Between 2017 and early 2021, I spent countless waking moments laboring over The Yin & The Yang Of It All - my memoir. The very word \"memoir\" sounds so hoity toity, but you know what? I LIKE IT! It rolls off the tongue so much better than \"au-to-biography.\" Blech.
The process of writing a book is unlike anything I've ever experienced. With songwriting - a craft I clearly have some experience with - if you get inspired and put a little work into an idea, you can have something pretty good in, like, an hour. With the memoir, I might spend all day poring over a single passage or paragraph, with no real understanding at first as to how it might fit into the big picture of the book. You just have to take the leap of faith that if you write your stories - the truthful ones - then somehow the bigger picture reveals itself.
I read a lot of other memoirs over the past four years to try and learn what I could from writers who knew what the hell they were doing, and I even read a book called The Art of Memoir, by Mary Karr - an author who, herself, had written three separate memoirs spanning different periods of her life. I gleaned many things from The Art of Memoir, one of the most resonant being this statement by the author:
“In some ways, writing a memoir is knocking yourself out with your own fist, if it’s done right.”
In other words, you have to be willing to \"go there.\" It was a process to find that willingness in myself, but once I did.. well, let's just say things got real. Dip your toe into my truth-infested waters with this audio prologue and enjoy a little preview of The Yin & The Yang Of It All.
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