Tag: Memoir

Excerpt #3

In looking for this month’s excerpt I realized I had jumped ahead too far with last month’s post. That being said, it won’t make too much difference since each excerpt is self-contained. Enjoy…

Chapter 3

Home

When you’re safe at home you wish you were having an adventure;
when you’re having an adventure you wish you were safe at home.
—Thornton Wilder

Spring arrived, bringing with it outside chores. I needed to learn how the riding mower worked. I’d never been on the damn thing. That was Mike and Rick’s job.

I entered the garage and confronted John Deere. The key was in the ignition. A sticker explaining how to start it adhered to the space between the footrests. I studied the instructions. An acre of overgrown lawn needed mowing. Time to saddle up and ride.

John Deere and I became well acquainted, particularly when I got hung up on a tree stump. I was at a loss for how to free it. I called my son Richard, who lived an hour away.

“The tractor got stuck on a tree stump,” I said.

“Got stuck? Or you got it stuck? Okay, you still have your truck, right?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“The chain Dad had in the garage in the oil pan, is that still there?”

“Yeah.” I wasn’t sure I liked where this was going. I wanted him to drop everything and come save me.

“Okay, put the John Deere in neutral, and attach the chain to it. Attach the other end to the truck, then give it a little tug.”

It worked. I freed the tractor. It was a small thing, but I felt triumphant. Regardless of my victory, my search for a new home continued.

I couldn’t keep up with the work the property required. I traveled to the seacoast to look at a few houses. One house, a humble ranch on Route One in Hampton Falls, lingered in my thoughts. It needed a lot of work, but the price and location made it appealing. I’d refurbished three houses in the past, but Rick and I had worked on them together. I struggled with making such a monumental decision.

Previous excerpts

Excerpt #2

Excerpt #1

A Very Simple Secret

The Little Prince

Every time I read The Little Prince I get more out of it. If you’ve never read it, or it’s been thirty to forty years since you did, I recommend you find a copy and spend a couple of hours with it.

I first read it in high school, I think, and then when I was looking for a name for the boat. Once again I read it when writing the chapter on buying and naming Little Prince and this latest time on editing that chapter. This time I learned something I should have paid attention to a long time ago.

Some lessons take a lifetime to learn. No matter how many times we are told a thing, sometimes it takes an experience to finally understand. The school of hard knocks provides a fine education. I’ve always wanted to be a writer. That hackneyed phrase “I’m going to write the great American novel” has been with me as long as I can remember. Besides the fact of having little time to myself when I wore many hats, mom, wife, graphic designer, school board representative, cook, and keeper of a half a dozen animals, the word novel was firmly implanted in my brain.

Once upon a time I worked as a correspondent for The Peterborough Transcript, which is no longer. The two newspapers in Peterborough merged. That was longer ago than I care to admit. I stayed in publishing for many years but moved over to the design side. That in turn led me to visual arts– photography and painting. Still that idea of writing a novel lingered.

The Great Reveal

Now, deep into writing my memoir, I love working on it. I get up early, sometimes 5:30 a.m. That is a shocking revelation to anyone who endured seeing me early in the morning, in my past life. Along this path I realized writing a novel is not in the cards for me, or at least a complete fiction. I enjoy reading historical fiction. Add that to my writing pleasure and you get Creative Non-Fiction. It’s the non-fiction part that grabs me.

Years ago, I sat on the beach reading alongside my sister-in-law Debbie.

“Do you ever read anything fun?” she asked.

Huh, I thought what I read was fun. That conversation should have yanked that novel idea right out of my head. I am more interested in non-fiction, that’s what I need to write, when my memoir is finished.

Now back to The Little Prince. He traveled from planet to planet learning all he could without losing himself in the process. When he completed his journey he understood the importance of the creatures he cared for and their uniqueness. My favorite quote from the book goes like this:

“And now, here is my secret,

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

On another note

I’m up to Chapter 24 and counting….getting close. Soon I’ll need Beta readers.

Deadlines and Do-overs

My goal to finish this book by the end of the year may have been a bit hasty. I’m twenty-five chapters in, with 64,000 words written but still working on the re-writing and editing of the first five. I’m 97.3% sure I’m finished with Chapter one. But that’s also why I don’t think adhering to an arbitrary deadline is a swell idea. I’ll just keep on keeping on until I’m satisfied its the best I can do.

I think I was up to about Chapter 6 with the re-write but that’s now Chapter 9 because I backed up further to add in necessary detail all the way back to Chapter 1. With that being said, I don’t know when I’ll be finished.

I’ve learned a great deal being part of the Florida Writers Association and joining the Bradenton Writers Group chapter. Its a diverse group of people so the critiques bring different points of view. Because of joining during covid I started with having our meetings online. Now we meet in person.

The process with the writing group: post your piece of writing in a shared google docs folder, make multiple copies so other members can make corrections/notes, read your piece aloud at the meeting and then the critiquing begins. There is a 3000 word limit.

And speaking of length limits, I’ve also been wrestling with chapter lengths. That’s another reason I’m back to the first five chapters. There are a lot of moving parts when writing a book. Chapters need to end well so the reader wants to continue. Whenever I rearrange chapters the ending needs extra consideration thus, more time.

Yes, I’m learning a lot as I go, between reading memoirs, books on writing and the writing group. That explains why I had to back up and re-write my re-write. There’s also a memoir group I might look into joining. It does take time, and in the times I’m not writing, I’m thinking about it. Trying to guess or predict when I’ll finish gets harder all the time.

Each chapter has a quote for a subtitle. I pick the quotes based first on the subject of the chapter but also on who is being quoted. The quotes are from my favorite poets, artists, authors, leaders and philosophers.

By way of a tease, (besides the picture at the top of the page) Chapter 1 is titled “Broken” and the quote:

“The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills.“

Ernest Hemingway

I have been on a Hemingway tear for a while now. “A Clean Well Lighted Place,” by Hemingway was recently recommended to me and while I was on Amazon “Papa Hemingway” popped up–Amazon really knows how to market. I had to have that one too. I had read it in high school for English class. That’s when I first fell in love with his work and the whole legend of the man.

Enough for now, maybe I’ll be able to give you a tease for Chapter 2 next time…..

Just for fun….

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