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Journal of a Memoir #1 · The Daily Writer

• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Hey my friend, welcome to this episode of the Daily Writer Podcast.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: So this episode is going to be a little bit different than what I typically do.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: As you probably already know, if you listen to the show on a regular basis, during the week I do these little short episodes where I try to give you something of value that's going to inspire you or motivate you in your writing.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: Those are little short episodes, which are actually basically those are first drafts of entries that are going to be in the book.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: The Daily Writer, which comes out this October, and I'm actually still creating those, although in a couple months I'll be done with those, with the drafts of those episodes, but I'm going to keep on doing the daily short episodes on the podcast for the foreseeable future.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: The other type of episode that I do is the Saturday interviews where I interview somebody who is a friend who uh has something of value to share related to writing, publishing, business productivity, creativity, or whatever it might be.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Those are basically the two kinds of episodes that I normally do.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: But two things happened recently that have given me the idea of doing an intermittent series of episodes on this podcast called Journal of a Memoir.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: And as you saw in the title, this episode is Journal of a Memoir entry number one.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the first thing that happened is that my dad and I have decided to write a memoir of his experiences in the Vietnam War.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: My dad is 74 years old.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: His name is Don Sanders Sr.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: So my brother's name is Don also.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, my dad is the senior of those two Dons.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: And this is an idea that we've been kicking around for probably two or three years or so.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: I would bring it up every once in a while to dad as something that I wanted to do someday.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes he would seem interested, sometimes really not that interested.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, anytime you approach somebody with the idea of writing their memoir, I mean, that's that's I'm sure kind of a a daunting thing, and something that is a completely new suggestion for the vast majority of people.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I wasn't sure totally if I really wanted to do it because I didn't know if I had the chops, to be totally honest with you.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: And being entrusted to write somebody's story, especially something as meaningful as the Vietnam War and their experience in a situation like that, that's a big task.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: And even though I'm a full-time writer, I'm a ghostwriter, I've got lots of projects I'm working on right now, and a couple of those are fairly high profile that you'll hear about later on.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, well, at least one of those you will.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the ones that I can't talk about, you won't hear about those, obviously.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: But the ones that I can, you will hear about those.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: But even though I'm doing that for a job, there's still an intimidation factor when it comes to writing something for a family member, especially my own father and his experience in the Vietnam War.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: So it's been something that we've talked about on and off.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: And recently, uh in fact, just a few days ago, we were talking and I brought up this idea again, and and he seemed interested in it.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, you know, there's no time like the present.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: I need to kind of practice what I preach on this podcast, which is just do the work, forge ahead, even though you're scared, you know, be courageous, all those kinds of themes.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh sometimes it's easier to say that on a podcast than it is to actually do it in my own real life.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: So I've just decided we're gonna plunge into this and we're gonna figure it out as we go along.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: So that's one element that's behind this.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing is that I came across recently a couple of books that were written by John Steinbeck.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, John Steinbeck, one of the most well-known authors in American history, who wrote East of Eden, Grapes of Wrath, of Mice and Men, so many classic novels and so forth.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, he compiled a couple of books that are actually journals of the time when he was writing a couple of his novels, Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: And you can find those on Amazon or wherever you get books.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I was really intrigued by that.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: I thought, well, that's really interesting that as he's writing these really cool novels, he's also recording journal entries in the form of letters to others talking about the process as he goes along, his fears, his his uh his thoughts behind behind the books, things that are going on in his life.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: So you kind of get an inside peek into the process of actually writing those novels.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I just got the idea, what if I created a journal as well of the process of writing my dad's Vietnam memoir?
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so what so what these journal entries are on the podcast is this is basically the audio version of the journal that I'm keeping as we are embarking on this project.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so what I'm gonna share with you in this episode is is essentially just an audio version of my first journal entry.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's a couple thousand words long, it's pretty long.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: These are not all probably gonna be this long, but I just thought I'd share with you in case you're interested.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: I know this type of entry may not be interesting to to everybody, but if you're interested in memoir, if you're interested in the process of of starting a new kind of project, if you're if you're interested in what I'm doing with this uh project, specifically with my dad and his Vietnam experience, then I think you might you might enjoy this series.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm just gonna dive into this.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: One thing that I want to say here at the beginning is I have to admit that this whole idea sounds a little bit pretentious.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: And the idea I'm talking about is the concept of helping my dad write his memoir, as if any human being is really qualified to deeply understand the struggles or experiences of another human being.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: Plus, whenever I hear the word memoir, the concept itself sounds so full of importance.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: The very concept of a memoir means that one person is putting their experience out there for other people to read as if to say, my experiences are worth your time.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: You might learn something or be inspired, or or maybe you might think I'm crazy, in which case, hopefully, you were at least entertained or at least confirmed in your sense of your sanity or your normalcy.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: But at its core, isn't this really why we read?
