That Was The Week That Blogged #22

Number 22! Good grief, that's a lot of awards I've handed out over the last year or so - because, despite my hiatus in the middle, I've been doing That Was The Week That Blogged since August 2009. Looking back now I really wish I hadn't taken that lengthy break in the middle because I still think it's the best blog award out there (even if the rules mean I can never win it). I'm particularly happy this week, because all the winners are writers who have never won the award before and it's always especially lovely when that happens.

Now, the next bit is going to read like a complaint. Virtually nobody has nominated any blogs to me this week. You know the drill, you know that I really want help from people and you know how to get involved because I say all that at the end of every TWTWTB post, every week. If you've all stayed silent because you think I'm doing a fabulous job then of course I'm very flattered (and I am doing a fabulous job, let's face it), but I can't get round to reading everything in the whole world and it can be more than a little discouraging. So don't feel you have to join in, but on the other hand if you don't, if nobody reads them, comments on them or nominates posts you can't feel too upset if eventually I get bored of persevering in the face of all that indifference and just give up.

Sorry, I've reread that and it is a complaint, isn't it? Never mind. I feel an awful lot better for getting it off my chest. So let's press on.

TWTWTB is my weekly award to the three best things I've read in blogland in the previous seven days. Here are this week's winners:

1. Dear old Fred by The stuff in between

"He inflicted another type of punishment onto my youngest sister when one day he decided to make her copy the entire textbook verbatim. When she finally completed it and presented the laboriously handwritten packet to him, he took it from her and with his typical French smirk and without even giving her the decency to admire the pages, he ripped them up in front of her face."

I read a blog post this week that said that writing was at its best when it exposed god or the devil. I have to say, I couldn't disagree more with that, but without coming out with a similarly sweeping statement I'll say something else. Writing involves an expert balance between telling too much and not telling enough, and good writing involves walking that tightrope with real skill. There are tons of blogs out there who tell too much; minute detail nobody needs, all that viscera, people sticking their heart on a screen and leaving it to pump away, squirting metaphorical blood all over you. And then there are blogs which look ever so clever but tell you nothing at all, pretty words and images and knobbing around with language but no end product. "What's is about?" you ask yourself. "I have no idea." you reply.

Jeannie's piece here is excellent in a lot of ways, but I think that the way she understands that balance is my favourite thing about it. It's a story, a lovely portrait, warts and all, of a funny little man who occupied a place in her childhood for a time teaching her and her sister French. But it's more than that; you get glimmers of the scene of unrest that sits behind it, you get a real sense of the stabilising part he and his lessons played but Jeannie is far too clever to beat you over the head with her family trauma. At the end of the post I feel like I can see him in my mind. It's only when I read it for the second or third time that I realised that she'd told me virtually nothing about his appearance at all. Clever writing, that.

2. Summertime and the living is, well, easy. Or at least, so it seems from here. by Brown. Paper. Bag.

"My little black car will be a hot box of steam. When I jump in it, my sunglasses will fog up from humidity. I’ll be able to wear bright colours for a full six months, instead of the customary winter blacks and greys. I'll be on my way to a lunch with the girls, we'll be drinking, eating and laughing - as we can only do under the big bright blue umbrella sky of summer."

Why wish the days away when you can write them away? I loved this post. The structure of it works like a charm, and in a short space of time Marbles (who writes the blog) takes us from anticipation to excitement to frustration to exhaustion. Lots of beautiful images and sentences in this one, a veritable feast; eating fruit over the sink, a nervous glance at a jumper, a jumpy and unshaven dog. This post has a lot in common with summer; bright, gorgeous and you could lose yourself in it, but unlike summer it doesn't outstay its welcome.

3. The Lady Who Hates Milk by Ordinary Art

"The phone rings, but she doesn’t pick it up. She doesn’t feel much like talking. Instead, she turns up the small radio she keeps on the kitchen counter. She finds a station that plays unstructured Jazz. She turns the volume up loud enough to wake the neighbors who are most likely sleeping off a hangover in the apartment next door."

This is a small and perfect piece, a superbly nuanced portrait of a lady. Again, that push and pull of what to tell and what to conceal is perfectly judged. After I read it, I wasn't sure if I liked her, or if the narrator liked her, or if I was meant to. And then I thought that I was probably meant to realise that. It's all very Inception how writers can put ideas in your mind, isn't it? This is like photography with words and (this is a high compliment, believe it or not) it almost made me feel like writing fiction of my own. I'm quite new to Kelly's blog but based on this I will definitely be back. This is a terrific, subtle piece and again, shows how much better things read when they have a clear beginning, middle and end. I really liked all three, here.

Here's what you can do to support That Was The Week That Blogged. First, pop by and check all the winners out in full. Feel free to tell them I sent you, in fact it's practically compulsory.

Secondly, if you read (or write) a blog post you think would be a worthy winner next week, either comment here, drop me a mail or Tweet at me with the hashtag #TWTWTB. The best ones will be announced on the blog and on Twitter every Sunday.

Last of all of course, if you won this week: congratulations! Feel free to take the rather fetching picture at the top and copy it onto your sidebar. Of course, I won't be offended if you don't.