COPD & Emphysema Support Group
COPD is a progressive disease characterized by airflow obstruction or limitation. Emphysema is characterized by loss of elasticity of the lung tissue, destruction of structures supporting the alveoli and of capillaries feeding the alveoli. Both have symptoms that include shortness of breath, among other respiratory troubles. If you are a COPD or Emphysema sufferer, join...
I'm alone a lot. I live with my daughter who is often away for a week or more. I can't leave the house alone--well, I could, but best not. I could be t-boned by a drunk while I was sitting still for a red light but somehow it would be my fault for being 88 and still driving. So I stay home. I got so tired of trying to find something on TV worth watching and something on Kendall to read that I started writing a book. At first, it really energized and invigorated me, but now it is dragging and I think it reads really ho hum and I can't seem to fix it. It is about a family who lived in Texas in the 1930s--during the , "Great Depression". They are at one point a family of eight, doing well financially from a cafe they own, where everyone works, but there is domestic violence, a rape, a breakdown of authority and finally murder for revenge. The family disintegrates and the last survivor is left homeless. I need at least 60,000 words but I only have 20,000 and I am tired of it. Why am I not a literary genius, like Ed McBain ?? Or Barbara Tuchman ??My daughter says I should take up painting, but I can make a paint by numbers sunset look like scrambled eggs.I guess I must just go on with the dull, stupid book. It beats lying here, looking at the ceiling, "Waiting for God".
Betty, your book just needs to be spiced up! I used to be a part time journalist, and I've been a storyteller all my life. My published works were all gratis, done out of the joy of storytelling. So if I may, I'll suggest some things: Try filling in some history for the location of your story. The Internet, as you well know, is an incredible tool for research! So pick a time period, and era, for your story, that will occur near or concurrent with a major historical story, or a local scandal that rocked the community, or a national event that impacted that community. Then weave that sub-story throughout the story of the family. Have one of the family be the narrator for the events, who is perhaps a major figure locally, or perhaps an ambassador assigned to a Euro country who returns home for periodic visits between assignments. Some such person. And have that person fill in the historical or scandalous details which will obliquely impact the events impacting the family as the stories progress intertwining to their ultimate climax. And the narrator could return home at the close, one last time as the dust settles, to help bury the last members, sell off the family homestead, and wonder what might have been if only..... but perhaps leave one little neice or cousin living to take under the wing and maybe help show that young heart that all was not for naught... You get the picture! Good luck with that! :)