"J" is about how I became a cracking good speller, in spite of myself...

I don't have a particular fondness for the letter "J". In fact, it's linked to one of the worst memories of my young academic life and may explain why I became so fanatical about spelling.

When I was in the fifth grade--about age 9-10, I was already a good speller. I always scored 100% on Miss Dunaway's weekly spelling tests and was proud of it. Go on, throw me a pop quiz. I would spell 10 out of 10 words correctly every time.

I don't know why I could spell well; I just could. Nobody else in my family was ever called out for this particular skill; in fact, quite the opposite. They had other talents--like they could all water ski and ice skate, at both of which I was abysmal. It didn't seem fair but I got what I got. And they got the good stuff.

Eventually, I was recognised as the number one speller in my class. When I was in elementary school--in the late 1950s--this wasn't necessarily a good thing. Only "teacher's pet" people and real nerdy types were the best spellers. Or 'dorks'. This was about the time the word 'dork' came into being in Orange County, California. The last thing you wanted to be was one of them. It was far better to be a 'neat', popular kid. It was a burden, being able to spell, an automatic demotion to the lowest of the low.

Imagine my horror when Miss Dunaway announced that there was to be a District Spelling Bee and the two best spellers from our class were going to represent the fifth grade. It was me and a light blonde, blue-eyed kid with a square head and big brown thick-lensed glasses that had a strap on them so they wouldn't fall off. I'm not making this up: his name was Herbie Delight. The other kids said he was sweet on me. Alas, I was enamoured of Price Locke, a star-quality blonde kid with a cowlick. Three girls liked Price. Life just isn't fair, is it?

So off we went to the Spelling Bee on the appointed Sunny Southern California afternoon. The details fade but I do remember these things clearly:

1. There were many children there; it must have been Kindergarten to 6th grade.
   
2. It was noisy (see number 1. for explanation)
3. There were nearly twice as many parents as children--so, hey, a lot of people overall.
4. Both of my parents were there. This is big stuff because my dad didn't go to my concerts and other life events very often--he was busy being a flight test engineer and helping people break sound barriers and eventually go to the moon.
5. I was wearing a red plaid dress my mother had made me (she made all my clothes). It had a full gathered skirt but I didn't have any nice full petticoats yet. They were on my Christmas list.
6. I had on horrible brown saddle shoes which were corrective in nature because, apparently, I had something wrong with my feet that needed correcting (I have good feet now so the embarrassing shoes treatment must have worked).
7. I was terrified and didn't want to be there at all.

Does anybody ever actually like these things? I didn't. The only worse thing was having to play organ concerts when my organ teacher--Miss Margaret--decided periodically to hold one and show off our budding musical talents. She had about two dozen Pekingese dogs and they were always all over the place so it made for an interesting event for a lot of reasons. (I'll save that for the "P" day blog, shall I?)

Cutting to the chase: I made it to some sort of semi-final or maybe even the final round in my age group. I spelled some pretty impressive words. It's different when you're in the fifth grade and you don't even know what a word means. Like peripatetic. Or chrysanthemum. Or duodenum.  I could do it. I did it. I was almost there.

Miss Dunaway was with me and I could do it for her. But could I do it with my awe-inspiring whiz of a father, Mr Science, in the audience? That remained to be seen.

It was for all the marbles. There were four kids left, maybe six. I can't really remember, probably owing to some sort of psychological trauma filter my brain immediately invoked afterwards and still hasn't been willing to let go. Herbie had long since bowed out; I have no idea what he couldn't spell but I knew that when I heard him spell it, he had blown it. Poor Herbie.

A hush fell over the crowd. They always say that, don't they? Maybe it did and maybe it didn't. The spotlight, though I'm sure there wasn't one, felt like it had fallen on me. It was my turn. My turn. All the marbles. What did that mean, "all the marbles?" I couldn't remember. Oh god please let this be a word I can spell. I promise I'll clean my room without being told. I won't pick on my little brother. Honest, I won't...

