Response with ideas please.

Welcome back into "the game", Michelle. These would make a great collection of connected short stories. You don't have to use real names or be accurate. You can make up composites of characters.

You have the sensitivity already to write them respectfully. I could imagine stressed out care givers appreciating some quick reads from someone who understands their frustration.

sarah_scotti wrote:

For reasons that probably related to fever, though, I keep thinking "screenplay" whenever I read your descriptions of this project.  Or "documentary."

Not the strep, it is exactly what I would like to do eventually.  I'll be talking to someone in the business as soon as we both can arrange it.

Okay, shorts it is.

thanks team for the help.

(Nancy darling, re: "I can't wait to see how you develop it."--- that's what you were supposed to be telling ME!)

Great idea, Michelle. Really great. Consider mentioning one such occurance at the end of DIARY--as a lead-in to the sequel, and to end it on a positive note.

I'm gonna be the voice of dissent here.  I like the ending of Diary.  I do not like the idea of "happying it up."  I think it is the ending of the experience of living with a husband as he loses more and more of himself.  The story of Michelle's relationships with all the different people at Memory House is a different story.  I expect the tone will be lighter, if only because not everyone there is tragic to us... for Michelle, and for us as readers, they were never anyone other than who they are when she first meets them. 

Also, I don't really see this is a sequel in the sense that you need a cliff-hanger kind of ending. 

I think Michelle does a really admirable job of not descending into self-pity in "Diary."  But I think the (really, already almost understated) pathos that we get at the end is important.

Interesting idea, what do  you think?

ShermanBierce (6:42:55 PM): I'm about halfway though diary now.
ShermanBierce (6:43:04 PM): Haven't been reading lately.
ShermanBierce (6:43:31 PM): I can give you a broad-stroke comment now if you want it.
mishmont1 (6:44:31 PM): Sure, you are one of the people I trust the most of those big strokes, very important.
ShermanBierce (6:45:07 PM): OK, here goes...
ShermanBierce (6:46:34 PM): It works brilliantly on the scale of chapter by chapter.  As a whole work, it's starting to feel unorganized.  It's a diary, I understand, but the stream-of-consciousness style does make it tricky to sustain momentum.
ShermanBierce (6:48:13 PM): Every time I pick it up, I'm glad I did.  But, every time I put it down I should feel an urgency to get back to it, and that's not happening.  I said a similar thing to medic, about his memoir.  The anecdotes are brilliant, but they seem to end as he tells them and not drive me on to the next one.
ShermanBierce (6:48:38 PM): Now you're quiet.  Am I in trouble?
mishmont1 (6:49:00 PM): Oh, no, not at all, I just didn't want to interrupt.
mishmont1 (6:49:45 PM): I hear what you say exactly.  what I am thinking is that, unlike a novel that has a plot, there might not be much I can do about that.
mishmont1 (6:50:25 PM): I need to read more memoirs to see how a momentum might be developed.
ShermanBierce (6:50:25 PM): I know nothing about writing memoir, less than nothing about selling it.  From a fiction writer's perspective, your chapters feel like they have a little too much closure each time.
ShermanBierce (6:50:46 PM): You've read Street of Rogues, I presume?
ShermanBierce (6:51:45 PM): Which is of course also unsold...
mishmont1 (6:51:48 PM): Oh yes, and read the re-writes.  That does have momentum because the kid is growing, moving forward.
mishmont1 (6:52:01 PM): Not at all like Diary.
ShermanBierce (6:54:54 PM): It's not just that he grows.  From the start, it's obvious that the book has a direction and a goal.  The journey is suspenseful.  Most of what I've read in Diary is descriptive, evocative, important stuff about what that life is like, but not really about where either of you are headed.  It's a totally different kind of book, and hard to compare.  Any suggestions I make would by necessity involve starting over completely, and I won't do that to you.
mishmont1 (6:56:36 PM): Those differences stem from the fact that Mitch wrote a story from his recollections, could do the plot, the direction; fit the events to move it.
mishmont1 (6:56:59 PM): Diary is a diary, what I wrote when I wrote it.
ShermanBierce (6:57:19 PM): Like I said, apples and oranges.  Unfair comparison.
ShermanBierce (6:57:51 PM): All right, I do have a thought...
mishmont1 (6:57:55 PM): some of the changes made because of reviewer suggestions have been for clarification, or added bits that are true to life even if not experienced on that exact day.
mishmont1 (6:58:10 PM): One is a recollection, one is at the moment.
mishmont1 (6:58:59 PM): A thought?  give it up.
ShermanBierce (6:59:27 PM): It might not work.  It's a radical restructuring, but no loss or change of content.
ShermanBierce (7:03:14 PM): Go through the book and pull out every piece that tells an old story, about your relationship before the book begins, and strip away the "diary" quality from those.  Let the stuff that happened in real time stay diary entries.  Then alternate chapters between real diary entries and a linear retelling of what went before.  I don't know if this makes sense to you.  My biggest concern about that strategy is that you might not have enough recollection content to balance the diary content.  In which case, you'd want to write more.  That would preserve the diary feel of the book, while still giving you a progression (in the form a linear back story) to keep it moving forward.  Just tossing this out.  I'm not married to it.
ShermanBierce (7:03:59 PM): It's a hybrid of what you have now and what Mitch did.
mishmont1 (7:04:06 PM): Hey, I like it!
mishmont1 (7:04:22 PM): I really like it.
ShermanBierce (7:04:27 PM): Really?   
mishmont1 (7:05:24 PM): Yup.  the recollections would not have to be part of the legit Diary, explanation probably wouldn't even to be necessary.
ShermanBierce (7:05:41 PM): Right.  That's my point exactly.
ShermanBierce (7:05:53 PM): It's a story.  A love story at that.
mishmont1 (7:06:38 PM): Wow, I love it!  But damn, that means I have to work.
ShermanBierce (7:06:56 PM): So sorry.



