I'VE HAD A REQUEST FROM A READER (enclosed):

Could you do a bit of a blog on what the writer does with her emotions when writing? I want to write about my two sets of grandparents and their very different circumstances, but as I examine the stark contrast, I begin to cry for my grandparents wbo were so very poor...am I not the one to write this story,.then?

I'll have to sleep on this....

- so it's actually the next day,and of course I have thoughts, not entirely charitable. My first thoughts were about dealing with the problem at hand. Second thoughts were about my own artistic problems, always working on them. Third thoughts were professional. This question is like a writing assignment, the kind of work I did/do for a living., not that I make a living. But I am becoming less generous than I used to be, mainly because I get tired sooner. I have to husband my energy, only so much per day, per task (love that word). Having said that, I would offer a few ideas to help Commenter solve her problem. Not solve - approach.

1) Treat it like a fable. Aesop comes to mind. "Once upon a time" creates a distance between the narrator and the protagonists and their story can be told in the third person with time as a buffer between them and her emotions.

2) Still in the third person, treat it like a case report, as if you were a social worker dealing with clients and maintaining a professional distance. I said to my son's counsellor last week that I considered her a good friend and she said she wasn't allowed to do or say that to me.

3) Tell it like a true confession in the first person. It needn't be history; it could be present tense, from the POV of a child (adult child) in the house, or a neighbour, not necessarily a kind one.

4) Recall the details as they impinge on your own life and how they have affected you. In other words, make it a memoir.

That's enough. I am doing a lot of mentoring these days.

Have a good one.

It was a very long day. One of the people I went to Stratford with has a dog. She doesn't hire a sitter to tend the dog, she takes Nathaniel with her. Taking it means dropping it off with friends who live an hour PAST Stratford. So we had to drive there first, then back to Stratford; then, when the show was over, drive back to get the dog. We started for home at 11 p.m. I got to bed at 1:30 a.m., so I slept in this morning, didn't swim until 8 a.m. So today will be a short day, I guess.

Minor irritation.

Bigger irritation was the pretentious director's notes in the program. I went to the chamber production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, "Cosmos for a Quartet of Voices", performed by four actors, 2 male, 2 female, playing all the roles. The director, Peter Sellars, might have been a post-graduate student tap-dancing his way through a preliminary pitch of what a great thesis he's going to write. Aaargh! His notes are theatre-speak at the very worst. He says, for example, that the ideal production would be by adolescents just discovering sex and other things. His actors were very touchy-feely, but they had the advantage over teen-agers in that they knew what they were talking about and they knew how to speak Shakespeare intelligently and movingly. They gave weight and emotion to beautiful lines so clearly that I felt as if I were hearing them for the first time.

I do think, though, that Shakespeare would turn over in his grave if he heard the actors put too much weight and emphasis on the mechanicals' words. The Bard knew how to write bad poetry, too, very bad, and he sent up the "tragic" play of Pyramus and Thisbe with very funny, bad verse. The actors were too serious; you had to listen very hard for the humour in the words. That's a small criticism. The production was terrible, too noisy and messy, but it also was a small irritation.

Put it this way, like a score: Peter Sellars, Zero; Shakespeare, 100. Also A-Plus.