#AtoZChallenge - BLOGGERS WERE CHILDREN TOO! - D is for di Gesu (Michael)

As it's the first Wednesday of the month, it's time to post for the Insecure Writers Support Group. Just a short one today before we move onto Michael di Gesu.

Today my post is Discretion When Editing.

I'm sharing some of the struggles our golden oldies had:

OSCAR WILDE would spend an entire morning putting a comma into one of his poems, then spend the afternoon removing it.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY rewrote the ending of Farewell to Arms 39 times before he was satisfied. When asked what the hold up was, he said: 'Getting the words right.'

VLADIMIR NABOKOV said his pencils outlived his erasers.

TRUMAN CAPOTE believed in the scissors more than the pencil.

So where does discretion come in? Writers in the past lived in a different era, a less hurried era, and they had the luxury of time to 'get it right'.

TRUMAN CAPOTE would stretch out on his couch, cigarette in one hand and a sherry in the other. His friends became consultants in the publishing process. He would read extracts aloud to his friends. 'I've got to be puffing and sipping.' Ah, those were the days...

But today, deadlines must be met. We might revise in a state of agitation or ecstasy. We can feel dumped, dejected, depressed, despondent...enough Ds?

So discretion might mean knowing when to stop editing. Can we afford a whole day moving a comma?

So now I move onto my regular A - Z posts... 

on the theme - BLOGGERS WERE CHILDREN TOO! 

Yesterday we had Cathy Olliffe-Webster.

Today:

D is for di Gesu (Michael) @ ...in time

Michael explains - since I couldn't get to my earlier pics, I thought I would send you something that meant so much to me as a kid. The first time I went to Disney World in Florida. One particular attraction left me speechless and even though it has been there for over forty years, it still packs a punch. I had revisited there last year, and took some amazing pics of it. 

The ride/attraction is called "It's a small world." AND since we have friends from around the globe, I find this extremely appropriate for the occasion.

I was born in NYC, NY. USA

I grew up in the suburbs only twelve miles from midtown Manhattan. I lived in the smallest house amongst the mansions... My parents worked non-stop to be able to afford the neighborhood and my brothers' and my private school.

It was an amazing yet frustrating experience. As you could imagine growing up with kids who had everything was hard when my parents could only afford the basics. I began working at eleven with a paper route and baby sat for income until I was discovered by a photographer to model... That's when my life changed ...

My favorite home is a toss up between two places, so completely different. My lakefront condo that was located in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and the current condo I live in now, a chic condo located across from Lincoln Park and Lake Michigan in Chicago, IL. The two residences are very different from each other, both beautiful in their own ways ... one beach and nature oriented and one urban. Both an exciting place to live.

My best childhood memory was in the summer at the New Jersey shore when I was three. We were at the arcade and my dad won a game and he let me pick the prize ... Not either of my brothers. I was so thrilled and excited. It was the first time ever. I picked a two-foot stuffed mouse. I will never forget it. I loved stuffed animals as a little boy and I had that mouse for years.

My worst childhood memory was when my black lab got sick and died ... he was my best friend.

Michael's living/work room, where he's penning those bestsellers!

I currently live in a vintage 1920's condo, located in Chicago,IL. The classic nine-foot plaster-molded ceilings and hardwood floors speak to the designer in me. The moment I walked through the marble entry with crystal chandeliers and plastered dome with etched Greek figures, I knew I was home.

Latte in Quebec City

More about Michael: After fifteen years of modeling in New York, I spent the past eight years as an interior designer in Chicago. I decided to take my creative talents and write/illustrate my first m/g novel, Amber and the Whispering Willows. A year later, I wrote The Blinded Gardener, an edgy y/a contemporary. I've been editing for the past six months and I am in the process of querying. I never knew how wonderful it could be to write novels ... I'm addicted. 


Visit Michael's blog, ...in time here...

Fascinating to learn more about Michael today. Visit tomorrow to find out about Sarah Pearson and maybe find out how those Empty Pages are going.

#AtoZChallenge - BLOGGERS WERE CHILDREN TOO! - C is for Cathy (Life on the Muskoka River)

Hello!

Regular followers and visitors to this site will know I'm using BLOGGERS WERE CHILDREN TOO! for my theme this year. I hope you're enjoying reading about bloggers, some you know and some you may not yet know, as they respond to some prompts I sent out. I've been so grateful for their responses as it helped me to get to know them better, admire their stunning cuteness as babes, and delighted me with random facts.

Thank you Adult Bloggers for your heartfelt responses. Thank you readers for visiting my posts. I hope you'll leave a comment and if you'd like to follow the link to my respondents' blogs they'd be delighted to meet you.

Rock on A- Z Challenge. (Click to read more posts...)

