Blog 2297 – 02.04.2022

The Turn Of A Phrase

Most blog writers do not number their blogs and most bloggers do not blog every day. But, I do and perhaps the biggest reason why is that I believe practice makes perfect and I want to remind my new readers and old that if a particular turn of phrase appeals to you that I have been at this awhile so others blogs I have previously posted might also appeal to you.

The list of names of those who follow http://www.theencouragingword.co has yet to grow, even after almost seven years, to over three hundred subscribers. As I was looking down the list yesterday I noticed that I have no followers listed who have been following my blog for over two years, but over half of those who do have been with me two years. I admit I wonder a bit about the accuracy of those stats as I do the daily reminder that I get from Word Press congratulating me that I have posted seven hundred some odd days in a row when I happen to have kept count and know the figure to be much closer to two thousand two hundred and fifty as I recall when I originally started the blog in March of 2015 that for the first couple of months I did not post on the weekends thinking I might want a break from writing. I did and do not, though I have noticed that my list of readers is often shorter on the weekends.

I still get a few “likes” most days and an occasional kind comment on a particular blog. I suppose I am most encouraged to see that past blogs are still being viewed. It is my hope and has always been that someday I will be widely read. I know that when I find an author that does it for me I try to find and read every word that he or she has ever written.

I am glad and grateful for the service that Word Press provides to would be writers and readers with this wonderful and relatively inexpensive platform. Yesterday, I began the Prime Video streaming of Z – The Beginning of Everything which stars the lovely young smoking hot star Christina Ricci as “the beautiful and talented Southern belle, the original flapper and icon of the Jazz age” and also famed wife of renowned novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Zelda meets Lieutenant Scott Fitzgerald in her hometown of Montgomery, Alabama during World War One. He is stationed at an Army base near there and training with his men awaiting orders to join the fray in France. The young Francis Scott Fitzgerald is more focused on writing his first novel than training for war (Fortunately for him and us all the Armistice came before his orders to report “over there.”) Strong as his passion for writing is it is nevertheless subsumed by an even greater passion for the vivacious and beautiful Zelda.

Her father, a judge in Montgomery, is quite unimpressed with Scott as he would be with anyone who believes he could earn an adequate living writing. Scott desperately wants to believe that he will not in his own words be “the next Mark Twain, but the next F. Scott Fitzgerald.” Before the Armistice is signed Scott receives his first rejection letter from the publisher Charles Scribner’s Sons. Henry James, Ernest Hemingway, and F. Scott Fitzgerald would all later be published by Scribners. As a further aside, some fifty odd years ago I myself sent a manuscript or two of poetry to Charles Scribner’s Son’s and for several years kept my rejection letters to prove that I was a dues paying member of the rejected writer’s club.

F. Scott would have given up his writing career, because like us all he hated rejection, had not his desire to woo and eventually win Zelda been so strong. Therefore the title Z – The Beginning of Everything seems quite appropriate. Zelda was F. Scott’s muse, inspiration, and most devoted fan. Every writer needs that. I am reminded of a song from the nineteen seventies where the would be artist writes to his beloved, “Please come to Boston – Denver – LA” but her response is always, “No, Boy, you come home to me, for there ain’t no gold and their ain’t nobody like me, I’m the number one fan of the man from Tennessee.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota not Tennessee but like myself he had a southern belle who encouraged him to write. My words may never be as widely read as his, but like him I found my A and Z, mine just happens to be named not Zelda but Linda Lee. (Still rhyming after all these years)

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David White

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eQcPfEXaeSYaMYju8Ck5Lfewcc63sCvE/view?usp=drivesdk

Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

Author’s Note:

I scrolled all the way down to the beginning of the first blog posted here and found the following. The first two months of posting March and April of 2015 are not longer there. Also the whole month of July 2015 is missing, but I reposted them during the month of July 2016. That month of posts is the entire little book that I wrote about my dear departed daughter Emily Elaine White that I call “Emily, The Little Girl Who Sang Her Song To Anyone Who Came Along.” I began this blog hoping to build a large enough following to help convince a publishing house to publish that little book. It is here for anyone who wants to read it free, all 32 chapters or episodes posted July 1st through July 31st, 2016.