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: We read to know that we're not alone in our craziness, or maybe to somehow feel that we're not lost after all.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I have all these different kinds of thoughts as I start this process of is this something we should even be doing in the first place?
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: And am I the person who's qualified to even do this?
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: But at the end of the day, even if this does seem a little bit pretentious, I don't think it is.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: People write memoirs and books all the time.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, heck, even as a ghostwriter, I should know this better than anybody else, since I've written a few memoir type of books for other people at this point.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe my feeling about this whole endeavor being a little bit pretentious is due to my own sense of not quite feeling up to the task of telling my father's story in Vietnam.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's such a deep and personal experience that I secretly wonder, and and I've, by the way, kind of a side note, I've just determined I'm gonna be really honest with you in these in these journal entries that I'm just gonna share with you my own fears and my own mistakes and my own questions about this process.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: And you're not always gonna hear some some big confident uh writer type of a person.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just gonna kind of let it all hang out, if you will.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I've decided just to be kind of brutally honest with you about this whole process because I think that's that's the only way this is gonna be valuable.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: If if you can see my process as I go through this, then I hope that this is valuable to you as well.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: So there is a part of me that I have to admit that this is such a deep and personal experience that I wonder should I even have brought up the idea to my dad at all of doing this memoir?
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: Do I have the chops to do this?
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: Uh is this a project that people are going to read?
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't really know the the answers to those questions.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: I think I'm fairly objective when I consider my own skill level as a writer.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh at the same time, it's really hard not to not to be impressed with your own sense of fear as you as you start a project.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's really hard not to feel a sense of dread almost and wonder, have I gotten myself in over my head?
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I guess the answers to those questions will reveal themselves over time as we go through this through this process.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: Now, having said all that, you know, the other side of this equation is that nothing is perfect.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: Anytime that you write a memoir or story, nothing is is perfectly told.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: And certain, certainly no event is perfectly lived, and and no telling of that event is perfect, even when the author himself or herself is the one who is telling it.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: Our memories falter and sometimes we get details wrong.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: We bring in our own perceptions and we mix it with the truth of the matter and we concoct our own version of events.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: We all do this all the time.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: Whenever we tell a story of something that even happened in the previous 24 hours, we leave out events, we get mixed up, we forget things.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I th I think that's just kind of how our memory works.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: And it never ceases to amaze me how I have the propensity, and you might even say I have the talent for misremembering details.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: My wife has an incredible memory.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: She remembers tiny details from decades ago.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: But for some reason, I was not blessed with that gift.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm sometimes kind of amazed that I remember anything, to be honest with you.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: I think that storytelling and especially memoir can be kind of an inherently messy business.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: It might even be the messiest kind of writing.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: When you're writing fiction, at least you can just make up people and events and you don't have to be accountable for the truth.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: But when you're telling somebody's story, especially a life-altering story like your father's experience in Vietnam, an event that shaped his life in countless ways, when you think about those kinds of things, the truth is pretty important.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: You can't just make things up.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: So given all of my own fear about this process, and given my own maybe wondering, um, have I bit enough more than I can chew?
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: Why even do this?
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: Why even try if you know that it's not going to be perfect?
