Jessica Norrie has embraced the block editor and also the unique writing style of Bernadine Evaristo (stripped back and unadorned) to share her writing and reading biography and some recommended books. As always an entertaining and interesting post.
blogger Jessica was first and foremost an author except on imposter syndrome days and ran her blog mainly to keep her writing hand in
having admired Bernadine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other she decided to try writing an autobiographical blogpost in Evaristo’s style
which is harder than it looks, as each sentence in Girl, Woman, Other has its own paragraph with no capital letters to start or full stops, although you can use other punctuation like commas
so Jessica made each paragraph a separate block and indented first lines as Evaristo does (please excuse inconsistent indents due to sustained opposition from the WordPress Block Editor; also note links to Jessica’s previous blogposts don’t open in a new tab although links to outside sites do and Jessica who is a writer not a coder is flummoxed and frustrated by this as it used to be simple to do)
it was a toss-up between trying the Evaristo style and writing another post about mothers and daughters because the first one was four years ago now and she was excited because her own daughter, not seen since before lockdown, was coming to stay
anyway that’s all some weeks ago now
the stay went well and it was lovely to see each other
Jessica returned to Girl, Woman, Other and realised how refreshing it is to read so much straightforward back story (memo to any creative writing tutor she’s ever met that she’ll put in as much as she likes from now on)
it gave her hope for her own future books
the reading pleasure she had once she’d agreed to Evaristo’s style reminded her of when she stopped fighting Jon McGregor’s narrative terms in Reservoir 13 and just rolled with them
(although it was restful later to turn to the conventional narrative of The Confessions of Frannie Langton, which along with the Evaristo gives good insight into the experiences of black women in the UK both historically and now)
Head over to enjoy and comment.. thanks Sally
We are in unprecedented times! I do not believe that there is a person on this planet that would disagree with that statement. In times like these we find out a lot about ourselves and those around us. My year did not start off the greatest. In January I lost my job and began my unemployment journey.
