Loglines and Taglines for Fiction or Memoir #AuthorToolboxBlogHop

First, I’d like to wish you all health and success in 2020. Happy New Year, Everyone! As I continue to crawl forward in revision on my college memoir, I’m thinking about loglines and taglines. When I researched online about these pitching tools for fiction or memoir, I gleaned the following definitions from blogs and webinars at writerly sites:

A Logline gives the gist of your book in a sentence. It tells something about the main character, the conflict, and the stakes. So, the WHO, the WHAT, and the WHY of your story.

A Tagline is a catchphrase that sucks the reader in. It’s the idea behind your book. Also known as the hook. It might be on the front cover of your book.  The tagline’s job is to evoke emotion. 

According to JennieNash of Author Accelerator, a pitch or logline is one line that gives some sense of the character arc of change; who they are, what the plot is, and where the plot goes.

Okay, so how do we do it? I found some questions that are helpful to answer when creating a logline and/or a tagline. So I answered them.

WHO is your main character?   Victoria, a mother of 5 young children

WHERE does the story take place?   South Jersey home and college campuses

WHAT is the situation?   Victoria tries to allow her special needs daughter Marie a chance at living her dream of attending college, but they are told Marie would never succeed.

WHY does it matter?   Victoria was told the same thing when she wanted to attend college.

HOW does the character solve the problem?   By swallowing her own fear of failure and beginning college herself first.

Now that we know who, where, what, why, and how, we condense it into what we as writers hope is a pithy logline.

“A South Jersey mom of five gives her special needs daughter the opportunity of college by swallowing her own fear of failure and beginning college first.”

            Does it work?

I think there’s an arc of change in the protagonist, the mom, from a paralyzing fear of failure to actually beginning college.

We know what happens; she’s going to attempt college.

And we know why it matters to her; she wants to help her daughter.

            Of course the story is much more involved than just these few pieces, but does it make someone want to read the whole book?

The tagline, the idea behind the book, according to our definition, the hook. The tagline is supposed to evoke emotion. I came up with many, but here are two I’ll share for your comment.

Every important journey begins with doubt.

Find permission within yourself to begin a difficult journey.

What are your thoughts on these? Do they evoke emotion? Is doubt even an emotion? Does finding permission within oneself sound more personal? Can other people [readers] relate easier to it than the more general statement about journeys beginning with doubt? Is finding permission more original?

These are necessary questions for all writers to consider as they try to condense their stories into pithy loglines and taglines.

*Please feel free to offer any insight or ask any questions regarding the details of my college memoir logline or taglines. It would be truly appreciated.* 

Has anyone prepared a logline or tagline for their story? I’m interested in how you came to condense your story into a sentence or two. Please share any tips you may have about loglines or taglines in the comments section of Adventures in Writing. Thanks so much!

And thank you for visiting Adventures in Writing. Please follow my blog if you haven’t already and connect with me online. Leave your blog link in the comment so I can be sure to do the same for you. To continue hopping through more amazing blogs or to join our Author Toolbox blog hop, click here. 

What Are You Trying to Prove Through Your Writing? #AuthorToolboxBlogHop

            I have more to discuss about secondary characters, and I’ll continue on this subject in September. I’m taking the month of August off to work on writing projects. For right now, I’d like to discuss purpose in writing.  

When authors sit down to write, they need to consider the purpose of the story or essay they wish to create. Aside from trying to entertain or offer inspiration, discovering the specific intention for a piece of writing will help the author stay focused. Having a specific purpose for your writing gives structure to your book project. You make decisions on what to say and how to say it based on this purpose.

I read an informative post by Jennie Nash about writing with intention. You can access it here. Nash believes that when writers are clear on their intention for a piece of writing, that intention will guide the writing process.

This makes sense to me. Writing with intention is knowing the purpose of your story or memoir. It’s having a point to make. The purpose of the writing project is what the writer is going to show in this story or memoir, and through that intention, the writer shows why the story or memoir is important her.

            Why am I writing about my college journey as a mother of five?  

To demonstrate that fear and doubt are a part of life. You can’t let them keep you from attempting difficult tasks.

