I’m fixin’ to really think about it

Yes ma’am, yes sir, I do believe that old dusty manuscript on the floor, the one lying there gathering dust is beckoning to me. It’s the one I called, The Second Doublewide on the Right, the one I created using my experience, my memories and my imagination.

I had to think about it a pretty long time, and then one day it all came tumbling down right into my lap, the whole story, and I couldn’t hardly keep my writing up to the speed of my mind. But I did manage to get it all down on paper. I wrote it out in longhand on lined sheets of paper before I sat down at my keyboard and typed it.

A lot of young kids in schools these days don’t even know what longhand is because they don’t teach cursive anymore. That’s a shame because printed letters are just about all the same, while cursive letters are almost as individual as a fingerprint.

But back to The Second Doublewide on the Right, which consists of 80,000 words and is 361 pages double spaced. This one is written in a different style than the most recently presented, I’m Fixin’ to Play Dead.

I’m Fixin’ to Play Dead, was presented by the protagonist, the main character in a literary work, who usually experiences some kind of transformation of their character throughout the story. This protagonist is not a character who shows up once or twice and then disappears, but rather the one we find ourselves identifying with and journeying throughout the story with, who presents everything from their point of view.

The Second Doublewide on the Right, is presented in a different style of writing, by the all-knowing and all-seeing omniscient narrator, who knows all the feelings and thoughts of all the characters in the story. Often referred to as the Third Person Omniscient Narrator, this style allows the author to move from character to character, allowing the events to be interpreted by several different voices, while maintaining an omniscient distance.

The third person omniscient style of writing not only allows the reader to see the actions of each character, but also to see into their innermost thoughts and feelings, enabling them to create a relationship and bond with them.

Finally, a writer may use third person omniscient because it allows for better storytelling. Because there are multiple characters, there can be several plot lines and many different interpretations to the same event. The story will have more action, especially when the plot moves between characters.

If presented, the work, as with the preceding one, would have to be edited down to be “fit to print” in a family newspaper. However, as before I would endeavor to present this hard-scrabble tale of living inside and outside the law in a manner which tells the whole story.

Speaking of characters, the ones in The Second Doublewide on the Right, are a pretty shady lot, whom you probably won’t want to bond with, but who expose the good and the bad and the right and wrong on both sides of life and the law.

These characters include a lecherous landlord, a different kind of drug dealer, a talented thief, a psychotic deputy sheriff, a preacher reminiscent of Elmer Gantry, a victimized young woman, a woman who virtually picks losers, a lawyer who can toss a confession up in the air and turn it into an acquittal, and a judge whose personal and legal decisions defy the ethics of love and legalities.

The story is presented as a vivid fictional dramatization of crime, deceit, passion, lechery, abuse and resourcefulness, through a cast of characters, all of whose lives are intertwined around the Shady Grove Trailer Park and a unique place called Apt-To-Miss, in Ocmulgee County Georgia.

I repeat, I’m fixin’ to think about it some more, think hard, because it would probably be about a year long endeavor, a quest that I would not be able to abandon after initiating.

I just wonder if anyone would be fixin’ to want to hear the story? (tmdunagan@aol.com) (706-468-6511).