Especially read Gladwell's Preface in which he tells how he came to choose his subjects and where he finds his stories ("You don't start out at the top if you want to find a story. You start in the middle, because it's the people in the middle who do the actual work in the world.") Be sure to read his chapter, "Late Bloomers; Why Do We Equate Genius with Precocity?" His premise is that many people are slow to develop their genius and craft, partly due to a propensity to experiment.
My way of writing songs has always been to write the lyrics first and then fit them into a melody/rhythm. Before I wrote my last recorded song, "See Him Home," some little thought in my head suggested that I first write the melody. I thought that was crazy, but the deadline for when I would have to have a song ready was a week away, and I was desperate enough to try anything. I sat down at the piano and a melody floated out of the chord changes I was playing. Next, the words fell into the spaces, words so touching and real, they surprised me and made me cry.
A few nights ago, I was thinking about what I'd like to write next, after my book Life with a Buckskinner hits the screens of the Kindle and Nook readers and the audio version is in the ears of iPod listeners. I could write a memoir about the years when I nearly died from a dark-ages abortion and the Catholic church annulled my marriage to my first husband. There's a piece of history I'm hoping our country never has to go back to! I could write a memoir about what it was like growing up in a family with a brain-injured father. That's the most common injury of war veterans these days.
I was in a quirky mood that night, and I've chewed up and choked on those old topics enough. That little backwards thought in my head started buzzing around again, suggesting that I first write the title of a story, and then fill in the story. So I wrote down a bunch of titles.
And then I got this freaky idea to let others write chapters for these books. They'll be collective works, written by a number of people instead of just one. Each chapter has to stand on its own with a beginning, middle and end. There won't be any money for the contributors--it takes some capital and editor's time to get an e-book out, and most books sell fewer than 100 downloads, for a pittance--but there will be plenty of notoriety to go around!
It doesn't matter if your chapter is fact or fiction, serious, funny, long, or short (a few hundred words). Write whatever and however much you want to write. The only limitations are that your chapter can't have any "explicit" sexual material in it, and it needs to somehow fit with the book title. Include made-up or real-life stories in your chapter, to provide a balance of showing and telling.
If you're interested, do this:
- Friend me on Facebook, if you're not already on my Facebook page.
- Send me a message telling me which book(s) you'd like to write a chapter for. I'll give you my email address.
- Write the chapter; make sure your name is on it and which book you're writing the chapter for.
- Attach the chapter to an email.
Renelle's Facebook Page
Here are the book titles:
- How To Be Something You're Not
- A Perfectionist's Descent into Mediocrity
- How I Quit Smoking and Everything Else
- Surviving the Presidential Election; When Moving to Another Country Isn't an Option
- Confessions of a Non-Bloomer
- Can I Do Anything About This? Plus 200 (or however many we get) More Decision-Guiding Questions to Ask Yourself (each question has to be explained for its importance, with examples of how/when to ask the question--again, humorous, serious--your call.)
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