December 14, 2013 – sold another copy today
For the past fifteen years I have had the desire to write my story. The original title was “My Story.â€Â In 2008 I set out to complete it but was sidetracked with a burning desire to write a story about my Mom. This book took on the title “Coins of Gold†and was published in 2010.
In 2009 my next writing project took off by my dedication of spending time to write every morning. Sometimes the words flowed easily; sometimes I didn’t have much to say. Whenever a thought came to mind, I would write it down. Lo and behold, a story began to take shape and before long I had a beginning and an end. From there it was a matter of filling in the middle. The story of Beth Worthington and Timothy Eadon was born and the title “Arrows, Indians and Love†came to mind for the gentle love story from Boston to Boonesborough and beyond. History of the time of Daniel Boone helped to fill out the story.
These are two books written, with two completely different audiences to appeal to. Some will like both because I wrote them; these are my loyal supporters. Some will not be interested in either because they won’t believe that insignificant me could write a book.
Now it was time to finish my autobiography. I had an outline of what I thought I wanted to share and went ahead to complete writing it. Then it was time for editing. I struggled with who would want to read it. Who is my target audience? Why did I write it? Who can it help?
I came across the book “How to Write Your Life Story†by Karen Ulrich and it was an invaluable tool in the process of writing my story. Karen encourages the reader to make lists of all kinds of things, including my timeline, how I fit into history. There were lists of my best friends, decisions that changed my life, people who have influenced me, goals achieved, favourite food, places, jobs, my passions and what I am drawn to. We were encouraged to write short stories and poems. Twenty years ago I began organizing and compiling my memoirs and have about one hundred volumes put together. They were a great resource for writing my story, along with the dozens of photo albums of family pictures and outings over the years. No one is likely to read through 100 volumes, so it was time to reduce them to the size of a book and include the most relevant information. As the editing progresses, a new format begins to emerge.
A project at Pioneer Club was to do a “This is Me†booklet. Often I would do the projects right along with the children. It was a good resource of memories.
The kaleidoscope was invented by Sir David Brewster and patented in 1817. David named his invention after the Greek words, kalos or beautiful, eidos or form, and scopos or watcher. So kaleidoscope means the beautiful form watcher. Brewster’s kaleidoscope was a tube containing loose pieces of coloured glass and other pretty objects, reflected by mirrors or glass lenses set at angles that created patterns when viewed through the end of the tube. The kaleidoscope creates reflections of reflections of a direct view of the objects at the end. The image will be symmetrical if the mirror angle is an even divider of 360 degrees. A mirror set at 60 degrees will generate a pattern of six regular sectors. A mirror angle at 45 degrees will make eight equal sectors, and an angle of 30 degrees will make twelve. The lines and colors of simple shapes are multiplied by the mirrors into a visually stimulating vortex. I have always been intrigued by the beautiful patterns that can be viewed through a kaleidoscope. This book is a kaleidoscope of my memories to be enjoyed.
