end of the year and 220 pages
I sit down to work on my memoir this afternoon as I do most afternoons. The editing, the rewriting, the tightening, the examination of prose, development and theme consume my focus. The stack of 220 pages is broken in sections. Select pages of my manuscript sit on my reader stand while I transfer my handwritten markings to my Word document. A stack of components I need to review as part of my comprehensive checklist hug my manuscript. The end of 2015 will be here in 8 days. One more year [...]
Ten Years and 7 Drafts
I’ve lost count of the number of drafts of my memoir, working title “Under the Birch Tree.” However, I have not lost count of the years my memoir has been in production. Specifically, I have accrued 7 professional manuscript critiques/editorial analyses over 10 years. (I consider my manuscript a draft when it’s ready to submit to a professional and not the countless rewrites it took to get to that point.) I don’t know which is worse, the number of drafts or years. Maybe neither is bad. I feel I’m on [...]
Refocusing a Narrative
I came across a title of an article today, “The Big Reason Why Agents and Editors Stop Reading,” by Paula Munier, literary agent and content strategist. Ordinarily I would have skipped reading this because my memoir and I are just not agent and/or editor ready. I can’t even say if I will even try to secure an agent but at the very least I hope to look to an editor – eventually. I don’t take my designated reading time lightly as the guilt of spending the time to study ever-changing [...]
A Slice of Writer’s Life
I patted the top of the 8 ½ X 11 box with affection to acknowledge its contents. The box was deep enough to cradle 220 pages of my memoir manuscript. But this wasn’t just a manuscript containing double-spaced typed lines. This was my story – edited, rewritten, honed to the best of my ability, ready for . . . another edit! I had attacked every paragraph with colored flair pens, reshuffling, deleting and adding, through its development, aware that more onslaughts will be in the making. When I had completed [...]
Memoir Platform
Oh, that word, "platform." When I hear or read it I inhale with tension and exhale in surrender. What's a memoir writer to do when she can't keep up with platform content and all its connection points? I'm beginning to find myself being distracted, if not, preoccupied to the point of losing sight on the writing itself. I listened to a presentation by Dan Blank (www.wegrowmedia.com). I liked what he had to say about how to create a knock-out, memoir-specific, platform not only because it was focused on memoir but also [...]
The Gray
In remembrance of that night beginning November 9, 1938, the Night of Broken Glass. Sometimes, I like to see my world as being either black or white, segregated into neat piles. My tidy thinking and tendency to categorize allow me to understand, to make sense of things. But segregation is unrealistic because of the gray. There is the gray of neutrality, of not being on either end of any spectrum. There is the time expended while passing from one point to the other, like entering a lighted tunnel entrance, passing [...]