Janet Marie Good
|
Unlike the rest of the writers in the Works in Progress, Janet Marie Good never wrote anything much until she
was sure the rest of her life was pretty much finished. She made sure her husband Jim's spirit was broken,
the kids had all evaded long jail sentences, her little side business called Carefree Weddings had been run
into the ground, most of the animals within her reach had been adopted out to great homes through Stray No
More, and she was well on the way to being old and crabby. It was finally her turn to write about her long
eventful life except that now she is faced with mountains of material and only a smidgen of time as the
memories keep slipping through her petrifying brain and wrinkled, age-spotted hands.
Janet won a couple of prizes while she was in college getting her degree in Creative Writing. She fooled
around with writing, nothing much, nothing much good, until she joined the Works in Progress group four
years ago. They sweet-talked and cajoled and sent heavily armed, burly, mean men to force her to sit at her
computer. It has paid off. She has 7/12 of a novel completed, several short stories and writes a weekly
column for the Somerset Daily American. But on the dark side of all of this fame and fortune, Janet has
written three poems for which she is deeply ashamed. "It was the money. I did it for the money, pure and
simple. Now I have to live with the horrible memory of what I did. The glamour and glitz sucked me in," she
told a crowd of people in a doctor's office one day last week. To send reprimands high praise, indeed, you
may reach her at jimnjanet@verizon.net
|
|