Writing Lessons: How to Shape A Book? Begin With One Strong Image
YOU CAN HAVE all the training in the world, and yet you begin each day of writing with a feeling of starting from scratch. Sound familiar? It does to me, approaching the desk each day as I do with a combined sense of wonder and fear. “Where’s this going to go?” I wonder on the best of days. On the worst of days, the voice asks, “How in the world are you going to get this thing started?” This question really thunders through when the issue is how to shape a book. D’Arcy Fallon is the writer to get us both going, and her straightforward approach is her gift to you to use forever. Read on to find out how and to win a copy of her perfect book.
How to Get Your Story Started
by D’Arcy Fallon
Long ago and far away—when newspapers were still fat and sassy—I had an editor who used to tell me as I headed out the door on assignment, “Make it sing!” Another said this as I feverishly paged through my mostly indecipherable notes: “Make ’em laugh, make ’em cry, or make ’em horny.” Still another would bark at me as I worked against the clock: “So, what’s the lede? Tell it to me—right now.”
I wish I could say I did learn to master all those editors’ requests, able to form perfect, musical sentences, skilled at identifying the Big Idea right on the spot. Although I did learn to write quickly and vividly under deadline, there were times when I wrote longer feature stories or columns and I didn’t know precisely what the real story was until I had written a fast first draft. Often the lede, the most seductive part of the story, and its essence, was somewhere near the bottom, flashing its brilliant blue tail like a Siamese Fighting Fish in a bowlful of guppies. Spotting it swimming down there amidst the other words was a happy moment of discovery, practically a homecoming. Now I knew where I was going.
Though I left reporting in the late ’90s, much of what I learned through journalism is still useful today. It’s still all about the story, and quickly connecting with the reader. Is it interesting? Does it resonate? Who the hell cares? This is what matters to me. I read and write emotionally. As e. e. cummings wrote, “since feeling is first/ who pays any attention/to the syntax of things.” Well, I do (said the English teacher), but I also want the hit of strong, visceral writing. Shoot me up. I’ll take it in the vein. Here, let me make a fist. Make me laugh, make me cry, make me horny. Have your way with me. Do me. Move me. And it better mean something.
But what is that elusive something? For those of us writing without a script, without a daily “news” assignment, therein lies the terror and the joy. You sense there’s something potent down there, but it’s buried under fear and half-guesses. I tell my students who want to write memoir it helps to start with an image in their minds. What is it about that day at the zoo you can’t forget? Why do you keep remembering the rhesus monkey sitting in the corner scratching himself?
When I wrote So Late, So Soon, which was about living in a remote religious community in the early 70s, I knew there was a powerful story, but I just wasn’t sure what shape it would take. And honestly, I was overwhelmed. So I started with the most compelling image in my mind, which happened after I had left the California commune but while I still part of the larger religious community. I was living in a large Brooklyn brownstone with my then-husband, because we had been “called” to preach the gospel, to shine our lights as godly witnesses in a craven, sin-laden world. Except that I wasn’t godly, I didn’t feel called, and the last thing I wanted to do was witness to strangers. Every morning I rode the subway into Manhattan, where I worked as file clerk for $75 a week. Thinking back to that year, 1974, this is what I remember:
A young woman sits on the subway, carrying her lunch and her Bible on her lap. Face scrubbed of make-up, pale legs unshaven, she wears a pair of flats fished from the ministry’s Free Box. A small wooden cross dangles from her neck. Clackety-clackety sings the subway as it races through the black tunnels. Bodies jounce as the train picks up speed. A few passengers take in the cross, the Bible, the woman’s solemn face, and then quickly look away, afraid to make eye contact. The woman stares up at the advertisement panels: college degrees, Planned Parenthood, flights to Copenhagen, Shakespeare in the Park. None of these ads have anything to do with her life. She is spoken for. Sitting on the train, familiar despair washes over her. Jesus is coming. Hallelujah. She would give anything to return to the world.
So Late, So Soon, an excerpt
I lay in bed listening to the waves crashing on the beach, and the splat-splat-splat of rain spattering the on sidewalk outside. Clouds over the ocean. Wind in the twisted cypress. If I closed my eyes, I could hear mold growing. The ground was a humid sponge that never dried out but kept decomposing underfoot. The windowpanes by my bed sprouted hairline fractures of dark green. It was so moist, the linoleum sagged like mushy Rice Crispies. Even clean cotton sheets fresh from the dryer quickly assumed the sweet-sour fragrance of curdled milk. Nature was a magician; it caused wood to bend and glass to sweat.
