Evaluation and Evolution

Prelude to a post

Before we get started I would like to say thank you to all who took the time. Comments were generally positive especially since I put silence and lack of response in the positive column. However, the people whose opinion and advice matters most made a few suggestions. More clarity of writing was requested, so I shall strip away the layers of excess and make this next post less work. My intent was not to preen for the grandstand and I hope that all will bear with me while I find my voice.

I read a memoir by Martin Amis( Experience) a few years ago, and Saturday I read a review of his new novel House of Meetings in the International Herald Tribune. In this piece the reviewer wrote how Mr Amis stated that "part of the job of the novelist is writing fiction that other people have in them". I read the review a few hours before having a conversation which sent me straight back to that particular phrase. I wasn't writing fiction but I was trying to write in someone else's voice before clearly defining my own. I skipped a step(or three).

All of this is to say that "I" will make an appearance in this next post. I will give something of myself in exchange for the time you are giving me.

A close and respected friend of mine told me a few years ago that his decision to begin writing had forced him, after a lifetime, to look at life from the first person point of view, he then expressed how difficult it had been and still was. I nodded as if I understood and sipped my coffee. I honestly thought I did, until the past few hours when, while staring at this gray keyboard attempting to write, memory opened the filing cabinet, sifted through its contents and brought me back to that unusually warm September day.

I would also like to say feedback: positive, negative, indifferent is welcome. Worry not, I can take it if you think it schlock and it remains the only was I'll get better.

Lastly I wanted to say that, though I know I'm the only one counting, I have referred to myself 26 times in different ways in this short post and that can tend to make one self conscious as that is more than one reference per line.

The "lost in the city" post will follow as soon as its proofed.

thanks,
Lost in Moldova