"Cindi Saunders. The word is JURY. Please spell JURY," said the person with the microphone. Did I breathe? No. Did I think? No. Do I know how to spell JURY. Yes. Did I say "Jury, J-U-R-Y, Jury" in the prescribed manner? No. I did not.

Immediately, and for reasons unknown to this day, the image of my mother's Ladies Home JOURNAL Magazine, laying on the coffee table in the living room, crowded into my mind and overloaded every synapse, coursed through every tiny artery, sang in an exalted voice until I heard nothing else. 'I can spell it, I can spell it! I can win, I can win!

"Jury, J-O-U-R-Y, Jury," I said, loud and clear.

Well, that was that. It was over. I'm sure my parents weren't upset; I'm certain they were proud that I got there in the first place and got to some sort of final round. I, on the other hand, was humiliated, mortified, embarrassed and probably in tears though I don't recall that either. How could I miss spelling a four-letter word? I'll never know. I choked. I panicked. I didn't stop and think.

It didn't seem like it at the time but it was a good thing. I remember clearly, as if it had happened earlier this afternoon, vowing that I would never get caught again not being able to spell a word. And I seldom do. It's a heavy burden to bear sometimes--people are always saying things like "Oh, can you spell jaculiferous or juglandaceous or jectigation...?" and off I go again, hoping that I can, but at least thinking it through carefully. I'm much more careful now. 

Miss Dunaway would be proud of me.

Oh, yeah...so, like, whatever became of Herbie? Well. I just Googled Herbie and there is one Herbert J Delight who's my age in the entire United States. He's living half an hour away from where we went to school. And his father is still alive, at age 95. Well, so is mine, just coming 90. Amazing. I haven't thought of Herbie in years. (Please don't tell him I said that.)

And Price Locke? Amazingly, he's right there, too, not three miles from where we grew up--over fifty years later. I think I'll stay right where I am.

Want to know more about the history of the National Spelling Bee in the U.S.? Click here!

#AtoZChallenge

"I" is for Isambard Kingdom Brunel

I'm certain that I had never heard of the man called Isambard Kingdom Brunel until I was about 50 years old. If you're not British, it's likely you haven't heard of him either. If you are from   Great Britain, you probably know that he was placed second in the  "Top 100 Britons" of all time in a BBC poll in 2002.

Go on, ask who beat him. (Winston Churchill). To put him in historical perspective, Brunel topped Princess Diana, Charles Darwin, William Shakespeare, Sir Isaac Newton, Queen Elizabeth I, John Lennon, Admiral Horatio Nelson and Oliver Cromwell (in that order) for the Top 10. Now are you wondering who he was?

Robert Howlett photo, 1859

Yesterday, April 9th, would have been Mr Brunel's 207th birthday. A pity the months didn't sync just right for yesterday to be "I" day; that won't happen again until 2019 so I'm pressing on.

Because his is one of the most unusual names I've ever encountered -- Isambard -- and with a middle name like 'Kindgom', he stuck in my mind the first time I heard him mentioned. And there he has remained ever since. Because he didn't live to see his 54th birthday (a heavy smoker, he died of a stroke) his accomplishments are all the more amazing.

But did he really do all that? Controversial new research suggests that his accomplishments may have been exaggerated, his projects error-plagued and, in some cases, that he may not have done what he is credited with. Oops. Good time for an inquiry.

To say that Brunel left his mark on England is an understatement. A quick look at Wikipedia and we learn that he was a "mechanical and civil engineer who built dockyards, the Great Western Railway, a series of steamships including the first propeller-driven transatlantic steamship and numerous important bridges and tunnels." 

Bridge over the River Avon, Bristol (Mark Hadlow photo)
Did Isambard Kingdom Brunel really design
the Clifton Suspension Bridge?

