Book Report: My challenge to myself

The search for a literary agent continues.  But I'm afraid that I really might have written something that cannot be represented as most other books can.  I've said it a few times already: the book I 've written may be too liturgical for a secular audience, and too worldly for more religious readers.  There are a lot of elements in it that would fit in something found on the shelves of the average Christian bookstore.  But there are also a lot of things within its pages that would absolutely disqualify it from that kind of retail market.  For an agent to pick it up for representation would be a risk.  I can understand that.

Dad was the one who most believed in this book.  A lot of people have told me that they wanted me to write my story.  But Dad especially.  I wrote this in his memory, more than for others.  Well, I may have written it for my dog also.  Tammy doesn't come into the book until a bit later, but she has definitely inspired and encouraged me to stay the course.

So I'm considering other options for getting my book out.  I believe in it.  It's going to find an audience.  It doesn't necessarily have to get to them through traditional publishing.  But there have been other books that have seen distribution outside the normal channels, and they have gone on to great things (The Martian by Andy Weir and Legally Blonde by Amanda Brown come to mind).  Who knows, maybe mine will find a little bit of success too.

Well, I've written a book.  It's now well past the first draft that  I completed the week before this past Thanksgiving.  It's not going to get out there just sitting on my iPad Pro.  Some initiative on my part is called for...

Here is the goal I have set for myself.  It's going to be hard, it certainly won't be as easy as many if not most people think it might be.  I'm going to have to learn quite a bit about proper formatting.  But this is what I'm setting out to accomplish.  I'm going to aim to have my book on sale on Amazon by the end of the year.  Maybe even by the one year anniversary of the first draft's completion.  New Year's 2026 is going to find my autobiography available on Kindle tablets and apps, as well as printed form in softcover and hardback.  Which would include a proper jacket, and I've some ideas about what I want that to look like (the photo of Tammy and me on the beach in San Diego on Thanksgiving Day 2016 would be great for the back cover).

Between then and now is some editing and proofreading (trusted friends have been doing some of that), as well as legal counseling.  There are things in this book that I need to be really careful about.  A lot of people get mentioned in my book and I have to do right by each of them.  I like to think that they will be honored.  This is my chance to give them credit where it's due.  And also to do my best to make up for some things that I regret.  As I've said in the proposal that I've been sending out, one of the things that my book is, is an act of penance.  Maybe that will be made clear if it comes out.

Hey who knows.  It might even be ready for the holiday season!  THAT would be pretty neat, to give out my book as Christmas and Hanukkah presents.  Hey, sometimes Dad would make knives to give to friends and family for Christmas gifts.  I would be following in his stead.

That is my plan.  To have the book available for purchase by the new year.  We'll see if I can pull it off.

I've shared this before recently.  It is a picture I came upon the other week.  It's from the Codex Manesse, a German illuminated text dating to 1304 A.D.  This image is perfect for the cover of my book.  It says so much, without giving anything away at all.  I've already got a draft of the cover, just needs a bit of fine tuning.

When you see this picture on the front of a book, you will know that I've succeeded.

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Book Update: I am in LOVE with this picture

I'm starting to wonder if the most realistic route to getting my book out there might be publishing on Amazon.  It's not really self-publishing, it's pretty much like traditional publishing in many ways.  As much as I would love to see my book on the store shelves that may not be possible right out of the gate.  Going through Amazon would let me keep the rights to my work, it gets released, and maybe it will sell well enough that a proper publishing house will want to buy it.

I've noted before, that this book is probably too Christian for the secular market and it's much too secular for Christian audiences.  Maybe this gets to be something that breaks new ground for other books that can't be readily defined.  Which would be a great honor if that happens.

So yesterday afternoon I had some time on my hands and I decided to work on a cover for my book, if it goes to Amazon first.  I went looking for pictures depicting men of chivalry.  My first resource to investigate was a website that hosts a big image of the Bayeux Tapestry.  For an hour I looked all over that thing and found nothing that really jibed with what I had in mind.

About 45 minutes later though I came upon this pic.  It's from the Codex Manesse and dates back to the very early 1300s:

It's perfect.  It absolutely fits with the themes of my book.  It's very beautiful too.  I honestly can't believe that I came across this image.  I could have been looking forever and not found an adequate pic for the cover.  But this one absolutely fits with what I have written.

