Friday Feature: MEsolushospes
The subject of this week’s “Proser Showcase” says that she didn’t have a given name at birth:
“My parents said “the first one out is Brandy,” and that wasn’t me. So, for hours I was “B baby, Elliott 2 of 2,” while my Mom and Dad vetoed name after name: Jasmine and Candy making the top of the list,. My Dad convinced my Mom that I’d grow up to be a stripper with either of those names.
“Finally, thinking about the radio, a nurse echoed my Mom’s thoughts and suggested “Mandy, like the Barry Manilow song,” and so it was and has been ever since.”
Her name is Mandy Elliott, though you know her here as @MEsolushospes. She was born “after a ride in a helicopter from the Melbourne hospital to the Orlando Hospital (that was better equipped to deliver premature twins),” and she refers to her hometown as the “rinky-dink, former Florida cow-lands of Palm Bay (which in my mind, includes the beach).” Palm Bay’s motto, “a great place to grow,” was in reference to families, Mandy said, “but they got a bunch of pot-growers and empty houses instead. If you can see it on a map, thank the bright young men who made it into the NFL. It is because of them that there was enough demand to know where this Palm Bay was, and we finally made it on non-local maps.”
After a two-year stint in the greater Cincinnati Area, she is now “in the heart of Virginia.” It is there that she teaches painting classes, supplying original and local-based art to local vendors, assist a local print shop when they get overwhelmed, and helps her grandmother to “do things she can no longer do (and sometimes my Grandfather when my Mother needs a break).”
Occasionally, she says, she also takes on private commissioned work. Such projects include portraits (“normally of pets, I prefer them to people”) and dreams. “Most of my commission work is in paint, but some of it has been charcoal, pencil, ink, photography, photo-editing/digital art, and creative writing/poetry to include transcribing the client’s original writing into my original (made-up) language as a decorative piece.”
What is your relationship with writing and how has it evolved?
1) I hated it. Writing was like Japanese to me, I had to memorize everything.
2) An English teacher introduced me to books I could enjoy reading, and it got me interested in story-telling.
3) I started playing online text-based games, which forced me to hone my spelling and grammar in order to inspire other writers to write with me.
4) Now, everything I do is tainted by my writing, either because it becomes the context, or I use the experience to learn ways to describe senses to a reader who wasn’t actually there.
5) In the last few years, I’ve begun sharing my writing online and widening my reading of individuals to a global level, thanks to venues like Prose.
In my journey I learned two things about writing that continue to help me improve:
1) A good piece of literature should be sound if read forwards or backwards.
2) Edit as a reader, not as a writer.
If you want to know more about me, visit these four former posts:
Three Truths and a Lie: https://theprose.com/post/29596/n-a
A letter from my future self: https://theprose.com/post/26558/30-extra-years
Autobiography Summary: https://theprose.com/post/29679/paper-trail
About MEsolushospes: https://theprose.com/post/26557/m-e-only-a-stranger
Briefly discuss the value that reading adds to both your personal and professional life.
Reading is brain food, and a steady diet is required for healthy brain living. Reading is like mind-melding so, trust the Vulcan grip of the writings you are drawn to and let them share with you.Reading won’t make you successful, but it will give you limitless tools to make your own success.
If you want to know more about my specific reading habits, visit this former post:
I never owned a TV so, I read a lot: https://theprose.com/post/26197/i-ve-never-owned-a-tv-so-i-read-a-lot
How would you describe your current literary ventures and what can we look forward to in future posts?
My extra time, which is when I write, has been limited as of late. That said, I am still working on the series of five interactive art/poetry journals dubbed “The P.E.A.C.E. Chronicles” so, expect to see more culture/social poetry and writing aimed at shining a light on consciousness, choice, and independent responsibility for the reality we all share. I’m also tentatively working on a few photo-books with true-story poetry in it, recounting real things that I’ve experienced or seen in my life. And finally, there is a small chance of a sci-fi erotica novel to be published in the future, which is purely my desire to be free of a particular dream I keep having in progressive chapters, and having fun in the process of writing it all down.
What does Prose. mean to you? Do you have a favorite feature or function on the app? What, if any, suggestions would you make that might improve or enhance your experience?
Prose. means creative freedom and constructive feedback, it’s a place, a word, and a culture (now) that alludes to a type of harmony that seems natural even if it’s purposeful. Prose. is my preferred place to write and socialize with other writers from across the world, even if I don’t have a mobile phone, let alone one that was smart enough to hold the Prose. app. But I do have a computer that gets online so, the website has been vital. I’m delighted it’s not exclusively a phone app, or I would be missing out.
My favorite function is the challenges because I am exposed to writers who are likewise inspired by that particular idea, and I have the same opportunity to expose my own writing to that audience. Additionally, and along the same lines, I enjoy being able to comment on any post, whether or not I’m following a particular Proser, and that’s a feature I can’t thank the Prose. programmers enough for.
I’d also give a shout-out to the “Explore” option, as I have found some very interesting writing/authors that way.
Features I would like to see:
1) The ability to sort challenges by word-count requirement. Sometimes I only have a few minutes, and I lose some of that time clicking into challenges that look awesome, only to find I don’t have enough time to write for them, even at 60 words a minute. If I could sort them by ascending or descending word count requirements, I could look at only those with counts in my time-frame, and therefore post more often.
2) The ability to save #tags I use often (like #archive, #truestory, #quote, #quickie, etc.) so that either I can click them in the overall list, or a list of most recent/most used tags populates first with an option to click into a master list or add a new tag. I apologize if that’s a big ask, it would be a time saver for thrifty-writers like myself.
3) Maybe it’s silly, and definitely not a priority, but I think it would be cool to have the word counts on our posts show up as a line underneath the tags, and in our profile as a total word-count for that author. I’m fascinated by quantifying our expressions at the same time as letting them free so, it’s just a suggestion.
Where else can we find you and your writing?
Presently, you can only find more of my writing on Tumblr (see comments below for links).
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This #FridayFeature blog series is designed to help you get to know your fellow community members better. Would you like to nominate someone for interview? Have a question you’re dying to ask of someone on the platform? Send us a private message here or visit our contact page to get in touch: theprose.com/p/contact.