We finished the Christmas holiday with a 50th birthday party for my younger daughter, Tara. It was actually a family reunion, as she requested. About fifty people attended and Tara was thrilled. The timing was optimum, since cousins from all over the country, in town for the holiday, were able to make it.

Back at home, I returned to my novel. I’m working with a craft book that examines some “fatal flaws” of novel writing. It has proved very helpful so far, and based on things I picked up from it, I made some edits to the manuscript section due to my critique group.

The edits made significant improvements and I got good feedback from the group. I tend to use too much narrative, and that will be my focus in the section I’m revising now. Show, don’t tell, as the old saw goes.

The project is ambitious. I am trying to weave together character development and some complex ideas – how slavery benefitted each leg of the triangle trade, different expectations of slavery, personal choices, national choices, destiny. See what I mean? Anyway, I am enjoying the process and the progress. I aim to finish it this year.

Following my critique meeting I attended the open writing group. Several of the pieces we reviewed were poetry. One in particular stood out because I couldn’t make heads or tails of it. Seemed like gibberish to me. Then, after the author read it aloud to the group, one of the members gushed that it was just like J. Alfred Prufrock. Of course, I had read that famous poem in college. But after a mandatory English lit course, I focused on Russian and French writing. I learned more about Pushkin and Montesquieu than Elliott.

Nevertheless, I decided that was no excuse for ignorance. I re-read “Love Song” and also found an analysis of it on the Internet. I liked and understood it better this time around. Experience and age have their benefits. My writing colleague’s work is ambitious and I applaud his skill. I will enjoy reading the next iteration of his poem.

Now I am going to do my own re-working. I have 5,000 words to rearrange and rewrite to show, not tell. First, though, I’ll spend a few minutes with my craft book.