His designs revolutionised public transportation and modern engineering. According to Britain Express, his most remarkable feat for the Great Western Railway was the Box Tunnel, between Bath and Chippenham. This amazing engineering feat was two miles long, took almost six years to complete and, when the crews funneling from each end met in the middle, it's said they were only 1.25 inches out of alignment. 

As a transplant to 'Old Blighty' myself, I have consistently been surprised at how often I've run into the name Isambard Kingdom Brunel. It seemed that everywhere I went or lived was somehow touched by the genius of Brunel. In fact, I lived in Kensal Green (London) for a year--and discovered on walk through the vast Kensal Green Cemetery one day that the man is buried there. It was nice to have him close by.

Why mention him now? Given how he and his many projects kept showing up, it was little surprise to me that I stumbled on a Brunel design when researching hospitals for my Crimean War-era novel. I'm not writing a book about Florence Nightingale so I wanted a different hospital setting than the ones commonly associated with her. It was then I discovered  Renkioi Hospital. And guess who designed it?

In February 1855, as war dragged on inconclusively and soldiers continued to die of things over than battlefield wounds, Brunel accepted the the task of designing and building--quickly--a temporary, pre-fabricated hospital that could be shipped to the Crimea and erected there. His team assembled designed, built, and shipped pre-fabricated wood and canvas buildings for the hospital--within five months.

Ward building design, Renkioi Hospital, Istanbul, 1955

Of particular note was the attention paid to hygiene, access to sanitation, ventilation, drainage, and even rudimentary temperature controls. The pre-fab units were a great success, with some sources stating that of the approximately 1,300 patients treated in the hospital, there were only 50 deaths. In the more familiar Scutari hospital itself, deaths were reported to be up to ten times that number.  

How can all this be true? Yes, it's a lot. And, sadly, as so often happens, further research sometimes sheds new light on our old beliefs. It is no different in Brunel's case. While I'm disappointed that this much-admired man's reputation and accomplishments have been called into question, it's also a pity that, if true, so many others didn't get credit for their work. 

So who's right? Consider the current debate. In a Telegraph article from 2011, biographer Adrian Vaughan claims, in his book, 'The Intemperate Engineer', that many of the things Brunel is credited with did not happen. After studying previously-unpublished Brunel writings, as well as engineering drawings of the period,  he also maintains that Brunel's work was littered with errors and problems--and often overdue and over budget. On the other hand...

Steven Brindle, an English Heritage historian, disagrees with Vaughan. Author of a book called "Brunel: The Man Who Built the World" Vaughan defends Brunel, the engineer, as well as his own conclusions. "Brunel,"he says, "was a genius at the level of Leonardo or Mozart. Again and again in his career, he had these fundamental insights....he was capable of what we would call blue sky thinking to a quite remarkable extent."

The answer? I don't know--but I would like to--and will continue to follow the debate. What do you think?

What I do know is that the engineering marvels of the Victorian era stand today, whoever designed them, as examples of a period of great innovation and change in the world. An impressive period indeed.

I also know that researching the illustrious reputation of  Isambard Kingdom Brunel for this "I" blog has been interesting, informative, illuminating, inspirational, intriguing, instructive and more...including my discovery of a fascinating list of words beginning with the letter I which calls me to look for even more.

Thanks for reading this April #AtoZChallenge blog! Comments and corrections welcome, please...

"H" is for Hashtag and some of what I've learned thus far...

Hashtags. You know, those funny things with a hash mark (or 'pound sign') in front of them. Appear on Twitter tweets and other places. Like here, with the #AtoZChallenge. See? That's a "hashtag". 

I'm not the only one who's onto hashtags today...the theme over at #AtoZChallenge Headquarters today is "Hashtag the heck out of us!" Lots of good information there. But here, a very basic primer on hashtags AND some information on Tagboard, a site I discovered just yesterday (see below).