To demonstrate that if you trust in yourself to do the hard work, you might discover that you’re smarter than the world would have you believe.

*Please feel free to offer comments or ask questions about the purpose for my memoir. This helps me to move forward in my writing.*

Authors should give fiction, memoir, and even poetry a purpose to help keep themselves focused on their intent.

So how does writing with intention give structure to a project?

It forces you to think in specific scenes. It keeps you thinking of the writing project as a whole. Because you have a firm purpose for this piece of writing, you consider scenes or experiences that prove what you want to share with the reader. You ask particular why and how questions of each character and scene. How does this scene fit into the purpose of the story? Why is this character necessary in this story?

You’re not just reaching for isolated thoughts or bits of action. You are selecting connected information, characters, scenes, or actual events. Remember to think: what are you trying to prove to the reader? In my case, I’m trying to prove that even an unprepared and insecure mother of five who struggled early in school can survive college if she studies constantly.

Thank you for visiting Adventures in Writing. Please follow my blog if you haven’t already and connect with me online. Leave your blog link in the comment so I can be sure to do the same for you. To continue hopping through more amazing blogs or to join our Author Toolbox blog hop, click here. 

Please note that I will not post in August of 2018. I have many writing projects I desperately need to address. Thanks for always reading my Adventures in Writing blog posts and sharing your insight. It means the world to me. Enjoy your summer!

Secondary Characters in Fiction or Memoir #AuthorToolboxBlogHop

Because memoirists can’t change what happened and who is involved in the particular memoir slice of life story they are telling, it’s all about what they choose to show the reader about the secondary characters in the memoir and what they choose to leave out. And whatever the memoirist tells or shows needs to be explained through the lens of the protagonist.  

Secondary characters grow and change within the story arc of the protagonist in fiction or memoir.  You don’t want just plot puppets, characters used to move the story forward without any background or desires of their own. All characters think they’re the hero of their own story according to Lisa Cron in her Story Genius course. But when you’re crafting a story, you want the protagonist driving the change within the story, not the secondary characters.

In memoir, the other characters are real life people. And the reason why they are in the story is to amplify and support the protagonist’s transformational arc of change. The reader needs to get a sense of what the secondary characters are about and what their specific agendas are. They are real people with real lives. The memoirist can’t change anything about their real lives or she’s writing fiction—not memoir.

In my memoir about attending college as a mother of five, my husband and our children play an informative role in helping me and hindering me in my attempt at college. I felt like a specimen under a microscope with not only my own family watching to see how I handle college, but also my mother and siblings. I felt like everyone was waiting for me to fail.

            Like in many families, my five children are all different. But as the protagonist in my memoir, I not only need to distinguish each of my children for the reader, I also need to remember to include only what matters about their lives to the story I am telling, my journey through college, my understanding of what education is all about. When I talk about distinguishing each child, I don’t mean what they look like. I’m talking about their personalities, how they act, what’s important to them and how that affects me the protagonist in the memoir.

            For instance, my second daughter Michelle is the family brainiac. Every family seems to have one! But what does that mean to Victoria in the memoir story. It means that even at a young age, Victoria relies on Michelle as a family [and later college classwork] sounding board. But because Michelle is young and inexperienced in the beginning of Victoria’s college journey, Michelle still wants Mom’s attention, still needs to be individually noticed within the family.

Marie, the oldest, is special needs. She consumes most of Victoria’s time and is the impetus for Victoria to begin college. Marie can process only one thing at a time. Victoria has trouble remembering this and frequently becomes frustrated.

My husband Bill’s task in the memoir story is to be the voice of reason. He tries to get Victoria to stop and listen to others, a very difficult job as Victoria’s always short on time. He feels Victoria is consumed by her studies [true], thus taking too much time away from family, increasing his workload, and denying him “couple time.”

Bill’s job is to counter what father had said to Victoria. Bill needs to change what is ingrained in Victoria, that she’s not good enough for college/not smart enough for college. He, along with other secondary characters, chips away at Victoria's misbelief that she’s inferior to those who attend or attended college. Victoria can do whatever she sets her mind to—even if she needs to study/learn differently or take longer to do so, like Marie.

