The year I retired from teaching high school, I journalled, then started turning my journal into a memoir. Some people were bored with what I wrote. Others hated it. One reader, bless him, said he wanted to get to know my students better. So my book has become vignettes about them. Each vignette takes place over a period of at least a week or so; some span considerably longer. Between vignettes, the book includes word snapshots. One, for example, is of a lunchtime queue and another is about a telephone call that reached an answering machine. I'm three-quarters through my first major edit of my first draft. The A&L group is wonderful, has already taught me so much. First lesson: I am trying to get comfortable with the concept that I as narrator am in fact a character in the book.
A&L Writer's Group Forum