Ask your family. I’m lucky. My cousin on my father’s side of the family compiled a comprehensive genealogy of our family, wrote books on the subject and developed several family trees. My aunt wrote a journal which, despite being in German, is a valuable resource for me. I’ve also asked
I have déjà vu. Once again, I’m rewriting my manuscript. Several months of fading motivation, a journey to my father’s family reunion and six weeks of travel around Europe where I had plenty of time to sit back and think, have culminated in a total rewrite of my father’s story.
If you think of it, our lives are built on stories. Our stories begin with our birth, our mothers relate tales of various levels of pain in labour; often our details are written down or at least discussed with family and friends, our length, weight, the colour of our eyes,
I am not a courageous person. I will go out of my way to avoid conflict. I will accept responsibility, even for things I haven’t done, to avert tension and unpleasant situations. Although I have been rebellious in many ways, I prefer my rebellions to be private. I don’t often
“Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write” once said Annie Proulx, author of the Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Shipping News. As writers and wannabe writers and anyone who has ever contemplated putting pen to paper or tapping frantically on their keyboard knows,
My best writing comes directly after a catalyst, some sort of trigger which, when pulled, catapults my words onto the page like shots from an automatic machine gun. In the case of my first book, the one I am currently working on, the trigger was the death of my father.