It will make even more sense when the title is revealed.  I'm still not ready to reveal that.  It's not time for it.  But I can't but think that the time for that is drawing closer.

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Book status report for June 2025: Proposal, agents, subtitle

This was supposed to be a weekly feature.  That notion has obviously fallen by the wayside.  But many of y'all have asked how is the book coming along.  So here's an update...

The manuscript is in as good a shape as it's likely to be, barring someone with a better mind than mine for this kind of thing going over it and marking places where it can be improved upon.  I'm looking forward to working with such a person.  Writing this book has been a process that is germinating enormous growth of mind and spirit within me.  I'm eager to experience what else might be coming along in that regard.

The search for an agent has been erratic, I must admit.  This also has been a growth experience.  In looking over the query letters I've sent out across the past several months, I can tell that there has been drastic improvement.  There's a lot of confidence that has been built up about this project.  The other week I shared what a friend had to say about the subject of humbleness.  I've been called humble before but I wonder if I've had too much of that.  My queries are reflecting much more boldness now, and that's been building up for awhile already.  I believe that I have written a heck of a book, and I believe that somewhere out there is someone who is going to take notice.  My looking for an agent has been re-invigorated.  I harbor no delusions: this part of the process is tough.  And my project was already going to be a hard sell before I ever set my hands on the keyboard.  But I believe in it.  The people who have been reading along the way believe in it, and they have been very honest and forthcoming in their judgements about it.  And now?  Now... there is a manuscript as mighty as any that has come along for a memoir.  So I'm going to keep sending out those queries and be praying that something will result from that.

One thing that has really gotten better is the nonfiction proposal.  That's a formal document that the author uses to present his or her project to the agents and publishers.  It's a business plan for the the book: who its audience is intended to be, what titles are comparable to it, a summary of its contents, a biography of the author... anything that can be done in the space of fifty pages to pitch and sell what the writer is presenting.  My first attempts at writing a proposal were, well... bad.  For much of March and April I spent some time studying proposals that others had put together.  Then I started fresh and worked on and off for a month and a half.  And now, I think I've assembled a pretty solid proposal.  People who've seen it have said they are impressed by it.  So I've started sending that out to agents who ask to see a proposal.

Here are a couple of pages of the summaries from my book's proposal (click to enlarge):

Okay, now finally: a lot of people keep asking me what the title of the book is.  Apart from the agents I've been querying with, less than ten individuals know the title.  It's something I'm keeping close to the vest for now.  There should be some mysteries in life, yes?  It's had a title for a year and a half now and I believe it's a beautiful title.  A team of wild horses couldn't tear it out of me though.  But I am looking forward to sharing it with the world in due time.

What I can share though is the subtitle.  It took awhile to settle on one.  But I believe it has at last presented itself.  Although it seems too easy in retrospect.  It doesn't really portend much more than has already been known: that this is a memoir about someone who is very much a child of the Eighties (a decade that gets a chapter all its own).  I think that right now I can tease y'all a bit.

So here is the subtitle: "A Generation-Xer's Quest Through Life".

It says what it means.  It means what it says.  It might still change though.  But that's the subtitle that's going out on all the queries right now.  It's as good as anything I suppose.

And that's pretty much all for now.

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Book status for early February 2025

It's been over a month and a half or so since I've posted an update about the manuscript I spent a decade of on and off work on, that I finished writing a few days before Thanksgiving.  As with a lot of other things in my life since I began this blog, some chronicling is in order.  Because this site is all about documenting the human condition and also for sake of anyone who might come across it and find themselves likewise wanting to write a book.

I guess the biggest thing (pun intended, maybe) is that it's occurred to me that I have not written a memoir, but a full-size autobiography.  Or perhaps it's two or three memoirs bound up cohesively with one another.  A memoir is supposed to be a personal reflection about just a few or even only one situation in a person's life.  That is not what my book is and I don't honestly know if what it became could have really been avoided.  My life today is the product of fifty years of many bad things as well as quite a few good things, and that is a tapestry from which removing even a few threads diminishes and even destroys the work entire.  I could have written an entire book about the swindling operation episode, or made it about pop culture as seen through the eyes of someone who was at the cutting edge of fan-driven Internet activity, or a how-to manual about running for public office.  My life has enveloped all of those things and so many more.

