About my French, About my book

I told my French pen pal “S” a week ago that I would be busy writing my campaign book and not to expect me to be available to pen. My Pal misses me but now S will write a lot while I’m asleep and when I wake I’ll write a lot back. Its more like answering emails than having a slow typing conversation.

S has began studying English in school. We are only three days apart in age so we have a lot of contemporary history in common only mine is from and American experience and S’s comes from the French experience. I only began studying French about 770 days ago. I know because my cellphone french software keeps track for me. I have had a couple breaks lasting a day or two but I’m not counting them. I spent much of the summer last year doing the bare minimum but I did something. There are times when I put in a couple hours a day. I guess I decided back at the beginning I was going to learn to speak French come hell or high water or a campaign for Congress.

With my help S is getting back into practice. S even bought a book about France I mentioned which is in English. Its “The Black Count” about the father of the great French writer Alexandre Dumas who wrote the Three Musketeers (Les Trois Mousquetaires). S just ordered the book and began reading it. S told me that it was surprisingly easy to read and S was pleased. I told S that I hoped someday I could do the same in French. I also noted that because the book won the much coveted American Pulitzer Prize it was a good book to dig into to practice English and learn new vocabulary.

S has been reading my blog too and been following my eccentric politics. S asked me last night about just how I’m going about writing my book after I told S. my writing has been going amazingly well this week. Yesterday despite a lot of fresh writing I spent nine hours working on it and roughed out 10,000 pages. So this is what I wrote back to S this morning about my book:

About my book. Yes much of it comes from my previous writing. My published columns don’t need much editing because I cleaned them up before people read them. My blog posts are much more casually composed and I rarely edit them as carefully.

“I am using my older writing like stepping stones. They tell about my past experiences but I am connecting them to make the whole story flow. Yesterday I added a lot of new writing about my college years. That is much slower work.

“I am up to 6 chapters. I am trying to do 2-a-day now. Chapters are about 5,000 words each. At the moment it looks like I have 7 to 9 more chapters ahead of me. I would love to have them written roughly by the end of next week. Then I can begin arranging for a printer but I will still have a lot of polishing to do.”

Its just past 8AM now so I’ll have a good day ahead of me to write. I’ll probably mow the lawn between chapters to freshen up for the second one today. Life’s obligations continue even during a corona virus sequestering. Before I start though I’ll link to a couple more news stories sans comment. S has been reading them to figure out what the Hell is going on in America. I hope S has known me long enough now not to take me too seriously. Its bad enough when I do that.

About the author

Harry is a ferociously good natured eccentric in Duluth Minnesota who detests traitors dressed up as Uncle Sam. You can find somewhat better edited writings of his at the Duluth Reader "contributors." page. The URL is:

https://duluthreader.com/contributors/h/84/284-harry-welty