Yesterday was Laura Bambery...

Today:

C is for Cathy (Life on the Muskoka River) Olliffe-Webster

I WAS BORN IN:  Weston, Ontario, Canada. Back then, Weston was its own town but it has since been gobbled up by the megalopolis that is Toronto. I think it's now simply referred to as "the west end." My first two years in "the Big Smoke" is the only time I've lived in a city.

I GREW UP IN:  My father was a railway engineer (for the Canadian Pacific Railway) and because of his job we moved frequently. I grew up in two places, mainly - Midland, Ontario (on the shore of Georgian Bay (on Lake Huron, one of the Great Lakes), about two hours north of Toronto) and then Markham, Ontario, which is only about a half hour north of T.O. 

  Midland was a rowdy northern frontier kind of a place. People either worked for the railway or for lake freighters. It was a mix of French Canadians and red-necked white folk, and they all liked nothing better than a few beers at the hotel in nearby Port McNicholl.

  Markham was "small town" in every sense of the word when I lived there. A farming community, it was conservative and straitlaced and really rather boring. Since I left it has become a bedroom community for Toronto and is now huge and unrecognizable. Like Australia, Canada is a relatively "new" country and is still being developed.

  My parents also had a cottage on Twelve Mile Lake in the Haliburton Highlands, about two-and-a-half hours north of Markham. We spent every summer there. I learned to swim, waterski, canoe and how to french kiss. It was the best place on earth.

MY FAVOURITE HOME WAS IN: The cottage. (Sigh.) I wish my parents hadn't sold it.

MY BEST CHILDHOOD MEMORY IS: In Grade 4 I won first prize for poetry in a class contest. There were also prizes for essay writing and storytelling. All three winners were taken to the A &W drive-in restaurant for hamburgers - in my cool teacher's extremely cool 1967 Mustang convertible. I don't know what was sweeter, the root beer or recognition for my writing. But I'll never forget cruising with the top down on a warm summer evening in June.

MY WORST CHILDHOOD MEMORY IS: There are so many: the time my boyfriend's mother caught us necking on the couch; the time I ran away from home; one of the many, many fights with my father... but I think the worst was this - I was at my uncle's cottage, hanging around with a neighbour girl. We had fun, I think, until we got to fighting over something. God knows what it was. Anyway, I shot my mouth off to the kid, made her cry, and then marched off in an indignant, dramatic huff. I got back to my uncle's cottage and my mom said, "where's your beach robe?" I had left it at the girl's cottage. I begged my mother not to make me go back but she insisted, probably to teach me a lesson about being mean and nasty. So I slunk back with my tail between my legs, apologized to the girl and asked for my robe back. The girl's mother gave me a lecture that was so sharp that I can still feel its sting.

TODAY I LIVE IN:  Bracebridge, Ontario, on the banks of the Muskoka River. I live in a tiny log cabin built in 1880. It was one of the first homes built in this area. Bracebridge is in Muskoka, the heart of Ontario's cottage country. In the summer it's where the rich and famous come to play and it's not unheard of to spot Goldie Hawn, Kurt Russell, Kate Hudson, Mike Myers or Shania Twain on the quaint main street. I made a fool of myself, once, cornering Myers in a boutique. I was such an ASS. He looked scared but he didn't sue. :)

PROUDEST WRITER MOMENT:  When I finished the 50,000 word goal in NaNoWriMo. It was a spectacular feeling.

RANDOM FACT ABOUT ME: I'm shy and always nervous meeting new people. It's like I'm afraid they'll find out what I'm REALLY like...

Cathy Olliffe-Webster is a writer and graphic artist living in a 130-year-old log cabin on the banks of the Muskoka River, near Bracebridge, Ontario, Canada. She shares her life with husband Dave, sons Angus and Sam, two cats, a squirrel-sized dog and an almost-finished novel.. Visit Cathy @ http://muskokariver.blogspot.com.au/

I hope you enjoyed learning about Cathy. Now tomorrow tune in the read about Michael di Gesu's childhood along with the Insecure Writer's Group post.


If you have a moment, pop across to RomanticFridayWriters where you'll find a flash fiction story every day! Today's is a real tear jerker.

#AtoZChallenge - BLOGGERS WERE CHILDREN TOO! - B is for BAMBREY, LAURA BAMBREY from DAILY DODO.

Hello!

Regular followers and visitors to this site will know I'm using BLOGGERS WERE CHILDREN TOO! for my theme this year. I hope you're enjoying reading about bloggers, some you know and some you may not yet know, as they respond to some prompts I sent out. I've been so grateful for their responses as it helped me to get to know them better, admire their stunning cuteness as babes, and delighted me with random facts.