My son William, the middle child, is smart, but needs to be watched to be sure he does all his assignments. He’s laid-back, not high-strung like Victoria. During Victoria’s college years, he has a calming effect on her.  But he, too, wants his time with Mom.

The family is used to having Victoria’s time. She doesn’t mind. This is her life. But if Victoria wants to succeed in college, things would need to change because she still learns differently, like her daughter Marie, and needs to play catch-up with the more traditional college student.

            *Please feel free to offer comments or ask questions about my secondary characters. This helps me to move forward on my memoir.*

            Whether it’s memoir or fiction, each secondary character needs to have a specific personality, a reason to be, that benefits the main storyline. As the writer, you include only the facets of secondary characters’ lives that pertain to the story you are telling.

Once again, I’d like to thank Jennie Nash of Author Accelerator and Lisa Cron for helping me to understand these concepts in my memoir.

Thank you for visiting Adventures in Writing. Please follow my blog if you haven’t already and connect with me online. Leave your blog link in the comment so I can be sure to do the same for you. To continue hopping through more amazing blogs or to join our Author Toolbox blog hop, click here. 

Going Beneath the Surface in Story #AuthorToolboxBlogHop

To go beneath the surface in your story, or shall we say beneath the plot, the writer needs to ask why what happens in the plot matters to the protagonist or the characters in the story. As Lisa Cron of Story Genuis fame says, the plot gets its emotional weight based on how it affects your protagonist who is in pursuit of a goal.

Let’s see how it works in two books I enjoyed.

The Boys in the Boat, Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Daniel James Brown is an historical non-fiction book told as a riveting story. The plot is about how these nine disparate, poor American college boys finally come together as a team to win the eight-oared crew race in the 1936 Olympic Games in Germany. [Eight oarsmen, 1 coxswain = nine American boys in the boat]

That’s what happens.

But who would really care if not for the why it matters to one particular boy in the boat, Joe Rantz. This book is mostly his story. Of course, Brown brings to life all of the crew members, the coaches, the boat builder, Joe’s family and girlfriend, the Depression, the Dust Bowl, and Hitler’s Nazi Germany.

What Joe has always wanted is a family who cares about him. The reader watches Joe’s attempts to get his father and step-mother to care about him, to be proud of him. And we feel Joe’s pain as he is abandoned again and again by his family.

We see his misbelief become a reality, that he can’t trust anyone to be there for him. The reader is part of his search for family and connection. And he finds it in rowing and realizing that he can trust his fellow crew members.

In fiction, John Grisham’s The Client works the same way. The plot is about the suicide of a mafia lawyer who knows about the mafia cover-up of a murdered Louisiana senator.

Okay, it’s about the mafia’s dirty works. Why should it matter to regular folks?

It matters because the protagonist, an eleven-year-old, street-wise but poor boy named Mark Sway, tries to prevent the lawyer from committing suicide.

Okay, so what?

It’s the backstory in any story that helps the reader understand why the plot matters to the characters.

Mark’s always wanted security for him and his mother and younger brother. He’s been taking care of them since before his abusive father left.

What happens in the plot matters to the Mark because he feels responsible for bringing a mafia threat into his family. A heavy load for an eleven-year-old to bear. Like any good story, problems escalate. Not knowing who to turn to, Mark retains a lawyer for his family with a dollar. Together Mark and his lawyer Reggie Love, a woman with her own complicated backstory, end up in a race to discover the body before the mafia moves the body.  

Again, this all matters to Mark because he doesn’t want his family to live in fear of the mafia killing them.

            I’ve only given a basic outline of what I’m trying to show here with the above two titles. It’s easier to show how the questioning system works with finished stories. It’s much harder to do this in your own work of creation.

In each scene, the writer needs to know:

What the characters go into the scene believing,

What they want, and

Why what is happening in the scene matters to them.

By the end of each scene, the characters need to change; their outlooks on the situation, their feelings, or their next moves, even if it is just slightly. Writers need to let the reader into the character’s head.

In the first scene of my memoir about attending college as a mother of five, Victoria is at school with her special needs’ daughter Marie. They are meeting with the guidance counselor from the high school to choose a curriculum for Marie.