Listening to the steady rain, I wondered if it was raining on my parents’ house in Lafayette too. I was in a tight cocoon, bound by worship and work. Time was ticking by, cycling through season after season. Years later, reading a four-line poem by Dr. Seuss, I felt a sharp pang of recognition, so perfectly did it capture the ranch’s state of missing time:
How did it get so late so soon?
How is it night before afternoon?
It’s December before June.
How did it get so late so soon?
It was easy to drift in a fugue of isolation; no newspapers or radios alerted me to the world outside. As isolated as I felt, I could’ve been living on an atoll in the Pacific. In 1973—my second summer at the ranch—the Miami Dolphins won the Super Bowl, Billie Jean King beat Bobby Riggs in a tennis match billed “The Battle of the Sexes,” Kurt Vonnegut published Breakfast of Champions, and “streaking” became a fad across U.S. campuses. While the space probe, Pioneer 10, was transmitting television pictures from within 81,000 miles of Jupiter, women in consciousness-raising groups were clambering up on tables with plastic speculums and mirrors, hoping to get a glimpse of their own inner space.
“I’m in the hollow of His hands,” I wrote my parents on Lighthouse Ranch stationary featuring a neat little garden and a large building overshadowed by a cross. And then quickly, God spread his fingers and I was allowed to scamper briefly back into the world—chauffeuring a trouble woman back to her home in the Bay Area. Helen had driven to the ranch, but she was in no shape to get herself home. Helen was in her early 20s and her heart seemed—there’s no other word for it—flayed. She’d recently given birth to a baby girl, Chloe, whom she’d given up for adoption. I don’t know why Helen had come to the ranch, but her kinetic presence in the sisters’ dorm made us edgy. I read once that sharks never sleep but having to keep swimming, moving the water through their gills or they’ll drown. Helen was like that, a trolling blur of restless limbs, with reddened eyes that never shut. How tired she must’ve been; how tired she made us all. What kept her swimming was Chloe. Helen was bereft, inconsolable, continually on the verge of tears. Talking non-stop one minute, nearly catatonic the next, she was losing it.
Her parents were wealthy intellectuals who lived in the Berkeley hills. I had the distinct feeling that they wouldn’t have approved of their daughter’s sojourn among us. In the Bible it says: “Whosoever will may come.” Helen had come and it was now clear she must leave. We couldn’t help her. We’d prayed over her, laid hands upon her, asked Jesus to list the spirit of oppression plaguing her. But Helen didn’t improve. Probably because I was single and unencumbered with children, knew how to drive, and was semi-reliable, I was recruited to drive Helen to her parents’ house in Berkeley.
Helen handed me the keys with a gloomy air.
“Ready?” I asked.
She shrugged.
“OK, let’s go,” I said.
Helen stood by the door, looking across the sprawling lush garden, to the wooden cross on the bluff.
“Okay, here we go,” I prompted.
She nodded absently. We stood there a minute longer.
Nancy clip-clopped out to the car in her little wobbly shoes. The wind caught at the hem of her madras skirt, exposing her knobby knees. “Praise the Lord, Helen, we’ll be praying for you,” Nancy said, trying to hurry her along.
Helen kept looking away. A tear glistened in the corner of her eye. Nancy looked at me. I looked back, imploring her with my eyes. Somebody had to take charge.
“We’ll miss you, Helen,” Nancy said, brisk as a nurse. “Goodbye.” Nancy put Helen’s suitcase in the back of the car. Finally Helen got in and I drove out of the parking lot with a heavy heart.
Lurching down Highway 101 in Helen’s Volvo, I kept a sweaty grip on the wheel. I glanced over at my passenger. She sat slumped against the door, chin trembling, hands folded tightly in her lap. Towns rolled by: Fortuna, Rio Dell, Scotia, Pepperwood.
“Want to sing a song?” I said. “How ‘bout ‘The Joy of the Lord is My Strength?’” Helen shook her head. I didn’t blame her.
“Helen, what’s wrong?”
“I’m fine,” Helen said. Sniff, sniff. And then the skies opened up and the rains came. Helen wept and babbled rapid-fire about Chloe. Chloe! She wanted her baby girl back. Why couldn’t she get her back? She was a good mother, wasn’t she? Where was Chloe? Couldn’t she at least visit her baby?