But what are they for, and what do you do with them? (Spoiler alert: I'm not the expert, just learning a little bit here and there and have found value in marketing--and other pursuits--with the help of social media). One definition of Hashtags comes from http://www.hashtags.org/ and says that hashtags allow us to "listen, measure and engage in Twitter conversations and gain valuable social media insights".

And who does this? Hashtags can and are used for any industry, keyword, event, business, product, service or blog where the need to track traffic or measure results is required. Well, that just about covers most of the known world, doesn't it? I've used it to track incentive programmes, measure return on investment, see who's visiting the client's website, do fund-raising, make sure my complaint about a product gets seen. Never tried it? Just add # and the company name to your complaint tweet (make sure it's the Twitter account they use) and watch the customer service folks respond.

Ever wonder what "trending" is all about? Read this article and you're on your way.  See an example in the graph below.

Why does all this matter? Read this article for information on hashtag tracking and you'll have a great beginning....and then...

Take a look at #LadyGaga, for instance (an example most of us recognise). There is more data there than you'd ever want to know about Ms Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta. Not interested in her? Consider what you can learn if you track a specific issue or company--say #IBM, the #environment or #gaymarriage or #WallStreet or a person, like #BarackObama or #JoeDiffie or #JKRowling. Go one, have a look check it out!

Participants in the #AtoZChallenge use the official Challenge hashtag so that their tweets, for instance, are picked up in various feeds and services so prospective readers will see them OR, importantly, anyone else who is tracking or searches on #AtoZChallenge, in this example, will find all the Tweets which contain that hashtag. The organisation also uses it to track who completes their 26 A to Z days.

I set up a search in Tweetdeck (a free Twitter application I use) to receive a feed of all the #AtoZChallenge hashtags. Then I can choose the participant blogs I want to read each day based on what they've said about that day's blog in their Tweet.

I knew about http://www.hashtags.org/ and I'd gone there before to see if there was a specific hashtag, for instance, for something I was interested in. But I hadn't understood that, while anyone in the world can use the hashtag, for say, the #CrimeanWar (of interest to me) no one had actually registered that hashtag so hashtags.org wasn't measuring it.

Is hashtags.org the only one? Not by a long shot! It's only one site/service related to Twitter and tweeting. It may not provide anything to you and what you want to do.

More appropriate for some people could be www.Tagboard.com, which allows users to "see the whole conversation, across networks, making it the perfect hub for social media." It still uses hashtags, though, so it's all a part of the same broader social media whole. It's a lot like Pinterest but built on hashtags.

When I used the hashtag #CrimeanWar (researching for my novel) and found all sorts of people posting information and photos. I registered a hashtag of my own, #ReedWrites, there, and when I use it in Tweets, people on tagboard will see my tweets (see left). This can serve to put me in touch with others with the same interest OR have them visit my site or blog for more information about my project.

Kinda fun, I thought, and potentially very useful for my research and eventual marketing efforts. Give it a try!

Comments, corrections and additional resources welcome! As noted above, I am not the expert but only a learner. Thank you for visiting.

"G" is for Good, No, GREAT Writing Quotes

"G" is the most difficult letter of the #AtoZChallenge alphabet yet. "K" looms large and knarly (or is it gnarly?) just ahead...but we're not there quite yet. I spent Sunday thinking, polled a few friends and ended up with a great big list of "G" words that, try as I might, I couldn't link to writing.

Nothing came to mind so, naturally, I turned to a favourite quote. It sits on my work table:

'When words don't come easy, I make do with silence and find something in nothing.' (Strider Marcus Jones)

Well, gee-whiz. So I listened, like the man said. And it came to me. "OK," I decided, "I'm taking the lazy way out and stealing a favourite idea from the second half of the alphabet!" Right, cheat. Got it. So, my "G" post is (tah-dah!) about the Good, Great, Glorious, Grand QUOTATIONS which have changed my day, or my life, or gotten me un-stuck or back on track somewhere along the way.

And here are some of them. (Spoiler alert: I have so many, I'm certain there'll be plenty left for Q-Day if nothing else comes along.)

