Autobiography: Will Yours be Fact or fiction?

What kind of autobiography are you going to write? Fact or fiction? I’ve been thinking about this issue, as the main protagonist in my current W.I.P, Under the Bed,  is writing an autobiography set mostly during the McCarthy years. Her dilemma is what “truths" to include and which to omit.

Memory

If the book is an autobiography rather than a posthumous biography, then one key factor is going to be memory.  Try discussing a long ago event with someone close, and you will almost certainly find you both have a completely different recollection of what happened, or even where it happened.

Even without deliberate intent, memory is the most unreliable witness to our lives.Share on Twitter

Truth or Dare

Autobiographies tend to be either serious works, or tell all. I’m dividing them into the categories of Truth (Seriously, it's all true)  or Dare (I Dare you read this " tell all" book) They both have their place and both fulfil different needs, just like different  genres in fiction.  The author's all carefully chose what to include. Sometimes what's been omitted might have given a more realistic insight. But who am I to say? Like any history, peoples lives are open to interpretation.

Behind the Lights: Music and Movie Stars

Music and movie stars lives are often filled with drama and tragedy. Some have more than most. Tammy Wynette and Liz Taylor both spring to mind.  Tammy Wynette's autobiography Stand By Your Man, touches not only on her singing career, but also the abuse she received at the hands of her ex-husband George Jones. So while the style was light reading the subject matter was not. So, Truth or Dare?Elizabeth Taylor’s autobiography, was definitely under the “Dare to Tell All’ category. ( Forgive me, I don’t recall the title of the one I read in the early ‘90s). But aside from the trail of husbands, Liz Taylor’s life was also filled with ill-health and endless surgeries. Despite all she went through, she became a great champion of AIDS awareness and fundraising. Despite the “tell-all” nature of the book, it was both entertaining and interesting to hear about her marriages and how her life changed both because and in spite of them.

The Door Stop Autobiography

Why do people feel the need to give every last detail? The doorstop autobiography that comes to mind is My Life, Bill Clinton’s autobiography published shortly after he left office. The man has certainly led an interesting life, and I loved all the photo’s he included , especially the ones of he and Hillary in their university days. But you would think with all the people the man knows, and has influence with, that a good editor would be on his list. And that's the truth.... 1008 pages?.... Really?

Look into My Soul Autobiography

Speaking of presidents, I read and really enjoyed President Obama’s Biography - Dreams from My Father. This was back in those heady days of being thrilled Bush was out, inspired by America electing its first African-American president, and hope was still alive. It was a readable length, and truly interesting from the perspective of where the man had come from.What made it even more valuable, was it had been written in 1995, years before Obama became President, so it was not the self aggrandizing work it would have been if penned after the election. Rather, it showed an optimism for a better world, from the perspective of a young man trying to make sense of his heritage. It rang true with me.

 Multiple View Points.

This to me is the best kind of Biography. The only one I’ve read where this has been done effectively was about the painter Jackson Pollock: To A Violent Grave by Jeffrey Potter. The method the author used leaves “the truth” to be decided by the reader. It’s a group of interviews with people who knew Pollock . Aside from being a fascinating look at the beginning of the abstract expressionist movement in New York in the 1950s at a time when the Hamptons were a little known artist enclave, it gives the reader completely different perspectives on events in the artist's life. It touches not only on his painting, but his alcoholism and his relationship with his wife Lee Krasner. She was an artist in her own right, but her own career was  eclipsed by the looming presence of Jackson Pollock. Frankly the guy seemed like a total jerk, but I can’t deny his innovative process which changed the landscape of experimental painting back in the day.So of all these I mention  - how many of them are true? And how much is the style in which they are written  geared to a particular market? If the latter is the case, then does that make supposedly non-fiction works so very different from fiction?Do you feel the autobiographies you have read have been fact or fiction? What will your autobiography be like? Truth or Dare?

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5 Books made into Films - Which Version is a Modern Classic?

A book or film created in the 20th or 21st Century is considered a Modern Classic if it has a quality likely to have enduring significance or popularity. When a book is made into a film, which version is the modern classic or can it be both?The novel I'm currently working on, Under The Bed, is set in New York City in the late 60's. I'm very interested in how location effects the narrative, so I've chosen five modern classics where location is key.

