write a nonfiction novel about my life.

in the “real” world of nonfiction this summer. Surprising. I did send Paper Frogs out in an attempt at publication, but it didn’t even get read before they rejected it. Ah well. I will send it out to someone else come Sepetember 1st when the journal market starts accepting again.

I do have a few real stories I want to tell. I keep spending time with my family, and they bubble up to the surface, so I will probably reign myself in and goal to get two nonfiction stories out before I graduate in December.

Three complete stories and two small vignettes I would like to use as pre-chapter introductions. I have to say that taking on this project, while difficult, has been one of the most eye-opening experiences of my life. I think everyone should have to write a novel about themselves. You learn so much about who you are, and trust me when I tell you, half of the things you learn, you really just have no idea.

I am so pleased! I’ve had a breakthrough in writing about some of the more horrific things that occurred in my life without just listing blame in a narrative bore. I am so proud of the story that came out, and so far the friends I’ve workshopped it with have been very supportive, commenting on the imagery, how it works, and then mentioning that their only concern in publishing something like that on a more public level would be the questions it would bring up, the attention it might get, and how often I would be forced to face that sort of attention. On the other hand, personally, I’ve never really had a problem talking about it. It was just difficult to write down without it sounding like one, big, utterance of blame.

It has a more symbolic quality to it, while still being true, and portraying the facts about what happened. Who would have thought that approaching it from a different perspective would have made it easier to write. HUZZZAH!

As I’ve started working diligently on the chapters of my life, I find myself often asking the question, “is it right to expose other people who were there? Is there perhaps some way to disguise their identity outright, so that only someone else who was there would be able to easily pinpoint them?”

It’s even more difficult to write the real horrors, but I will not give up. So far there are 3 chapters… not successive, but one day there will be enough to fill an entire book.

I’ve tentatively finished story one. It’s a brief vignette called homecoming about the first time I came to visit my family after moving out. I had spent months living in Pittsburgh after living in the Pennsylvania farm country nearly my entire life. It’s just a small piece about the journey home and what it meant to me at the time. I hope to add a few other pieces to it, and need at least one more for my proposal requirements by next Wednesday. No problem. I’m in the mood now. maybe I’ll even do it tonight.

Made and more or less accepted. Now all I need to do is get started on the stories I want to include. I’ve been contemplating which era of my life I want to start with. I’ve considered starting with some of my earliest memories, like the judge asking me who the man adopting me was, or my first meditation as a three year old out of bed and in my sandbox before the sun really had a chance to come up. We were living in Texas and I had gotten out of bed and let myself outside into my sandbox to play. The moon was still up and made a giant sliver of a slice in the sky. I recall thinking to myself that this sliver was a king’s toenail, and this was why it was so important to be displayed in the sky for all to see.

I am proposing to do this project as my Senior Thesis in the Creative Writing Seminar I’m taking this semester. I haven’t quite decided where I want to start it, but I’m just going to start writing memoirs and put them together randomly until a clear path presents itself. I feel really strongly about doing this, and can’t wait to get started.