Barbara J. Hamby

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Nitty Gritty Writing Decisions

We had great weather today. After an early morning swim, I went to work on the stories from my life. I was able to sit outside for a while and mark up drafts with revisions.

To do the tedious work of merging two stories into one, I sat at the computer, cutting and pasting. I’ve printed the draft of the combination, and will read it over tomorrow to test its continuity.

Rather than chronologizing the stories, if I publish memoirs in book form, I will title the tales much like chapters and allow the reader to pick and choose the order in which to read them. At least that’s the plan at the moment.

Sections such as Employment History and School Days don’t lend themselves to placement in proper order.

Travel tales, if separated, could be presented in chronological order I suppose.

It just occurred to me that, since writing verse has been such a big part of the last fifteen years of my life, I might want to have a poetry section. Or, I could sprinkle appropriate poems between the stories, as I did in Find Romance in Later Life. I’ll have to give that more thought.

I’m beginning to have some hope that this project, which seemed so overwhelming when I began, may be finished before I am. Possibly before I turn 80.

It’s very jarring to note that will be my next major birthday.