Midnight Cowboy

Midnight Cowboy by James Leo Herlihy , is a novel set in New York made famous by the cult film of the same name. The novel and film, both set in the 1960's, show the plight of Texas greenhorn Joe Buck (John Voight), who comes to New York to find his fortune as a hustler. he finds that he is the one getting 'hustled', until he meets Ratso Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman), a streetwise polio-crippled third rate con-man who initially cheats him. They team up and the unlikely pair progress from partners in shady business to comrades. Each has found his first real friend.One of the most memorable scenes from the movie is Dustin Hoffman walking across the road slamming his hand on the hood of a yellow New York cab yelling " I'm walking here! I'm walking here!”. The scene of the crowded streets, yellow taxi cabs at 58th and 6th, is quintessential New York City of the era it portrays. The book was a great read, but it's the film that's the modern classic.

The Shining

  The Shining is a psychological drama by Stephen King, who apparently became inspired during a stay at the Stanley Hotel in Ested Park Colorado. The story centers around a man and his wife who are left with their son to caretake an large isolated hotel during the winter season. The location is central to the narrative, and indeed the suspense of the novel would not exist without the isolation, which is only increased when the family are completely cut off after the heavy snows come. What follows is a slow downward spiral of suspense, which turns into a roller coaster of terror, interspersed with metaphors, repeated symbols and lots of blood . The hotel is literal awash with blood at certain intervals.Stanley Kubrick's 1980 film of the Shining is a classic in the horror movie genre. Jack Nicholson plays the deranged alcoholic, and Shelley Duvall , his wife. Through Jack Torrance , the failed writer, we see the heady days of the Overlook Hotel's past, and his son too is privy to hallucinations. The film was, in part , filmed near Mt. Hood in Oregon, though other scenes were shot in a purpose built set in Britain which was the largest set to be produced at the time. I first saw the film three years ago, and though I'm not a fan of horror, thought it was great. Then I read the book, which managed to maintain some of the suspense, but it was no match for Kubrick's masterpiece.There are some interesting social interpretations of the movie and it's metaphors on the film's Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shining_(film)

Vertigo

 Vertigo is the Alfred Hitchick movie based on the 1954 novel “D'entre les morts” by Boileau-Narcejac. The novel was specifically written for Alfred Hitchcock. For me, the film's location of San Francisco was absolutely key to the film, though the original novel was set in Paris. San Francisco was an excellent choice to place a policeman who suffers from vertigo as the hills are exceptionally steep. I'm not wild about heights myself and the one time I've felt frozen by it, was when I was working as a house painter in San Francisco and I was up a ladder in Twin Peaks, one of the highest neighbourhoods of the city. Although I was only one flight up , when I looked down the hillside, the effect was as if I was hundreds of feet in the air. I was alone, and froze for about 5 minutes,feeling dizzy and sweaty. I finally crawled down the ladder.In the film, Scottie (James Stewart) investigates the strange activities of an old friend's much-younger wife, who he fears is going insane. During his investigation, Scottie becomes dangerously obsessed with his friend's wife.Vertigo is filled with as many plot twists as there are hairpin bends on Lombard street, and Hitchcock never lets up on the suspense right up until the final scene of the film. ( FYI, the book has a completely different ending.) For San Francisco lovers, it's a rare treat to have so much of the film shot on location and there are walking tours to the various spots in the film such as Mission Dolores, Palace of the Legion of Honor, Fort Point etc. In 2009, the hotel that one of the main characters stays in toward the end of the movie, changed it's name to Hotel Vertigo. I've not read the novel, but the movie is so iconic, I cannot imagine it comparing.

Brokeback Mountain

 Brokeback Mountain is a fantastic film/ fiction combination. Set in Wyoming, the film is based on a short story by Annie Proulx, one of my favorite authors. I'm still blown away that the movie comes from a short story of a scant 27 pages, but her prose is both rich and spare. All of Annie Proulx's works pack a hell of a punch in a short space of time. Brokeback Mountain originally appeared in the New Yorker in 1997, and is included in Annie Proulx's Close Range: Wyoming Stories, published in 1999. The location is made stunning by the cinematography in the film,(actually filmed in Alberta's Rocky mountains), and indeed Brokeback Mountain itself becomes synonymous with the relationship between the two men - literally the heart of the novel.As the subject deals with the experience of modern day gay 'cowboys', (Ennis and Jack were actually herding sheep on Brokeback Mountain), the location could have been a number of states, but set in the early 60's through to the 80's, Wyoming works well. ( The choice of location is poignant after the murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay American student at the University of Wyoming who was tortured and murdered near Laramie, Wyoming in October 1998. In October 2009, the United States Congress passed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act (Matthew Shepard Act for short), and on October 28, 2009, President Barack Obama signed the legislation into law.)I re-read the story again after watching the film, and still cried when Ennis (Heath ledger) takes out the denim shirt of Jack’s (Jake Gyllenhaal) that had been kept in secret for almost 20yrs. For me, I loved both the book and the film in different ways. I felt the book gave more character insight, particular inner dialogue of Ennis, that I'd missed in the film. I'd have to say they are both Modern Classics.

