Saturday, January 3, 2009

Living My Life

It's funny, Jennifer, but your little bit of writing is essentially what my novel, Horizon, is about. My main character is a woman who has lived her whole life by what others think and how she changes. I like it and I hope you keep going on it so I can see what Claire does that's different from what Gail did. (If I ever finish it. Arrrgh. All I have to do is go through it once more to check for typos and then I can start trolling for an agent. God help me, I can't imagine it. Maybe I need an agent-finding agent. Maybe I need a novel-mother. Help meeeee!)

January 2--Van Gogh's Sunflowers. His yellow paint is rusting, turning dull as it ages. The lively strokes of his brush, wielded more than a hundred years ago, still fill the viewer with a certain energy. I want to paint my kitchen that soft blue-green hovering in the top left corner of the canvas. I'm not usually a fan of blue or green but the way he put it on there makes me think it is a reflection of something special right outside the frame. You see how he signed his name, Vincent, on the rude pottery jar that holds the flowers? Only his first name as if we are old friends, and of course I know Vincent. You do too. I like too that if you study it you can see that his perspective is a bit off, a little flat, as if the exuberance of the painting's feeling is the most important thing. I wonder why such a plain little painting of a handful of flowers in a farmhouse became so famous.

I'm stumped for a closing, some clever few words to make you smile and leave you with a warm feeling. Maybe it's the gray sky and promise of freezing rain. Ugh.
--Barbara

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