This morning I was contacted by a good friend of mine who had been reading a chapter of my book (I haven't plugged it for a while so: Signs of (a) Life) and who expressed wonder at the depth of the detail in the story.
Since the book is effectively a memoir, the story is a true one. When I began to write it, I was deeply skeptical about the chances of me having enough recall to fill even a short volume with my memories. What happened over the next eighteen months or so was entirely unexpected.
My lovely wife has put it very succinctly: "I don't think I have that many words in me!" when referring to the amount that I have written, either published or otherwise. That pretty much summed up how I felt when I finally confronted my apprehension and committed to writing my very first book. I had never written anything of a length more than a few thousand words before, and I had serious doubts that I would be able to maintain momentum - and perhaps more crucially - have enough to say.
Of course, anyone who knows me will be laughing heartily at the latter suggestion, but talking a lot and having anything to say are two different things, and I worried that I would be found lacking when it came to recalling the details of my life. I was delighted to discover, only a few thousand words into the project, that my memory seemed to be responding to the process in a way that I had not imagined.
As I wrote, the memories began to bubble back towards and through the surface. Themes surrounded by vagueness slowly resolved into more and more focused recollections from my past, and the deeper that I delved, the more memories made themselves available. I've always been aware that I have forgotten far more than I have remembered (who among us has the space to do otherwise?), especially when friends have reminded me of foolishness long ago banished to a locked filing cabinet in the darkest reaches of my mind, so I was increasingly delighted to find that some of these memories were still around. I had unwittingly found the key to many of them.
Writing memoirs has become a double delight (when things are going well, of course); I am creating, and at the same time rediscovering things about my life and myself. Both of these things bring me great pleasure. My aim is to bring pleasure to other people by making these recollections available in as entertaining a manner as possible. In doing so, I create more memories which I can look forward to enjoying when my fingers have become too tired to type any longer.
Some people might tell you that the devil is in the details. Luckily, I have no belief in devils or demons. Instead, I find that I like details very much.
Since the book is effectively a memoir, the story is a true one. When I began to write it, I was deeply skeptical about the chances of me having enough recall to fill even a short volume with my memories. What happened over the next eighteen months or so was entirely unexpected.
My lovely wife has put it very succinctly: "I don't think I have that many words in me!" when referring to the amount that I have written, either published or otherwise. That pretty much summed up how I felt when I finally confronted my apprehension and committed to writing my very first book. I had never written anything of a length more than a few thousand words before, and I had serious doubts that I would be able to maintain momentum - and perhaps more crucially - have enough to say.
Of course, anyone who knows me will be laughing heartily at the latter suggestion, but talking a lot and having anything to say are two different things, and I worried that I would be found lacking when it came to recalling the details of my life. I was delighted to discover, only a few thousand words into the project, that my memory seemed to be responding to the process in a way that I had not imagined.
As I wrote, the memories began to bubble back towards and through the surface. Themes surrounded by vagueness slowly resolved into more and more focused recollections from my past, and the deeper that I delved, the more memories made themselves available. I've always been aware that I have forgotten far more than I have remembered (who among us has the space to do otherwise?), especially when friends have reminded me of foolishness long ago banished to a locked filing cabinet in the darkest reaches of my mind, so I was increasingly delighted to find that some of these memories were still around. I had unwittingly found the key to many of them.
Writing memoirs has become a double delight (when things are going well, of course); I am creating, and at the same time rediscovering things about my life and myself. Both of these things bring me great pleasure. My aim is to bring pleasure to other people by making these recollections available in as entertaining a manner as possible. In doing so, I create more memories which I can look forward to enjoying when my fingers have become too tired to type any longer.
Some people might tell you that the devil is in the details. Luckily, I have no belief in devils or demons. Instead, I find that I like details very much.
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