FISHTRAP HOLLOW, Miss. —
Mary Grace, whose name fits, has been coming to this old house since she had baby teeth and wore clothes her mother chose.
She’s headed to Ole Miss in the fall, with her blond good looks, lithe and long legs and academic scholarship. I find it hard to believe.
Just yesterday this kid used to play in my branch, or eat hot dogs on the porch while the grownups solved the world’s problems. She has slept on quilts on the floor here, or fallen asleep in her father’s lap as Christmas carols evolved into late-night rock and roll.
She turned out exceedingly well, despite my occasional influence.
Last fall Mary Grace told me about a high-school senior project she wanted to tackle. She was to participate in National Novel Writing Month, something devised to promote literacy among teens. Sounded good so far.
The goal was to write 50,000 words in one month, roughly 1,667 words per day. If you don’t think that’s a lot of words, try it one day. Then try it again the next day.
This wasn’t to be written in that pidgin Latin that teens use to text, either, but correct language and complete sentences.
I assumed this typing frenzy was to demonstrate that if you sit down and put your mind to it, you’ll eventually have a book-length manuscript, if not a book.
I struggle with my few hundred words per week, so initially I had my doubts. But Mary Grace’s email explaining her project had a postscript: “I already have over 16,000 words written.”
At first I thought this was unrealistic, writing anything that long and so quickly that made any kind of sense. Then I remembered Ernest Hemingway wrote the first draft of “The Sun Also Rises” in eight weeks, and it was 60,000 well-chosen words.
Mary Grace already had her idea, too, which for anyone — Hemingway to Harlequin — is the hard part. Three adult women who haven’t seen one another in the 30 years since high school have a reunion. The tension necessary for a good plot is built into that situation, trust me.
So I agreed to be her “mentor,” using the term loosely. This girl did not need my help. She had an idea, lots of jumping-off words and the discipline of a Carthusian monk.
She finished. Of course she did. I have seen a small part of it. The fictional dialogue was better than anything I could have done. I know, because I’ve tried to write dialogue. It’s difficult.
I think the main lesson here was that if you sit down to task every day, eventually your work will be done. If your routine is constant, it might be done more quickly than you’d expect. In other words, Rome wasn’t built in a day.
It’s one lesson I learned from this young woman’s effort. Another: Young people don’t know some things are nigh impossible, so they succeed.
We finished up our mentor-student relationship on the same porch where Mary Grace and her brother Patrick used to romp with my big yellow dog. Mary Grace had to interview me.
What’s the hardest part of writing for you, she asked in an official voice. Getting started, I said.
Second hardest thing? Finishing.
(To find out more about Rheta Grimsley Johnson and her books, visit www.rhetagrimsleyjohnsonbooks.com)
Opinion
Yesterday’s Child is Full of Grace
- Opinion
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Hood’s ‘open carry’ ruling strikes important balances
Attorney General Jim Hood’s office issued an opinion this week that went a long way toward establishing some order and applying some common sense to what has become a contentious and confusing debate both for proponents and opponents of free exercise of the Second Amendment.
House Bill 2, which becomes law July 1, was authored and led to passage by state Rep. Andy Gipson, R-Braxton. Gipson has told the press that he believed the legislation was necessary to clearly define what a concealed weapon is under the law and to distinguish between “concealed carry” and “open carry” rights. But many law enforcement officers charged with enforcing the state’s “concealed carry” law and other contradictory statutes, the bill created some confusion and Hood’s AG opinion brought some clarity to the ongoing debate. -
Analysis: Miss. supes discussing county budgets
Mississippi supervisors gather on the Gulf Coast this week to talk about roads and bridges, economic development, water resources and other issues.
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The Loss of Trust
Amid all the heated cross-currents of debate about the National Security Agency’s massive surveillance program, there is a growing distrust of the Obama administration that makes weighing the costs and benefits of the NSA program itself hard to assess. The belated recognition of this administration’s contempt for the truth, for the American people and for the Constitution of the United States, has been long overdue.
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Mary Dorsa Guttry
Mass of Christian Burial for Mary Dorsa Guttry, 90, of Carriere, Miss., who passed away Friday, June 14, 2013, will be held Wednesday, June 19, 2013, at 2 p.m. at St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church.
Visitation will be Wednesday, June 19, 2013 from 11 a.m. until 1 p.m. at McDonald Funeral Home.
Burial will be in New Palestine Cemetery under the direction of McDonald Funeral Home. -
We all need to be prepared for disasters
When my father was alive, he left New Orleans only two times in his life. The first was to serve his country in Korea. The second was when the federal government evacuated him to San Antonio in 2005.
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How much spying needed for security?
Ever since the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, Americans have vacillated between their desire for safety and their desire for privacy.
The federal government, whose spying on its own citizens has been further exposed this past week, says Americans can’t have it both ways. -
State lags in early child ed
The bad news is that Mississippi remains the only state in the South without a state-funded early children education program. Only eight states nationwide do not invest in some form of early childhood education and only 11 states don’t have a state-funded pre-kindergarten program.
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A hard rain is gonna fall...
By Kathryn Jean Lopez/Syndicated columnist
After disappearing during his term in office and bringing scandal to his family and state, former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford is going to Washington, having won election to Congress. And that’s far from the worst story reflecting the current character of our nation.
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Not your mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal
By Rheta Grimsely Johnson/Syndicated columnist
I haven’t seen the Ladies’ Home Journal in about a million years, except maybe in the dentist’s office when I was trying to avoid a television permanently set on Fox News.
Somebody’s grandchild was selling magazines for a school project, and Ladies’ Home Journal was the only one on the list I recognized. Now it comes to the house.
Let’s just say: It’s not my mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal. This month, right behind a feature called “A Country of People Who Never Stop Eating” is one called “Nice Girls Do Get Tattoos.” -
Health care market needs oversight
By Gene Lyons/Syndicated columnist
Sometimes the best journalism explains what’s right under our noses. In Steven Brill’s exhaustive Time magazine cover article, “Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us,” it’s the staggeringly expensive, grotesquely inefficient and inhumane way Americans pay for medical care.
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