To Kill A Mockingbird

To Kill A Mockingbird is such an excellent novel on so many levels. It's one of the best books written in first person I've read, handled so expertly, you don't even notice. Scout is a fantastic character and it's amazing Harper Lee could convey such adult themes through the voice of a ten year old girl. But then I could not think about Atticus Finch as anyone but Gregory Peck when I last read the novel.Written in 1960, it's set in depression-era Alabama, and again the location is integral to the work. Atticus Finch is a lawyer in the racially divided small town who agrees to defend a young black man who is accused of raping a white woman. Despite its themes, To Kill a Mockingbird has been subject to campaigns for removal from public classrooms, often challenged for its use of racial epithets. It's excellence as a modern classic in both print and film, is well deserved.So which do you think is the modern classic - the film or the book? Do you prefer to read the book first or vice versa? What are your favorite book/film combinations? Come join the discussion, and please share this post on your favorite social media.

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The Next Big Thing week 15: Interview with an Author

The Next Big Thing is an author's Work In Progress project  from SheWrites. When I read Jeri Walker-Bickett’s  blog last week,  I immediately thought what fantastic questions for any author to ask themselves. So I was thrilled that afternoon, when Jeri emailed, and invited me to participate. A Big Thank You to Jeri.What is the working title of your book?‘Under The Bed’. It comes from the phrase ‘Red’s Under the Bed’, used in 1950’s America.Where did the idea come from for the book?I was set to write the sequel to my first book Radio Echo, catching up with the characters a few years after the end of WWII, but I decided to spread my wings as a writer, switched countries and found a completely different voice. The 50’s anti-Communist era in America struck a chord with me as part of the backdrop. In doing my research and seeing how widespread the effect of McCarthyism was, I didn’t want to focus on the more publicized Hollywood Blacklist, so decided to move cross country and settle my characters in New York.  What genre does your book fall under?Literary fiction. Specifically mid-Century historical literary fiction. Set in both the early 50's and late 60's, makes it a tricky time frame, as some camps argue historical fiction has to be 50 years in the past. Other’s say it can be considered historical fiction if the time period - and its depiction - is at the core of the story. I think if the work involves major political or social events of the time and the character’s role in those events are interlinked, it’s historical.Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?I'll let the two main characters in the novel comment on this.Midge: “I know Izzie said I was a pissy mess the other week, but I'm trying darling, I really am. Putting on a few pounds wasn't a crime the last time I looked, but pudgy is such an ugly word. And these Chanel suits don’t buy themselves. I was a very successful business woman before the shit hit the fan. Life Magazine was always doing some article on Boswell Designs. Seems a lifetime ago now... like someone else’s life.... Er,... where was I?  Oh yes... The actress would  have to play a younger me as well wouldn't she?  To do both roles justice,  I think Sharon Stone  would be marvelous. She’s got the same coloring too, don’t you think?”Izzie: “Do you think I give a shit who plays me in the film? How hard can it be to write some crap poetry, and take a few lousy photo’s in the East Village?  [Takes a hit on a joint]. OK, fine. So I do care. I bet that skinny-assed  Girl With a Dragon Tattoo actress would could make a stab at being me. Yeah, Rooney Mara. She’d be good.”What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?Two women, a generation apart, each burdened by guilt regarding the death of a sibling, find their own lives in danger during the Vietnam era, when the older woman’s brush with McCarthyism emerges during their collaboration on her autobiography.   Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?I will definitely look for an agent to represent me.How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript? 11 months. What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?I obviously wouldn't dream of comparing myself to these authors, but I have certainly been inspired by them. These came to mind, each for different aspects of their content.Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood. This is one of my favorite novels and spans the narrators lifetime, who is in her 80's as she is writing.The novel pays particular attention to the pre & post WWII years, but goes far beyond that in  encapsulating a number of different story lines as well as time lines.Toby's Room by Pat Barker. Well know for her incredible "Regeneration Trilogy" ,  this is a sequence to Life Class,  though it's also a stand alone novel. Set during WWI, the novel is as much about the interpersonal relationships as it is about the era. However, the two are interchangeable and it is the societal times of the era on the life of the individual that, for me is the real correlation between this and Under the Bed.The Night Watch by Sarah Waters. This is mid 20th century fiction, set during WWII. But Waters deals with the time frame in a very interesting way as she goes from finish to start.  Who or What inspired you to write this book?After a friend told me about growing up with parents who were in the Communist Party in the UK, and what it was like as a teenager in the sixties to have your phone bugged, it made me think about the invasion of people’s privacy and what effect it has on them. Since 9/11 the invasion of privacy has became almost an accepted ‘right’ by Western governments in the quest to protect our freedom. CCTV tracks us constantly and emails are tagged continuously in the fight against terrorism. I questioned the end justifying the means. Eventually I decided to follow how anti-communist fervour has moulded certain key elements of American history, and chose to juxtapose the eras of the Vietnam War and McCarthyism, with 1969 being 'present day'.What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?The novel blends the struggle of the individual with that of the bigger picture of the political events of the time. Can we as both individuals or as nations, learn from our past? I believe we can, and yet, as we know, history repeats itself. ‘Under the Bed’ explores how an individual’s lack of control over their fate can be in the hands of the government, even a generation apart. But ultimately the fight for survival and coming to terms with past mistakes is up to the individual. Here are the authors I’ve tagged for the project. Check out their websites and you'll be able see their interviews posted there next week.Claire CappettaDoreen PendgracsHemmie MartinSusan CooperBridget WhelanSally O’Reilly I’d love  your feedback on the interview, so do leave a comment below. Or post this blog to your favourite social media.Connect with me on: -Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/artyyah/Twitter: @artyyahLike my Facebook page : http://facebook.com/akandrewwriterFor regular updates of my blog: Subscribe Here