This may make pitching the book to a potential agent considerably more difficult.  Autobiographies by people who aren't established celebrities can be a tough thing to sell, no matter how colorful their lives may have been.

Then there is the lingering issue with the inherent nature of the book.  I may have written something that per the marketplace is nigh on unpublishable.  It's too Christian for strictly secular audiences and it's too secular for more spiritual readers.  One example: there is a point later in the book where I drive to a cemetery to conduct a ritual at the stroke of midnight.  What sensible Christians are going to approve of my doing such a thing as that?  And it may rub others the wrong way, also.

Other than those matters, I've been editing and revising and shifting elements around.  I've also been letting a few trusted friends read parts of it.  Recently I shared the prelude, which is an account of my first attempt at suicide.  Many told me that it was especially powerful and that it drew them in to wanting to read more.  I guess it's nice that something good came out of that experience after all.  I just don't ever want to be in that kind of place again.

I'm not giving up on my dream of seeing this on a store's shelf.  Dad believed in me and so have a lot of other people who have asked for a book about my life all these many years.  But I'm also having to accept the reality that this is going to perhaps be more difficult to bring to market than most other books are.  And I'm discovering that it is a hard thing indeed.

Perhaps next time I'll be able to post something more upbeat.

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What's up with my book's manuscript the past few weeks

Still doing editing and revisions.  But I'm comfortable enough with the first several chapters that I'm including them in some of the queries I've started sending out.  This is the next step in the life of a new book: looking for someone to represent it to a publisher.  I could self-publish, and there are a variety of ways to do that.  But ever since Dad especially told me that I should write a book about my life, my dream has been to see it sitting on a real "brick and mortar" bookstore's shelves.

So, I'm looking for an agent.  And that isn't going to be easy.  But it's part and parcel to the process of seeing any book get traditional publishing.  And really, would I want it to be any different?  This entire thing has been something to grow and develop from.  It took a lot to finally commit to finishing ten-some years of on and off work, and that's what I did between August and November.  I've grown from the journey already and now it's time to grow with the next part of it.

I'm discovering that querying for a fiction book and then for a nonfiction book are two entirely different matters entirely.  An agent looking for fiction usually requires the first few chapters to look over and grab their attention, along with a query letter describing what the book is about.  Someone looking for nonfiction like a memoir wants to see a proposal: a document describing the book, a short biography, qualifications for writing the work, how and where it would fit in the competitive book marketplace, and maybe the first ten or so pages if the manuscript is complete.  Which for nonfiction doesn't have to be 100% complete, but it helps.  My manuscript is like 95% finished.  All that's required is for me to make a short trip out of state to fulfill a "secret mission" and it will be all done.  With the vast bulk of it written I've decided to go ahead and start querying.

I'm also discovering that agents looking for nonfiction works have wildly different requirements for the proposal.  Some are fine with the proposal being five to ten pages.  Others call for fifty, and that includes summaries of each chapter.  Which would be a challenge for my book.  There is a point in it where the chapters come very fast and hard.  It's how I'm depicting having manic depression at its worst, from the period of 2004 through 2010 or so.  It's a lot to cover and I did my best to keep the manuscript well within the suggested word count for a memoir by a first-time author.  But it has to be this way.  The driving philosophy of this has been to show mental illness with as much brutal honesty as is possible.  In that regard I believe that it succeeds.

This may be the last of the weekly-or-so book statuses that I post for awhile.  There isn't really much more to report, other than that I'm sending out query letters.  I'm only making this report to keep my readers informed about what I'm learning about the book publishing process, from the start on through its hoped-for conclusion as a real volume for sale at your friendly local book store or an online retailer.  Maybe as what happened when I ran for office, my sharing about this will encourage others to begin to write their own books.  If I have helped motivate others to hopefully finish and publish their work, I would really be honored to know that.

And when I know more, if it is wise, I'll have more to share in the fullness of time.

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This week's book status

I need to start referring to it more as my "manuscript."  It's not a full-blown book until it's got a few hundred pages nicely bound together with a beautiful cover, and maybe a dust jacket if it's a hardcover.  Perhaps there will be a photo on the inside back cover.  Maybe a pic of Tammy and me.

