Tuesday 26 April 2016

Mr Jeremy Fisher et moi







It has been an eventful month.


True, April has not come to its end and surprises may happen during the few remaining days. However, this month has been a month of landmarks. It has been a year since I have begun writing this blog. I have now scribbled more than a hundred posts - this one is the 111th! You belong to a number of readers to whom I never thought I would be of interest. Some of you have been following my ramblings with patience since the beginning. Some of you are new to my meandering and wandering thoughts and prose. 
I thank you all.

I thank very particularly those friends who will recognize themselves: they encouraged me to write, gave tirelessly their advice, were next to me when I despaired and when I was over-enthusiastic; they have edited my errors in English, corrected my typos, suggested alternative vocabulary, seen to my grammar, and respected my quaint French way of saying things in a foreign language; they have made comments, emailed me, supported me, comforted me, given me huge chunks of their time. 
I am deeply grateful to them.

You may not aware of it but you have given a new direction and a new meaning to my life. I never knew I had a voice before. My throat was constricted and, at best, I croaked on my lily-pad leaf, close, very close, to the banks of the river. I was afraid of leaving the security of the banks, and I resented this closeness at the same time. I felt shackled and bound, with a heavy past, a heavy present, and not much of a future. To write, to be read, to read you, to talk with you, all these have changed my perspectives. There are still bad days but there are far more happy ones.
I thank you.






And now I have taken my lily-pad leaf boat even further.






I have made a frog leap, like Mr Jeremy Fisher. 

Some time ago, I felt the urge of writing something different from the blog. Before knowing how, there was a short story in the memory of my computer. Then there was another. And yet another. I sent them to these special friends for advice: I was incredulous and very much doubting about their worth. They were returned with critics, comments, editing, corrections. And they stayed in the memory of my laptop. 

I learnt blogging during the past year, but I also learnt tweeting, posting on Facebook (by the way, here is my blogger page where I shall be glad to have the entries of your blog(s) posted if you wish, comments by non bloggers if they wish, discussions among you if you wish: https://www.facebook.com/sketches.and.vignettes.from.la.dordogne/ - Camille de Fleurville-Malaret), using Pinterest and other facilities. And I learnt about Goodreads.

Quite recently, I discovered there is a special section for "creative writing" in Goodreads. After some steps of "hesitation waltz", I decided to post the first of my short stories. Tentative post entitled: The Waltz and the Leopard. It is rather long to be copied as a blog entry, but you may find it here, following this link:

I would be glad to receive your comments and to know if I was right to leave the banks of my brook to go and sit writing a little further!

Meanwhile, thank you for being here!