FIRST, an an all-time favourite from an all-time favourite man, film critic and writer extraordinaire Roger Ebert:

"You are the writer. What you write is what is written. It is exactly right because it is exactly what you wrote. If someone else doesn't think so, fuck 'em. There is no objective goal, no objective right or wrong. Only the process. Your mind will set itself down in words. Do not criticize. Do not look back at every sentence. Just write. You have no idea where you are headed. Your words will lead you. This above all: Nothing is ever completed until it is started. Start. Don't look back. If at the end it doesn't meet your hopes, start again."

NEXT,  this one. I love what Clancy says because it makes my mind make grinding sounds just thinking about it:                                  

"The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.” -Tom Clancy

BUT, some days I want a more mellow approach, something that puts the great big picture in something resembling perspective. Thich Nhat Hanh does that for me: 

"Our own life is the instrument with which we experiment with truth." - Thich Nhat Hanh

And, FINALLY, for now...my newest gleaned quote, just last week from an interview in an issue of Creative Nonfiction Magazine; it came along at just the right time. I needed a kick in the, well, you know. Isn't this just the most wonderful writing advice?

“Writing is hard for every last one of us—straight white men included. Coal mining is harder. Do you think miners stand around all day talking about how hard it is to mine for coal? They do not. They simply dig. You need to do the same. … so write, Elissa Bassist. Not like a girl. Not like a boy. Write like a Mother#^@%*&!"

"F" is for Father (and a poem about flying with family in Idaho)

My family loves to fly. Dad was a WWII and Korean War bomber pilot, later a test pilot and then a private pilot until well into his 80s. Mom got her instrument rating in 1973, right after they bought their first plane: a six-passenger Beechcraft Bonanza A36.

One of their two sons is a private charter pilot and still flies. The other son loved dune buggies and, for me, it was horses. Home was Southern California; work was to get out and go. They flew everywhere and traveled with little Honda 50s in the back. When there was nowhere else to go, they'd land on a dirt runway pitch a pop-up Coleman tent and ride the little motorcycles into the nearest town to grab a burger or a bowl of soup.

Sometime in 1976, my father discovered the Bitterroot Wilderness of Idaho--something like one million acres of designated wilderness--and a series of U.S. Forestry Service-maintained runways truly in the middle of nowhere. Eventually, the family settled on Moose Creek (though there are lots of other wonderful places as well) and that was where we went.

Some families have lake cabins or mountain homes or places in the desert or at the seashore. We didn't. We had the beauty of Idaho, the bountiful rivers and lakes (most years) but sometimes couldn't fly in because of the fires, when the USFS would close the runways to all but fire-fighting use.

Over the years, Dad and Mom celebrated their anniversary at Moose Creek, camping all alone for a week, nearly every late September. Mom made cherry pies in the camp oven Daddy had bought her and he unearthed a cast iron griddle he kept buried in the hills (there was a treasure map to find it every year) and made hashed brown potatoes and bacon for breakfast.

In the summertime, we all went...kids, grand-kids, the odd great-grand-child and even my Alaskan Malamute, Wookie, who clambered on board quite cheerfully, sat herself in the second row with me and had a great old time, never noticing (apparently) that we were flying on our wingtip up a winding mountain cabin, a sparkling blue river a few thousand feet below. We hiked, we fished, we sat, we slept. We ate. And did it all over again. Especially the eating part.

Those times are over. One too many pacemaker replacements and Dad's pilot's licence went. Mom started having memory problems and wouldn't (and shouldn't) fly alone. It was time to pack it in. We made a few more trips with my brother, Ron, ferrying us all in and out.

The next-to-last trip was 2005--for my parents' 58th wedding anniversary and it was fabulous, memory-filled and the stuff that overwrites everything else. I even took my British fiance to meet the folks and whinge about sleeping on the ground with his feet hanging out of my parents' original 1970s pop tent while they lived like kings in the new Northface withstand-anything model.

