Tag Archive | fiction

Memoir or Novel?

Mar15

It’s voting day here in Missouri and you can bet I’ll be out there doing my part! I hope all my fellow voters today do the same. Now, maybe I should have a more patriotic project to show off today, but all I’ve got is the completed green hat. Good enough for March, I think. IMG_5509IMG_5510Pattern is Duality, yarn is Malabrigo Rios in Lettuce. I’ve got enough leftover of it and the teal that I really want to make a striped version now.

Confession time: I didn’t get my two queries done yesterday. Somehow I got stuck in a self-defeating mood, convinced that I’m wasting my time trying to sell this memoir that no one will want to read. And I think I’ve mentioned that I’ve written other stuff too. I’ve got two completed novels in my files. So I thought about how I never did anything with those, and how the one I’m currently revising is surely trite and common. Then I thought about how I’m still struggling to build my Etsy business, and my proofreading client base, and suddenly it hit me that I’m trying all these things and none of them are working out the way I want them to. And bam, before you know it, my head is in a not-so-good place.

Therefore, I spent much of the day outside with the puppies instead. It was a beautiful day, so I don’t consider it time wasted. I’ll consider it a mental health day.IMG_5507

I soaked up sunshine and puppy loving and the smell of spring flowers. I wrote in my journal, and I knit on my hat.

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And today is a better day. Nope, I’m not giving up yet! I may still be unconvinced about my memoir but I’m going to work on revising my synopsis and query letter and then contact more agents. But I’m also pondering the idea of fictionalizing it, if this doesn’t work out. There are a few benefits to that route: I get more flexibility and freedom in storytelling, there’s no legal/liability issue from using the real company’s name, fiction is simpler to query (no lengthy, complex proposals), more agents rep fiction than memoir, and fiction is more marketable. But my concern is whether I would lose the heart of the story by making it fiction. Maybe part of its appeal is that it’s honest and true, and if it were a novel, it wouldn’t be as relatable.

What do you think, readers out there? Do you like non-celebrity memoirs? Do you seek them out? What draws you to them?

Here’s Grace’s opinion. Make of it what you will. IMG_5506

Don’t forget to vote, whenever it’s your turn! Every single vote counts!

Grief Takes Away So Much

Aug30

This morning, as I lazed on the couch with my cup of tea, I was idly scrolling through Twitter when a tweet caught my eye. “It didn’t surprise me, when my parents were dying, that I couldn’t write. But it shocked me…that I couldn’t read.” It was a teaser with a link to a NY times column, and it was so unexpected, and so close to home.

Four years ago, I was working full-time as a retail manager, but I was also a bookaholic. I read as much as I could. I’d grown up with books, worked in my mother’s used-book store for years, even went to a seminar for antiquarian book dealers. And even though I was no longer in the business, I still loved books. All kinds of books. My parents and I shared a lot of authors, too, mostly mysteries/thrillers. We shared Ridley Pearson, Carol O’Connell, Philip Margolin, Michael Connelly, Dennis Lehane, Kathy Reichs, Linda Fairstein, and so many more. I shared a lot of fiction with my mom: Maeve Binchy, Nancy Thayer, Elin Hilderbrand, Kristin Hannah.

Then, as many of you know, my father was diagnosed with lung cancer. I still worked, but managed to get out to Arizona for a few visits. I remember one trip, on the way there, I read my first Lee Child book. Lee Child was my dad’s absolute favorite author, and he’d said this book was the best. I read it, and it was thrilling and gripping and tense, and I had a grand time talking to my dad about it when I got there.

My dad died in spring of 2012, and I stopped reading. For a very long time, I didn’t really read anything. I watched a lot of TV, I played stupid games on my phone. I learned to crochet a few months after my dad died, and that was my outlet. Then knitting. It was creative and soothing, and didn’t remind me of him at all.

Over time, I started picking up books again. My mom and I still share a fondness for fiction, and we swapped what we called “light, frothy books”. They were fun, didn’t require much thought, didn’t challenge me or push any of those grief buttons. I’m so glad I had you, Jane Green and Emily Giffin, Sophie Kinsella and Susan Wiggs, Debbie Macomber. I still love you, still read you all religiously.

I shared some YA books with my daughter. I’ve always loved YA books, and even though these were often darker subject matter, it was okay because it was different. Thank you, Sarah Dessen, Rainbow Rowell, Laurie Halse Anderson, Veronica Roth, Suzanne Collins.

After a couple of years, I started reading heavier books again, ones that made me think and cry and feel extreme emotions, and it was good. And just the other day, the boy and I went to the library, and I came home with six books, and I plowed through five of them within a week. It felt marvelous to fall into books like that again, to get that feeling of utter escape, that feeling where you close the book and you’re still thinking about the characters hours later.

For so long, I wrapped myself in the soft cushion of yarn crafts, and it saved me. I still love it, still knit more than I read, probably. But I think I’m at a point where there’s more of a balance. I can be a knitter AND a reader. A yarnaholic AND a bookaholic.

But I still can’t read mysteries. Well, no. I take that back; I’ve read a few. Harlan Coben is still a favorite. But they’re few and far between. I’ve never read another Lee Child book. I have an O’Connell and two Fairsteins in my To-Be-Read stash, and I pick them up periodically, read the description, and put them back. They’re too dark. There’s too much pain and anger and ugliness in those worlds. And of course, they still remind me of my dad. I think I’ll get back to them, someday. Until then, there’s still a whole wide world of books to explore, and I’m so relieved that I could find my way back to it.