Today is February 1, 2024, celebrating an epiphany of sorts, because I just re-discovered the Inbox for the email address you have continued to use (Writethestoryofyou@outlook.com) since my computers crashed last March, and this blog shut down.
Bill Gates was 4 years old when I began working with computers, and the crash took almost everything/anything I had saved in computer heaven. So weeks later, with a new system running, I had to shelve any work on the blog because rebuilding database was a priority over the fun stuff.
In the process, I lost track of the email account, which finally re-surfaced today – with 550 messages in the inbox. Somehow, I will find the time to respond to all of those who wrote for anything that needs a response, as soon as I can.
Meanwhile, I’ve already begun the process of removing the blog from the internet, and replacing its content into a book, whose cover arrived just yesterday. The book will carry out my original intent – to get you thinking about how and why you should record the details of your life, and how much you will gain from doing so. Originally I was writing for an older audience, but the first letter in my newfound inbox this morning was from a young man named Jesse, who gave me another idea.
Many of the local seniors I’ve talked to won’t consider a memoir, because they don’t want family secrets on a record with their names. For these, I suggest they could just as easily write their memoirs as a work of fiction, with no attachments to real names or places.
As the blog progressed, I was intending to add directions and exercises for putting together a memoir, but it would be just as easy to include directions and exercises for writing fiction, too. In fact, writing fiction might be even easier, because it involves little more than following a formula.
While the blog is shutting down, if you’re at all interested in fiction writing, here’s a good place to start:
A young author named “Jessica Brody” wrote a book that describes the formula, and how to follow it, in her book, “Save the Cat Writes a Novel.” I got my copy on eBay, for just a few dollars. My first work of fiction, a work in progress (after writing only non-fiction for 50 years), is in the “Young Adult” genre and, much to my delight, Jessica’s first book was so popular, she wrote a follow-up specifically targeting the “YA” genre called “Save the Cat Writes a YA Novel.” How lucky can you get?
Jesse gave me the idea of introducing some of this info in the “Resources” pages at the back of the book, or even doing another book laying out the science of fiction writing for the YA crowd. Maybe it would help any young writers groups, as long as our school systems continue to put more emphasis on sex-ed and diversity propaganda, rather than old-fashioned topics like civics and life-skills.
Thanks, Jessee, for the good idea.
Finally, I’m also planning to retain the “WritetheStoryofYou.com” domain alive, in case we later try to put a site online to facilitate two-way communications for those who want to trade tips, help, and questions with the subject.
I’m not a fan of facebook, since they gave my timeline to one of their kids, after I posted a new photo of each of my 121,000 followers’ Shih Tzu puppies every 3 hours, 24/7 over a 6-year period.
And, I’ll continue to monitor the “writethestoryofyou@outlook.com” mailbox so if you’d like to be on a mailing list exclusively for readers of the blog or the book, drop me a line with permission to put your address on that list.
Hope to hear from you soon,
Jim McCarthy