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I think there's several reasons for this.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: One major reason is that my dad's Vietnam story needs to be put down from start to finish.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: All of my life I've heard bits and pieces of his story, but it's never been written in a complete sort of way, at least as far as I know.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I think this is important since my dad's not going to be around forever, and neither will I, neither will any of us.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: So somebody needs to do this while we have the opportunity to do it.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: And given my career choice and my propensity for writing, I figure, hey, I'm probably the logical choice to take on this project.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: Second of all, this is also a reason for me to practice my memoir writing skills.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I do want to write more of these kinds of books for people, including military-themed books.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: So this kind of seems like a no-brainer on some level.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: And then the third reason is that it's just an excuse to spend some more time with my dad.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: He's 74 now, and he's going to be 75 when this book comes out.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: He might even be 76, depending on when the book is released sometime next year.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: So any chance we have to do something meaningful together, I think is a wonderful thing.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: Now, let me share the process of how we're going to actually go about this.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: And for those of you who are interested in the processes of writing and how things actually get done, I think you might find this uh kind of interesting.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm going to approach this project the same way that I approach any nonfiction book.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, I determine what the goals of this project are.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: Now, in this case, we don't have really a business goal.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: I don't necessarily have a certain number of copies that I want us to sell or anything like that.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I'd say it's it's really more of an emotional goal, which is to tell my dad's Vietnam story in the most compelling way possible and to create the best book that we possibly can.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes with the book, you have a clear outcome that is externally driven.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: But in this case, like with many legacy-oriented type of books, this is a project that is internally driven.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's the kind of book where you put it together because you have the impulse of love, you have the impulse of creativity or wanting to leave a legacy, and then you just put it out there and see what happens.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: And that's really going to be the case with this book, I think.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: So now that I'm clear on that, the next step is going to be doing a general interview with dad to get the overall scope of the most important events in his Vietnam experience.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: Now, like I said, I know lots of stories from his time in Vietnam, but I'm kind of ashamed to admit that I couldn't give you a comprehensive timeline of what my dad did in Vietnam.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like I couldn't tell you, hey, this particular month of this year, this happened, then this month that happened, this happened, and this is the month that he came home and so forth.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: I really can't give you that because nobody has ever set this down in some kind of written form.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: So I need to get a really clear sense of this before I can proceed any further.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, just kind of as a side note, all of the interviews and conversations about the project are going to be recorded and transcribed.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: Now, obviously, I'm not making those available publicly, but anytime that I do an interview with a client and I'm considering my dad a kind of client for this project in a way, uh, even though obviously I'm not charging him any money, because you know, him him having given me life and raised me and all that stuff, you know, obviously you don't charge family members for this kind of stuff.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: But nevertheless, my dad is a sort of client for this project, and I'm gonna treat it like I do any other client, which is every time we have a conversation related to the book, I'm gonna record it and have it transcribed so that I can make use of that as I'm putting the book together.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: So that's just kind of a side note.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: Now, once we do that first initial interview, I'm gonna try and get a sense of the thread or the overall theme of the book.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I already have a sense of where this might go, but I don't want to talk about it just yet because I just want to wait and see.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think it's good to come into a project with a preconceived notion of someone else's story.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: Even though in my head I might have even sort of decided what direction this is gonna go based on what I know, I want to keep an open mind because, you know, oftentimes when you talk with people about their stories, you can change, you can totally change the direction of the of the story and of the narrative by just one or two little details that that in the process of talking and interviewing comes up.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: Those are things that you don't know ahead of time.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I think it's careful not to make up your mind too much before you even get started with a project.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I think this is a key element because uh this element of having a thread or an overall theme of the book, this is really important because every story needs a theme, it needs a thread, it needs some kind of through line that ties everything together.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, yes, I can just write down a collection of events and and call it a day and say, hey, here's the Vietnam book.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: But how do you choose those events?
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: How do you tie them together?
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: And how do you know what to leave out and what to include?