#Dorothy Parker On Fiction

  In researching the 1950’s for my novel ‘Under the Bed’ , Dorothy Parker's name came up as one of the Hollywood writers black-listed. It is also 45 years ago this week since her death.Dorothy Parker was renowned for her wit, being a keen critic, her poetry, short stories, plays and her left wing politics. When she died of a heart attack in 1967, her estate was left to the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. foundation. Following King's death, her estate was passed on to the NAACP. In 1988 the NAACP dedicated a memorial garden to her in Baltimore and erected a plaque. She’d suggested her tombstone should read ‘Excuse my dust’. They didn't argue. But first, let’s have some fun and see if you can complete three of Parker’s famous quotes. No.1 is my favorite and was the name of the lunchtime theatre play in London where the wit of Dorothy Parker finally came into my life, a decade after her death. Answers are at the bottom of this post!

1. Men seldom make passes,

At girls…………………..2.     Guns aren’t lawful;Nooses give;Gas smell awful;You…………………….3.     You can lead a whore to culture,But ……………………… The following is taken from a Paris Review interview she gave in 1956, on the Art of Fiction.* If you're not already familiar with them, the archives of Paris Review have some incredible interviews of literary figures  - thoroughly enjoyable and a fantastic writer's resource.On how she started writing:

“I fell into writing, I suppose, being one of those awful children who wrote verses. I went to a convent in New York—the Blessed Sacrament. Convents do the same things progressive schools do, only they don’t know it. They don’t teach you how to read; you have to find out for yourself. At my convent we did have a textbook, one that devoted a page and a half to Adelaide Ann Proctor; but we couldn’t read Dickens; he was vulgar, you know. … But as for helping me in the outside world, the convent taught me only that if you spit on a pencil eraser it will erase ink. And I remember the smell of oilcloth, the smell of nuns’ garb. I was fired from there, finally, for a lot of things, among them my insistence that the Immaculate Conception was spontaneous combustion.”

On whether her reputation as a wit interfered with her acceptance as a fiction writer:

“I don’t want to be classed as a humorist. It makes me feel guilty. I’ve never read a good tough quotable female humorist, and I never was one myself. I couldn’t do it. A “smartcracker” they called me, and that makes me sick and unhappy. There’s a hell of a distance between wisecracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words. I didn’t mind so much when they were good, but for a long time anything that was called a crack was attributed to me—and then they got the shaggy dogs.

