Friday, August 11, 2017

Distracted? Me? Never

It all started with grace and ended up standing on the sea front with Munch the cow.

You see I was writing my article for the next issue of The Bay and I wanted to describe grace. (The grace of God that is not the natural elegant grace some people - not me - are born with.) And then I realised I only had about sixty words left of my allocated word count in which to explain it. 

As Monty said to me in Zac's, 'Philip Yancey needed 300 pages for his book Amazing Grace.'
'Huh,' I shrugged. 'He obviously doesn't have my way with words. Just because he's a best-selling author ...'

I am good at writing concisely. Much better in fact than writing ... whatever the opposite of concisely is. Wordily maybe. 

Some time ago I submitted a short story for an anthology and was asked for a biography in about 100 words to accompany it. I duly wrote my life story and it amounted to sixty words. This inspired me to write a short ditty. Bear with me, I am getting to the point. So I thought I'd include said ode here on my blog. But do you think I can find it anywhere on the computer?

In fact I discover that I can't find any of my old writings. I summon Husband, who Knows About These Things. He looks in all the same places I've looked then says, 'Don't know.'

They must be there somewhere. I hope. In the meantime I am amusing myself getting distracted by writings I'd completely forgotten about, some I am fairly certain I didn't even write. But how are they on my computer then? Anyway I shall no doubt publish some of these wonders from my pen - possibly - over the next weeks. And if you recognise anything as yours please tell me so I can credit you appropriately.

Munch the Cow who wants to be a moosician is worthy of publication I have no doubt; others are just odd.

I did find my little ditty eventually. I used it in the introduction to Dear God, letters to God from a mother (published by Kevin Mayhew) in 1998 - that's nearly twenty years ago! Lumme! So here it is.

My life
My life fits in to sixty words
the who, the what, the where.
But where in that is me?
The why, the how, the who of me
the hopes and prayers
the dreads and fears
the thoughts and deeds
the lies and truths
the real and lost ...
the glimmer within
that dares to dream.

My life fits in a thousand years,
just.





2 comments:

Sharon said...

It does sound like you got off track a bit. Munch sounds interesting.

Liz Hinds said...

I was so far off track!