The last trip was September 2007. Their 60th anniversary. And we almost made it to Moose Creek. Almost. Unfortunately, it was a fire year and, though we tried, visibility was compromised and we couldn't land. We turned and flew back south toward Boise and set up camp near Cascade Lake--sitting around the campfire pretending it was Moose Creek but knowing that it wasn't. And that there probably wouldn't be another trip to 'Moose'.

There wasn't. But 30 years in the Bitterroot Mountains of Idaho? It's a lot to be thankful for.

I wrote this poem about my dad a few weeks ago as an exercise in a Sharon Bakar class in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The memories are so strong it might have been last month that we sat around the fire at Cascade Lake, not at Moose Creek. Dad and Mom are well, the plane has been sold but Ron still flies and takes my dad up for a go whenever he can. Daddy, this one's for you...

                             Bitterroot Mountains

He’s old, facing ninety head-on, deep lines

framed by the latest in high-tech camping hats,

polar fleece doubled up against the

Coumadin cold of now-thin blood. He sits,

hands pocketed,  reading embers.

It’s the last trip. It has that feel, lastness,

together we will crown their sixty years,

but Idaho consecrates this anniversary

with fire.  Smoke obscures the canyon—

instruments or not—and we fly back.

Almost Moose Creek, not quite there but nearly

there, hunkered down around this lesser fire,
its orange-red cincture catching each cinder,

sending sooty signals into the endless heavens

above that special place in the Bitterroot

we have family-worshipped for so long.

His heart is going, her mind has gone--

not that we Know it yet, unequivocally, but

he has guessed and keeps her safe from us,

draws circles around their memories with his

own smoky screen of love sixty decades wide

and a lifetime long. 

Mom washes dishes as she always does
and Debbie dries. One plastic tub with creek water
hand carried, another to rinse and maybe

they’ll be dry by breakfast-time

to do it all over again, Saunders-style.

The girls roast marshmallows and giggle,

Derek and Ron count endless stars in a blueblack sky

and name constellations as if they could best the best

(or perhaps it is to let him win just one more time)

‘That’s not Omega,’ laughs my father

rousing himself to point skyward and last-inning

take the game he knows oh so well

 “it’s Cassiopea; see the ‘W’ shape, right there?”

grunts and turns back to his fire.

Across the ring our eyes meet as they do

once every fifteen years or so and I abdicate

my speaker’s role to wait for a different ending.

“Christ, he doesn’t say much,’’ I think, and exhale

blatant longing. “But when did he ever?   

He clears his throat, leans back, waits…

‘Wonder what the poor folks are doin’ tonight?’

A chuckle, a wink, a nod affirm that his life

is rich, descendants all around, the fire crackling,

unspoken love and memories rising

in the unknowable Bitterroot night.

                                    (c) 2013 Cynthia Reed

"E" is for Edit...SmartEdit, if you please!

I'm in Edit mode with my novel right now. I've got plenty left to write, of course, but my manuscript also got to the point where it needed some serious smoothing out. I realised that the day I discovered that someone who did something in Chapter 34 had actually been killed in Chapter 22. Ouch. 

I've been using a tool in this process which I really like: SmartEdit. It's FREE. The full SmartEdit version can be downloaded and used for ten days, then either purchased OR you can opt for the free-forever package which contains the most used features of the larger product.

It's E-Day! Let me tell you about SmartEdit and how to try it out.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      
WHAT IS IT? SmartEdit is a new, first-pass editing tool for writers. Not a replacement for a human editor or good proofreading, it's an aid--and easy helper for when you begin editing your work.

WHAT DOES IT DO: SmartEdit takes text or reads from an rtf file and runs all these checks on your document and produces a list. Imagine your surprise when you discover (as did I) that you have way too many adverbs or you've actually used the word 'actually' ten times in a chapter.

