A journal is not a (good) book

Posted on January 15, 2017 by moonbridgebooks

Here’s something different:  Notes From My Phone* a self-portrait in her twenties is a compilation of notes Michelle Junot wrote on her cell phone’s notepad app. She wrote during her college years, posting her thoughts and prayers and grocery lists during “formative years of her life.” Two years later she came across the notes, bringing her back in time. A friend liked them enough to want to publish them, so a short book was born. Reviewers say it is honest and funny and captures life in all its mess and beauty, to paraphrase.

Have you thought of publishing your journal notes, or the old love letters between your parents, or even your old blog posts? Well, don’t publish them raw and unedited and in their entirety. Michelle had 500 notes and they were culled down to 180 of the better ones, leaving out the “self-indulgent and totally woe is me” ones and keeping the ones that “told a larger story,” the ones that covered shared human experiences. In another example, a WWI veteran’s 400 pages of notes were edited down to a 157-page book. I chopped down my Korean War veteran friend’s notes to about 215 pages, leaving out any stories that said nothing new.

The average journal-writer or letter-writer is not composing essays she/he plans to publish. To be interesting to strangers (and even family), a lot of editing needs to happen. A famous piece of writing advice is by Elmore Leonard:  I try to cut out the parts that people skip. You may think everything is important, but readers will not. What is the reason you want to publish? What do you want readers to learn, understand, experience? Gather the entries or letters that are most meaningful to what this overall message or theme is and then edit out the boring parts. You will probably need to add context, but what will be left after pruning is much easier and more enjoyable to read.

Lafayette-born author found a memoir in her smartphone’s notes

Sault teacher writes first book, turns soldier’s memoir into a ‘must read’

The art of memoir and writing about history

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WWII on the Home Front – a Woman’s Perspective

Posted on December 12, 2016 by moonbridgebooks

As Pearl Harbor Day was last week, it is fitting to write about a different kind of WWII memoir. Peter Green finished putting together his mother’s story of civilian life during WWII and published it in time for Veteran’s Day. I’ve just started reading it. Feisty Alice Green was raising two young children while her husband, Ben, was out among the Pacific Islands and acting as defacto manager of the Armed Forces Radio Station WXLI based on Guam. Both of Peter’s parents were writers, so Peter had well-written stories and letters to work from. His father’s letters to home are the basis of Peter’s earlier WWII memoir, Ben’s War With the US Marines.

imag2592From the cover of Radio: One Woman’s Family in War and Pieces, I can see Alice is probably a fun character, and right away in the book that is confirmed in “A Fish Story.” The memoir starts with her childhood as spunky and somewhat unusual daughter of a stay-home mom and a civil engineer dad who is away most of the time. Her father designed some famous bridges and buildings in the US. The stories continue through starting a family with Ben who goes off to war at age 35, leaving Alice with two little kids and her ingenuity. When he comes home, he has to deal with a wife who has become not just independent, as many women were forced to become during the war, but independent-minded.

The book goes beyond being a memoir of just life during WWII, since it covers Alice’s childhood and goes all the way to Ben’s death in 1976. The final chapter wraps it all up, and the story is book-ended by what amounts to as prologue and epilogue, both touching. This is almost an autobiography. Alice is quite candid throughout, a pleasant surprise as many of this generation can be reticent in expressing true thoughts and feelings.

Radio is not just a story of life on the home front during WWII. It is about the effects of the advancement of technology. It is about women leaving their traditional roles and how society reacts. It is also, interestingly, about the changes in news media, as both Alice and Ben were writers and Ben worked in radio and advertising. Really it is about the changes in the whole cultural fabric of American life. If you have parents or grandparents still living who can tell about these times, be sure to ask them questions about it. That was a whole different world from now.

I am enjoying this book so far from reading and skimming, and I commend Peter on his accomplishments of putting together and publishing both his mother’s and his father’s stories. While his parents left behind a pile of letters and writings, I know how hard it is even to take written pieces of other people’s lives and put them into a cohesive whole, especially when they are no longer around to consult with. Alice never realized her dream of writing her own memoir, but it is done now and she lives on in written pages. It is a delight to meet her.

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Pearl Harbor 75th anniversary stories

Posted on December 4, 2016 by moonbridgebooks

My mother was a 16-year-old living near Tokyo when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. The war seemed far away to a teenager busy working to help support the family, but soon she was following radio broadcasts to hear of bombs dropped and damage to the enemy, but nothing was said about damage done by the enemy. Soon, however, things got bad. . .

My local newspaper has started publishing articles about WWII, readying for the Pearl Harbor 75th anniversary date of December 7, this Wednesday. A story carried today (by Michael Ruane and the Washington Post) features Ensign Wesley Hoyt Ruth, pilot of a small, brightly colored amphibious plane used to transport mail, Navy photographers, and sailors around Hawaii. The plane and Ensign Ruth were commissioned immediately after the attack to scout for the Japanese fleet nearby–a death sentence for those in the silver, orangey-yellow propeller plane with a bright green tail. Fortunately for the 4-man crew, whose only defense consisted of WWI-era rifles they pointed out the windows, they did not spot the enemy ships and warplanes and survived the return to land amidst nervous US military men ready to shoot down anything suspicious. Mr. Ruth died last year at age 101, but his stories of that day live in videotaped accounts and with the old plane hangared in storage for the Smithsonian and awaiting maintenance and restoration—someday.

If you know someone still living from the WWII era, ask for their stories. Even civilians have interesting stories, like rationing and Victory gardening and diving under school desks for the bomb drills. Many elderly people have loved my mother’s memoir, Cherry Blossoms in Twilight, because even though she was the enemy’s child, many of her stories sound very familiar to them.

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PS: Also in the paper is how the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund has been collecting photos to go with the names of all those on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, DC. “People see the names, but behind every name there is a face and a story,” said Heidi Zimmerman, spokesperson. See the Wall of Faces website to submit a photo if you have one of a soldier who was killed in the Vietnam War. They are missing quite a few photos.

 

Posted in history, honoring veterans, war stories, WWII | Tagged , | 4 Comments