“I don’t know,” I answered, feeling helpless. “I’m so sorry.”
Placing her hands on her flabby abdomen, Helen bent over and sobbed. “I should never”—gasp—“have let her out of my sight.” I tried to keep my mind on driving, but by the time we’d reached Garberville, less than 50 miles from the ranch, I was ready to turn back. Chauffeuring Helen was the job of someone with a hardier, less permeable personality. I was becoming as hopped up as she was, twitchy, hungry, homesick for a child I’d never known. My mind was echoing: Chloe! Mama! Baby! Gimme! It was as if I had internal Tourette’s. I chewed the inside of my cheeks, and tried to stay within the white lines. Think of those lines as stitches, I told myself. Stay within the boundaries. Neat and tidy, in and out. Sew yourself to Berkeley and keep the thread taut. As we reached the outskirts of Ukiah, Helen started hyperventilating.
“Stop the car!” she said, bracing herself against the dashboard. I hit the brakes and the Volvo shimmied.
“Are you sick or something?”
Or something. Helen put her hand on the door handle. She unrolled the window. “I need to get out for a minute.”
“Do you have to pee?”
Helen opened the door and got out.
“You know, Helen, we’re never going to get you home at the rate we’re going,” I said to her retreating back.
“I need some air,” she called. You and me both, I thought.
Helen stopped at a grove of redwoods. The Eel River tumbled by. I watched her clutch at a tree branch and shake a finger at it, as if lecturing to a naughty puppy. I was trying very hard not to be terrified of Helen. We had been thrown together in the most basic way, without artifice or pride or the buffer of small talk, just two people hanging on by our fingernails. There was really nothing I could do but except pray and that I did in the most direct way: Oh-shit-God-help, oh-shit-God-help, oh-shit-God-help. Row, row, row your boat. How-shit-God-help. This was my mantra, a four-word invocation I mindlessly repeated as I watched Helen talk to the trees. My faith was really shaky. Jesus seemed like a figment of my imagination. Helen was gathering steam for what seemed like a real melt down. The river rushed over the rocks, cold and frothy. Helen required so much vigilance! I thought angrily. I didn’t know if she was going to impale herself on the car’s radio antenna, fling herself into the Eel, or start singing Three Blind Mice. I was nineteen and childless. What did I know about post-partum depression? I watched her from the window, thinking: Why are you doing this to me, Helen? And then I stopped, convicted down to the soles of my feet. Helen. I’d been flogging her with her own name, a name that was not only familiar but cherished by God. I thought about that scripture which says The Lord knows us and had called us each by name. That scripture, so intimate, so personal, always gave me chills.
I got out of the car and walked over to Helen. Now she was sitting on a tree log, tossing pine needles into the river, one by one.
“What’s wrong, Helen?” I said, squatting beside her.
“I feel sad, that’s all,” she said, flinging in a handful. “I’m sorry I’m such a mess.”
“You’re not a mess, I promise you.”
A few minutes later we walked back to the car and drove on. When we reached Helen’s parents’ house that night, they plied her with anxious questions as they fed us tofu and stir-fried vegetables. Had she forgotten to take her medication? Where exactly had she been? Did she need to make an appointment with her psychiatrist? No one mentioned Chloe.
I spent the night at Helen’s parents’ house. The next day I met my mother in the Berkeley Rose Garden on Euclid Avenue. I had wanted to see her and I was dreading it. I wore a pair of knee high leather boots that Rita had given me. They were a little too big but the leather was nicely broken in. I chose a dress for the occasion, one of the few store-bought items I owned, a long-sleeved blue and red plaid mid-calf dress with strawberries on it. My mother and I sat in the stone amphitheatre, surrounded by terraced, climbing roses. I cannot recall the particulars of our conversation, except that it was strained. I cried. I told my mother Jesus loved her. What was her reply? I cannot recall her words, only her consternation over my tears.
Why are you crying?
I’m just so happy.
No, you’re not. What’s wrong?
Repent and be saved.
