Hello everyone, I am in the middle of transcribing my diary which covers many years as I would like to share my personal experiences. I initially just tried to write it and change the tense (so it looked like I was writing it now). I did a little test but when I read it back all the emotion seemed to have drained out of it. So I have decided to transcribe it, with no tense changes and add commentary and link the past to the current where I think I need to. I was wondering though, when people write about their own stories, do they move sections around so to help the reader wonder, what's happening?, why is this happening?, how is he going to get out of that? If I did everything chronologically then I feel it may reveal things too early. And I would like to insert as many cliff hangers and unanswered questions as I can early on and throughout. I have a few I can dig out. Thanks Lee
This is an interesting idea. I have used journal extracts in a novel, and I like the method. I interposed direct quotes from the 'journal' with general prose. I also contrasted elements from the journals with first person narratives where the events were re-lived. I imagine that there are any number of ways you could do this. But I personally feel that a diary by itself would be too dry. Of course, that depends on how you write. But consider the possibility of developing a story that is then supported and supplemented by the diary. Epistolary writing was big back in the Victorian age...time for a comeback?
do the requisite research... see how successful authors have handled their 'epistolary' and autobiographical works... you should find a way that works best for your story...
A better way might be to use the diary itself as your primary source material and write from your current perspective.
I found this book that uses diary entries, emails, receipts etc so I have ordered it, will read it and teach myself this interesting writing form. Almost Like Being in Love by Steve Kruger EdFromNK, This was where I was heading with this, I was just going to comment on my diary entries. I will read this book above first and see what best fits my need and new/limited writing ability. Thanks Lee
@LeeBookProject - I actually did not mean simply commenting on your diary entries. I meant writing your story as a narrative, using your diary as a source for information. As noted by others, the epistolary style can be very limiting, keeping the reader at a distance. Writing your story as a true narrative would make it easier for you to put the reader in your shoes, which is what we usually want to do. It also would allow to weave your current comments into the story in a much more seamless manner. Just a thought.
@EdFromNK - Yes I definitely would like the reader to emotionally connect with my story. So perhaps the narrative route is better for me, this book is quite funny so am going to finish it while I research how to construct a narrative from my own timeline of events. Actually, what you have described, is that an autobiography? Also, when I tried to rewrite a diary entry as a test, it seemed to lose something. Hence for my post. I am going a bit around in circles. But I will do some more research and read this book. Cheers Lee
That would depend on how much of your life was included. If it was most of your life, then yes. At any rate, it is autobiographical. I would think that it would - for you. Because when you read your own diary entries, it brings you directly back to your own personal experience. For many years, I coached my son's youth soccer teams, and because I was learning the game and the coaching of it as I went along, I kept journals of most of my seasons. When I go back and read from them, I am immediately transported back to that time and place, even if I haven't thought about it for years. My personal experience is refreshed in my own memory, even if the memory has been distorted over time. I experience anew what I experienced then. But if you were to read them, you wouldn't have that experience. Because you weren't there, and there are no dormant memories to be revived. Instead, you have only my reportage, without the benefit of additional perspective. If I were to rewrite my journals into a single, unified narrative, it would lose something for me, because it would put greater distance between where I stand now and what I experienced back then. But for you, it would establish context and depth as I explained to you what I never needed to explain to myself. Another example from the most frequent form of modern epistolary writing - the sports diary. The first one, and still arguably the best, was Jim Brosnan's The Long Season, published in 1960 about the 1959 baseball season. Brosnan felt he'd learned so much about writing that he penned another three years later, entitled Pennant Race. Because it was his second such book, it lacked a lot of the contemplative passages of the first book and focused more on the immediacy of what was happening to his team at the time, and that deprived it of perspective. At mid-season, Brosnan was overlooked in the selections for the National League All-Star team, a slight that hurt him far more deeply than I would have expected. In fact, it permeated the rest of the diary and became (for me, at least) tiresome. But then, he was writing every day, struggling with the disappointment every day, trying to get past it and failing. Had he written about it years after the fact, he would have been able to put it in perspective, but writing a diary, he couldn't do that. And I really think the book suffered for it (by the late August entries, I found myself saying, "Enough already!"). Dave DeBusschere's The Open Man, a diary about the first NY Knicks championship team in 1970, is still a wonderfully emotional read for me, not because it's so well written or even that it holds much perspective, but because I followed that team on a daily basis and can personally relate to most of the events described. When I read DeBusschere's entries, I am transported back. But only because I was a 16-year-old fan in New York at the time it was written.
