Hi I’m Jenn

Hello Everyone

I sat here for a while trying to decide where to start with this. I’ve come to the conclusion that in order to discuss the present and possible future, I need to talk about the past. If it wasn’t for what I have gone through in the past, I wouldn’t be where I am today.

I grew up a little different from most of my friends. My family lived in a tent for 6 months when I was 8. When our house was built, we carried water for a very long time and only had a wood stove as our source of heat. Then there was the dirt floor in our house till shortly before I moved out. You know you have a smart dog if they can tell the difference between inside dirt and outside dirt. Our Max was definitely house trained.

From the moment I learned how to read, I loved the escape. Any book I could get my hands on was fair game for reading material. I entered read-a-thons to raise money for the Special Olympics. People would pledge money based on how many books I could read in a certain time frame. I would often read 25 or more books in a 6 week period. People back then generally pledged a dollar per book. Sometimes bringing the total up to $300. My favorite book started out as Judy Blume’s Freckle Juice. Then as I got older it became Cujo. My eighth grade English Teacher will attest to that. He once asked if it was the only book I had ever read because I generally gave examples from the book. 

I was the kid who spent their summers reading. I was the one who walked around the house with a book open in one hand and only one eye really watching where I was going. I read more books than necessary for school and my book reports were more detailed than other kids my age. 

As a teenager, I began writing just for me. It was the 80’s and we didn’t have handheld computers like we have today, so I relied on pen and paper. Back then I just wrote, I didn’t think about editing. I just wrote what came to mind. When I grew up, I boxed up these notebooks and moved them from place to place. 

I married my high school sweetheart and we had two children. After we had children and moved into a bigger house we had a flood, the boxes were ruined with the contents inside. My characters Marcus Gaston and Bethany Lawson will have to return another day.  

I worked in the food industry to start out and then I progressed into an office job in the medical field.  When I was diagnosed with epilepsy, my family and I struggled with my diagnosis. I was sorting out feelings and trying to express them somehow. I went into a period of denial at first. Then after crashing my car, I realized that my seizures were not going away and it was time to do something about it. I began pursuing more aspects of my healthcare. I started expressing myself in written words since my vocal skills were impaired somewhat, not physically but mentally. 

A poet, whom I became friends with, began teaching me a tremendous amount about poetry formatting and styles.  For the most part, I prefer to write my poetry directed by format. Robert Frost once said something similar to, “A poem written without form is like playing tennis without a net. It may be fun but it’s not tennis.” 

There were weekly contests open to the public. In 2016 I began to enter those contests. I wrote about my medical issues, the weather, people and pets.  I started writing poems, as a way to express myself in anger. At some point, I began writing about anything that inspired me, whether it was a topic or a poetry form.

From 2016 to 2018 I entered 75 contests, I won 23 of them. Next time we get together I will talk a little about those. 

Poetry and prose are two very different forms of writing. To me, it is a huge transition from one to the other. One that takes time and practice. It also requires a huge support system.

When I joined Writing Prompts and Critiques Group on Facebook, I was looking for prompts. Something to bring back that writing urge. My husband passed away, I moved, and the urge to write poetry left when he did. This group has been a tremendous help for me.  Now here I am, helping by being a moderator.  I have come to depend on this group of people. In all honesty, if it wasn’t for some of these administrators and moderators, I wouldn’t have had nerve enough to step back into the world of fiction that I tried to enter in my youth. 

See you next time.