That is still awhile ahead of us.

Since completing the manuscript nine days ago I've been doing some revisioning.  Right now I'm looking at part three, which is about my years at Elon.  It's now striking me that the depiction of that is a foreshadowing of the greater drama to come.  The bad things but also the great good.

(I'm coming to realize what the book's moment of climax is.  It's three words.  And I'm looking forward to the person it pertains to discovering it.)

I'm going over it all, seeing what things can be improved upon, where the prose can use some tightening.  I'm not sure at what point this escalates away from being "first draft" but it's definitely got forward momentum behind it.

Meanwhile, I'm writing other stuff too.  The last several weeks of finishing the manuscript thrust me "into the zone" and I want to make the most of that however long it lasts.  Which I hope will be for awhile.

Maybe I'll commit to posting more to this blog.  I feel like a neglectful parent to it sometimes, and that's not right.

More next week!

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Book Status: MANUSCRIPT FINISHED!

 It's time to celebrate!!

A little less than an hour ago I finished the draft of the manuscript of my memoir.  So very thrilled!  I had wanted to have this done by Thanksgiving and I beat it be a week and a half.

It is packed.  Pretty much every moderate to major event of my life, from birth to where I am today: An artificial intelligence trainer, op-ed writer, and crisis line counselor.

The next to last chapter, I'm particularly fond of that one.  It's a "where are they now?" of most of the characters who appear.  And there are PLENTY.  I'm turning a lot of people who have been in my life into literary characters.

What happens now?  I take a break for a week or so.  And then I'll return to the manuscript with refreshed eyes, no doubt making edits and revisions (I made one earlier today, of the beginning of the chapter about my wedding, that is much nicer than it had been).

I'm also going to let a few friends, sworn to secrecy, read parts of it.  I've already shared some chapters with them.  They have each responded that these chapters are everything from "powerful" to "raw and visceral".

And then, well... we'll see.

But in the meantime, it's really happened!  At long last I have written a book.  I've got a really positive feeling about this.

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Book status for week of November 11th

Five chapters written this past week.  And three of those were written on Thursday.  Also, a chapter that I wrote over ten years ago now has a home in the manuscript.

The draft has now reached the 100,000 words mark.  As things stand now it's looking like it will all fit within 150,000 words, which is the goal.

At the rate this is going the entire first draft will be done by Thanksgiving.

It's been a lot of effort, but it really is quite something to see this all come together.  I'm soon going to have "written a full length book" notched on my belt. Maybe if this gets published that will give me street cred enough to sell my children's book too :-) 

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Weekly book status: Wow!

Want to know a secret?  I haven't showered in thirteen days!  I've been that determined to work on this project.  If I haven't been sleeping or job or eating or taking care of and playing with Tammy, I've been writing.

I look terrible.  I've dry-shaved every few days.  That and brushing my teeth have for the most part been my only hygiene.

But what has come out of that has been amazing.

Twelve chapters written this past week!  But it must be emphasized that these were smaller chapters than most of what have been composed so far.  Still, I'm very happy with the progress made.

I'm still writing this book out of sequence.  But as of yesterday my life from birth up to winter of 2002 has been chronicled as thoroughly as is feasible for a project like this.  And I've also got 2016 on through the present day written about.

Also, the book is split into eight parts.  Other than a few chapters still needed for the one about my college years, and the very last chapters, there's only one part left to be written.  All the others are complete.

I'm striving to keep the manuscript within 150,000 words.  As of last night it's at 90,000 written.  Sixty thousand remaining to use on one part sounds like a lot, but this part, titled "Years of Heaven, Years of Hell" is absolutely the biggest of them.  Sooooo much happened in this period.  It's going to be tough to pack it all in.  I think the episode involving the newspaper may be two chapters.

I'm not making myself out to be a saint in writing this.  I'm already coming across as a very horrible person.  But that's just the truth of it all.  I'm only writing about what happened, and trying to be as honest and forthcoming as I can be.

No writing today.  I'm taking a break.  And there is my "real life job" that must be tended to also.  But I think I've earned a day's rest, after writing most during most of my free time for the past two weeks.

Okay, me go shower now.  And play with the dog.  She's earned a new toy for putting up with me as she has.

