On Being "PERFECT"...this year we will get it right!!!

                                                                                                                                                                                    

I use that word quite a bit. In the world that I live in, pictures, people,

The perfect Palo Verde bloom.

and life are at any given moment perfect. And yet here I am...making resolutions, again! Didn't I do that last year and the year before? 

Yet the notion is so wonderfully hopeful. This year I will get it right...maybe. 

It all goes back to that writing class I took at Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, University of Arizona. Optimism springs eternally from my breast and I continue to hope to improve. I licked my wounds after writing for that group of writers. I need to be not exactly perfect but the best I can be at what I love to do. I want to write with other writers again.

In that class, we were challenged to describe what "voice" means to us. Anthony Horowitz should have been the example I used. He is a genius at using the first-person position as though it could be his voice. I want to be able to do that. He packs action, conversation, and authentic emotion into what he writes. If you listen and watch carefully, he is truly there.

The Word is Murder felt almost autobiographic yet I don't believe it was. For example, another character reacts strongly and offensively to a gay. Horowitz as the storyteller is greatly insulted. It turns out Horowitz bills himself as "a defender of gays and alternative lifestyles, a moderate on abortion, and a civil rights activist". It is all in the story much like Chekov's gun on the table. 

The Word... is written in the first person voice as though he were telling his story to you verbally. What an inspiration it was for someone like me who does write that way yet is in the process of making the stories...well...almost acceptable. I am daring to dream I suppose.

What do you think? 

So, for 2024 the resolution is to get better at whatever I set out to do. Perfect would be the goal, but I would settle for just getting a notch better at life. 

What do you hope for? 

Happy New Year everyone!

b+