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the answer to those questions is you have to know what the theme of the story is.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: So that's something that I'll need to figure out and and really kind of process and make sure that that aligns with the story that dad wants to tell in the book as well.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: Now, at the same time, as I'm doing all that, I need to figure out how the book is going to be structured and what the major movements of the story are going to be.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I tend to lean toward a clean three-part structure to every story.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: So that might be how the book is organized.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I also prefer shorter chapters, or at the very least, normal length chapters with shorter segments sort of baked into those chapters.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: So each section of the book, probably three sections, although I'm not sure, each of those three sections will have several chapters within them.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: And this is a really delicate balance whenever you're starting a book project, particularly something like a memoir, because you can't go in and impose a structure on a story that is calling for a different kind of structure.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now, on the other hand, you do have to have a container for the story.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: You have to have a specific way you want to tell it.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: The container partly determines the story that you're telling, but also vice versa.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: The story determines what container that you're using.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: So the way that I approach resolving this is that I listen really carefully for what the story wants to be.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: I listen for what the story is telling me.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: Then if I don't hear anything, if it's not really clear to me how it should be structured, then in my own mind, I gently suggest a structure or a container that seems to best fit that story.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if what I'm what I'm saying here doesn't make any sense, it's because this is this is a very intricate, well, intricate's not the right word.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: I would say this is a process where you have to be very delicate.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's a better choice of word.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: You have to approach this uh like you're handling something that's very fragile, because I think stories are fragile.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: I think stories are stories are fragile, but at the same time they're very robust.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I think anytime you're talking about stories and and memoirs and things like that, you know, there's a lot of paradoxes involved in that.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: Stories are fragile and they're robust.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you have to listen for what the story is telling you, what it wants to be structure-wise, but also you have to sometimes just kind of impose a structure on something and see if it fits if you don't know.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a lot of kind of back and forth in your own mind about this.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: At least this is the way that I approach it.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: I think listening is really the key thing here.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: You have to listen for what the story wants to be.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: And if the story isn't telling you anything clear, then try out a structure and see if it fits the major movements of what that story is.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: Now, as I said, if you listen carefully enough, I think the story will tell you if that container is right.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: And if the container is not right, then you need to find a different container for that story.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: This is why it's important to know about story structure.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's important to watch movies and read novels and read comic books and uh go to plays and watch musicals, um, watch TV.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's important to have a pretty broad knowledge of the different shapes that stories can take.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you don't have that, you're just going to take the small bit that you know and you're going to assume every story is going to be is going to be served well by that structure.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't necessarily, well, in fact, I know that's not the case.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: So when we talk about listening, um, this is what I mean when I so often tell people that ghostwriting is about listening as much as it is about writing.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just listening to the client, but it's also listening to the story itself.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things that I that I have found really interesting as I've gotten into ghostwriting the last couple of years, ghostwriting books specifically, is so I used to be a pastor and uh was a college professor for a long time.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: You probably already know that if you've listened to the podcast a while.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: But I have found that my preparation and experience as a pastor, especially with counseling and and listening and those kinds of things, really, really has served me very well in ghostwriting because I think half of ghostwriting is listening.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's listening to prospective clients and what they want so they feel heard and so that you can move forward with the project.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's listening to clients who've already signed when you're working on a project.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's um it's listening to the story itself, because I think the story exists outside of the person who is telling it in some ways.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: So I guess in other words, what I mean is sometimes we're not even aware of the on movements of the stories that we have lived and breathed.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: I think this is why it's helpful to have other people who can help us tell our stories because just because we have lived through a story and we have experienced it firsthand, it doesn't mean that we know what that story means.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: It takes other people giving us their wisdom and giving us their insight.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: It takes other people to help us understand the meaning of our own stories.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: This is not something that we can do, that we can do ourselves.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's it's almost like this idea of you can't you can't read the label of the jar that you're inside because the the label could only be read from the outside.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I think there's there's some important truth to that.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, sometimes the person that you're writing for, uh, as speaking from the ghostwriter perspective, sometimes that person may not even be aware of the themes or the threads that are running through their own story.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's probably true for all of us.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: We're way too close to it.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: We can't see it.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's like being in the middle of the Grand Canyon and you're facing a rock wall.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: You're way too close to the rock formations to be able to see the overall grand design of the whole thing.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: So after I feel like I have a handle on that, then dad and I will do a series of interviews, and I will come to those interviews prepared with some sp some specific questions, and I will record those interviews and have them transcribed, and I'll I'll draft the chapters for the book, and that'll be a whole long process.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: And after that, then we revise it, we edit it, and then we publish the book.