MM:So the momentum would come from a life chronology (my life/our life together) moving forward until it consects (I know that's not a word but it should be) with the time of the writing of Diary (2006)?

SB:I would have said intersects, but yes, that's what I was thinking.  You get to start and end with the same scene of discovering Dave's condition.  The second time, we're prepared for it, but it will still have impact because now we've read all of what he's about to lose.





So the momentum would come from a life chronology (my life/our life together) moving forward until it consects (I know that's not a word but it should be) with the time of the writing of Diary (2006)?

I would have said intersects, but yes, that's what I was thinking.  You get to start and end with the same scene of discovering Dave's condition.  The second time, we're prepared for it, but it will still have impact because now we've read all of what he's about to lose.

Mish, I too see this as a totally separate project from diary. Diary stands alone and I would expect this new project to be more of a collection of shorts or short stories. The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien comes to mind, although a different subject matter (Vietnam War) I think he does a spectacular job of painting these characters. Why not focus on one of the residents per chapter, show that person in full color, your interactions with them, maybe even some of their story, bkgd, etc. Could be very moving and humorous in parts. I see you moving your reader subtly from laughter to tears in a book like this. Very rich material indeed with a new twist. nancy

I may have to abandon this project, my people keep dying: first Steve, Dave's roommate, then my darling Lucky (mentioned in the beginning of this thread), now Jean (my poem:"Conversation with an Angel").

Many tears over Lucky.  My favorite caregiver, Debra, held herself so rigid after she heard the news that I thought she was angry with the world, and for some reason me and Kathy and Simone, (visiting that day) in particular.

I may need to move back before "I drown in my own tears."

I won't deny Dave my many hours with him, but may need some armor against loving the others.

Hey thanks, I'll think about it.

I will put this off, but feel as though I have to take notes.

I forgot to mention Chick who is in the first post here along with Lucky.  He can no longer walk, is very thin, and sleeps in the recliner for much of the time.

New woman, Alice.  Jew born in Germany.  Her father travelled a lot, including to the US and saw the writing on the wall and moved the family first to Belgium, then NY.

sarah_scotti wrote:

but somehow I'm still not Queen of the Fucking Universe.)

Damn.

Bad news sure does come in threes.

Just yesterday I heard about the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny.

Nancy,

Gmail is Google's version of free email.  They give you a ton of space, so you archive everything instead of deleting it, and all your email is fully searchable.  There are several different ways to organize things, and emails can have multiple tags so fit into multiple "buckets."  So, really, for those of us who email our mothers/sisters/friends/therapists/whomever about every little old thing that happens in our lives, it turns into a really interesting kind of journal that you can use to do much of your initial research on a memoir piece. 

I have every email Mot ever sent to me, every email I ever sent about Mot, and emails from that time that have nothing to do with him.  It's incredibly helpful to be able to go back and see what Scotti and I were talking about, to check all the dates of things, to look for concurrent life events... really, it's invaluable. 

Of course, it doesn't help at all when I write about anything from before 2005.  But you gotta start somewhere!