Well, here it is only three weeks into the New Year, and I am BEHIND in my writing! My usual Monday entry has become a Wednesday entry this week! Such is the stuff of New Year's Resolutions, I guess. I will not berate myself too much though. My lateness is partly due to an absent "web master." Ray is traveling this week after having installed our new computer in the office. Even after an entire day of retrieving documents and re-installing programs, he has more work to do to get our operation fully functional again. When he returns tonight, we will look to "fixing" the glitches that have kept me from my work... I'm sure that they are mostly MY lack of understanding and NOT the machine's "fault."
With the technical challenges have come opportunities for exploring other writing pursuits... writing real letters, for instance. I had forgotten what pleasure that can bring. It is too bad that penning a personal note to someone you care about has become "old fashioned" and rarely done today. I can't quite think that pouring through emails to re-construct a person's life will be nearly so rich and full as reading the letters of people in the past.
One of my favorite kinds of books is the presentation of letters, sometimes of famous people; such as N.C. Wyeth in the Gambit publication of the painter's letters which were written from 1901-1945, compiled by his daughter-in-law Betsy James Wyeth in 1971, and presented as "a personal document of unusual richness - one that traced the author's evolution from an exuberant, naive student of drawing to an artist able to give eloquent expression to a maturing perception of his own nature, and that of the world around him." Indeed, the letters are remarkable reading and so very penetrating in their honesty. I learned the depth of his character and talent through those letters. I doubt seriously if that will ever be said of this BLOG!
I am happily looking forward to reading a more recent publication of letters, this time intimately entwined with a story of fiction. My friend and fellow writer Rhoda Trooboff sent me a book that she found wonderful. It is Natalie Wexler's A More Obedient Wife, A Novel of the Early Supreme Court. In it, Ms. Wexler, once associate editor of a multi-volume documentary history of the US Supreme Court in its first decade, the 1790's, presents a tale based on actual letters about two early Justices and their wives . Through those letters, the author supposes what their lives were, and with imagination she blends fact and fiction to tell the story of the two Hannahs, one married to Court Justice James Iredell and the other married to Justice James Wilson. My favorite genre! Historical Fiction.
Along with letter reading and writing, I have turned to some editing tasks this week on my stories about B&O, Monument Avenue Girls. After having read some lovely children's chapter books this week, I felt inspired to work on mine. It is still a bit staid and not nearly as delightful as the real dogs. I need to do better by their sweet and wonderful characters. I still struggle with giving voice to my animal characters, but I seem determined to use animals as central "persons" in my plots. I guess I come by it naturally as my brother Clinton, too, seemed far more enamored of dogs, cats, frogs, and even rats (!) than people!
Speaking of rats, I must get to my manuscript. I haven't given up on my self-designed deadline of the end of the month for finishing the first draft... to work!
Ellen Gaines
Full Biography
Evy and the Dance Recital
Lillie and the Wizard’s Wand
This Isa, This Izzy, This Isabel
