LifeStory Writing

There is the story of an American family who commissioned a memoir ghostwriter to write their dad’s autobiography, but they insisted he soft-pedal the case of their dad’s brother, Fred. The late Uncle Fred’s life of crime ended with his death in the electric chair, a source of deep family shame.

It was an embarrassing truth so the ghostwriter ‘soft-shoed’ or spun the story thus: “Uncle Fred occupied a chair of applied electronics in one of our leading government institutions.  He was held to the post by the closest ties and his death came as a real shock”.

As a tennis player, my view of the world has been pretty narrow at times. It’s like seeing the world within four fences around a tennis court. In his acclaimed memoir André Agassi reflects on tennis as a ‘lifetime in miniature’. And he has a point. Seeing life through a tennis filter. Perhaps it’s to be anticipated after hundreds of thousands of hours on court.

His autobiography, Open discusses this microcosm of life, and it’s a heck of a read:

It’s no accident, I think, that tennis uses the language of life. Advantage, service, fault, break, love, the basic elements of tennis are those of everyday existence, because every match is a lifetime in miniature. Even the structure of tennis, the way the pieces fit inside one another like Russian dolls, mimics the structure of our days. Points become games become sets become tournaments, and it’s all so tightly connected that any point can become the turning point. It reminds me of the way seconds become minutes become hours, and any hour can be our finest. Or darkest. It’s our choice.

As a ‘tennis obsessive’, I wonder: Maybe there is more to life than tennis? So next long weekend I might give tennis a miss. Cast the competitive instinct aside for a few days and chill out. Go camping, catch a fish, relax. Sit by a campfire and meditate on the state of the world, without tennis. Nothing combative. A world of nature where the universe is in harmony. Ahhhhhh. Now that’s the life! Peace and goodwill to all. Read more →

We often see a book begin with a ‘Prologue’. Why is this? It’s usually because the author wants to start at a critical moment in their life, a turning point, and it doesn’t fit in with the chronology of the rest of the story. So it precedes ‘Chapter 1’.

Here is an extract from one of my client’s life stories. It’s a work in progress but has a lovely feel and engages the reader at an important moment in the writer’s life. Her name is Ros, and she has kindly agreed for it to appear here:

PROLOGUE  (by Ros L)

I watch you kneel in the dark, your lips moving silently as you bow at the altar of your God. Waving sticks of incense about your body in a fashion clearly familiar to you, yet so foreign to me, you move through the gloom, whispering incomprehensible words.  At the back of this cavernous space I stand motionless, not knowing where I should place my feet; petrified at the thought that I might offend you in this temple that is so sacred to you. Read more →

There are many different approaches to the task of editing but these are the main ones.

Proofreading
Proofreading is the final check before publication. It looks at spelling, punctuation spacing and so on.

Copy-editing
Copy-editing is a light or medium edit. It aims to achieve accuracy, clarity and consistency in a document. Copy-editing looks at correcting grammar, spelling, punctuation, and style (which includes capitalization, syntax and referencing).

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Verbs are life-giving!
We want our writing to sparkle. So give it some life with verbs. Too often writing descends into boredom. It’s passive and ho-hum. The answer? Great verbs. Verbs are action words, doing words. Verbs like . . . Read more →