Vinettish

…and other mutterings on 9/11.

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Canon on the Lynx, 2008.

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Himself: Another good day at work, in the evening another good walk and a struggle to discover why my computer’s Photoshop 5 will not save his “Trees” to jpg format. We discovered that it will save everything else to that format. After running everything through both computers and keeping in mind that his camera ate a disc at the wedding, we are thinking that it may be his camera. He’s still working on the problem. Could be the discs too. It’s endless detection. Herself: I’m playing with some of the tall ship photos. It works fine now on all but the “Trees.” Tonight dinner with the Delightful Jim’s at Felipe’s in Little Italy. Somewhere I will fit in a slice of cake with white frosting. Oh, I am addicted? Today: Swim in the morning, lunch with the poets….oh, I admire those ladies, and a quiet 67th afternoon. Oooooooo: Himself brought breakfast, coffee, the paper, and a delightfully decorated bag to me in bed this morning. Inside the bag a card that made me laugh, a book: “Warrior Queens,” by D. A. Butler, and a flat out stunning garnet ring. He spoils me so. Food: Wed: Green beans and coffee, ½ sandwich and V8, 4 chocolate chip cookies…too many oh the guilt, meat loaf, steamed squash, 1 point bar. Thurs: beans and coffee, tostada, Felipe’s for dinner.

You know that I keep a blog doggedly at times. Over the years, I’ve found a format I like to work with…a photo and side bar with daily happenings, but lately I have felt little connection to the main content I put on the page. Often there seems no focus to the words I write, no hook or core to my writing, or perhaps just no cohesiveness. Sometimes I feel disconnected or even that the writing is perfunctory. I continue to post those days, with bullets to emphasize the fragmentations, with bullets to add some order to my confusions.

Another daily writer, Eleanor Roosevelt, produced at least five hundred words six days a week for her My Day column from 1936 through 1962 with only a four day break at her husband’s death. She used her column as a springboard for ideas she felt the public should know about, and even when she could no longer hold a pen she kept on writing. “Never a great prose stylist,” the edited columns by David Emblidge collected in “My day” tell us, “She used her loyal secretaries to clean up, type, and transmit the “My Day” columns by wire…”

I have no secretaries. I’m not one to wave my springboards in the air…..unless they are chocolate. Obviously, I need to retool my brain.

I follow the writings of my friend John Bailey who also is faltering with the blog style he has chosen to use. He finds himself uncomfortable with the format, and he’s been toying with returning to old patterns in his writing as well as his layout.

I’m of the mind that any writing is better than no writing, but I am tired of the catch as catch can of the “any.”

This year, I’m spurred on by our workshop writing instructor, Donna Boyle, who asked us all what are our Semester goals while handing out a paper on Vignettes. Where Mrs. Roosevelt often wrote from the heart with a beginning middle and end, a vignette is a short impressionistic scene that focuses on one moment.

My grandmother used to say she had Unitarian leanings. I find today that my writings appear to have vignettish leanings.

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Links:

Google Books: My Day

American Experience: My Day

My Day: A comprehensive electronic edition of Eleanor Roosevelt’s My Day Newspaper Column

Wikipedia: Vignette