I'm back.

It has been a little over 2 months since I posted a chapter of Up Home Again, but I have been working on it. When I sat down to write the next chapter, a chapter came out, but it wasn't the next one. So now I have two chapters nearly ready, plus I have outlined the whole thing (on an excel spreadsheet, how's that for creativity?).

I expect it to be 15 chapters plus its prologue and epilogue. I'm hoping to scratch out all the chapters before I leave for my annual retreat in July. That means I should be posting roughly a chapter a week here. (I have a schedule on my spreadsheet.)

I try to write for 2 hours every morning now. I'm aiming for 6-8 am. This morning I didn't start until 7 but went until 9. Apparently my cat Buddha, who doubles for my alarm clock, wasn't hungry before 6. I'll try again to explain the spreadsheet to him.

How are each of you doing? Mishmont I get the moving bit since I have moved three times in the last few years. I recently bought 7 bookcases so that I have access to my stuff, especially my books. It's a challenge to pack books without reading them.

Last edited by EllieO (04-29-2008 18:21:48)

Ellie,

I should be back on track with reviewing and all next week, and am happy to hear there will be more of your work to look over!  Sorry I've been so remiss. It's a madhouse here.  Literally!

I too have been taking a break from reviewing, sometimes we need that. Glad to hear you are cranking the chapters EllieO, that inspires me.

Ok, raise your hand if you think I might be behind according to my excel spreadsheet schedule. No, please put you hands down I can't take it.

I am still working on Up Home Again and will be posting a new chapter very soon, maybe tommorrow. If you have time to look at anything, please look at the prologue and comment here. I have had wildly varying views. One person told me here write it like this. Well that was well written, too but my memoir has to be in my voice. Another reviewer told me I got the dates wrong. Really? What did I get wrong, when I was born or when my mother died? Someone else told me to put it all in chonological order. It's a story about returning, there are flashbacks. A fiction writer told me not to start with landscape. That reviewer probably is no fan of East of Eden, which starts with a long and beautiful explanation of how the Salinas Valley was formed.

The most comments are on my long sentence. You may have seen my posts in the forums where I say that rules are guidelines. I don't know what is too long. Is there a word limit? I don't think so. As long as it is grammatically correct and conveys the meaning without confusion, why does it have to be shorter? It is linked parallel phrases, not rambling run on. OK, I have shown how I feel. What do each of you think? The sentence is below.

Our house was across from the rundown, gray clapboard Banton Brothers Mill that is gone now, down the street from Bangs & Knight IGA store that is closed, and only a few houses away from the old post office, reduced to just its granite block foundation.

EllieO wrote:

Our house was across from the rundown, gray clapboard Banton Brothers Mill that is gone now, down the street from Bangs & Knight IGA store that is closed, and only a few houses away from the old post office, reduced to just its granite block foundation.

I think this is a BEAUTIFUL sentence!  I don't think it's to long, and I think the echo of things gone does a great job of setting the tone.  This is really, really good.

I (respectfully) disagree with William.  I think his sentence reads very differently than the original, and some meaning is changed or lost.  I dont like the changing of the word "house" to "home"--this is a sentence about buildings, and home means something other than house, something that isn't about the physicality of the structure.  I also think the repitition forms a kind of cant... it's something that has to be used skillfully and judiciously, but I think Ellie does it very well here.  It raises this above the simply descriptive and makes it lyrical.

Again, just my two cents.

Don't know how my question got on Sarah's thread, but I'll start yours no later than this weekend.

Trying to catch up on some old (very old) reciprocations.

Ok, don't fall over. I have posted a new chapter. Not a reposted one. A new chapter.

I'm starting Ch one tomorrow, not sure how far I'll get.

Ellie (and all),

Below is my review of your latest (very good!) chapter.  It's almost exclusively a line reading, but I thought I'd bring up what, for me, is maybe a little missing in the book thus far.  (You're going to say, "That's the pot calling the kettle hard to see...")  I don't feel like we have an adequately present "Ellie" yet in this work.  I want more sense descriptions, more thoughts laid bare, rather than wrapped in anecdote.  More feeling, instead of just analysis.  See?  Pot, kettle.

Other thoughts?

Peace and all good things!
Sarah

Line reading:
**A consultant, I like the name of that job. -- Have you considered simplifying to just:  I like the idea of being an consultant.
**I love it when someone else tells me they are a consultant. I want to ask, "So did you get fired or quit? Laid off, maybe? Retired?" -- I LOVE this. 
**Now that I am back from the retreat I start working on the first time homebuyer's workshop, the first one that I will be facilitating myself. -- echo on the word "first" here bogs this down a little.  Maybe, since we already know what it is, you can find another way to say "first time homebuyers' workshop?"  Particularly since first word of next graph is also "first."
**me get thru a lot.-- Ellie!  "Thru?"  Not you!  I'm sure this just snuck out somehow.  You are channeling your inner teenager-passing-notes-in-class.
**We used to have breakfast together once a week calling ourselves the Breakfast Club. -- Simplify to "We used to call ourselves The Breakfast Club, meeting once a week (for bagels and gossip?  oatmeal and angst?  something so you don't have to say "breakfast" twice).
**Because it's my birthday, I start thinking about myself from the beginning. -- I love this line.
**I liked being named after my mother when she was alive. Once she wasn't, the name was a dead weight. -- Very nice, particularly the choice of phrase, "...once she wasn't..."  Lovely.
**I felt extra, as if the family had not lasted long enough to raise me. -- Very nice.
**I'm the only one of my siblings who kept in touch with Aunt Catherine (consistently over the last forty years).--Sometimes I feel like you give us quantative details we don't need and that can slow us down.  I love qualitative ones, though.  It may just be me.  I'd run this by the other group members.
**A few days later at the funeral home, my aunt is laid out in the same room where a decade before, her husband Bernard had been, and years before that, her Aunt Mary. -- Workding suggestions:  "A few days later my aunt is (ready to receieve visitors?) in the same room of the same funeral home where her husband Bernard had been laid out a decade before, and years before that, her Aunt Mary."  (This is lovely as is, but it gets tangled up a little in itself?)
**LOVE the last graph!

Pamela,

I think we're doing both.  Mish suggested we repost our reviews here (I think that's what she suggested, I'm a little befuddled these days) so that we could talk about them as a group as well.

And I don't think we have rules.  Except for the one that says "be respectful of one another." 

Do we?

Peace!
Sarah

I woke up afraid Ellie would never speak to me again after this review.  Ellie, I forgot to say that as your story progresses, there will be plenty of opportunity to weave in what I suggested you leave out. the hok of the chapter is in the big stuff---I am very interested on a personal level to see how you cope with all these traumas.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Well aren't you a busy lady? Because you are going somewhere with this: "The story that unfolded includes some big events, but is mostly a story of revelation and learning," which is much more interesting than a recitation of facts, I suggest you condense or eliminate the information overload.~~~

Example: I would cut out graphs 3.4.5.6. As we read along, not particularly fascinated by this info, we come to graph seven which should be HUGH--->I had gone through divorce, bankruptcy, and two bouts of breast cancer, I decided to just give up for awhile. In 1997 we had to sell our family home..."---->now truly, which bit of information is going to grab us, the name of a book you almost wrote, or the horrific ordeals of your life? ~~~

Also I would divide the graphs to give us a chance to catch our breath and for easier reading.~~~

Memoir, right: the events in your life AND how you respond to them. I have also read Ch 2, the beginning of the story. It is going to be an interesting ride, and one, I can see swirled with humor.