Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House in the Ozarks

While I enjoyed all the books I have read about Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House in the Ozarks: A Laura Ingalls Wilder Sampler : The Rediscovered Writings was especially interesting to me as a freelance writer. This book is a collection of her published articles she wrote for a farm paper. The topics range widely. They are based mostly on her personal opinions, experiences, and advice. Previous biographies indicate she made some decent money on these articles comparable to our current pay structure for WAH writers. In some cases, she made even better rates.

Her topics are not unfamiliar to me as they sound like conversations I had with my father's mother prior to her death. Her writing style is typical of other articles I have read from the time. What has inspired me was her goal. Her focus in writing was not a main source of income. The focus of this writing was not the same as the books she became famous for writing. She wrote to create a supplementary income that would help pay off the first farm mortgage and then later notes taken on the property. This has been my goal as well. I have not found my niche in writing that will make this a primary income source. However, I am pleased to see our home mortgage decrease more each month as I can apply writing income against principal. The rest goes into emergency savings. From the biographies I have read, that was another of her goals, too, emergency savings. Farm life was never secure. In this economy, nobody can guarantee jobs are secure. Paying down debt and saving money for a rainy day is not a wasted effort. While I hope I find my niche that provides me with a full time income, I feel encouraged to know I am not in bad company with my current goals.

The library obtained Beyond Prairie: True Story of Laura Ingalls Wilder for me and I checked it out Saturday. This is a movie version of Laura's adult life. I have read varying reviews. I am interested to see it for myself after having read several biographies of her life. The Disney version of her early life was mostly accurate. I am interested to see what Paramount did with her adult life.

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