Something Different

 

I've written in the past about someday writing a book about a true story that I came across years ago. But I have come to realize all these years later that by setting my goal so high, I have doomed myself to failure and indeed, every time I sit down at the keyboard on the computer, I become so lost in the details of book formatting, citations, getting the order of story correct, fleshing out details and fretting over other details, that nothing really every happens towards the writing aspect. 

Back when I started this blog some 21 years ago, I think it was every November was a month when bloggers all over the world dedicated to writing a story of sorts and I participated a couple times. There were no dreams of publishing or getting things just right, only putting words to "paper" and I have fond memories of those days. So I thought I might attempt to do something similar with this true story that has been percolating in my brain all these years and maybe pick one day a week to post a new chapter of the story. By allowing myself the freedom to just write, perhaps I can rid my brain of the shackles it has borne for all these years and allow myself to move onward to other projects.

The story itself is a true story that I came across in old newspapers and the more I looked into it, the more I was blown away at the twists and turns it presented. Back then, I had to make trips to the state library and find articles manually on microfilm machines and print out copies of them at $0.25 per page. I supplemented that with boilerplate articles I found in regional newspapers through online newspaper archive subscriptions. Then about five years ago, our local library received a grant to digitize the local newspaper where all these events took place. Soon, I had local copies of all the articles and was able to fill in a lot of the gaps I had in the storyline.

Several more years would go by as I transcribed these articles manually into a word document in chronological order where I could read through them in an easier fashion than trying to squint at a computer image of a blurry copy of a nearly 200 year old newspaper article. I could make notes, flip here or there and begin to compile a storyline in my head. I just never have been able to make that critical step of getting it out of my head and into actual characters that could be read by others. 

So this is my attempt to get the story written without a lot of fleshing out. If it doesn't work, so be it but hopefully it will bear fruit. I am going to choose Friday's as the day to try and have the next section done. If I miss a Friday or two along the way, so be it. But hopefully, eventually, I will get it all written out at least in some sort of rough draft form.