Hello, friends. Ramona Grigg here. That picture above was taken some time in the 1980s. That’s how long I’ve been writing professionally, but I really don’t remember when I didn’t write. It started around the time I learned that letters formed words, and words formed sentences, and the right mix of sentences could tell an entire story. That was heady stuff.
But about the picture: I had my own office upstairs of that house–the house we lived in for 32 years and in which we raised our three children–but I don’t remember why I was writing at the dining room table. It looks like I was set up for the duration and not just having a quick sit at the typewriter. The way I’m dressed tells me it couldn’t have been summer, when the heat would have made our un-air-conditioned rooms upstairs unbearable. But it was a nice place to write and I still have that typewriter.
I was freelancing a lot back then. I wrote for the Detroit Free Press, the Jewish News, The Observer-Eccentric Newspapers, and the Eagle Newspaper chain, along with alternative rags and regional mags. I wrote feature pieces and had regular columns in two papers–but not at the same time.
I began a couple of novels in that house but never finished them. I’m pretty ashamed of myself over that. I received a grant from the State of Michigan for one of them, and I worked hard at it, but it’s still missing large chunks of the story. Still, they’re my stories and I love them, incomplete as they may be. But unless something miraculous happens and I suddenly learn to speed-write–and speed-edit–chances are they’ll always be mine and mine alone.
I don’t know why I’m telling you this. It’s not a good look. But the one thing that remains constant with me is that I suck at selling myself. I can’t help that I think I have to go on proving it.
I bought my first computer way back then, not long after the miracle of Windows gave even us novices access to a rough version of the Internet and an opening to a whole new world. I’ve been at it ever since. If you’ve never heard of me I’ll take all the blame. If you don’t like what you read here, I’ll take the blame for that, too.
Ramona Grigg 