A Biographer's Journey
@generikat's Biography Writing Adventures
If you look closely, you can see my hands shake from the nerves resulting from a to-do list that is larger than the total blubber volume of a humpback whale
A couple of months ago, I was commissioned to write a biography. As a person that loves to write, but as of yet not a traditionally published writer, this assignment came as a bit of a surprise. The person that asked me to tell their tale hailed from the annals of my childhood, and selected me to be the scribe of their success story due to, and I quote, "You were kind to me when others weren't".
Holy ham sandwich in a brown wicker basket! I don't know about you all, but when I reflect on my life behavior to date a lot of times that train stops in the "I totally failed there" station. I do, however, have a bit of fondness for those in society that I like to call "The Odds". This is probably due to being a bit of an Odd myself. The particular Odd who's story I am telling is a genius, very attractive, and faced some disadvantageous circumstances that make his story a very worthwhile narrative to be told for all to enjoy.
That said, I know next to nothing about creative non-fiction, writing a biography, and about a million other points that don't spring to mind at the moment. Don't worry though, I will eventually share them!
I have learned so much from everyone here at Steemit, and I believe it's really important to share what you learn with other people. That's one of the reasons that I love being a librarian so much, I get to help empower discovery. With this series of posts, I hope that through chronicling my successes and failures in the realm of story creation and publishing that I might help some in the way that so many of you have helped me.
A good visual reputation of how mired by the enormity of what I have to do that I feel on any given day
Author Observation # 1: Intimidation Sensation
In the beginning, I was so intimidated by all aspects of this project. There was so much pressure coming down on me as I took in all of the details. The people my biographical subject interacts with are the Who's Who of society. I have an Oxford published writer chomping at the bit to read the first draft of what we come up with. There is a well established publishing house that is interested in publishing the story. I have a Princeton educated lawyer that I can consult with regarding any legal issues. I quite literally was thrown into a very different world from my rustic and simple existence. On top of that, I have to write the story from the biography-ee's point of view. This is apparently a really hard thing to do. Great! Bring it on!
I began experiencing feelings of doubt and that I wasn't qualified to tackle this project. I'm sure a lot of you have been there, that moment when you look at something that you have to do, and in that moment you think, "This is so far beyond me". You know what? It isn't.
In the last few months I have taught myself the finer points of writing creative non-fiction through tons and tons of reading and absorbing the knowledge of those that do it for a living. I have learned how to use incredibly complicated (but awesome) software designed for big writing projects. Hello Scrivener! Don't worry, there will be lots of posts on that mammoth beast, and the best thing of all is that I have discovered a confidence in my abilities that I didn't know that I had.
Failure happens often, and I might feel despondent when it occurs, but it is not in my nature to be too gloomy. The single greatest bit of advice I can offer is to just keep writing. Even on days that you feel like the biggest waste of space, or that everyone on Amazon is a gazillion times better than you, or that the only thing your novel or project is good for is digital toilet paper. Just. Keep. Going. I try to up-vote every post I see of people's writings just for that reason.
See you next post!
And as always, the pictures in this post was taken by the author's pen ink-marked iPhone
Written with StackEdit.