Moment of Extreme Emotion: 200th Post Mark with Julie & Julia

Welcome to my 200th blog post! It’s here because you have visited this blog, a time or two, or maybe way more often. Writers write for many reasons, most importantly to express themselves. But most writers don’t like to write in a void. Writing is communication. And communication, for me at least, is a two-way street.

Julie Powell agrees with me. Remember Julie Powell in the movie Julie & Julia? 

Julie, using Julia Child as her muse, conceives an idea for her blog in this scene:

The quotes below are excerpted from the movie script, all based on her best-selling book with a much longer title:

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WHY DO YOU DO IT?    “It’s a regimen, Mom, like doing pushups!”

SOMETIMES IT’S FRUSTRATING!  Julie shouts at her computer: Is there anyone out there reading me?

Then later: Today I had 12 comments from readers and I didn’t know any one of ‘em!

WHY WE CONTINUE . . . 

Julie comments: Julia taught me what it takes to find your way in the world. It’s not what I thought it was. I thought it was all about-I don’t know, confidence or will or luck. Those are all some good things to have, no question. But there’s something else, something that these things grow out of. It’s joy.

Catch joy on the wing . . .

– William Blake

And so I do today, thanks to  you, dear reader!

Blog_200 Posts

Coming next: Visions of the Little Match Girl

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Behind the Scenes @ “Plain and Fancy Girl”

Writing a blog post is magical–right? Words appear in the right order and photos sift down from above and settle into a nifty niche between paragraphs. Well, sort of . . . When I created the post Mennonites, Ventrlloquists, and Memoir, 3 things happened in succession:

1. In Vladimir Nabokov’s memoir I read that the author can “ventriloquize” his voice by inventing incidents, characters, and relationships.

2. The word “ventriloquize” sparked an image of Howdy Doody and the forbidden TV show I sneaked off to watch.

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3. That reminded me of a story about our next door neighbors, the “red-light” Rentzels whom I wrote about 10 years ago.

Writing that post wasn’t fast or easy but it was smooth, not usually the case.

So I invite you to the website of author Kathleen Pooler, who is hosting me today in a blog post which features me “undressing” some of my posts in public. Click here for secrets divulged! (You can leave a comment below or better yet on Kathy’s blog.)