Victoria enters the scene believing that she’s inferior to college-educated professionals, but if she can only get the counselor to understand Marie’s needs and what Marie wants to do in life [attend college to become a teacher], choosing the curriculum will be easy.

What Victoria wants in this scene is for the counselor to listen to Victoria. [Counselor ignores Victoria.]

Why what is happening in this scene matters to Victoria is because she is reliving her own struggle of trying to convince her parents that she desired to attend college, and Victoria, too, was told that she was not college material.

Victoria changes by the end of the scene [only slightly] by deciding, as a mother, to give her daughter the opportunity that Victoria was denied so long ago. Victoria allows her daughter the opportunity to at least try to attend college. [Counselor makes Victoria sign paper stating that if Marie fails high school it’s Victoria’s fault because Victoria wouldn’t follow recommendations made by teachers and the Special Education Department, people who are more educated than Victoria, who wanted Marie to stay in Special Ed classes.]

Writers of fiction as well as memoir need to remember that we never just give us the what in the story. We need to always dive into the why. In other words, when creating story, writers need to know the questions to ask of every scene, every character:

What happened?

Why did that happen?

What did the character do as a result?

If we keep asking why and where the feeling is coming from and what does it mean to that person, we can discover the true meaning of our story.

I want to thank JennieNash of Author Accelerator and Lisa Cron for helping me to understand which questions to ask for each scene in my memoir.

*As before, please offer any insight or comments you may have about my college memoir. Thank you! * 

Thank you for visiting Adventures in Writing. Please follow my blog if you haven’t already and connect with me online. Leave your blog link in the comment so I can be sure to do the same for you. To continue hopping through more amazing blogs or to join our Author Toolbox blog hop, click here. 

Insecure Writers want to know: What is one valuable lesson you've learned since you started writing?

            So many valuable lessons, so much still to learn. I think the biggest lesson I’ve learned since beginning to write is to believe in myself enough to send a story out. And if it comes back, to brush it off, and send it out again. And again, and—yes—even again.

            Many times, writers are a fragile creature. I know I am. We try so hard to believe in ourselves, in our stories, in our writing. And in my case, I’m crushed again and again. To be able to pick yourself up and continue to believe is a power all writers have. It’s just difficult to find sometimes. 

            Where can we find this inner strength to continue calling ourselves writers, to actually be writers? Here are a few tips that help me.

            Safety in numbers. Writing groups help writers find confidence. I belong to South Jersey Writers Group, a friendly group of writers in many genres who support one another, critique one another’s work, and offer presentations about writing, publishing, social media, and other tools of the trade.

            Writers helping writers. When writers learn something new, they don’t keep it to themselves. The very nature of the writing beast is to share what they’ve learned with others in their number. I do this through South Jersey Writers Group and reading other Insecure Writers Support Group blogs and sharing information on my Adventures in Writing blog and through workshops I present.

            Here are a few excellent writers and bloggers that I have come across: Jennie Nash, Lisa Cron, Writers in the Storm, The Editor’s Blog. You might like to follow them as well.

            Finding a quiet space to think. We are a multi-tasking society, and writers are no different. I believe writers need a peaceful place to leave the world and all their obligations behind in order to look within and consider what’s working and what’s not in their writing in progress. Some writers attend writing conferences, which not only allow for the first two points in my post, but also some time for uninterrupted thinking and writing. I realize they are expensive and some writers don’t have the money or time to go away to write.

I find thinking time in chunks, a few hours lost among the stacks in a library—away from the five children and home obligations. But I also find quiet in a walk through the woods or around a local lake. Sometimes just a walk in my neighborhood gets me away from the computer screen and into my thoughts about story flow, pacing, and logic. Writers can’t be afraid to look within to find answers; both for their writing and in life.

If writers are lucky enough to share these three key pieces of the writerly life, then they can find the courage to let go and send their stories and essays out into the world time and again, whether through traditional publishing or self-publishing. No. It’s still not easy. But it can be done.

