You Can Call Me Val

Come join me on my voyage into the literary world. Bring your trunk of B-movie actress costumes, because it's sure to be more than a three-hour tour.

I am a teacher moonlighting as a writer. I am both a neophyte and a veteran. I have never been published, which tends to happen if you never submit. For five years, I have posted daily on my anonymous blog, which puts a little writing experience under my belt.

I am fairly proficient in the mechanics of writing. In my distant past, I was valedictorian of my high school class. This honor was lost on my students, who, on a last-day-of-school time-filling quiz on how well they knew me, professed that I was Val the victorian at my high school.

I am writing a book. Isn't everybody? Of course, I have been writing books since I was a child. All were abandoned, pencil-and-paper orphans stuffed into a trunk, folded into little-read books, or concealed in the middle pages of spiral notebooks. Or, more modernly, left to fade away on 3.5 inch floppies. I did not love them enough to leave them on a doorstep in a giant basket like the one that held that red-headed kid in Problem Child. The one who wrote fan letters to the Bow Tie Killer, who was actually Kramer from Seinfeld.

Last year, it hit me like a semi smashing a green bean on the interstate: I was never meant to write fiction! My strength lies in the comedic turn of phrase immortalized by the late, great Erma Bombeck. I first started reading her column when I was in elementary school. It never entered my mind to write something like that. I just did it, without making the connection. In notes, in letters, in emails, in my old blog for the past five years. It's what I do. And that's what will make my book. I'm culling the greatest hits from five years of blog posts, polishing them to a high sheen, and tying them together with a common theme. Once that little task is finished, I will go about the business of querying agents.

As you can see, this blog is just getting underway. It will undergo some fine-tuning as time allows. Some links on my sidebar are purely for entertainment. Others may help those of you who have been bitten by the writing bug. Don't expect me to teach you anything!

But I will leave you with a joke to explain the green bean reference. Because I'm a sucker for jokes told by elementary students.

A green bean and his best friend stood by the interstate, waiting to cross to get to the playground. Best Friend darted through the traffic and reached the other side. He shouted for Green Bean to join him. Green Bean ran onto the highway, and was flattened by a semi truck. At the hospital, the doctor called Best Friend aside. "I have good news, and bad news. The good news is, your little friend is going to live. The bad news is, he's going to be a vegetable for the rest of his life."