Hello and great to see so much activity here!

[Susan B]

I just wanted to say hello and say how great it is to see so much going on here! I guess I haven't checked in for awhile. Hope I can join you all.

I am just getting back to writing memoir. My first book, a music memoir, came out in January. But I spent most of the past year very caught up in writing (or trying to!) my first novel, a mystery. I did NaNoWriMo last year and loved it. Still feel a little sad to not be doing it this year.

My little "fiction bubble" got burst about 6 weeks ago, when I showed the mystery to my agent. Let's just say she doesn't subscribe to the "No Plot? No Problem" theory :-) She directed me back to nonfiction, to the project I said I planned to work on next. Not sure of the final form it will take, but it definitely has elements of memoir. (Family stories, secrets, ethnic identity. All that good stuff!!)

Anyhow, so glad this forum is alive and well!

[Bluegate]

Susan so glad to see you here. I had read the back threads and saw when you were handed the keys to this forum. I wondered if you were lurking in the dark out there. Nice to see you here with the rest of us exhibitionists.

I have so much compassion for you regarding your fiction bubble. I had a similar experience when I showed my oils too soon to my gallery rep. He suggested I stick with watercolor and sculpture. It was a long time before I picked up an oil brush after that. I do hope you keep trying the fiction if you liked doing it.

[Chrisla]

Glad to see you back, Susan. I've been thinking for a while that this is the hottest forum on the cooler, at least for now. It's a nice change; it was dead for so long.

[Red Bird]

Susan B,
I had the same experience when I tried to write poetry. I had already started memoir writing, and my instructor said my work was poetic. I took that to mean I could be a poet! Ha. So, I strayed from my original work long enough to construct one poem. Oh boy. Lesson learned: there is a difference in poetic writing and writing poetry.

Go where the talents lead you.

Cheers,
Red Bird

[Susan B]

Thanks, everyone, for the warm words! Not sure if/when I ever "got the keys" but it does seem like this is a lively place to hang out. So I will try to do just that :-)

[Bluegate]

Susan perhaps I was mistaken on just who got the keys. It was a while ago when I was reading all the back pages here. You know, back when the forum was quiet as a graveyard. cue crickets.

[jerrywaxler]

Hi Susan,

It's delightful to see a memoir writer persisting to the next step. Lord knows it's hard enough to write the first one, and then publish it. And now you keep going! Awesome. You ought to give persistence lessons.

Another really interesting thing about your situation is the idea of a "second memoir" - the memoir I'm working on covers most of my life (ducking) - yes, I know memoirs are "supposed to" cover just a section, but I keep wanting to tell the later part of the journey to explain the whole purpose of the first half.

So if I had to do a second memoir (assuming this one is ever finished) I would go back and dig in deeper to a section of my life, like maybe the time I went to an ashram in India, or my life in a commune, but then I would be repeating a lot of material I already covered.

So I'd be curious to know more about the way you have visualized your second memoir. Is it a different segment of your life? Does writing the second one make you wish you had done something different in the first? Tell us more.

Jerry

[sommemi]

Welcome back! It's great to hear more about you - and great to have a 'not-so-newbie' chiming in on things too! lol I think a lot of us are 'greener' here than we would like to be. I look forward to getting to know you more! I don't have as much time lately to dig deep into the great past of this forum like I used to, but I love getting to know all the active people out here! It's a great support group! :)