Thank you Adult Bloggers for your heartfelt responses. Thank you readers for visiting my posts. I hope you'll leave a comment and if you'd like to follow the link to my respondents' blogs they'd be delighted to meet you.

Rock on A- Z Challenge. (Visit more posts here).


Yesterday was Ann Best...

Today:

B is for BAMBREY, LAURA BAMBREY from DAILY DODO

Laura in back with her little sister in front. Dressed in traditional
Welsh national dress.

I WAS BORN IN:  Poole, Dorset, UK.

I GREW UP IN: Mid-west Wales. We moved there when I was 3 years old to live on a dilapidated smallholding in the middle of nowhere. It was magical!

MY FAVOURITE HOME WAS IN: The one and only in Wales. We had so much space – I thought this was our god-given right as kids, but I’ve come to appreciate the freedom we had as I’ve got older.

MY BEST CHILDHOOD MEMORY IS: Sitting in our large hay-barn with the wind and rain howling outside. It was made from corrugated iron, so sounded fabulous – and made me feel so small.

MY WORST CHILDHOOD MEMORY IS: The dread of going to school when I was being bullied. I still remember the feeling. Desperate to run away but completely powerless to do so.

TODAY I LIVE IN: Ashburton, Devon, UK.

PROUDEST WRITER MOMENT: Winning my first ever actual THING with a poem – I won a voucher and bought a lamp with my prize money – which I broke within an hour of having it – thought my heart would break too.

RANDOM FACT ABOUT ME: If I had to choose between cheese or chocolate for the rest of my life – I’d choose cheese.

Catch Laura on her blog, Daily Dodo. You'll find some wonderful flash fiction and writerly advice.




I hope you enjoyed learning a little more about Laura. Call by tomorrow to hear about Canadian Cathy Olliffe-Webster's childhood. She's a real hoot! 

#AtoZChallenge - BLOGGERS WERE CHILDREN TOO! - A is for Ann - Ann Carbine Best

Hello!

Regular followers and visitors to this site will know I'm using BLOGGERS WERE CHILDREN TOO! for my theme this year. Today we begin reading about bloggers' lives, some you know and some you may not yet know, as they respond to some prompts I sent out. I've been so grateful for their responses as it helped me to get to know them better, admire their stunning cuteness as babes, and delight in the with random facts they shared.

Thank you Adult Bloggers for your heartfelt responses. Thank you readers for visiting my posts. I hope you'll leave a comment and if you'd like to follow the link to my respondents' blogs at the bottom of the post they'd be delighted to meet you.

Rock on A- Z Challenge. (Visit more posts here).

Today:

A is for Ann - Ann Carbine Best

Ann somewhere between the age of 3 - 5. She
tells me she hasn't grown a lot since then, lol!

I WAS BORN IN -- Salt Lake City, Utah (USA) in “Mormon” country, on May 13, 1940, a year and a half before Pearl Harbor. I was too young to remember anything about the war, but of course my parents did. My mother was 33, my father 32 years old when they got married, and thus there was never any chance of my father having to go to war. My mother was a housewife of the forties and fifties. My father eked out a living first as a service station attendant in the 1930s and 1940s-- his skill and talent was repairing cars -- and in the fifties he had various jobs, one selling and repairing washing machines. In some ways we were poor financially, but my parents were as frugal as one can be. My mother was born in 1905, my father 13 months later. They’re of the “greatest generation.” They lived through the Great Depression. They learned from experience how to be frugal.

I GREW UP IN Salt Lake City. I lived there until I was 19. Then I moved south about 35 miles to Brigham Young University where I rented an apartment off campus with five other girls.

MY FAVORITE HOME WAS IN -- Salt Lake City, my only childhood home. But I had a favorite home away from home. My mother grew up in Santaquin, Utah, a fruit farming town about fifty miles south of Salt Lake where during my youth I always spent two or three weeks every summer with my country cousins. My best childhood memories are of those times.

MY WORST CHILDHOOD MEMORY IS --  of an evening at the Great Salt Lake, a salty lake that’s a remnant of a great ice age lake that lies west of Salt Lake City. A resort called Saltair was a booming place in the thirties when my mother was young. But I remember it as a place that was beginning to crumble. I never rode the roller coaster because Daddy said it wasn’t safe.

Some of the beach was still very good though, and on warm evenings Daddy would often drive us to the lake in his 1930 Chevrolet that bumped and rattled over an old, now non-existent road. In the distance we could see clouds of brine flies hovering in the air, and smell the briny lake before we saw it.

At the lake, my parents and little brother watched me and my younger sister wade far out in the salty lake that was too salty to support fish life but so salty one could float in it without sinking. I had been assured one couldn’t sink in the lake. But I was only ten years old, frightened in the not too distant past by tales like Little Red Riding Hood and given to flights of fancy.