Thank you. No I don't want to tell someone about my whole life. But I have specific events that are connected over many years that are not boring and contained in my diary and other emails and paperwork etc. So I am trying to pull this altogether, emotionally touching the reader as much as possible. I am in the middle of going through my old diaries and creating a narrative. Then I will come back here and seek some advice on next steps. But I see now what I was experiencing was because I am in my own story. And my job on my writing project is to put the reader where I was, not simply to recite a diary with additional comments looking back. Thanks Lee
@Mike Kobernus @mammamaia Hi, just a quick thanks for your replies also. You have all helped me focus my research. Lee
what you're describing would likely be considered a 'memoir'... check out some by successful authors and see if that's what you want... david niven's are among the best, so check out 'the moon's a balloon' and 'bring on the empty horses'...
I've been working on a memoir for over a year and half now and let me tell you, it's exhausting. I've started over multiple times...not just editing but completely scrapping. One thing you need to be careful of while writing something like this is to keep reader engaged without exaggerating events. What might be interesting, exciting, and emotional to you because you lived it, doesn't always translate to the reader in the same way and a creative writer by nature can tweak factual details without even realizing. It's no easy task to translate your feelings and memories to the page so that the reader feels as affected (or at least can understand your reactions/thoughts) as you did in the moment. Good luck!
@sunplash thanks for the advice, I will keep this in mind. I have had look at a few memoirs via the Amazon preview, this is exactly what I am after. Thanks Lee
lee... avoid kindle previews unless the author is well known as a good writer in the literary world [don't go by amazon reviews], since so the majority of self-published books are poorly written and their rave reviews are by the authors themselves, or their friends and family... to be on the safe side, stick to only books published by major paying publishers, that have been ny times bestsellers and are respected by professional literary critics...
Hi all, I hope you are all well. I have been creating and collecting research on myself - what/when/where - supported by my diary. It's taken years because I had to do this when my health is good. My health has also made it impossible for me to create a mental health thread through all of my research because of my inability to focus for periods, this also made reading other books difficult. My brain seems very food at filing though! I have great research all by year with various what/when/where data. Lots of memories. I think a compromise for me is going to be the epistolary, with my research playing a more direct role as content. I can still write between this content? I realized while struggling to focus today that my 'accurate' voice is my driving force in this project. Some of my diary and other content will be dry, but it will also be accurate data from other sources, not just my diary. I am ok with this. Is there a basic epistolary structure you could share with me without me needing to do lots of other reading? Thanks, Lee
... happy to listen to other ideas about how I can use my research and filing about myself. I just remembered I bought a epistolary book. I'll have a flick though also. Pee
You can do what you suggested above if you want to—the in-between segments can be your own thoughts as you sit amid this pile of diaries and reciepts etc trying to make sense of it all as if you're setting out to turn it into a book. Or maybe simply as if you're looking back over your past through these entries and piecing it together, and it's bringing up memories. I'm doing something a bit similar. Though most of mine is presented as a narrative, the first chapter is from his dream journal from decades ago. He's an old man now thinking back to when he was 17, and he's speaking into his cell phone on voice record to get his ideas together, with the vague notion of making a book from it. I'm thinking I'll first just present the original dream journal entry as he originally wrote it, and then follow up with his own thoughts as he voice-records them, some 40 years after the fact. That way I can fill in more detail and make it more emotionally satisfying than a simple journal entry. There's the wistfulness as he remembers back, and also he can think about what he's learned since then through growing up (largely because of the events he recorded at the time). One thing you can use in this type of story is the difference between who the character was back then and who he's become. Contrast them. He was young and foolish then, but he's learned and gotten over the problems he was having then. In fact the main thrust of my story is about the growth he experienced as a result of the events he's remembering and reading about in his journals (waking and dream journals). But in my case I'm only presenting journal entries occasionally, and the rest of the time it falls into his discourse on the events themselves. Like that thing in some movies where the narrator does a voice-over at the beginning ("It was the summer of 1942—things were a lot different then... "). And you know—in a movie that part might be tinted with a sepia filter to make it look old fashioned like an old photograph. But it fades into the actual story, as if you're seeing it through his actual memories now, not only through his diary or whatever. It "comes alive" and goes to full color etc. Then it goes back to voiceover and sepia-tone at the end, and maybe a couple of times in between too. I'm just talking about a way you can transition between diary entires and current thoughts about them, or let the actual memories themselves come up so it becomes more like a standard narrative rather than epistolary. You can decide how you want to present it along that spectum—full narrative at one end, full epistolary at the other, and various shades in between.
Thanks for sharing your project. I struggled with rules. But I like your idea of just making sense of my research as I lay it out. I'll do this year by year. It's about my mental health all through my life. This feels less overwhelming for me as I've already done a lot of with collecting information about me. I want to add emotions to all of this data and this feels possible now.