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I realize I said I said all that in about 28 seconds, probably.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: And that's actually a process that's probably going to take well over a year.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm greatly condensing that, but essentially that's that's what happens.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: And it all seems so simple, but in a way it kind of is.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: Once you have the structure, once you have the theme, and you know how you're going to tell the story, and you and you feel like you know what the story is, then it's just a matter of putting in the work and making consistent progress.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: I think half of the emotional work of writing a memoir or writing a story, or ghostwriting a book for that matter, half of the emotional work is done up front because you've got to discover what what book are we writing, what story are we telling, how are we going to structure it, what's the perspective, how are we framing it, all that stuff.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: Once you get that settled, then it's just a matter of just following through on what you know that you need to do.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now, as far as the timeline for this project, I'm not gonna rush this.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: This is not a book that has a deadline necessarily.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: As I mentioned, I think it's gonna be out sometime, probably next year.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I could push this if I wanted to, and I could release the book this November for Veterans Day, but I've got a bunch of other big projects that are happening this year, including actually three books uh that I'm three of my own books that I'm putting out this year.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: Two of them are pretty short, though.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the big book released for me this year is the Daily Writer, which comes out in October.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't really want to have like two, two of my own books back to back that that I really need to think about marketing and promoting.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: But it's not even really about that, it's that I don't want to rush the process.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: I want to take my time, I want to do some background reading on Vietnam so I can get an understanding of the context of what my dad experienced.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he lived through it, he knows all the context, but I don't know all the context.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to do some research and some outside reading so I make sure to understand more about what he actually went through.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: So probably it's gonna come out sometime next year.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: I do have to say that I'm releasing any and all expectations of this project.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: The main thing that I want out of this experience is learning about my dad's story and also becoming a better writer.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: If I can do those two things, that that's that's I mean, other than actually crafting the book itself and having that as the outcome of this project, if I can learn about my dad, spend some time with him, and I can improve my memoir and storytelling skills in the process, then I'll be a happy camper.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: Now, of course, there is a market for these kinds of books, and I think I think I Can make a pretty good finished product, but we're gonna see where it goes with the marketing.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: I have no idea what that might look like.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, it also depends on whether dad wants to be involved in the marketing side of things or what all that may look like.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: I have I have no idea.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: We haven't even talked about that.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: So all that remains to be seen.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: So, one more thing that I want to dive into, actually, a couple more things as I head into the home stretch in the last few minutes of this episode, is that I think it's good to have some clarity about this question of why am I keeping a journal of this process?
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: What do I hope that other people are gonna get out of this?
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: Why am I going to the trouble of recording this episode right now?
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: Why am I keeping a journal of this whole thing?
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a couple of reasons.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: One, one of the answers to that question is the same reason that I do anything that's teaching related, which is that I hope it's gonna help other writers.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I hope that these podcast episodes, these journal of a memoir episodes, and the eventual book that's gonna come out, that's the journal of the memoir.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: I hope that this is going to inspire you to write your own story or maybe somebody else's story if you're a ghostwriter.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I hope that maybe you'll learn something from my process and see that it's very doable.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: You've heard how I'm gonna lay out the process, and this is exactly how I approach basically every book.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe you'll feel motivated to do something that draws you close to a family member.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you have a parent, maybe you have a sibling or somebody in your family who needs their story told, and maybe you can get some writing practice by telling their story.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody wins in that process.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: So who knows what may what may be the outcomes of all this, but I know I just I have the impulse to document what I'm doing and to share it with other people, so I hope that it's helpful.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: All that I know is that there's great power in doing that.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's great power in keeping records so that that you have processes documented and so that other people can learn from those.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: Plus, when you go back and you reflect on those things and you read what you have put together, you oftentimes forget what you wrote.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: You forget what you did, you know, a year, two years, ten years ago.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: So it's important to document this because I mean, heck, uh, a couple years from now, I'm not gonna remember this episode.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you probably won't either, but it's gonna be there for other people to listen to, and then I can come back and refer to it uh the next time that I do this this kind of a project.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: And this is probably gonna help me as well.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: Now, let me say a few words about some sources that I'm using that are gonna be helpful for this project.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: To get a sense of the overall scope of the Vietnam War, I'm gonna be consulting a couple of books, including The Vietnam War by Jeffrey C.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: Ward and Ken Burns.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's based on the Ken Burns documentary.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna be consulting a book called Black Virgin Mountain by Larry C.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: Heinemann.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: My dad recommended that book to me, and also a book called The Vietnam War Experience by Jerry and Janet Souter.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the Vietnam War Experience is a really cool book.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: I got it from Barnes and Noble years ago, probably at least 10 or 12 years ago, when my wife worked there.