Writing a personal book: Emotional challenges

Image via Wikipedia-a jury selection--commons license. wiki/File Do all personal experience authors have the same challenges when writing about their lives?  Maybe the first hardest thing to do is different for each one, or for most. If you are thinking about writing your story, what is your biggest challenge now? I'm interested to know. E-mail: jean.purcell@opinebooks.com

     What does your life experience have in common, for example, with the Henry Fonda character in the movie, Twelve Angry Men? He was a regular guy, serving on a murder case jury. He was not the foreman, and he was not the loudest, youngest, handomest, or richest juror. We don't know about his education, profession, or family. We did learn, watching the movie or play, that he had one thing more than everyone else on the jury: conviction about the case. He thought and felt deeply about seemingly small yet potentially serious flaws in the evidence presented to prosecute the murder case before the jury. And he never gave up trying to get jurors to think it through, to help find why something did not fit. He convinced the jury, one person at a time, of reasonable doubt. They voted "not guilty," although at the beginning they had leaned heavily toward a "guilty" verdict. Those facts alone, however, would not make drama. It was how they were shown that made words, characters, script and film...classic.

    Your story has equal, although not the same, dramatic interest, with early assumptions, successes, failures, misunderstandings, loss or disappointment, dreams, changing minds, change of mind, biases, and influences of other people, happenings, and beliefs. Every life--yours or someone you want to write about--has those or equally challenging parts, and so it's true if you envision a book about significant times of transformation in human experience. Are you aware of the exact positives that your story--the one you want to write--has? Let me know. Let me share your comments--anonymously, if you wish--with other writers who want to know. 

Copyright (c)2011 Opinari Writers and Jean Purcell

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The Irritations Among Us

Commentary

Irritations point to conflict, and most of us welcome drama only if it comes in forms of good stuff. The drama that reeks of perpetual upheavals mainly annoys or  repulses us.

Yet I've been thinking in recent hours about people who, during their lives short or long, really annoyed others, sometimes in great numbers. Ironically, the irritating people in such cases were among the gentlest and humblest of people. Most were among the smartest and most compassionate.

Their dogged unwillingness to be demonized out of their basic beliefs made them into gross irritatants for  others not able or willing to listen to arguments made to support a view, or to tolerate differences not to their liking or not popular in their select, ingrained groups.  

Later, many of us who found some people to be irritants have given thanks for the influences of their irritations. Kept some off the streets when they wanted to be there at the wrong time or with the wrong crowd, i.e., out of danger. Kept others from making messes it might take a lifetime to clean up or clear up, if ever. Opened some eyes, helped soften some hearts and strengthen some minds at the same time. I thank God for these kinds of irritating people. Irritating people have led great changes for the better, scorned for a time and valued generations later.


Copyright (c)2011 Opinari Writers Network