Writing a memoir continues to be a top priority for me. As we enter 2019, I want to inform you my first draft should be finished this year.

Up until recently, I worked through my writing sessions using single spacing and finally caved in this past Thursday to make it double spaced. As a result, I am sitting at 130 pages with my last writing session. It might sound weird but it was easier for me to start when I wrote with the single spacing. I found it easier to identify patterns in my writing I wanted to keep and where certain sections needed greater emphasis on conversation or building the scene. As a young writer, I must admit I don’t have a clue about how to get the final result published but that’s a concern for down the road after I edit a few drafts for content and final formatting.

The writing process is not always easy and I made it more difficult in my choice of subject. This book covers war in a different light and I am working to be fair in my observations but honest in my viewpoints. There are a lot of things that don’t deserve a word on the page and would be an absolute waste of readers’ time and my effort. I also encounter some difficulty in how I present people and conflict. A number of the authors I’ve been reading make it known overtly in their guidance or subtly in what they share that memoir is not the place for certain behaviors. It is an absolute lie to craft a version of the past to make the narrator look better and/or to use this medium as a way to get back at people. For this reason when I present a situation where I felt hurt, I am more selective in what I share and think through why I shared that information.

Writing responsibly is important. I am using different resources to see how I can remain accountable while also being creative. I don’t have the same leeway (in my opinion) to write this book the way I do my blog. I have situations where I must show off other people to explain what I was going through which might mean showing off a private encounter no one expected to become public knowledge. This reality is why I lean heavily on books and music to think of how other creative persons have explained parts of their own lives.

I slowed down on my research reading this past year the more I’ve invested in my writing and college classes. Here’s a small snapshot of what I can remember offhand as having a few tidbits that inspired my stories or provided the motivation to push through an area I was struggling with, like the labeling of chapters.

• Taylor Mali’s What Teachers Make
• John McPhee’s Draft No. 4
• Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s Gift from the Sea
• Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried
• Kerry Cohen’s The Truth of Memoir
• Judith Barrington’s Writing the Memoir: From Truth to Art

I also found some poems and a few chapters invaluable (although I am ashamed to admit I have a number of partially read books still on my reading list, to include the ones listed here.)

• Barbara Abercrombie’s A Year of Writing Dangerously
• JmStorm (a poet I found on Instagram)
• f.s.yousaf (a poet I found on Instagram)
• rodolfo.eduardo (a poet I found on Instagram)
• J. Kael Weston’s The Mirror Test: America at War in Iraq and Afghanistan
• Mary Jennings Hegar’s Shoot Like a Girl
• Bill Adler’s Letters from Vietnam: Voices of War 

I am probably not giving credit to every work I looked over last year. I guess it’s just important to say what inspires us is not always closely related to what we choose to write about but it gives us a fresh lenses through which to view our own experiences.

Music has a different power for me over books in how it influences my writing. Sometimes, the lyrics speak to my heart. Other times, the energy or solemn mood reminds me of a time where I needed something quiet to fall asleep to or that song that spoke to my anger needing an outlet. Music has a beautiful way of evoking memories and the songs listed below are not fully representative of all the songs that help me in my writing but are some that will continue to serve me in this next stage of my writing.

I have some work ahead of me this weekend, but thanks for stopping by. This might be my only check-in for January but feel free to check out my Instagram @she_wears_dogtags if you need a small conversation fix before I write again.