Wow! What a month. Time sure does fly when you are busy working on something that you love.
For so many years I wanted to find ways to help others going through domestic and family violence but was not sure how. Well, last month I was able to participate at my local Candle Lighting ceremony for Domestic and Family Violence Prevention month, along with a radio interview and launching of a web page for my book –of which this blog is a part! Writing my book and promoting it on websites, social media and word of mouth have also been quite fulfilling and helping me to achieve my dream of helping domestic and family violence victims and survivors.
When that little voice at church told me to “write a book” I thought it was a good idea, but had no idea as to what to write about? I could have written a book about my own experiences but who wants to read a book which probably would have only been about ten pages long of all the bad things that happened in some else’s life? Most people have enough dramas of their own, they don’t want to read other people’s dramas. No, they want something positive or inspiring to read. That is when I thought of Alice.
I have known Alice for many years and often talked with her about what was going on in her life. Many of the things she told me left a lasting impression – and not always good ones. When I first approached her about writing a book about her life she was quite uncertain about it and had many questions. Why her life? What would be included and what would be left out? What about her privacy and those mentioned in the book? What? What? What?
The more we discussed the issues the more she warmed to the idea and before we both really realised it she was saying included this, oh and this, you must not leave this out, and things like this. We had a good laugh together when we realised that without actually saying so, Alice had decided to give me permission to write about her life and we were already starting this wonderful journey together. After making basic notes we decided to write down basic chapter titles – very descriptive so we knew where that chapter was leading. These changed dramatically over time, but it gave us a structure to work with.
The next project was writing a time line so that the book flowed along in the basic sequence of her life events that were to be included. Alice then allowed me to read her diaries which contained a lot of details about many events in her life. Diaries are usually very personal and very private writings of an individual and Alice’s were not different. Being allowed to read them gave me great insight into Alice’s feelings about what was happening and not just the events themselves. So many times she would just poor her heart out onto paper and even events that I knew about were shown in a different light. From our discussions, what I read in her diaries and stories that I remembered her telling me over the years the book slowly came together. At times more information was added so that sections were easier and clearer to understand; at other times entire sections were removed for different reasons.
Then came the fun and challenge of changing all the names of people and places. For people’s name I tried to keep them as relatively common names for that time period, as well as making sure they were not names that were held in contempt back then. Changing the place names was more difficult as the story had to fit into that area and appear realistic, while at the same time being different enough so that the real place would not be recognised.
. . . to be continued next month!