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Book Progress Report: Five new chapters and a home for the very first

A little over two years ago I wrote the first chapter of what was going to be the book I had always intended to write.  It's not one that the reader is supposed to find early on in the tome.  It's actually a chapter that comes in quite late into the book.

For various reasons I needed to write that one first.  It more or less establishes the tone of the work still to come.

As of a few days ago that first chapter written now has its place in the manuscript as a whole.  I didn't have to change a thing to it.  It just slid right into place without any mess at all.

It joins five chapters that I've been able to finish the first drafts of since a week ago today.

So far, it's gone well. I've consistently been composing chapters, around five a week. There have been three significant events in my life that I've been able to reach down deep and write about. I dare not say I'm feeling proud of myself but there is a sense of some accomplishment.

But this, all of this, is still just tip-toeing across the minefield.

 

There is something massive that I haven't come close to beginning to address, in this book. It's about the very worst place that I found myself in because of manic depression. All the grief and pain and worst, that *I* was causing even more horrible things to the people I cared most about.

 

I feel like a coward. How I've been able to work on a little of everything else so far. Except for that.

 

For the past few months I've been doing the best work on this project that I've been able to have since Dad first told me he wanted me to write a book. I'm grateful to have found myself in such a groove. After a very long period of being stuck, there has been a LOT of movement forward.

 

But really, so far I've been doing nothing but pulling rabbits out of my hat.

 

Now it's well past time that I be able to pull out an alligator.

 

 

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A very good week for the book project!

Five chapters written in the past seven days.  And a strong start of another that I was able to compose on Saturday afternoon, the day before yesterday.

It can be noted that one of the chapters was written start to finish while I was suffering from conjunctivitis (also known as pink eye).

The drafts of the first five chapters I wrote are from the start of part three, which covers the years I spent studying at Elon.  A lot happened in that time and to be honest I hadn't been exactly sure what tact to bring to bear upon it goes.

But so far it's almost wound up writing itself.  I'm just pouring my memory out upon the page (or the keyboards at either my desk or my iPad Pro).  Those are five chapters that build up to something and when it finally came to that... well.  I needed to step away from writing for awhile.  It took a lot out of me.  I haven't gone back to finishing that part of the tale but I did move forward to another section of the book and began writing that.

(Lots of authors do this with their own books. Tolkien wrote parts of The Lord of the Rings at various times in the period before, during and following World War II.  You write what comes to you, whatever interests you most right then.  And then you piece it all together.  I figure that I'm in good company :-)

So much has been done yet a lot of work still remains.  But I'm feeling really confident about this.  I've shared a few of the drafts with a select number of trusted friends.  I insisted that I need their most brutally honest thoughts.  All of them have come back with nothing but good about what they've read.  I'm taking that as a good sign.  If I can keep that kind of vibe going, I'll be quite pleased and thankful.

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Weekly book report for September 30th 2024

 Well, this turned into something interesting.  My home is in the upstate of South Carolina.  Three days ago the entire western Carolinas region got slammed hard by Hurricane Helene.  I lost power on Friday morning about 7:30 and 77 hours later it still hasn't been restored.  Based on what I saw on the way to the library in downtown Spartanburg this morning, it may be days if not weeks before power is turned back on 100%.

This was a catastrophe on the same level as Hurricane Katrina.  Our kids will be telling their grandchildren about this one.

So I wasn't able to work most of the weekend, because power is out.  Until yesterday when I started writing in a notebook with a pen, jotting some thoughts down that will go into further chapters.  It will honestly be able to be said that I worked on this book through a hurricane.

Anyhoo, since last week I have been able to fully write one chapter, along with editing the previous one and the aforementioned bits and pieces that have been jotted down.

And that's pretty much it, for now.

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First weekly book update

Almost a month ago I posted about the status of my book, something that had been on the back burner of my life for ten years now.  Work on it has taken various forms, there had been progress made only for that to be tossed aside... well, it's been a mess, not to put TOO fine a point on it.

Things are very, very different now and have been for much of this past year.  A few months ago I had a breakthrough moment and was able to crank out the first few chapters of the story of my life.  That has led to more, and more.

Maybe it will help to keep me on track to post a status of this memoir's progress, say each week on Sunday.  Perhaps that will encourage me to stay committed.

