I Love Getting Tagged

By C. Lynn Beck
© 2008

Some time ago, fellow blogger, Nichole Giles, tagged me in the game of “Seven Unknown Facts about Me”. Because I write a humor column, there’s very little the world doesn’t know about me—or my husband, dogs, cats, and dust bunnies under the bed. Because I love playing tag, I’ll give it a shot, however, like fellow blogger, Darvell Hunt, I’m going to give it a little twist and make it seven unknown writing facts about me.

1. I can not diagram any sentence more complicated than, “See Spot run.” Even in that simple pronouncement, I’m unsure where the word “see” would go on the diagram.

2. Like most writers, I’ve composed poetry. Things like, “There was a young girl named Beckie, who was stuck in the snow to her neckie.” Award winning stuff, to be sure.

3. I never aspired to be a writer when I was a child. Although—funny thing—a friend and I started our own newspaper that we hand-wrote and then typed on an old typewriter. We wrote it for friends, when we were 12. It ran about three months and bombed out when we realized the two of us were the only ones reading it.

4. Writing was something other people were good at, not me. Or so I thought, until I had a wonderful graduate student as a teacher in college. Because of her, I discovered that I could actually write. It probably happened because she never made me diagram sentences.

5. Brevity. It’s a problem!

6. Typing is an evn bigger prblem becsaue my brain tinks faster then me fingrs.

7. Author, Shirley Bahlmann, mentors and encourages me. The 2006 LDStorymakers' Conference motivated me. Without those two, I wouldn’t have plucked up the nerve to say, “So what if my stuff gets rejected a hundred times. I’m writing and submitting anyway!”

C. Lynn’s other work:
Cup of Comfort for Horse Lovers, "Horse on Lap"
Life is Like Riding a Unicycle by Shirley Bahlmann, "Priming the Pump, pg. 79
Newspaper Column
Ensign Magazine, Dec 2007-Q&A
2007 League of Utah Writer's Award-Historical Fiction
Website

What books C. Lynn recommends:
Publishing Secrets by LDS Storymakers (BJ Rowley and others)
Writing for Story: Craft Secrets of Dramatic Nonfiction by Jon Franklin
Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Rennie Browne & Dave King