Why I Wrote Life Flashes: A Memoir and Writing Processes
I do not fully know why I wrote Life Flashes: A Memoir. I did not intend to do so. I do not know why I began writing a journal in diary form that three years later became *Life Flashes: A Memoir *book manuscript. I do remember beginning to write the manuscript for the book right after undergoing a profound spiritual awakening in early 2007.
As a result of internal conversion, I began to truly live again, through having re-established connection with God, accepting uncertainty, realizing that conflict happens in all relationships and that division is essentially an opportunity for growth, not an obstacle, and that goodwill—kindness, respect, and cooperation—is what holds relationships together in delightful, devastating, and everything in between times.
I remember the first short story I wrote in elementary school. It was entitled the Deer Hill Fire. Sitting at one of the desks in the fifth-grade class homeroom, I wrote about the fire—as it was happening—at a farm located on Deer Hill, which was situated directly behind Deer Hill School. To this day, I can recall the excitement I experienced while writing the story, I can also remember being thrilled when receiving the completed story back from homeroom teacher Mrs. Bancroft, who marked the paper in red pen with an A or an A minus grade.
Shortly after I left the education field in the mid-1970s, I began writing freelance news and —feature articles for two local newspapers. Writing feature articles about people, places, and things especially interested me. I do not know why I loved writing from the start. I remember the internal freedom and peace I felt after finishing the first freelance article I wrote.
I had done something that I was not expected to do and did not expect self to do. Writing or playing with ideas, including observing behavior of people, places, and things with words was personally fascinating and rewarding, for reasons that I did not fully understand. I was discovering —in a new way—that it is just as normal to work in a profession that is different from what family members or friends have chosen as it is to choose the same profession in which family members or friends are employed. I was rediscovering that life is essentially about passion, not proving self-worth.
When I began writing a journal again in 2007, I decided I was not going to do so in the same manner as I had in the past. This time, I vowed not to sugarcoat challenging matters. At the same time, I pledged not to wallow in self-pity. I was not interested in writing a tell-all memoir; I chose to write *Life Flashes: A Memoir *in diary form because doing so helped me to discern what was genuinely going on within me—mind, heart, and soul.
Writing, editing, and proofreading of *Life Flashes* found me remembering words someone, whose name I cannot remember, uttered. “Do not ever write anything that you would not want to read on the front page of a newspaper.” This is sage advice. A writer who seeks excellence consistently re-examines written material. Why? On a regular basis writers find material that they wrote that they initially believed to be relevant is immaterial, inaccurate, or inappropriate. Published or not, writing which does not demonstrate literary limits damages author credibility and relationship between the author and readers.
Writing is not an essentially solitary process. While writing, an author is continually interacting with people, places, animals, and things that he or she is examining. After writing for several hours, writers generally experience considerable physical as well as emotional fatigue. Writing enables authors to privately engage with people, places, and things in a manner equivalent with engaging with people in person. During the past fourteen years, I have consistently discovered that social life that I errantly believed that I have missed while I have been living alone and writing, rewriting, or editing for much of the day—mostly at home or in libraries or coffee shops—has been active within me. Solitary and social interactions are remarkably similar; the two communication methods are not mutually exclusive.
No endeavor, including writing, is conflict-free. As a rookie laptop computer user, I lost sections of the manuscript on several occasions, without warning. The manuscript text could not be rewritten; passing time can render a writer unable to recreate experience, mood, and atmosphere. Authors continually learn how to grieve and move beyond literary losses.