NovAbs (Nov 5 club)

[MyOwnWoman]

NovAbs (Nov 5 club)

Hell's bells, JJ, you got me all teary eyed. Honestly. I think you hit the hammer on the head (or the chicken!). I have never been able to recall fond memories of my childhood. But maybe I can shift my perception - so that these stories morph from horror stories to comedy, thus lightening my heart.
Damn, girl.

[MyOwnWoman]

NovAbs (Nov 5 club)

BTW, just how in the hell did you know that they used to call me pumpkin head????????

[jane jane]

NovAbs (Nov 5 club)

I...am..psychic....! Oh, shoot, MOW, I just wrote a long response to you and accidentally deleted it. Basic message was: WRITE, you fool! You can, and you need to, and there are so many people out there who will gobble up those stories. Finding the "funny" amidst the "tragic" will be your salvation, I guarantee. Might get you a book contract and some $$, anyway. And that never hurts!

[trixietrack]

NovAbs (Nov 5 club)

MyOwnWoman;220583 wrote: LOL!
Ewww, here's a good story... So my dad would butcher a bunch of chickens on some chosen Saturday. He'd sit next to the head-chopping stump, always a cold Busch beer at his side. My brothers would catch chickens and hand them over. CHOP! Then the poor bird goes into a huge barrel of simmering water (that's been over a fire since dawn). The hot water make the feathers easier to pluck.

SO one chicken-chopping day, Dad had a pretty good beer buzz going on (like he ever didn't have one). So he'd chop and plunge, chop and plunge, one chicken after another. Then this one time he got out of synch and skipped the chop - and plunged a fully live chicken in the boiling water!!!

Oh, I've got more stories.... Damn, haven't thought of this shit for years. Maybe this is the black comedy I should be writing, eh?

yes this is amazing I can see images (chickens in boiling water) and the sound of the cleaver and the chicken heads falling to the ground. I won't go on

[trixietrack]

NovAbs (Nov 5 club)

jane jane;220589 wrote: YES! YES! YES! MOW, you have got a best-sellin' book in that ol' punkin haid of yourn, honey chile! I think that perhaps we BOTH grew up in another century! A boiled live chicken...oooooh. Bon appetit!

*Beer Buzz on Chickin-Choppin' Day*. There's your title...go from there. Memoir? Fiction? Your choice! But you have a writing assignment! Seriously, I'm not making light of your issues with depression and malaise you've expressed, but I think that if you could focus on the humor, you'd approach your "demons" a whole new way, one that might just provide the redemption and release that has eluded you.

Are you a Flannery O'Connor fan? If so, have you read her published letters, "The Habit of Being*? I can see you becoming the Flannery of the 21st century---I love your dark wit, and I'll bet millions of readers would, too.

All I ask is a signed copy of your first book...

I agree with JJ

[MyOwnWoman]

NovAbs (Nov 5 club)

Thank you, again. I'm humbled.
(But I think you are getting to me - the night before last when I went to bed stories like this arose from my gut to my mind, sentences formed, paragraphs wrote themselves in my head while I tried to sleep...)

[jane jane]

NovAbs (Nov 5 club)

MOW, that's terrif that you're letting these stories bubble up. Capture 'em! Do you like Truman Capote and Carson McCullers? Just free-associating about other Southern voices I enjoy...(and one day I'll add MOW to that list, of course...)