Yes I do like to hear that the writing prompt is working for you. Thanks for sharing your success.

Jerry

Thought I’d let you know your writing prompt gave me a good idea for jogging my memory. I’m three hours away from my home town, but I can go to similar venues right here, like the skating rink, and use it to start the flow.
I find a physical element to looking back is a great help.

While we “pre-published,” or self-published authors don’t have access to the heavy hitting editors provided by big publishing companies, many writers including myself have hired freelance editors to help us get some of these benefits. We can also receive editing direction from critique groups, which serve as a sort of “focus group” for writers, to help us figure out what works and what doesn’t.

Often, when I write the pieces, I really don’t see when one part should be placed earlier or later.

That’s a good example of what a good editor does. I know many people think editors just mark punctuation and such, but one like Rachel is so much more than that. We really worked together to assemble the book inito the form you see today.

In addition to arranging, she also picked up holes that needed filling. She’d say, “here everything is fine and two pages later you move out. We need some explanation.” And I’d write the missing material. That’s another vital job, because the author is often too close to the story to see the holes.

I’m not surprised that you didn’t break your storytelling into parts. That’s the way most experts work. They “just do it.” There’s a theory in psychology called “modeling” that says you can learn how to perform complex skills by studying experts, “unpacking” their actions, breaking their expertise down into steps. Here’s a wiki page about it. As I strive to organize my thoughts about my own life, I am learning as much as I can from people who have successfully done it already. I’m having fun, gaining exciting insights into story telling and life writing, and sharing my insights with others who want to accomplish these goals.

Jerry

I would not describe it as a hero’s journey but I do think my story is inspiring to the younger people I talk to, and that is something to feel good about.

To me, the key to a book like mine is stringing ordinary, everyday events together in a way that’s funny and entertaining (to keep people reading) and yet still deliver a message (to have some social purpose.)

Jerry

You wrote:

“The beautiful thing about memoirs is that they force us to review those periods and look under the surface. The passions and desires unfolded day by day, too slowly to make sense of at the time. Gradually, those days accumulated into our unique story, and now in retrospect we can find their significance.”

This is what I’m learning as I work on my own memoir. It’s one thing to remember an event, but it’s quite another to consider how that event shaped my current outlook. Sometimes, in the digging, we find that an event or individual had a bigger impact than we ever realized.

Thanks for the reminder, Jerry. Keep up the great posting!

Brian

Steve