On contemporary writers:

“…as for living novelists, I suppose E. M. Forster is the best, … at least he’s a semifinalist, wouldn’t you think? … He once wrote something I’ve always remembered: “It has never happened to me that I’ve had to choose between betraying a friend and betraying my country, but if it ever does so happen I hope I have the guts to betray my country.” Now doesn’t that make the Fifth Amendment look like a bum?

On her own writing practice:

“It takes me six months to do a story. I think it out and then write it sentence by sentence—no first draft. I can’t write five words but that I change seven.

On whether her political views made any difference to her professionally?

“Oh, certainly. Though I don’t think this “blacklist” business extends to the theater or certain of the magazines, in Hollywood it exists because several gentlemen felt it best to drop names like marbles which bounced back like rubber balls about people they’d seen in the company of what they charmingly called “commies.” You can’t go back thirty years to Sacco and Vanzetti. I won’t do it. Well, well, well, that’s the way it is. If all this means something to the good of the movies, I don’t know what it is. Sam Goldwyn said, “How’m I gonna do decent pictures when all my good writers are in jail?” Then he added, the infallible Goldwyn, “Don’t misunderstand me, they all ought to be hung.” Mr. Goldwyn didn’t know about “hanged.” That’s all there is to say. It’s not the tragedies that kill us, it’s the messes. I can’t stand messes. I’m not being a smartcracker. You know I’m not when you meet me—don’t you, honey?

 If Dorothy Parker was alive today, what issues do you think she'd be writing about?   *From Dorothy Parker, The Art of fiction No 13,Interviewed by Marion CampionTo read this interview in full, go to:http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4933/the-art-of-fiction-no-13-dorothy-parker Endings of Dorothy Parker quotes above:1.At girls who wear glasses. 2. You might as well live. 3. But you can’t make her think.  

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  Related articles Time and Place: 1950?s USA (akandrew.com)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Parkerhttp://onetrackmuse.com/2012/06/11/a-year-in-booksday-154-the-portable-dorothy-parker/#more-3123http://www.npr.org/2012/06/07/154148811/how-dorothy-parker-came-to-rest-in-baltimorehttp://www.dorothyparker.com/wordpress/        

Time and Place: 1950's USA

I’ve recently finished the first draft of my second novel, “Under the Bed”. It's set in New York in both 1969 and 1952. Time and place are integral to the story; the commonality between the two eras is anti-communism in the USA. I’ll only deal with the 1950’s in this blog.“McCarthyism”, which was at the heart of the anti-communist movement, started in the late forties. You may be aware of the havoc and horror the Hollywood blacklist had on the lives of actors and screenwriters, many of whom were banned from writing or acting. Their careers, and often their entire lives were left in shambles. A number also went to jail. Dashiell Hammett is one of the more famous names of people who served time. He died a year after his release. Lillian Hellman, was also brought before by the House Un-American Activities Committee  - HUAC. She took a landmark stand, later known as the 'Diminished Fifth', in which she was willing to talk about her own activities but refused to talk of others .Paul Robeson and Charlie Chaplin were also victims of the HUAC. Chaplin, who was born in England, was refused re-entry into the USA in 1952, and ultimately never returned to America. Paul Robeson’s passport was confiscated, leaving him unable to work abroad – he was already blacklisted from working in America. His career as a singer and his International Human Rights advocacy work were severely curtailed.       Influence of the House Un-American Activities Committee, reached far beyond Hollywood into many professions, including those in public service. University professors and elementary schoolteachers  were asked to sign an oath swearing that they were not, nor ever had been a member of the Communist Party. Those who refused, which many did on principle, lost their jobs.All serious stuff - but in researching the period, I came across some hilarious footage from the public service announcement of the ‘Duck and Cover Campaign’ that told people, and especially schoolchildren, what to do in the case of a nuclear attack – “Why, duck and cover of course!”.httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89od_W8lMtAIts simplicity might seem ludicrous to us now -  perhaps it did to many people at the time  -  but it gives us a certain insight into an era of fear, tinged with naïveté , in the USA of the 1950's.I love the whole idea of exploring different time and place in writing. They're usually the two challenges I first  set myself when I start a new project. It’s so important in a novel in setting the tone.Where do you set your work? Is it is always in the present, or in the town or country where you live? How does time and place affect your choice in the novels you read?Let me know - I’d love to hear from you.  