Here it is as of September 22nd, 22024: so far, not counting the preface, there are fifteen chapters that have been written.  I spent most of this past week working on one, that had really been making me struggle.  It's still considered a VERY rough draft but early word that a dear friend I shared it with is that it's good.

There are going to be at least six parts.  Part one is complete.  There are five chapters done so far for part five, which is currently titled "Three Months and Three Ladies".  I'm not writing this book in sequential order.  Just working on it as the Muse leads me.

There is still a lot of work to be done.  Ideally I would be producing two to three chapters a week, but I'll be happy if it's even just one.  This book is finally getting the attention I needed to lavish upon it.  It's not going to be rushed.  But when it's finished, I will have written my life story, as well as such things are possible.

And that's how things stand now.

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Yes, I'm still writing a book...

More than a decade ago Dad persuaded me that my life story would make for something that many people would probably enjoy reading.  I started writing that in 2014.  And then a lot of things happened.  Dad's passing.  The year spent journeying across America.  Four years as a mental health professional.  Those things and more atop the wackiness that life had already sent barreling my way since I was a cub.  And let's not forget manic depression and all that led to!

Well, here's a bit of an update on that.  Following a few fits with a fresh start on writing, during these past several months I have made significant progress on my memoir.  I had been stuck at one point since mid-March however.  And then a few days ago I finally cracked it and was able to knock two chapters out of the ballpark in less than 24 hours.  Right now I am working on a new chapter, which is set-up for something of a "triptych" in the tale.

The first six consecutive chapters are done.  Several other chapters of varying sizes, to be spread around the book, have also been written.

If someone were to ask for a rough estimate on the size this is going to be, I would guess that right now it's going to be a little longer than J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy, which is 272 pages in hardcover.  Actually, that's not a bad book for comparison, for a few reasons.

I'm discovering that it's not just writing my life story out as a straightforward narrative.  I am having to examine and consider things - and people - that are coming into a whole new light.  The process of writing this is changing me, and I believe for the better.  A few days ago I wrote about the little Amish girl who I met when I was ten years old.  And that made me realize for the first time what an impact that had on my life (forty years later and I still think of her).

There is a title and has been for a year or so now.  It took awhile to find one but I really love it.  Only five other people know it and they're all sworn to secrecy.  But every person I've told it to has responded with the same question: "What does THAT mean?"  Hopefully they and many others will delight to find out.

So, there is the status on that particular project.  It's found its groove again and the past several days have been a rollickin' wild ride across the life of young Robert Christopher Knight.  This next part is going to be a hard one to tackle though.  A lot of tragedy in a very short period of time.  Maybe if this book gets published it will help make some things right that happened long ago.

And maybe enough people will be able to not only understand me, but be able to forgive me.

Edit: 09/08/2024 6:10 PM EST: I have been able to knock out three chapters within the past 48 hours.  Including the one that illuminates the reader about the meaning of the book's title. That was tough to write but also a lot of fun.

This really is coming together.  It might even be finished by Christmas, but that's not a goal per se.  Just a possibility.

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EEEEEEEEEEEEK!!!

 All this time for the past several years I've been trying to write a book.  About my life especially regarding the impact manic depression has had on it.

I've been working on a number of bits and pieces of it, going back and forth on those.  But there has never been a "plan" per se.  I've been assembling fragments but this project lacked structure.  I was stumbling around without a clearly defined plot.

For a very long time, going back even to before I left my hometown and set out across America, I've been trying to crack the basic outline for my book.  It has been something that has driven me crazy... well, you know what I mean (I hope).

I haven't had the shape of it.

Until today.

I finally cracked it.

Like a bolt out of the blue it hit me late this morning.  Maybe God was waiting to show it to me.  Perhaps I needed to be in a better place before I could be shown this.

Hot dang.  This is going to get made.  It's going to work.

I think that this is going to become something very special.

The first draft of the outline is now a Microsoft Word document.  Chapters and sections are already falling into place.

Working title of part one: "The Page", but that may change.  This is still very early.

My confidence just got a major boost.  Lord willing, I'm really going to be able to do this.

Okay, me go celebrate now.  Tonight's dinner: pepperoni pizza with a good helping of sriracha sauce (the original from Huy Fong).

So stoked now.  I'm looking forward to sharing it with others.  This is gonna be KEWL...

