A Piece in Progress: What do you think?
Posted by blk1 on July 13, 2008
I’m up on Sunday morning and it’s 7:30. I slept well and that will make today much more fun. I am hooked into a writing piece that began on my Image/text blog and I moved it to the Eanthology with a just a bit of proofing. I wondered what more I needed now that the text was out there without its image. I had it up late one night and by the next morning I had some great feedback. I responded and got more.
I shared the piece with Mary and got some very supportive comments. Just reading it out loud was so helpful.
Last night it was back into the piece and really reworking it. I don’t know if it’s better but it’s just exploding. I think I will put it up on my blog with this reflection, but I am getting ready to put it back up on the EA.
Original:
For the Love of the SouthWest
Funny, as I was graduating college in 1971, lots of my hippie contemporaries who were not yet ready to begin careers, looked westward. I was all about crossing the Atlantic, and spending my first summer travel adventure in England and Austria. A European history major, I was not yet bitten by the see America bug, and I remained untouched for many years, saving my summers for more trips to Europe while my younger brothers traveled together across the country overwhelmed by the parks, the deserts, the Pacific Ocean, Las Vegas. I was the family snob.
But when I began to teach high school, Georgia O’keefe came into my life. A great documentary about her on Channel 13 turned me to her art and to her Southwest.
My dreaming began to take shape when I found my writer’s identity with the help of Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones and one day at school, I picked up the phone and called the number on the back page of her book. Natalie answered the phone. Natalie Goldberg graciously shared information about her upcoming summer workshop in Taos, New Mexico and my southwest travel plans began in earnest.
Georgia and Natalie joined forces and I fell in love with the southwest, then and forever. Many of us were captured in the spell of the southwest. Maybe a second home? Maybe?
For the next 4 summers I found my way back to the area: writing, riding in the mountains, but somehow, as hard as I tried, I would always be a visitor. Too far from the Hudson River.
But I never lost my passion for the feel of the southwest and Tuvia joined me in January for a return to Tucson and it was still overwhelming and overpowering and thrilling.
I am an American. I am an American.
Bonnie
July 13th, 2008 at 9:55 am
Hi Bonnie
You have definitely expanded the piece, and it is evocative, for me, of my own time spent in Northern New Mexico, particularly Taos and Chimayo. (One more thing we share, along with a longtime fondness for Natalie’s work!)
I recommend that you reread this carefully, looking at your sentences. For example, the third paragraph from the end that begins with “Natalie” is two sentences. The length of the second sentence is distracting to me – it packs so much info in it, that I feel like I can’t catch my breath. As I read it I have to pile so much information on top of other information that I kind of lose what the sentence is saying. Does that make sense? So that is my recommendation, to read the whole think looking at the sentences. The length of some of them could be varied and would benefit the flow of the piece.
Having said that, I love it. I think it’s surprising we never met earlier!
Lynn
[Reply]
July 13th, 2008 at 11:15 am
Thanks Lynn for responding so quickly. I think you were on it in less than 30 minutes and that’s great for me and for our SI. I am trying to model the power of our blogging community and here you are offering me feedback that might offer our fellows a reason to blog beyond our SI and the end of the Eanthology’s community.
And thanks for your specific feedback. I was actually writing this revision and reworking it as I read to aloud to Tuvia. This version is really the 3rd-4th. I am ready to move to the editing more now.
And yes, our paths seem to have been moving in the same directions. How about that?
Bonnie
[Reply]
July 13th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
Bonnie,
Hi! It has taken me a while to clear many end of year things from my plate and I at last had time to read this. I really enjoyed how you took me through your journey – from college “snob” to venturing “beyond your own roots.” I am also struck by more “spiritual” connections between us – my husband and I are hooked on the Southwest as well. Several years ago we spent Christmas and New Years in Santa Fe. We’ve taken long and short trips around New Mexico and Arizona – and next month we are heading to Albuquerque to see the city which has always been just an airport transfer. So I know what you mean about how that area can inspire – we are still more prone to travel in Italy, but can’t help going west as an alternative. Of course we also love the Hudson Valley!
One thing I was wondering about your piece – since I do know the areas you mention, I was wondering if others would get the same mental images that I do. I am reluctant to say the trite comment kids always fall back on, “Could you put in more detail?” But I am wondering if a few descriptive phrases even about one of O’Keefe’s pieces depicting the Southwest would give the reader who does not know this something to connect with. I know that, for me, I never appreciated the color brown until I saw the pueblo homes, the terra cotta buildings and just the expanse of land juxtaposed against blue…
That aside, I think you have made some great edits so far – I definitely see that it has taken hold of you and you are working on something important. Keep at it – but I guess I also know it could never feel complete – that’s what happens to me with a lot of my writing. I am always saying, Oh, I’ll get back to it another time, but call it a final “draft” for now. Thank goodness for that useful oxymoron!
Thanks for publishing this – your blog continues to grow into a fabulous place to visit!
Grace : )
[Reply]
July 13th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
Thanks for reading and thinking about my piece. I’m hoping that you get to check out my ELL video just below Hancock, I believe just to see if it connects to your memory of the day.
As for your suggestions, I agree that’s what might be missing. I’ve been adding a bit to it as I continue to work on it. I feel good that the structure is there and I can move to tightening and editing. I think that this kind of text only writing is a thing of the past for me. By next year I would bet that photos and video will be included in the Eanthology.
BTW, I’m wishing that we set up an ning network instead of using edublogs. I am hoping to move everyone to one and maybe share it with another SI like Western Mass.
I want to see what we can do to get people willing to blog beyond the SI and create a Slice style community.
Bonnie
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