I wish you all a solid belief in what you are doing in your writing life. Thanks for stopping by Adventures in Writing and sharing any thoughts you might have about this or about writing. Writers sharing with other writers. It’s what the writing life’s about.

This post was written for the Insecure Writer’s SupportGroup. We post on the first Wednesday of every month.  To join us, or learn more about the group, click HERE.  

Story Genius Writing Course: The Origin Scene

Sometimes I feel so small in revision.

If you think about it, all stories begin with relevant backstory. For just as real people deal with the present based on their past, so too must our characters deal with the story problems based on their relevant past experiences. The key word here is “relevant” past experiences. Jennie Nash and Lisa Cron in my Story Genius course asked:

What was the pivotal moment in your character’s past that changed her outlook on life? This will be the “origin scene” that sets the character up for interpreting the present story problems. Even in memoir.

In my memoir about attending college as a mother of five, I felt highly inadequate for college—and amazingly so at the Ivy League level. Attending college is not something rational people do on the spur of the moment. Not even when the prospective college student is a mom challenged by an all-knowing educated person who determines that her child shouldn’t attend college because she’s not good enough.

In my mind, people who attend college spend years preparing for it. At the Ivy League level, students spend their entire lives in preparation for it. No, college isn’t something to take lightly. After all, I could fail out, proving that educated person and extended family members that I am, in fact, unable to succeed and therefore my child might be as well.

It all came back to me. The origin scene for my college memoir, that is.

It was early spring in 1973, and I was perusing the high school curriculum booklet given out by the counselors, dreaming of going away to college. At that time, I thought everyone who attended college went away to be able to concentrate solely on their college education. At least that’s what they did in movies and on television.

Boy was I naïve! We never heard of community college or college loans. My family had no money for college.

I sat at the kitchen table, selecting college prep courses from the curriculum booklet for high school. I was the second child of four in my blue-collar family, the first who wanted to attend college. Then my father, a machinist by trade, the realist in our family by necessity, took note of what I was doing.

“Vic,” he said. “What makes you so sure you can handle college?”

My hand went numb, the course selection form blurred on the kitchen table. Why couldn’t he forget about my earlier struggles in school? I tried to.

“Dad,” I choked out. “I’m on the honor roll now.”

“It takes more than that to succeed in college, Vic.”

The scene continues as my father hammers into my consciousness that our family goes to work after high school. As someone who struggled earlier in her education, I should accept that I wasn’t college material and move on in life.

Finally, Dad’s realism became my realism. I wasn’t cut out for college. I was inadequate to those attempting higher education. It ate away at my confidence to succeed in life. I needed to settle, not strive. This was my present, my future, my life.

This origin scene works in conjunction with a post on the ticking clock of a story.  

It wasn’t until I was a mother of five with a special needs daughter that I finally realized if you don’t take any risks in life, you have already failed.

I think the choosing of my high school curriculum scene was the first “relevant” past experience, the origin scene, that formed my belief of not being good enough for college. I also feel it shows the effect a significant adult can have on a child. It forced me to be sure not to do the same to my children.

Please offer any comments or questions regarding this scene or your own college preparation, for they truly help me to define the moment and improve the writing. Thanks again for stopping by Adventures in Writing and leaving a note. It’s greatly appreciated. 

Story Genius Writing Course: One Ticking Clock in Story

Crawling along in the
Story Genius method for
my college memoir.

A story is one external problem that grows, escalates, and complicates from beginning to end, Lisa Cron says in our Story Genius class.  Jennie Nash concurs. And, the ladies tell us, the writer needs to develop one overarching ticking clock with real life consequences. 

Right!

It sounds easy, doesn’t it? Try it in memoir.

So I started with my misbelief that I shouldn’t attempt college because I’m inadequate to those seeking a college education. This was instilled in me when I was growing up and struggled in school. This belief kept me out of academia and away from failure, humiliation or displaying incompetence. Or so my father told me. I chose the successful path of secretary with a regular paycheck and married and became a mother like my mom, sisters, and friends.

I was safe in my cozy box of motherhood, safe from any fear of failure until my disabled daughter signed up for high school classes. Then I needed to choose whether to be a failure at guiding my children or disabled child or a failure at attempting college.