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it's one of those books where you take it out of it, it has this really cool like sleeve that it's in, this cardboard sleeve, and you open it up and it's got all these replicas of stuff related to the war, you know, uh things that soldiers carried or draft cards or maps.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's one of those kinds of books.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's really, really interesting.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: So those are some resources I'm gonna be using to learn about the war itself.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: Also, I'm gonna be reading through the book The Art of Memoir by Mary Carr.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's probably the most popular book out there on memoir writing.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: And you can go on Amazon and grab that book.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: I've not read it before, but I know it's really popular, so I'm gonna be going through that.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: Now, even though I've been thinking about this Vietnam book for really two or three years now, probably, the idea of keeping a journal to document my experience is pretty new.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, this is like just a week old.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: I had not thought about keeping a journal of writing this book until just a few days ago, honestly.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: And as I mentioned, I got this idea from two of John Steinbeck's books.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the title of those books are the first one is Journal of a Novel, The East of Eden Letters.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, that's a journal of him writing East of Eden.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: And the second book is called Working Days: The Journals of the Grapes of Wrath.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, his journal of writing the grapes of wrath.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I also think it's interesting that these two threads of John Steinbeck and Vietnam actually came together in a book that I had never heard of, but I just got from Amazon.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: And this book is called Steinbeck in Vietnam.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: So Steinbeck, and this was when he was in his 60s, Steinbeck was actually a war correspondent during Vietnam, and he wrote a bunch of uh wrote a bunch of things related to that.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm going to be going through it probably not the whole book, but at least parts of that book, just to see what his experience was in Vietnam and his reflections on it and and just see what I can take away from it.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: Now, let me just get really honest with you for a second.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: As I mentioned a few minutes ago, my goal with these journals is to just be honest and frank with you about my own experience.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to present myself as somebody who knows it all or who has everything figured out.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I think there's a lot of value in hearing people wrestle with their self-doubts about things.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: Now, on the other hand, I don't think it's healthy to always present yourself as somebody who isn't confident and doesn't know what's going on and that kind of a thing.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the reality of it of this situation is that I am confident in my abilities.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I think I have a pretty clear objective view of my own talent and skill.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: However, I do want to confess that I don't really know how this thing is going to turn out.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: I suspect that the book is going to turn out well, and certainly I hope that it does.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I am very confident in my skills as a writer.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: Not necessarily because I think I'm the greatest writer in the world, because I know that I'm not, but because I know that if you keep searching for the way forward when you're writing a book or telling a story, that the answers do reveal themselves.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: I am confident of that.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: So, in a sense, this project is not really about my skill or my talent.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's about listening and opening myself up to the story.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's about listening for what the story wants to be and then following those clues and following that guidance and then being obedient to it.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: I think that writing is ultimately not about creating as much as it is about listening.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's not about being the source of all the ideas or all the creative work.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's about being a conduit of that creativity.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: Now, at the same time, I also want to say that I think you are a source.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: You have to have the chops.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: The thing that bothers me the most is that, and again, I'm just being really honest with you, is that I know I'm a very solid writer.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, in fact, I think I'm more than competent.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to be a full-time writer for a living.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: But I realize that I'm not great.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: At least in my own mind, I'm not a great writer.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: Now, when I read truly great writing, okay, for example, the book The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, which is another Vietnam memoir that I absolutely love because I love his writing style.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: When I read a book like that, the writing and the storytelling just they transport you.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: I remember reading that book a number of years ago, and I finished it and I sat there, I read it on Kindle, and I sat there in my chair in my home office, and I just kind of look stared off into the distance.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: Because the whole book feels like you're in a dream.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's written in such a style and like such a compelling way, you just feel like it's transporting you into a dream.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's why it's really popular, and that's why he's such a phenomenal writer.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I look at my own skills and I go, I wish I had, I wish I had the talent to do that.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: I wish I could write like that.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: Not that I want to be a copy of Tim O'Brien, it's not that.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's just I wish I had the chops to be that kind of writer when I need to be.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe I do.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I just have never been presented with the opportunity to do it that way.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's not really a comparison thing, it's that I have a pretty objective view of my own talent, and I don't feel like I have that level of lyrical skill as a writer.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: I would look at my, I would see myself as I'm a working writer, I'm a working ghostwriter, which means that I can write in other people's voices.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: But when it comes to something like, like that, I wish I could find a section of my own voice where I could write in that lyrical, dreamlike way that almost kind of entrances people.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's something that I am working toward in my own skill and my own writing.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the good thing is that I'm a pretty analytical person.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're an analytical person, that means you can you can deconstruct someone's writing style and then you can learn to do that, at least to some degree.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't think it's necessarily a matter of having the inborn skill to do something.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's a matter of can you can you reverse engineer someone's writing?