I was crying for more than my mother’s salvation. I was crying for the missed cues between us. I wept for Helen, mentally unhinged by grief, I wept for adopted Chloe, I wept for myself, a daughter who had left her mother’s house and been adopted by another family. I had been in retreat and now I was back. In memory, everything that day seems exaggerated: the garish plaid of my dress, the bigness of my boots, the cloying scent of the roses, and of course, my mother’s presence. My mother was the most important person in my life, realer than Jesus, more powerful than all the ministry’s elders combined. I’d thought that living with other people would dilute her mighty power but here we were, once again caught up in each other’s gravitational pull. Next to her, I felt large and ugly, unlovable and weird. Like Helen, I felt like a mess.
I took the Greyhound back to Eureka that evening. Still in my dress and lace-up boots, I sat in a seat by the window with my Bible in my lap. It was crowded on the bus, and people were restless in their seats. Somewhere around Healdsburg an older woman got on and sat in the seat next to me. She was short and had a bad perm that was growing out. She pulled out a ball of yarn and began knitting. I glanced over at her and then looked away, feeling clearly that God wanted me to witness to my seatmate. I didn’t want to. Several miles passed. I argued silently with God. Do I have to? Why can’t I just ride the bus like everybody else? What do you want me to say, anyway? Sighing, I snapped open my Bible. The page opened to Psalm 130:1, which said:
Out of the depths I cry to you,
O Lord.
O Lord, hear my voice.
I stared at the lines and meditated on them. God was telling me to praise Him at all times, even on a Greyhound.
As James’s mother had pointed out, I couldn’t even carry a tune in a bucket. I was tone-deaf and tune-challenged. But as dusk came on, I flicked on the overhead reading light, cleared my throat, and took a deep breath. I sang:
Oh God, hear my cry
Attend unto my prayer!
From the depths of the earth
I will cry unto thee
When my heart is overwhelmed.
Lead me to the rock
That is higher than I!
Jesus is the rock
That is higher than I!
I sang those verses as my stone-faced companion kept knitting. After a few minutes I stopped, flicked off my light and turned toward the window, burning with embarrassment. Neither of us said a word. When we stopped in Cloverdale for more passengers, she moved to another seat.
Author’s bio
D’Arcy Fallon has been an award-winning journalist and columnist for nearly twenty years, working for such papers as the Long Beach Press-Telegram, the San Francisco Examiner, and the Colorado Springs Gazette. Her stories typically have focused on the disenfranchised, the urban poor, and those most at risk in society. The American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors named her one of the best newspaper columnists in the country. She has an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Antioch University in Los Angeles. Ms. Fallon teaches English composition and creative nonfiction at Wittenberg University, and lives in Springfield, Ohio, with her husband and son. Her new book, So Late, So Soon, is available from Hawthorne Press.
AND THE WINNER IS…
I hope you enjoy Writing Lessons. Featuring well-published writers of our favorite genre, each installment of the series will take on one short topic that addresses how to write memoir, and will include a great big book giveaway.
It’s my way of saying thanks for coming by.
The contest for this book is now closed. Please see the next installment of Writing Lessons.
The winner of the book is Hollis. Congratulations, Hollis! I’ll be in touch to send your book.
What an interesting story and helpful lesson. I do believe it takes a full first draft to know what our story needs to say. This memoir intrigues me on many levels as I am an adoptee who was lost in religiousity for a season before I found myself. I wonder what happened to wake this author up. Trying to fit in with strangers but drawn to her mother. I look forward to reading the rest of the story. TY for this article and chance to win…write on!
Hi Rhonda, thanks so much for your comments. Ah yes, that first draft. As a writer and a teacher, I’m often stymied at HOW LONG it sometimes takes to really get at what one’s subject really is. As for why I finally “woke up” and left the brothers and sisters I’d been living with, it was like the accumulation of a thousand paper cuts. I just got angrier and angrier at the sexism and patronizing attitudes towards women. I know I wasn’t alone in those feelings. It wasn’t safe for me to express my disillusionment with the ministry at the time, but I felt deeply disenchanted with what was going on, especially after I got married. Maybe I just grew up! Thanks again, D’Arcy
This is exactly what I needed to read today. I have been struggling mightily with my first chapter and it just wasn’t coming together. That “one strong image” piece of advice might just hold the key. I think that it pulls the reader in sooner rather than later, something that my opening pages weren’t doing.
This book is now on my to-read list. (My memoir has a similar theme.) Thanks for introducing us to D’Arcy, Marion.
