Happy New Year, fellow
writers and bloggers! Believing in yourself is what life’s all about, isn’t it?
Whether you are a college student struggling with classes or a writer
struggling with a manuscript, you need to believe you can do it. You need to
take the chance and at least try.
Otherwise, you’ve already failed.
Is it easy to truly
believe in yourself? No. At least it’s not for me. I can’t seem to get out of
my own head. Insidious thoughts keep voicing their ugly opinions. In other
words, it’s easier for me to help my children think positively and help fellow
writers find the point of their manuscripts than it is for me to commit to a
point for my college memoir and move forward with the manuscript. You see, I’m
not trapped inside other people’s heads, only my own. I can hammer away at
their negative thoughts from the outside, offering positivity, focusing on the
good rather than the bad. I don’t have to live in their thoughts.
This college memoir is
my first attempt at a book-length manuscript. I have a first draft that is more
a summary of what happened during my college experience rather than a memoir
story with a “because of this, the next thing happens” trajectory.
Even though this is a book-length
manuscript, I’m trying to break down the writing process as I do in my short
story writing. Do you break down a difficult project into smaller pieces to be
able to move forward?
Let me answer a few questions for
the memoir project. Please offer any insight you may have as this truly helps
me to move forward.
The main goal of the
protagonist in the college memoir story is to help her special needs
daughter, her oldest. Victoria needs to find the courage to believe in herself
and her abilities enough to complete a college degree as a nontraditional
student, a mother of 5, because this is the only way she thinks she can truly
assist her daughter, and by extension her other children.
The main conflict: Abandoning
her own derogatory thoughts about her abilities, built through her backstory, and
finding the foundation and time needed to be able to reach her goal of an
undergrad degree, thereby demonstrating to her children how to succeed.
The premise of the story
[I hope] is that determination will overcome all obstacles.
Why does
it matter that this story is told?
People need
to see that it’s never too late to embark on a dream, to commit to attempting
something that scares you to death, to finally learn to believe in yourself. I
hope to inspire others.
I need to
take baby steps and begin telling the journey again. I wish you all a healthy
and successful 2019. Thanks for reading!
And thank you
for visiting Adventures in Writing. Please follow my blog if you haven’t
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