Or that 14 sentences begin with 'Mother had said'. Ouch. You can go through and change--or not change--them. I've found it a very useful writing tool, too, since it's identifying some things I do again and again.

WHAT ABOUT SELF-PUBLISHING: We all have a hard time catching our own mistakes. If you're self-publishing, and you don't have a strong plan for outside editing, I think this is brilliant. It picks up things from a library of commonly-misused words (capital vs capital, for instance) and makes it simple to catch those before your first readers do. The dialog tag counter is great, too. Does your hero 'exclaim' or 'declare' everything? Give the boy a choice with some SmartEditing!

WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE: Here's a sample. Oh, those pesky adverbs! See all the sample pages in the SmartEdit gallery for a closer look.

p.s. Want an "E" bonus?
Check out Evernote...and 'Remember Everything'
I truly use this one for just about everything I do. I collect ideas, clip things from web pages, save whole web pages to it, capture the odd paragraph opening I write in Starbucks, research items wherever I am...at home or on the go...and sync it all between my PC, my iPad and my Android phone. I think it's fantastic. Check it out and download your copy at:

http://evernote.com/evernote/

#AtoZChallenge

"D" is for Dialogue...which fills me with dread, despair and despondency...

I've been an author of non-fiction, a sorta technical marketing author specialist type for IT and telecomms, for decades. That's my comfort zone. So when I set off to write this novel, for a long time I simply avoided the Dialogue part. It was easy during NaNoWriMo: I just blasted out 50,000 words and some of it was blah blah blah. I'd fill in the blanks later. 

Then I finally had to Do it. Write Dialogue. The very idea filled me with  a bunch of other "D" words: despair, doubt, distress and  despondency will do for starters.

Add to that the fact that I was writing historical fiction set in mid-19th century England and the Crimean Peninsula of what is now the Ukraine. Oh, woe...I had cast a Russian colonel, a Polish captain in the Russian army, an American doctor from Tennessee, a Turkish couple, the Russian Sisters of Charity nuns, the odd French Zoave, a few French women cantinières and maybe a Sardinian or two for good measure. And who knew when the bloody Cossacks would come riding in and cause a ruckus?

Those colourful folks are on top of the variations that might show up from the different regions of Britain; after all, many thousands of soldiers went to The Crimea from all over England, Scotland, Wales--and Ireland, too.

How would they all speak? What would they say? What could possibly sound real? I still don't know; I just keep trying to get out of the way and let them find their voices. Slowly, slowly, each claims a voice. I hope they'll get it right!

The other problem I have with Dialogue goes deeper still--I have been Dreading actually sharing any of my writing with anyone. It's Difficult to imagining actually publishing a book, by whatever means, without actually Delivering a written word on the page, isn't it? Decidedly so. I joke about having the unpublished manuscript tossed on my funeral pyre but I'd really rather have someone read it (I think).

So...herewith...my first attempt at throwing a relatively small, inconsequential section of my novel out there for anyone who happens to come along and have the time and interest read it. It might work and it might not. I have about 20,000 words to cut, I'm guessing, and it could well be some or all of these.

This is about 2,000 words from the middle an early chapter. I picked it because it had a lot of Dialogue. Two young Coldstream Guards officers are riding off to meet a ship to sail to the Crimea (and war) the next morning. It's got children and adults, broken hearts, some past hurts, a broken almost-engagement, a lot of unresolved stuff and some good information about the longest river in Britain, and swans, in case you've been wondering about swans.

Am I feeling Despair that I ever had this idea? Yes.  At the moment I am. But I'm going to DoItAnyway. Isn't that what the #AtoZChallenge is all about?

All that Dread aside, let me say that (1) I'm doing this just to do this and get over it; and (2) I welcome feedback from anyone who wants to send some. Hate it? That's OK. Please tell me why. Like it? What about it do you like? Feel free to email me at CynthiaReedWrites@gmail.com if you really want to rant. Or coo.

  Click on Read More (below) to jump to the story excerpt.