Category Archives: Writing

Old Writing: Part 1::A Day in the Life of Dona and her Owl-Focals

Memories, Writing

I found a few writing samples from my youth in the attic. Here is the first. Warning, it will leave you unfulfilled. Also I have left out the numerous spelling and grammatical error but I am not promising the punctuation is correct. Also this was written in 1969. Also J. K. Rowling does not have to worry.

A Day in the Life of Dona and her Owl-Focals

“Go and get the mail, Dona,” said Mother.

“Oh do I have to?” I asked, “I’m reading the best story I’ve ever read in my life!”

“Oh you always say that when I ask you to do something,” replied Mother.

“Yay! Yippie!”

“You scared me to death,” said Mother.

“I’m sorry but I forgot that my Owl-Focals are coming today.”

“Your what?” asked Mother.

“My Owl-Focals,” I replied. “I will show you when I get the mail.”

“I thought you didn’t want to get the mail,” said Mother, grinning.

So I went out and got the mail, showed them to Mother and couldn’t wait until that night.

When night finally rolled around, slowly but surely, I tried on my new glasses. They worked. So that night when I went to bed I read my book thoroughly. It was 1130 when I fell asleep that night and 8:00 when I woke the next morning. I was so tired I could hardly keep my eyes open all through school.

I learned my lesson and never used something good to do bad again.

/teacher’s note: I’m glad to see you using conversation/

owlfocals
Dona reading with her owl-focals. Image by Mike Popovic

Voice — active and passive

Writing, ,

I am reading Stephen King’s On Writing and loving it. I read half of it about a year and a half ago then stopped. I am now at the same place I stopped eighteen months ago. The place he describes active and passive voice and tells us to not use passive voice.

I don’t really understand the difference between active and passive voice. I know I use passive voice because my word processor alerts me when my sentences are passive but I’m never sure how to fix the sentence.

King speculates that timid writers use passive voice. I think he is correct. I think I am a timid writer. I am a timid everything. I think that writing in the passive voice is akin to not wanting to hurt anyone’s feelings.

I plan on trying to write in the active voice (was the previous phrase active or passive? I can’t tell) as much as I can. You will tell me if I slip?

Right?

False Alarm

Events, Writing

Ok, I could have sworn I wrote about the lunar landing and walk, but it seems like I didn’t find it worthy of documenting.

Diary entry from July 16, 1969

I suppose what I remembered writing about was four days earlier when Apollo 11 took off from Earth:

Diary entry from July 16, 1969

Wed July 16 1967

Dear Diary,
What next! The moon now, mars next? Saw the flight of Appolo [sic] 11.

Penny and I had a Seance to day & we brought back Hitler & Lenin we think. We didn’t see D.S [Dark Shadows] today. Saw Michel J. Burke! Didn’t read Dracula to-day.

Penny and I were honestly not budding skin-heads. We’d just learned about Lenin and Communism in school and confused him with Hitler who we’d heard might not be dead. We wanted to try to bring him back to see if he really was dead. I guess he was. I think the explanation needs its own post. (oh, and the v with two dots over it was my secret vampire symbol.) Ok — I was a little weird at 13.