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About the post from three days ago...

Feel like I need to follow up on the the post I made a few days ago about what happened to me when I was an adolescent.

 

It increasingly seems that it was the right thing to do.  I feel an AWFULLY large burden has been lifted off of me.  I carried that particular thing around for almost forty years.  I felt better after talking with the detectives about it three years ago.  I feel better again, now.

 

It has indeed been a boon.  I'm writing for the book again.  From the very beginning, when I first tried writing it in 2014 before Dad passed, I knew this was going to have to be addressed somehow.  That is possible now, when it hadn't been possible before.  I wish I could tell you that this book is going to be entirely focused on my life as a manic depressive: something that in and of itself is replete with drama and occasional comedy.  But it's not and it can't.  A person's life is like a tapestry.  Try to take one thread out and the whole thing unravels.  This particular thread has insinuated its way into my life since I was twelve.  But in the past couple of days I've found that I'm not afraid to confront that anymore.  So, that's good.

 

A number of people have privately messaged me about it.  Some have reiterated that the chances of seeing something done in the way of justice are slim.  I know that.  I knew it going in to talk to the detectives three years ago.  I keep thinking though that if it happened to me, well... could it have happened to others also?  As one of the detectives told me then, a person who does a thing like this can't stop.  He (and it's almost always a he) will try to do more.  Who knows?  Maybe others will step forward.

 

One person left a comment on my blog yesterday, noting that decades after the war that Nazis were still being found and prosecuted.  My situation isn't quite like that though.  There were MANY witnesses still alive in the 70s, 80s and 90s who could recollect individual SS officers and concentration camp guards.  There was very little problem with identifying such people.  With what happened in 1986 it's going to forever be my word against his  But again, who knows?  Since going to them three years ago the authorities may be keen on something I don't have.

 

Anyway, I felt led to come forward and write about this.  It was more than that even though.  God put me in a place where I had no choice, if I was going to continue writing the book.  And I want and need to write this.  It's as part of my recovery story as much as it is a chronicle of that.  I have been obedient to that and now it's done and well... we'll see what transpires next.

 

So that's what's happened since Saturday.

 

Hope you guys are having a great week :-)

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Status of the book, December 2022

Three months ago I posted here that I had begun work anew on the book that has been percolating in my gray matter since 2014.  That was when Dad told me I should write about my struggles with bipolar disorder.  He thought it could be inspirational to others.

And then of course, Dad passed and that knocked me off my feet.  And since then a lot has happened: the journey across America, new career and then changing career (and now, again), new town and new faces... all of this the backdrop against an ever-evolving saga of my mental health.  The book then, in whatever form it was going to take, is radically different from the project now before me.

I am happy to report that after a few false starts with how to open the book, that it is now well on track.  Late last night I finished the first draft of the new prologue.  It no longer opens with me in handcuffs, being taken away to a psychiatric facility.  The prologue now is one page of Microsoft Word that comes barreling at ya at 90 miles an hour, literally.  The preface was completed a week and a half ago.  Yesterday I finished chapter one and it's now in the hands of a few faithful friends who I'm awaiting feedback from.  The chapter about the school board run is also done.  There exist a few incomplete chapters, which I will be getting to as the Muse leads (wow, haven't mentioned "the Muse" in quite many years, I think).

I want this book to be a thorough chronicle of my life not only in spite of bipolar disorder but also much other traumatic experience, that have only been addressed in recent years (another reason why I'm glad I'm working on this now instead of trying to publish it then).  I also need for it to be a homage to everyone who has entered my life and helped me along the way.  I hope this will reach out to some of them.

And the title?  I've had about a dozen ideas for that.  Last week it was called "American Manic".  But this book is going to be about so much more than manic depression.  It needs a title that reflects a deeper life story.

For the past three days I've been fighting a nasty bug that at one point had my temperature reaching 104 Fahrenheit (or 40 centigrade for our metric friends).  During the delirium and convulsions I came to a spiritual place of peace that I had been praying to reach for most of my life.  And accompanying that, arrived an idea for a title.

(I think I underwent what my Native American brethren refer to as a sweat lodge, whether I wanted it or not.  I was perspiring like a pig as the fever broke.)

