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!