The ticking clock begins as I am forced by a comment made from a high school guidance counselor, an educated person respected in society, to either re-teach my daughter as best I could, the material needed to pass high school by educating myself first through college classes, or condemn her to only special education classes in high school.

So you may ask why I was so afraid of failure in college.

Because, in my mind, if I fail at my attempt to obtain a college degree, I have wasted the time I could have spent with the family, trying to achieve a goal that was not possible for me. My father would be right. I am not college material. 

But my family is everything to me. If I failed college, I would have wasted my family’s time, which is more precious to me. It’s ok to waste your own time but not someone else’s, especially when you love them.

So what do you think of my memoir problem and ticking clock? Any comments you offer are greatly appreciated. 

Story Genius Course: Internal and External Plots

I'm still hammering away at
the Story Genius course. It truly
is a difficult but impressive way
to analyze your writing.

Besides the constant thinking of “why does [anything and everything] matter to the protagonist” in the Story Genius method of writing and creating story, Lisa Cron and Jennie Nash, the two key editors and writers in the course, want us to develop an internal and external conflict for the protagonist to battle.

            I have no problem with this in my fiction. In my YA short stories, my protagonist is always battling some familial or friend issue on the inside while she is traipsing through a national park battling real life problems trying to save both herself and usually a younger sibling on the outside. These two conflicts, the internal and the external, converge and sometimes clash at the epiphany or “aha” moment where our hero discovers how to overcome both problems and save the day. 

            But in my memoir about attending college as a mother of five, it’s not that dramatic. In memoir, everything must be true. I can’t make it up.

            So I told my editor, in order to find resolution to my internal and external problems and struggles with inferiority in the memoir, I graduated from Penn.

            Guess what she said? …Right! “That’s just surface,” [wait for it] “go deeper.”

The internal problem must become a new way for me to look at a particular situation in life.  In other words, the editors of Story Genius want to know what college MEANS to Victoria.  What is pushing and driving the protagonist to go on – what’s making Victoria go to college? What keeps her continuing to complete a degree?

College was a method to better educate myself in order to help my children, especially my firstborn who is perceptually impaired.  She was the impetus for me to begin college at that time.  Ever since the school counselor implied that my daughter couldn’t handle college, that the special education department felt she would never be able to obtain a degree, I decided to be sure she can at least have that opportunity because I never had the opportunity to attend college.   

What does college mean to Victoria?  Although Victoria always wanted to attend college herself because in her mind college equaled intelligence, by the time she is a mother of five children, college equals the voice of reason in the educational journey of her children.  Teachers, counselors, and the learning consultants at school gave their educated opinion that my daughter, with her learning disabilities and ADHD should not go to college. But she wanted to be a kindergarten teacher. How can a mother not allow her child the opportunity to at least try to see if she can do it with my assistance as I’ve helped her all through her school journey thus far?

Fellow faithful blog followers, did I go deep enough this time?  What does college mean to you?  Thanks so much for any insight you may offer. 

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! 

Story Genius Course: Starting with Backstory

The Story Genius course started
as a book. Lisa Cron uses concrete
methods to guide story creation.

That’s right, fellow writers!  Before you begin to write forward in your story, you need to understand who your protagonist is and why she acts the way she does.  What happened in her life before the story opens that makes her think and act this way?  Just like real people, characters are molded by prior life experience. 

Understanding the backstory of the protagonist [as well as secondary characters] is vital for fiction writers to create believable characters for their stories.  And that helps readers to connect with the characters and care about them.

Lisa Cron of Story Genius believes that writers must understand their characters before they can even begin to write the story present.  Cron believes stories are character driven as opposed to plot driven.

Cron’s concept of a character-driven story helps me to see that a particular story can only happen to this character because of how the character was raised or because of specific events that have happened to this character in her life before the present story action occurs.     

It’s a concept of specifics:  this particular story can only happen to this particular character because of her past and how she interpreted it.  It’s the character’s beliefs that drive the story forward and help the reader to connect to her.   

A particular character with her own beliefs and specific backstory works in memoir as well, although I must admit that I feel like I’ve been on a therapist’s couch for weeks now.  Looking for the “why” of my insecurity in college is giving me a complex—now, in my life’s present story. 