Related articles

• Sunday Open Thread (3chicspolitico.com) (A great blog site!)
• Tayo Aluko pays homage to a musical pioneer (charlestoncitypaper.com)
• Defrosting The Cold War (envisioningtheamericandream.wordpress.com)
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillian_Hellman

And it’s 1, 2, 3, What Are We Writing For? (orig. post Jan 20th)

And it’s 1, 2, 3, What Are We Writing For? I’ve been taking a poetry class with Catherine Smith (see Links page), called Pushing the Boundaries. I wanted to get to know one of the characters better in my new novel Under the Bed - she’s a 25 year-old poet in the East Village in 1969. A not very good poet, so I figured she wouldn’t be too hard for me to emulate. I’ve also been a bit poetry phobic so I thought it would kill two birds with one stone. I’ve loved learning the value of brevity, which can only be a good thing for a prose writer.This week we did a Ghazal, which comes from a musical tradition of Urdu poetry, going back to the 14th century. A ghazal is made up of several couplets, which traditionally would have been set to music, sung and performed. When sung, the music provides an interlude for the audience between each couplet allowing them to resonate. An important aspect of the couplet is that each should stand on its own as an aphorism. The couplets have been compared to a ‘stone from a necklace’, each with a value of its own. Once put together it’s part of a whole. I’ve included here the ghazal I wrote as “Izzie”. Ghazal:  When is a War not a War?By “Izzie” 1969 No poem or painting is finished without our eyes to see.We decide what it means. Dare to say what we see. Are the mix of hues and colors still on the canvaswhen they’re left in a darkened room, too dark to see? Have all the colors in the world disappeared whenthe sun is blazing white, so bright we cannot see? Where have the other colors run to, in a land where sun burnscrimson, earth and rivers reflect blood red for all to see? What is more real? What we think we see, what we’re toldto think, or what is shot in front of the whole world to see? TV images of the War up Close - visual bombardment more realthan any reality in the commonplace we live and see. Izzie’s paintings are finished by the viewer’s eyes. Can wefinish the War by what we dare to think and say and see?  The ghazal I’ve written asks more questions than I answer, which is symptomatic of the times (1969) and how a 25 yr. might have viewed them. By coincidence, after I’d written the ghazal, I came across a quote from Ursula K. Le Guin on twitter this week, which I thought was apropos:“The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live … “ In the critique part of Catherine’s poetry class, I talked about the fact that the Vietnam War was really the first war recorded live on television. We also referenced the iconic satirical protest song ‘Fixing To Die’ by Country Joe McDonald *The refrain says it all: - And it’s 1,2,3, what are we fighting for,Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damnThe next stop is Vietnam,And it 5,6,7 open up the pearly gates,There ain’t no time to wonder whyWhoopee we’re all gonna die To most people in the UK ‘during the war’ refers to WWII. When I first went to live in San Francisco in the early 80s, when people talked about ‘the war’ everyone was referring to Vietnam. I think it’s hard for people in the UK to fully understand the enormity of the effect the Vietnam War had on an entire generation of Americans. So in the spirit of my ghazal, mixed with Country Joe’s humor,  I’m going to leave you with the question: What are we writing for? Click on Comments at the bottom of this post and let me know. * Here’s a link to Country Joe’s performance of ‘Fixing to Die’ at Woodstock, August 1969.Country Joe @ Woodstockhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBdeCxJmcAoCommentsJess

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 02:34:23

what are we writing for? To stay alive, to be alive, to be able to say all the things we can't speak aloud ourselves and to see how all these things look through other people's eyes.A.K.Andrew

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 03:02:07

Thanks for getting the ball rolling Jess. I have to agree with you, especially the part about seeing how things look through other people's eyes. To actually get inside their minds is pretty amazing. I think it helps us understand other peoples motivation too.Catherine Smith

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 04:48:54

I agree with both of you - and writing reminds me I want to keep asking questions.I want to find out what I belive, what is important to me. I don't always find the answers, but asking the questions still feels essential. Love your blog, Kathy! ;-)A.K.

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 08:05:10

Thanks Catherine. And you're right The questions always take the lead.