I stretch this bio plot arc – to kindergarten?”; nor “Strictly facts? Or is embellishment OK?”; nor even, “The worst autobiography that I write is better than the best one I don’t!”; but rather, “I wonder if she means her question with the emphasis on WHO, on HECK, on ARE, or on YOU?”
Those of you with your hands raised, I salute you. (I’d hug you, but that’s so not me.) I can definitely relate. We are fellow travelers on the road of words. We see through the question for what it truly is: a monosyllabic word series with no intrinsic meter. Without meter, there can be no sustainable rhyme scheme. And without rhyme, what is there?
I’m a card-carrying writer of rhyme. Which is not to say I’m credentialed or anything. The card is actually a “Get Out Of Jail Free” card from an old Monopoly game. I keep the card handy in case the “It’s a crime to write in rhyme” police ever knock down my door. (Though with the way I mutter through my drafts late at night, trolling aloud through the rhyming dictionary, reading and re-reading and re-re-re-re-re-reading every stanza, every word, every syllable, occasionally laughing, sometimes even shedding a frustrated tear or raising my fists to the sky, it’s more likely that the door-knocking crowd hauling me away will have a different institutional destination in mind. To the extent that it’s quiet and library-like there, I’ll have no complaints.)
I do write other things. Grocery lists and To Do list epics come to mind, but I also have a middle-grade novel manuscript and a young adult novel manuscript in various stages of abandoned progress. I’ve managed some short, unpublished essays that assay very little. And I am now – as of this writing – a blogger. (That makes fourteen billion and one of us, which would explain the delay in receiving my membership packet and complimentary tin of mints.) But, though I frequently vow otherwise, I always return to writing in rhyme. It’s a pursuit that is as enjoyable as it is excruciating. (Think grade-school music recital. Same basic feeling.)
Other than the rhyme-writing, I’m a hodge-podge of interests and activities. Mother. Wife. Cat-owner. Reader of mysteries. Doer of crosswords. Walker of walks. Taker of baths. Amateur photographer of trees. I lack a musical ear, but this doesn’t stop me from my unfulfilled wish to buy an electric guitar and channel SRV. A librarian by training, I currently earn my non-Monopoly dollars doing bookkeeping and financial management for a small nonprofit.
And then I spend my riches on rhyming dictionaries. I figure, what the heck.
Those of you with your hands raised, I salute you. (I’d hug you, but that’s so not me.) I can definitely relate. We are fellow travelers on the road of words. We see through the question for what it truly is: a monosyllabic word series with no intrinsic meter. Without meter, there can be no sustainable rhyme scheme. And without rhyme, what is there?
I’m a card-carrying writer of rhyme. Which is not to say I’m credentialed or anything. The card is actually a “Get Out Of Jail Free” card from an old Monopoly game. I keep the card handy in case the “It’s a crime to write in rhyme” police ever knock down my door. (Though with the way I mutter through my drafts late at night, trolling aloud through the rhyming dictionary, reading and re-reading and re-re-re-re-re-reading every stanza, every word, every syllable, occasionally laughing, sometimes even shedding a frustrated tear or raising my fists to the sky, it’s more likely that the door-knocking crowd hauling me away will have a different institutional destination in mind. To the extent that it’s quiet and library-like there, I’ll have no complaints.)
I do write other things. Grocery lists and To Do list epics come to mind, but I also have a middle-grade novel manuscript and a young adult novel manuscript in various stages of abandoned progress. I’ve managed some short, unpublished essays that assay very little. And I am now – as of this writing – a blogger. (That makes fourteen billion and one of us, which would explain the delay in receiving my membership packet and complimentary tin of mints.) But, though I frequently vow otherwise, I always return to writing in rhyme. It’s a pursuit that is as enjoyable as it is excruciating. (Think grade-school music recital. Same basic feeling.)
Other than the rhyme-writing, I’m a hodge-podge of interests and activities. Mother. Wife. Cat-owner. Reader of mysteries. Doer of crosswords. Walker of walks. Taker of baths. Amateur photographer of trees. I lack a musical ear, but this doesn’t stop me from my unfulfilled wish to buy an electric guitar and channel SRV. A librarian by training, I currently earn my non-Monopoly dollars doing bookkeeping and financial management for a small nonprofit.
And then I spend my riches on rhyming dictionaries. I figure, what the heck.
1 comment:
Debbie, you sure make me want to "Read More" about you. :o)
--L
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