I need to discover why I didn’t attend college right after high school and how and where my insecurities developed. 

Oooo!  I thought.  I can tell you why I didn’t go to college right out of high school.  We didn’t have any money for college.  And my family didn’t believe in loans for college.  We went to work after high school. 

My editor writes back:  “Think deeper.  Why?”

My response:  I was signing up for high school courses at the time I found out there was no money for college.  It was the early 1970’s.  I grew up in a blue-collar neighborhood.  This was the norm—especially for females.  

The editor wrote again:  “A deeper why?”

Me:  Dad said you only go to college if you want to be a doctor or a lawyer.  [But we still didn’t have any money for it.]

Editor:  “Why did he think that?  How did this make you feel?”

…Do you see why I’m developing a complex over this? 

“Dig deeper into your feelings and memories,” the editor said.  “Pull out how you developed your insecurities.”

I wanted to write back:  Stop picking on me!  You and Story Genius are adding to my insecurities.  I might require a real therapist couch at this rate.

But I didn’t. 

Thanks so much for stopping by.  Feel free to visit Adventures in Writing again to learn how I make out with all these questions that are invading my dreams right now.  Please leave any insight you may have.  It is always greatly appreciated.  

Intense New Writing Course: Story Genius with Lisa Cron and Jennie Nash

It’s time for a new draft of my memoir about attending college as a mother of five.  I’ve been tweaking and revising the same version, but I think I need a fresh start.  So I signed up for Story Genius with Lisa Cron and Jennie Nash. It’s the science behind story—brain science. 

This is an intense 10-week Writing Workshop

…I’m overthinking the application process already.    

            I'm a scene painter.  I enjoy reliving and fleshing out the scenes [the stories of my college experiences] in the memoir.  I think that I am showing the reader my home life, my experiences, the characters who are myself and my family.  I am progressing through college and hope that I am taking the reader along for the ride.  I think I’m inviting the reader into my life at that time so that he or she can experience this journey.

This memoir is supposed to be the insightful, yet humorous, adventure of an inexperienced and obsessive mother with young children trying to navigate the world of academia.  I feel it would help other parents/mothers or older non-traditional people who always wanted to go to college but who might think they can't juggle the responsibilities or might feel it's too much trouble to begin or too late to even try. 

This is my journey of attending college as the primary caretaker of five young children, the oldest being special needs. I had never attended college, knew nothing about how to begin, and worried that my brain no longer worked after being home with those children. I began at a community college close to home when my youngest, twins, started second grade and my oldest started high school. I received several honors and won scholarship to the Ivy League to complete my B.A.

            We had to fill out an application to begin the course.  One of the questions was what’s your book about?  And I wrote this:

Victoria is your average mother of five who never went to college. She always wanted to, though. So when her youngest starts second grade, she jumps in with all her insecurities and a few skills she learned from her children: whining for help from her college-grad husband, falling asleep on textbooks while doing homework in hopes that osmosis works, and peppering professors with questions until her brain wraps itself around a new concept.

Through awards at the community college level, Victoria earns the opportunity to attend the University of Pennsylvania to complete her bachelor’s degree in English.  With this major success, all the insecurities just overcome to obtain her associate’s degrees rush back to haunt her. She wrestles with her belief to never let opportunity pass her by and tries to conceive how she can possibly handle the Ivy League.  It’s not a casual four-year institution a mother of five attends, right? 

Victoria realizes that the only regrets in life are the opportunities never taken.  How can she be content to stay as she is while opportunities flourish around her?  She goes down to the wire, signing up and choosing classes at another university that offered her scholarship before finally accepting the University of Pennsylvania’s invitation to study.  Victoria recognizes that she can’t retreat back into the home and be content with what she has.  Not when the world of academia graciously invites her in to stay a while with scholarships to further enlighten her mind.

            I’m in the second week of Story Genius and all my insecurities are firmly in place as I try to come up with the point of this memoir.  How about: The only regrets in life are the opportunities never taken like I said in my application?  What do you think?  Your insight is greatly appreciated.