My Journey to a Book

I know that I am pretty young to be writing my life story, but I came to a turning point several years ago and felt that the first half of my life was done and I was now starting over, sort of.

Well last night, I found myself in a new situation that originated in my ‘past’.   I am frustated and mad.  I do NOT want to rehash the first half of my life (except as I write my book) in living color.  I do not want to deal with that raw emotion of my childhood – even if it is adding more material for my book. 

I have not explained yet what the focus of my book is.  It is much more intense than girl scouts and cheerleading.  Soon though….

I have just gotten started on this journey and I had to take a break!  I had a mild heart attack on Jan 9 and I was in the hospital for 4 days.  Now that was just enough to stop my forward momentum for a bit.

Or it may have even added some chapters to my book.  I am only 47 and am in pretty good health overall – or was.  Smoking was the main culprit to this problem – which is still mind boggling because I have only been a smoker for 10 years, not all my life.

The good news is that I have quit smoking – did I really have a choice?  No, and that is definitely causing some anger issues with me.  I wanted to quit on my own and I was definitely getting much closer to doing that.  My body failed me and never gave me a chance to have that last cigarette and be in control of my quitting.

It has been 12 days now and even though I don’t usually ‘want’ a cigarette I could start again right now easily.  Sigh…. but I won’t do that because I am a better person and I really do want to get healthy.

Last night I went to see my dad.  It is a 30 minute drive and that leaves much time to ponder life – or my book in this case.  It was during one of  these drives that the whole book idea was originally created.  Making this drive frequently in the last year has given me time to really think about making something out of my life.

The whole idea of me writing a book is very odd to my family.  See, I am a Gemini – the twins.  That means that I usually do two things at once and rarely finish them both.  My house is full of half finished projects and I have many pages of ideas just waiting to implement.  My brain is always in overdrive and I am usually one step ahead of everyone else – at least in my little world.  I always share all my brilliant ideas with the family, and they usually just look at me and snicker.

When I decided to start my first blog (my personal test to see if I could even write something that people might read) my family did not share my enthusiasm.  They believed it was a passing fancy and would never last the month.  Well, they were wrong.  Then I started my second blog and I had the same reaction.  People from all over the world read my blogs and that is very exciting – a fact that I like to share with the family. (I have yet to tell them about this blog because I can hear them already – “3 blogs AND a book?”)

However, I will always be a Gemini.  Maybe I have found my ‘calling’ – who knows?  I sure have surprised everyone that knows me and I have even surprised myself.  Writing this book just feels right to me because I do have something to share.  Something that will make a difference, at least to me.

Since I created this blog AFTER I had begun my 2nd draft, I am starting on this chapter.  Yes, I have done 3 chapters, but they are not necessarily in order.

This is early in my writing career (haha), and I am still learning everything!  Last night I went to Starbucks, set up in ‘MY’ corner, with the intention of writing one specific life event.  Well, as soon as the laptop warmed up, I switched gears and decided to write about Brent’s half brother - completely unrelated to my original thought.  I told a story about my genealogy research on Brent’s family and that led right into my search for the mystery half brother.

It turned out to be a long chapter, and also a rather emotional one.  When I was done though, I felt really good putting that event into words.

It is fascinating to me how this story is unfolding.  Writing is coming to me easier than I thought it would.  Or maybe I am just managing my writing time better.  I wonder when that writer’s block will hit?

I was asked to give a speech about my life story in December.  I had not spoken to a group of people (other than maybe a presentation at work years ago) since I read some very exciting report about the climate in Australia in high school.  I was honored, scared and nervous as hell.

Using my rough draft of my autobiography, I practiced telling my story out loud in the car while driving (in the dark of course).  My story took over 2 hours!  Well, that was a problem because I only had 30 minutes to tell my story!

So I started condensing and taking notes.  I even borrowed a tape recorder so I could hear myself.  I kept some funny parts, deleted the tear jerker stuff and managed to get it down to a good speech.

My speech was to be given after a buffet dinner to a group of about 50 people.  I had read everything I could find on ‘How to give a Speech’ and knew that I had to eat ‘light’ or a queasy stomach could embarrass me.

Eventually my time came to start.  I started by telling the crowd I was a little nervous and then telling my little anecdote about how long it took tell my story (2 1/2 hours).  That first round of laughter broke the ice for me and made me calm down immediately.  My speech went pretty well, thanks to that lady in the 1st row with the funny knit hat that I kept looking at.  No one fell asleep (that I know saw – always a relief) and the faces all looked interested.

After the speech, several people approached me to say I did a great job and they wanted to hear more details.  I never looked at my notes, and I just told the story that God wanted me to tell.

My 45 minutes of fame had ended, but I had a personal confirmation that I had something to say that might be important to other people.  A few days later, I had this feeling that it was time to start the book.  And I did.

Now that is a great place to start!  But how do I start this process?  I already have a VERY rough draft of my autobiography that was written in the late Spring of 2009 and finished over 4 months later.  I just wrote and wrote with no regard to correct verbage, spelling or grammar.  My 1st draft is mostly chronological – that seemed the easiest way to get it all down.

Midway through the process, my husband wanted to read what I had done so far.  My husband and I have been together since we were about 17 (over 30 years if it matters) so most of this stuff should not be a surprise.  However, it turned out to be an emotional experience for him.  Seeing my life from the inside, apparently hit some nerves and he never finished reading it.

I was not sure how I felt about that.  Was it too harsh?  What could I have said that made a grown man cry?  I wrote my feelings at the time, so maybe from a writer’s view getting that kind of emotion out of written words was a good thing.  Not that I WANTED to make my husband cry, but maybe it was something that needed to be said.