This morning I re-wrote the preface to ONE of my projects for the third time. In my mind, the preface needs to be right since it is going to point to the rest of the book, set the tone, define the parameters, and so on. The other prefaces failed to do these things. I think.
The thing is, I found and purchased another book also written by an ex-employee of the phone company. I won't judge it, but say that it is a smallish volume consisting of about 40 chapters, each of which is a vignette, a funny or poignant story involving a phone company worker and a customer. Except they are not really funny, nor particularly poignant. I always knew that I wanted the subject matter in my phone company book to appeal to non-phone-company people, and not to other employees, ex, or otherwise. So, it's a little hard to gain the right perspective. I think that the authors of this book were stretching just a little bit--so, when people say, man, you ought to write a book, it's not necessarily always good advice.
Anyway.
I agree about setting the tone. I don't know if real writers do. But I feel like if I don't have the first chapter pretty close to right, anything that comes after will have me floundering around in the dark. I have a lot of incomplete first chapters.
ReplyDeleteSo you're writing a memoir? Good for you and best of luck. I wouldn't even know where to start...
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