SIX WORD MEMOIRS

Have you heard about Six Word Memoirs? They are causing quite a buzz these days. You have to sum up your entire life in exactly six words. There's a website out there somewhere, that lists a bunch that have been sent in, and they run the gamut from thought-provoking to downright hilarious. Some are a little of both , like "Happily married until she discovered affair." I've been playing around with several combinations of my own, and so far, this is my favorite:

FOUND SOMEONE WHO KEEPS ME LAUGHING

I apologize for giving you only the blog entries that I can pull from my head for the next couple of days. I will be back in Wimberley Friday though, and have several good ones saved up for you, as soon as I can access my photos: Our whirlwind tour of the Hill Country with niece Megan and her husband Ben, who were down here for SXSW; dining with the Hall clan at t'afia; Cafe Susannah music event featuring Slim Richey and the Kat's Meow; my first day on the job at Bella Vista Ranch; and a pot luck dinner at the Arnosky's blue barn, with live entertainment.

I had become rather lax about writing in my journal for a while. Since I was busy trying to transfer the previous 3 year's worth of entries over to this blog, I had to keep my rate of adding new stories lower than my rate of transfer, or I had no hope of ever getting it caught up to real time. Now it's time to get cranked back up to creative mode, and beyond. Although the friends and family members I sent my hand-written letters to remained loyal regardless of their infrequency, blog readers will not. If I go too long without posting, I've lost them.

Another thing I've discovered is that they have fairly short attention spans. I've spent a lot of time reading the blogs of others lately, and 'tho I can sit reading a book for hours, the minute a blog starts to ramble, I'm outta there! (am I rambling?) Also, even if I was willing to wade through the early prehistoric chapters of a Michner novel (the ones without humans), a blog had better grab me with its first sentence, or I will go no further.

Thanks to a recently received rejection letter, I now realize that most of my early stories not only rambled, they were also way too wordy. Because I don't enjoy typing near as much as I enjoy writing in the beautiful journals and using the wonderful assortment of writing implements that John keeps me supplied with, I naturally began to condense the stories as I transferred them over to the computer. Trying to rework them for submission to magazines and journals that had strict word limits, had me slashing them even further.

All of this, I think, is working to shape me into a better writer. All I know is, when I go back to read my early ramblings, I am embarassed by my own verbocity.