My sister and I had to wade quite a distance before the salty water reached my waist and my sister’s upper chest so we could lie on our backs and float without our feet or buttocks touching the lake’s bed; where under a twilight sky that began to turn a deep brilliant desert red, we floated side by side, maybe a few yards apart in the water, the inland gulls circling and cawing above us.

It wasn’t very long before I noticed the waves swelling around us, and felt as if we were riding the crest of a huge watery creature. With the pungent taste of salt on my lips and the hump of Stansbury Island within view on the western horizon, I suddenly felt an undertow around my legs. I had no idea how far below my feet the bottom was. I only knew that something seemed to be pulling me toward that hump, pulling me away from the shore and my parents and brother who were now specks, and I panicked.

I turned my head enough to see my sister calmly floating near me. Was she as terrified as I was? Sometime later, I don’t remember when, I found out that her experience that evening wasn’t the same as mine. She only remembers easily floating in the waves while I remember the terror I felt. I was certain we weren’t going to get back to shore.

A few years later we both took swimming lessons together, but after that evening at the Lake I have been mildly afraid of water, and even in a swimming pool never want to be far from the edge. I would never want to have to swim a long distance to save my life!

Ann lives in one of these duplexes in Harrisonburg,Virginia

TODAY I LIVE IN -- Harrisonburg, Virginia. Utah is my first beloved home state; Virginia, my second. Virginia is where I’m living the rest of my life.

Ann as a young mother with her husband Larry and their
children,  happier times before tragedy struck

PROUDEST WRITER MOMENT -- Having my first full-length book, a memoir, published by a small press on May 17, 2011, four days after my 71st birthday. The “moment” would be when I held the print copy in my hands for the first time.

RANDOM FACT ABOUT ME -- Gosh, I don’t know. Maybe that I don’t have a lot of patience. Certainly not the patience my friend Carolyn had that day we sat outside in the playground of the junior high school. We sat because Carolyn had polio when she was nine (in 1948). Her stricken right leg had been operated on for the second time, and she didn’t have to participate in sports. The teacher didn’t mind if I often sat with her. On this particular day a bee landed on her glasses. She didn’t move a muscle until it finally left the glasses and flew toward me. It landed on my forehead. Instead of copying my friend’s patience, I instantly swatted at the bee, and got stung. My forehead swelled until I looked like an alien from outer space.

 ANNE'S BIO:

I’m the author of In the Mirror, A Memoir of Shattered Secrets, Imprisoned, and An Ozark Memory as well as stories, poems, and essays that have won awards and been published in various magazines and anthologies.  I’m a mother of three daughters and a son, a grandmother of almost-eight wonderful children, and full-time caregiver of a lovely disabled daughter.


Want to visit Ann? She blogs @ AnnCarbineBest'sBlog

I hope you enjoyed reading about Ann. Join me tomorrow for B is for Bambrey, Laura Bambrey from Daily Dodo.


Want to visit RomanticFridayWriters A-Z Challenge - flash fiction every day? Go here.

#AtoZChallenge - BLOGGERS WERE CHILDREN TOO! - My theme for April.

We're all individuals, right? Right!

Here is my great reveal - for the A - Z Challenge in April I've contacted bloggers whose name/blog/surname/whatever, starts with the relevant letter of the day and have sent them questions to answer about their childhood, accompanied by a childhood picture.

This should be easy, right? Wrong! Overall, I only had a couple of refusals and a couple of ignores, but getting the answers/pics back was a matter of persistence. Getting the individual posts set up has taken me far more time than I'd imagined as I cropped and tweaked photos and posts. However, I want to pre-schedule them so I have more time to go around reading/commenting on your posts if you're in the challenge. AND I've just decided I'm entering RomanticFridayWriters in the challenge too - short, short flash fiction every day!  What about you? Are you in or not?

But hard work or not, folks, these posts here at L'Aussie Writing are going to be super intriguing. Some of my respondents were so honest and generous with their information they made me quite emotional. I know I'm a softie, but they really tore at my heartstrings. We didn't all grow up in an ideal situation that's for sure, but it is often those trials and tribulations at an early age that mould us into the person we become. Maybe it gives us an edge, makes us fight harder, makes us overcome early obstacles and succeed in whatever path we choose in our lives.

So, do follow my posts when you have a moment. I know there's going to be over 1,000+ other posts to peruse and you can't read them all. But if you call in here, you'll love reading the stories, seeing the pictures and getting to know some things about bloggers' experiences that will make you wonder...and make you appreciate them even more...

Click on the badge if you've just decided to join the challenge, or to check out who else will be posting!

So, are you doing the A - Z Challenge? If so, what is your theme?