And now, I think it does have a title.  A good one.  Beautiful, even.  That doesn't refer to mental illness at all.  But instead could be interpreted as being about my entire journey, from the moment I was born on through young life and into adulthood.

I hope my high school freshman English teacher gets to read this.  She owns that preface!

I've read a number of autobiographies by people with bipolar disorder over the years.  Kay Redfield Jamison's An Unquiet Mind and Terri Cheney's Manic were two of them.  I am currently reading Electroboy by Andy Behrman (as high energy a jolt of a book as I've ever come across).  It doesn't hurt to study those who have gone before.  But I like to think that my own humble contribution to literature about life with mental illness will have a style all its own.  If it can carve out some small niche which readers will discover and be led to think about and even be entertained by, that would make me very happy indeed.

So, work is well underway.  Maybe it will come out before The Winds of Winter (come on Martin, what's KEEPING you??!).  I am looking forward to the next few weeks and months as it develops further.

Next up: chapter two.  Which begins in Washington, D.C.  Or maybe not.

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Back to work on my book

Dad wanted me to write a book, about my life with bipolar disorder.  He thought it would serve as an inspiration for others.  He was really proud of how I had gone forward with having a mental illness, how I was trying to use my experience with it to help others.  I like to think he would be proud still of my work the past three and a half years at a state department of mental health, where I've been employed as a peer support specialist.  I've gotten to utilize my knowledge and experience just about every day of that, toward assisting others to have more full and complete lives despite their diagnoses.

I had been working on a book, and had quite a lot of it completed, before Dad passed away in November of 2014.  And that... took the wind out of my sails, to put it mildly.  A year and a half later I left my old hometown for a year's journey across America.  And ever since a LOT has transpired that effectively make the original plan for a book, well, obsolete.

But I think that it's finally time to get back to work.  Last week I finished the prologue.  I know how it begins and I have bits and pieces in mind for the rest.  I haven no idea how to end it.  Friends have told me that since it's an autobiography that I shouldn't have a definite ending.  Maybe it will wrap up with me going into peer support: some symmetry there, from how the book begins.  The opening paragraph is me getting put into handcuffs for my first time en route to a psychiatric hospital.  Not a particularly cheery image to evoke but it happened, and I'm going to be brutally honest with this work.

It's not going to be entirely all about my life with bipolar disorder.  There are going to be other things too, like the trek across the country.  Something like that changes a person, I prefer to think for the better.  And I thought it could include the school board run, since that was so much fun and educational.

And hey, this will actually be my second book.   The first was a children's book I wrote a few years ago.  Maybe getting this one published will help me get that one to see print too! 

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First draft of my first book is finished

Some of this blog's longtime readers may recall how I was writing a book about having bipolar disorder.  That was a project I'd been working on for some time, and then Dad passed.  It sort of took the wind out of my sails, but I vowed to finish it someday.

Guess what?  It's still nowhere near finished.  The last time I committed a word to that endeavor was in winter of 2015.  And so much has transpired since then.  It will make more sense to write a new book drawing from the experiences of the past four years especially.

Someday I'll start to work on that.  In the meantime, I do get to rightfully proclaim that I have finished the manuscript of my first book.

The idea for it surfaced about ten years or so ago, and it's been percolating in my gray matter all this time.  Perhaps I needed to achieve some deeper understanding of the message I wanted to convey.  And then came the past two weeks and events on this side of the Intertubes.  And then I knew: it was time.

It's a children's book.  I visited the local Barnes & Noble's and studied products in the kiddie section to make sure I would have the page count right.  The average seems to be thirty pages for a picture book the primary audience of which is ages 5 to 9 or so.  And this manuscript packs in plenty with that amount of space to work with.

It's the book that I wish had been around when I was six years old.  Maybe I can contribute a little something to children who are likewise going through a hard time.  I like to think so.

So, the first draft is complete.  And there'll be some tinkering and having friends critique it and then perhaps sooner than later it'll get shopped around and hopefully an agent will like what he or she sees.  I will admit from the start however: I am NOT an artist.  So I'm praying that someone specializing in children's art is out there somewhere who can help bring this vision fully to life.  I think there is.  Whoever he or she is, I'll be looking forward to working with them.

Just as I look forward to posting about this again.

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    "Almost there."

"Almost there..."    

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