Hi Judy,
It takes guts to start a book. The first chapter is the hardest. Just remember that starting anywhere is OK too. Go with your gut. You’ll figure out the structure later. (This, from a person who doesn’t write fiction!) Best of luck to you! Keep writing!
D’Arcy
The excerpt reinforces my belief that we learn more by LISTENING with every part of our being than by putting our own interpretation on another’s words. It is hard but crucial not to superimpose our own thoughts/feelings/beliefs on another.
Hi Elisabeth,
I agree that listening is so important. We’re all dying to be really “seen” and really “heard.” When that happens, it’s an incredible gift. We’re all guilty of snap judgments and putting people in neat little boxes. What’s been interesting to me is that after this book came out, I heard from MANY people from the Lighthouse Ranch who had felt diminished or dismissed or shunned or talked down to because they weren’t “spiritual enough.” We were all just dying to drop our masks and be real, but we were scared.
Best,
D’Arcy
So nice to read D-Arcy’s work again. I read her column religiously in the Colorado Springs Gazette in the late 90s. She offers great advice about working to find the gem of the story and getting started with an unshakeable image. Would have liked to have seen how the subway ride lead to the excerpt.
Dear MP,
Thanks for the kind words about an old Gazette columnist! I miss the column and I desperately miss Colorado. I’ll tell you how that subway ride led to the excerpt: it was a starting point. It made me start writing. I had felt overwhelmed with the idea of actually writing a book about this enormous… thing that had happened to me. (Living in a Jesus commune.) So many feelings, so many thoughts and memories. I didn’t know how to begin. So I went with what had the most “heat” for me.
Thanks so much for writing,
D’Arcy
Hi D’Arcy,
Thanks so much for writing me back. I miss your column, too. My impression is the Springs has changed much since we lived there.
So the subway ride story just was a jumping off point? I liked it so much I was hoping to read more. The excerpt was very vivid and I enjoyed it very much.
I have used the images stuck in my head in what I call “memoir poetry.” They’re often small fragments of things I remember from a special time in my life 40 years ago. I find there’s not enough image and incident to build a story, let alone a book on, so I find an outlet in narrative free-verse.
Do you have any advice on how to build on these strong images from the past?
Also, if you don’t mind another query: A column I read in the Gazette around ’97 or ’98 has stuck with me since. The columnist lived in Black Forest and was about putting her aging dog. Was that you?
Many thanks,
mp
Write with depth of emotion and authenticity: that’s what I’ll be working on in this memoir of mine. Starting with the story of my stroke just over 4 years ago, and then venturing into my adoptee childhood, I’ll be trying to make it sing. I appreciate the beautiful dialogue and imagery in this selection, and “felt a sharp pang of recognition.” Yes, I’ll read your book, D’Arcy! Marion, I finished “The Memoir Project…” today. Thank you so much.
Thank you, Mary Ellen, and welcome to The Memoir Project blog. I’m delighted that you read my book, and hope you will be a regular here at the blog. I will be launching a new iteration of this website in a few weeks. Look for some cool new things, including several audio products I’ve made for your continued memoir experience. Please come back soon.
Oh Mary Ellen,
Good luck with your memoir! It sounds like the things you want to explore are so important to you and to other readers! Keep plugging away at it! Thank you for taking the time to write me. It’s important to know we’re not all alone.
Best,
D’Arcy
D’Arcy is a wonderful teacher and mentor, I would love to read So Late, So Soon. I have been toying with the idea of memoir writing, but I too, feel overwhelmed. Thinking of powerful images rather than stories might help me at least get some words on the page. Thank you for this.
Danielle, thanks for the compliments. Don’t let fear overwhelm you. I wrestle with fear all the time and the nay-saying voices in my head too, but what else can we do with ourselves except write the truth about our lives? The fact that you’re wrestling with the idea of writing a memoir is a pretty good indication that you’ve got important things to say!
Thanks again,
D’Arcy
D’Arcy Fallon is the reason I became an English major in college and much of the reason I love books and writing so much and have chosen to become a public librarian. She taught me how to read and write emotionally, which always produces the best work for me and gets me the most out of the material I am reading. I cannot wait to read this book! I love her charisma, blatant sense of humor, and wild storytelling.
Haley,
I miss you! Thank you for your kind words! I hope you’re giving everybody a run for the money as the newest, sassiest librarian in the state of Ohio.
Love,
D’Arcy
I would love to read D’Arcy’s book. I really like the idea of taking one image and getting into the story that way.
