[stylist] Sharing Memoir and question

Tue Jul 17 18:28:06 UTC 2012

Lynda,
I will only deal with your first question. I had to put your memoir part
into a Word document to get the word count. It is 1,113 Words, and what I
did was to select all, then press Alt T, arrow down to word count and press
Enter. It will give you lines also.
I tried to do this in Outlook and it did not have the menus where I could
find this.
I like your writing, and will leave the critiquing to the experts in memoir.
Jackie

-----Original Message-----
From: stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of Lynda Lambert
Sent: Tuesday, July 17, 2012 9:18 AM
To: Writer's Division Mailing List
Subject: Re: [stylist] Sharing Memoir and question

OK, I will ask this question - I know I should KNOW this, but, how do I find
the "word count" for my writing?

I will copy and paste a short memoir I have worked on today. I am writing a
series of memoirs about a Great Grandmother's Memories - her reflections on
Art and Memory. This is the first of the "Silent Discourses." In this one,
the storyteller speaks of a memory shared by the Great Grandmother. The
recollections of the Great Grandmother on her childhood and her love of
nature and secrets of the Earth.
It should move from the storyteller, to the memories of the grandmother,
back and forth, as in the way memories come to us - in layers, shifting, and
moving.

In my work there is almost never a chronological time line - so don't expect
it. Life shifts and moves and comes and goes like the ebbing of the
Caribbean waters as one stands on the beach. That is how I approach writing.

I very greatly would appreciate any feedback you can give me on this, any
suggestions for improvement, or anything else you can offer to me on it. I
consider every comment carefully.

I really appreciate feedback. In fact, because of the great feedback I
received from a group of writers on another site, my poem "Flotsom, Jetsom,
and the River" was selected in the NFB writing contest. The group had told
me it was too vague - so I set to work to figure out what I needed to do to
make it stronger and then I submitted it to the contest. Without their good
critique this poem would have been too vague, I am sure, to be considered. 

Thanks, Lynda

Here is the Memoir:

____________________

Silent Discourse:  Reflections on Art and Memory

By Lynda Lambert

Silent Discourse #1

Memories of  her summer days in Western Pennsylvania seemed to silently move
in the thoughts of the Great Grandmother today as she thought of the little
girl  who stood  alone, surrounded by  a yellow-green world.

Great Grandmother's  memory  was taking her back to a distant summer day in
western Pennsylvania. She thought it must have been in the late 1940s
because she was so very young at that time. The little girl  was sensitive
to the natural world of trees, flowers, birds, grasses, and the brilliant
blue sky.  She loved to be outdoors in all kinds of weather but summer time
was particularly pleasant because she did not have to wear shoes. She could
splash through the falling rain as it saturated her clothing and made her
long auburn hair stick to her wet shoulders. She liked to stomp down with
her bare feet, into   the puddles of cool squishy water in the yard. Her
toes moved about on the wet ground, and it felt so good to her!

On sunny days, she climbed into the back yard walnut  tree  quickly and
liked to hide amid the foliage to survey the entire world of her deep green
grassy  yard. From there, she could watch her father working in his gardens.
There were two of them, separated by a path down the middle. When she thinks
about her father, in her mind's memory book, he is always laboring in his
garden and bringing fresh vegetables to the house for their dinners. Father
brought other delights, too. There were rabbits and squirrels, wild game
birds , and deer. All were brought by the Father for his family. There were
fresh fruits, too, from his trees. And, chickens from the chicken coop
behind the gardens.Great Granmother's favorite gift that was gathered by her
Father was the assortment of fresh mushrooms he gathered in the woods. He
knew exactly what each mushroom was, and exactly when each would be ready
for picking. He was a woodsman who knew the ways of the woods and brought
the bounty of the woods home to feed his family of four children. There was
always plenty to eat because of her Father's skills in hunting and
gathering.

If she was not high up in a tree, then she might be found in the gardens,
making trails and roads through the dark rich soil. She liked to play there
in the dirt  with her dump trucks and brightly painted metal cars. She was a
little girl who did not play with baby dolls or have tea parties with her
friends. She read about little girls who liked those things in the books she
read from the library. She enjoyed reading about the tea parties and the
adventures of little girls in the books. But, that was not really her world.
It was the Earth that she connected with. The Earth in all it's many
manifestations was her muse from the earliest days of her life.  

Great Grandmother  was in her late 60s and she still loved the Earth. She
liked to feel it in her hands. She liked  to sit on it, and lay on it under
the trees in the shade. Her children would often lay there on the Earth with
her and they would laugh and tell stories, and dream together. It felt so
good to lay there, fixed onto the surface of the earth like a magnet. She
taught the children that the Earth was a Positive charge, and that people
were a negative charge. It was necessary to join their bodies with the
Earth's surface for them to be complete. Just like a set of magnets, the
positive and the negative charge have to be together for the magnet to work
properly. 

Great Grandmother believed  it was probably mid-July when she reflected on
it because the days were smoldering and languid because the sun was high in
the sky very early in the mornings that particular summer. The days were so
intense and hot that her skin felt sticky all the time. Her hair felt wet
from sweating as she played in the trees that summer afternoon.  She was
aware of the stifling heat of the early afternoon.  The child's  stature was
quite small as she  stood beneath the large leather-textured tree. She was
small, but very strong. Neighbors often said she was athletic and wild.

She  had glanced up into its gnarled branches, with their downward movement
towards the earth. They reached out in every direction over her  head.  This
hulking giant was her favorite Apple tree - a protective, sheltering
hide-away.  This ancient Apple tree stood just behind Mr. Corbin's gray
concrete block garage.  As Great Grandmother  recalled, it was the only tree
that stood in her  neighbor's yard.  She could   not say that there were no
other trees, but it is this giant one that was remembered.   It must have
been very old and looking back on the scene through the lens of memory. It
seemed to her  to stand as a sentinel to separate the garage from the rows
of garden plants. But,Great Grandmother 

knew for sure that even as this tree separated and divided Mr. Corbin's back
yard it was also the connection between Heaven and Earth.  It was the space
between Here and  There; between the Present moment and the Future.  The
tree stands in her childhood memory as a vertical division in a horizontal
verdant landscape - an axis mundi.  

The Great Grandmother  knew then just as sure as she  knows  now about
secret things.

She  has  always known about hidden things and what they mean. She knew
about the life inside of rocks, and the tears that were there. She knows
about the silent and quiet things that most people never see. Some people
call Great Grandmother a "seer." But she really cannot see because she is
now blind. Great Grandmother talked  about seeing wit her inner eyes. She
calls this her "intuition." She says she sees the very special places  that
people with good eyesight have never seen. 

The secret places are all tucked away in her memories. One by one, over the
years, she will share them with her children and her grand children and even
now, today, she shares this memory with her Great Grand-daughter. It is the
Great Grandmother who is the Storyteller. Just like the Griot in an African
village, Great Grandmother is the One who preserves the memories for the
family and tells the stories that will give them the information they will
need on their journey in life. She holds the secrets in her memory until the
time is right.

Lynda Lambert
104 River Road
Ellwood City, PA 16117

724 758 4979

My Blog:  http://www.walkingbyinnervision.blogspot.com
My Website:  http://lyndalambert.com

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