When the Writer Tells his own Story
I was asked in a book club interview the other day what prompted me to write Lost Edens and I had to say that I really didn't feel like I had a choice. I'm a writer, it's what I do. Life happens and first I grab a book and read, and then I sit down and write. The bigger question is why I decided to publish. After all, I have other manuscripts piled up, so why this one?
I think the answer might be so that conversations like what abuse does or does not look like could be had (which is already happening in early reader reviews). I think it also might be so that people who have gone through something similar will be able to share in an experience, if only on paper. So far, reviewers who have gone through something similar express the feeling that Lost Edens is an accurate portrayal of their own personal experiences, which I think is fascinating.
Each time a reader contacts me and says that he or she went through the same kind of pain I'm at once saddened that it's so widespread and also amazed at the consistencies of human experience. It also makes me feel content with my decision to publish; that somehow the story is useful, even without discussion.
Toward the consistencies of human experience bit, here's something Samuel Johnson published on Autobiographies in November 24, 1759:
Biography is, of the various kinds of narrative writing, that which is most eagerly read, and most easily applied to the purposes of life.
The mischievous consequences of vice and folly, of irregular desires and predominant passions, are best discovered by those relations which are levelled with the general surface of life, which tell not how any man became great, but how he was made happy; not how he lost the favour of his prince, but how he became discontented with himself.
I think the answer might be so that conversations like what abuse does or does not look like could be had (which is already happening in early reader reviews). I think it also might be so that people who have gone through something similar will be able to share in an experience, if only on paper. So far, reviewers who have gone through something similar express the feeling that Lost Edens is an accurate portrayal of their own personal experiences, which I think is fascinating.
Each time a reader contacts me and says that he or she went through the same kind of pain I'm at once saddened that it's so widespread and also amazed at the consistencies of human experience. It also makes me feel content with my decision to publish; that somehow the story is useful, even without discussion.
Toward the consistencies of human experience bit, here's something Samuel Johnson published on Autobiographies in November 24, 1759:
Biography is, of the various kinds of narrative writing, that which is most eagerly read, and most easily applied to the purposes of life.
The mischievous consequences of vice and folly, of irregular desires and predominant passions, are best discovered by those relations which are levelled with the general surface of life, which tell not how any man became great, but how he was made happy; not how he lost the favour of his prince, but how he became discontented with himself.
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