Dear Dena,
Thank you for that shot in the arm! Starting is the hardest part!
Best,
D’Arcy
“Make it sing!” spoke to me. It does seem as though there are so many demands on us as writers. Honestly, I’m a little intimidated and overwhelmed by those demands at the moment. So much so that I’m a bit stuck in the memoir I’m working on. I think the having one clear image in mind overlaps very well with Marion’s “formula” for an argument that you must have in place to write good memoir. Onward!
Hi Hilarie,
I agree that there are enormous demands on writers, heck, on PEOPLE, these days. It’s hard to keep a balance between being responsive and open to how one “should” write and being true to one’s own vision. In the final analysis, you’ve got to be true to yourself. It’s lonely work and often isn’t rewarded, so you might as well try to stay true to your vision.
Best,
D’Arcy
The key part of this that spoke to me is about needing that first draft to figure out where the story is really going, or even what the story is. I am participating in NaNoWriMo for the first time this month, and as I near the finish line, the story on my page is not at all the story I thought I started writing. This story sounds very intriguing and I want to read it. It’s going on my short list of Next Reads.
Thanks for sharing your story and your insights.
D’Arcy…. this post touched me deeply. Your writing SINGS like the Halleluiah Chorus. Your words came up off of the computer screen, wrapped around my heart, and now I HAVE to read the rest of the story.
How did it get so late so soon, indeed?
The first time I tried to write my memoir was back in 1975. I was 22 years old then, the mother of two small children, unhappily married to my second husband. While he worked as a pipefitter building oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, I was trying to sell real estate in a post-oil embargo Houston economy. In my spare time, I wrote. I thought I was ready to write about the bizarre and painful events that had occurred in my life in the late 1960s, but I was wrong.
Today, with my beautiful 22-year-old granddaughter in her second year of college, I think I am finally ready to open up that vein and bleed. Reading Marion’s terrific book on memoir writing (TWICE!), keeping up with her blog, and now reading this beautiful post of yours, gives me the encouragement I need to believe that I can do this.
In your reply to Danielle’s comment you said: “Don’t let fear overwhelm you. I wrestle with fear all the time and the nay-saying voices in my head too, but what else can we do with ourselves except write the truth about our lives?”
The truth about our lives… oh you said a mouthful there. After my aborted attempt to write my truth nearly forty years ago, I went the opposite way and tried to bury my secrets. But there’s a funny thing about buried secrets: they refuse to stay buried or secret.
My “shameful” truth is that I was a traumatized 14-year-old more than a decade before Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder was known and labeled. Schizophrenia was the default diagnosis of that era, the prognosis was believed to be hopeless, and the treatment was to lock you up in hell on earth and throw away the key.
Built in the 1800s, the massive, Gothic-looking insane asylum where I spent the longest two years of my life in the 1960s was closed and torn down in the 1990s. All I can find on the internet about these abandoned mental institutions are legends and ghost stories, the stuff of myths and fairy tales. But I lived it.
The satellite view on Google map shows a big empty field where the solid buildings of State Hospital No. 3 once stood on the outskirts of Nevada, Missouri. Although the bricks and stones are gone, that place still lives on in my mind and heart. How can it be gone? Where did all of the people go? There were thousands of us there, jampacked and locked in like lost mutts in a dog pound. Most of my fellow patients were clearly incapable of making it on their own on the outside. I was one of the 3%, according to the statistics of that time, to be released from that place, the remaining 97% stayed there until they died. When they closed that place, when they tore the buildings down and hauled away the rubble — what did they do with the people?
It’s called Survivor’s Guilt. I know this, but I can’t stop wondering and worrying. I remember how the homeless population began to increase very dramatically on our city streets in the 1980s and 1990s.
There has to be a compassionate solution to this problem, somewhere between the extremes of locking emotionally broken people up in human warehouses and throwing away the key, and turning them out on the streets to fend for themselves.
Toady I am a very youthful 60-year-old great-grandmother, happily married to my best friend, a disabled Vietnam Combat Veteran who serves as Chaplain with the American Legion and rides with the Patriot Guard. When I am feeling brave (or foolish), I ride with him. When I am feeling very brave (or very foolish) I work on a memoir called GOING CRAZY; from Horror to Healing. I feel an urgency now that I have never felt before, to get this written. I don’t want to take my story to the grave.
How did it get so late?
Lynda