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: Can you deconstruct it?
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: And then can you learn to do what they're doing?
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I really think you can.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: I really, really think you can.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: If you listen to behind the scenes stuff of the great directors, you'll find that that's exactly how they learn to be great directors, is they deconstruct what other great directors have done and they integrate their own style into it.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: Then they can they can take what they have learned from other people and then they can create their own new style based on that.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's kind of what I intend to do in my own writing is I want to deconstruct the great writers, the ones that I really, really love.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to figure out a way to to not not copy them, but I want to figure out a way to to learn how it is that they do what they do, to deconstruct it, reverse engineer, and then how can I, how can I bring those elements that I love into my own writing within within the the container of my own voice?
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: So that's probably way more than you wanted to know about this whole project.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like I'm uh this project is about my dad and it's about his uh the Vietnam book, but I'm just kind of being honest with you.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: These are some of the things that are that are bouncing around in my head as we embark on this project.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, some of this, some of this is really sort of beside the point.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: All this self-reflection is a little beside the point since in this particular book I'm writing on behalf of my dad.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I need to figure out what is his voice.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: I now obviously I've known my dad my whole life, but what is what is his voice as it can be translated into this book?
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_00: And how can I really learn to um how can I learn to use that voice and tell his story the way that he would tell it if he were writing this book?
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_00: And that's my job.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: My job is to listen and figure out what his voice is and tell the story the way that he would tell it if he were the writer.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I hope this project serves my dad well, and I hope that's going to be a great experience for both of us.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: And what I tell my clients, and this is, and I'm this is exactly the way I'm approaching this project also, what I tell my clients is that my number one job is not to be a writer.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: My number one job is to create a book, but also to make the process as easy and as fun for them as possible.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: That is really what my job is as a ghostwriter.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I think if you're doing client work, that's really what your job is.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: You're doing the writing, yes, you're doing the the labor and the work, but your real job is to make the process fun and easy and enjoyable for them.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: You got to give them a good experience.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm hoping that's what I can deliver for my dad as well, is that this is going to be fun for him and it's gonna be enjoyable, and that it's gonna be something cool that we can give away uh to people or get in the hands of people of people who would love to read his story or maybe connect with some veterans uh with this book in some way.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm not sure where this whole thing is going, but uh but I think it's all about the journey, you know.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: I think if you're too when you're doing a book, if you're too obsessed about all the outcomes of the book, you're gonna really limit yourself.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: I think you've got to have some imagination and some creativity, and you just have to be obedient to that creative impulse that you're gonna do the work, you're gonna figure it out, you're gonna make something cool that people are gonna love, uh, and then just see what happens.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, thanks for tuning in.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_00: This uh this episode has been way longer than I anticipated.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_00: So if you like this this uh journal of a memoir series, let me know.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: And um I'll take that into consideration and do some more of these.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: So thanks for checking out this episode.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate you hanging in there with me.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you've learned something from this, and I will um see you in the next episode.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for listening to today's episode.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: If you've been listening to this show for any length of time, you know that one of the four practices of a great writer is creativity.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: And in order to stay creative, you've got to have great input.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where writing prompts come in.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: A writing prompt is a sentence or two that helps you break through creative blocks, brainstorm new ideas, and get back into a state of flow.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: Writing prompts are an awesome creative tool for journaling, storytelling, creative writing, stress relief, social media posts, and so much more.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: But the great news is that you don't have to create these yourself.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: We've put together an amazing package of 365 daily writing prompts.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: So every day for the next year, you can have a shot of inspiration delivered straight to your inbox.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_00: You can check it out at dailywriterlife.comslash writing prompts.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, and I'll see you tomorrow.