Cristian Godfrey's Blog, page 2

Conversation with a lifelong friend

I spent about 45 minutes on the phone today with one of my childhood neighbors. We don't speak all that often, but when we do it's purely to reminisce and compare notes. Our calls are so infrequent that some of the same topics are covered and I treat it like it's the first time I've heard his opinion. I'm ok with that. He's referenced many times in Anywhere But Home (under a pseudonym) and got a kick out of sending me a text last night and signing it with that name. I'm glad he wasn't offended by anything I had written. Evidently his sister purchased four copies based on the opinion of yet another childhood friend who said that reading my book was like reliving his childhood and distributed the books to each of her siblings. It's amazing the details we've retained and the details we've forgotten.

50 pages into the still unnamed book 2

During the writing of Anywhere But Home, I decided to follow a topic rather than a time line. One paragraph could have been talking about a present topic and then the following paragraphs would support the idea and jump around through history. This was a conscious decision I made for a couple of reasons. The first being that I couldn't figure out a way to maintain the integrity of the story and the time line simultaneously. The second reason was that when I put things in a time line, the flow just didn't work and required the reader to recall an inference that I had made perhaps chapters prior in order to understand what brought me to the current situation. For the second book, I've written a time line which I think will be achievable. Mostly by happenstance because my life was pretty linear at the time. More even keel and less chaotic than everything covered in Anywhere But Home.

First slump

After the last blog post about hoping I have enough material to write a second book, I have it in my mind that I might not have enough material during the period which I wanted to cover (up to age 19). I'm thinking that I might cover a larger portion of my life, not in the autobiographical sense, but more of a memoir. This way I can pick and choose what to expose. In the first book, I exposed as much as I could without stepping on other's toes or telling their story. There are pieces of the story which I cut out and saved elsewhere because I got into the realm of telling someone else's story. While it might be an interesting catalyst to provoke them into writing their own story (which, to me, would be very interesting), I have to let them make that decision on their own.

Finding my way on Book 2

Book 2, for the past couple of weeks, has just been a collection of thoughts and pictures which help spark my memory. Mid story, if I get stuck, I look up a picture of an object or a place which is relevant to the story and that usually sparks more memories. I was recently writing about a weekend trip to Ocean City Maryland and in describing the events which transpired that weekend, I looked up a picture of the hotel. While it looks slightly different than it did in 1987, it's still basically the same hotel. Late last week I was writing in stream of consciousness, which I usually do in order to get ideas out, and I believe that what came out will be the beginning of the second book. If there's enough content for a second book....