I have been approached by a number of mothers all of whom have lost children and have started to write a book or a collection of memoirs about the topic both before, during and after the event. They want me to help get the book into production and this is a very good time to look at the stages of production irrespective of the subject matter.
When you have input from more than one person it may be better to separate their different chemistries and their different approaches rather than try and concatenate them into one.
People love stories that they can identify with and if you have lost a relative or loved one or child, we need something to affiliate the person’s mind with what is written.
People present something that is very important to them and this is a very good therapy but it can be just a prelude or a dress rehearsal to writing the actual book when you have had time to reflect more clearly on how you should address people and who is your target market.
I would have thought an obvious market is people who have been bereaved because you would not relate to the subject matter unless you had had some sort of experience of bereavement either of a child or of a colleague or family member. The principles are the same with everyone but I would have thought slightly more extreme with innocent children
The first bit of advice I would give is if you want to make a thing of it and publish it, is to see what is on the market and see if you can spot a gap.
Writers might also like to compose a small sample and show it to someone who would be in their cohort of being interested and see their initial instinctive reaction rather than finish the whole book and then find that your style is of little or no interest
The meeting started well enough and I shared my own experience of losing my son and the time in Great Ormond St. hospital but then came the time to discuss my plans which was to get each of four people to describe themselves, their background, their lifestyle and then to describe the state of mind they were in before, during the premature passing of the child and afterwards.
Since it was eight years since they first met I felt it was high time to offer another suggestion for moving forward since they were still stuck at a very early stage.
I also suggested they write about the reaction of their partners, the reaction of family and friends, and any advice they had sought and any lessons they had learnt. This would be followed by conclusions and reflections. I thought that for good accounts would be very interesting for people and would fill a gap in the market.
Unfortunately one of the three ladies who turn up felt threatened and immediately stopped me in my tracks and started to thank me for my contribution and said that they would be in touch with me, in other words pulling up the drawbridge. There was a lot of anger in her stance and her words.
I immediately saw that there were levels of emotion that was not compatible with moving forward so I made the decision to close the meeting. Another five minutes and we would have come to blows.
So I’ve learned that the limitations of a meeting, no matter how worthy the cause, is limited by the personalities of those who attend; one person can break an atmosphere of goodwill and create the wrong vibration making it impossible for me to continue.
All we can do is to put our contribution out in goodwill and good faith and as Jesus said and leave it to people’s free will. Some seed will fall on stony soil and not reproduce and other seed will produce 100%.
The things that Jesus said were not universally accepted by any means so why should i expect any better.
Anyway it was a good exercise and I’m glad I did it and they must sort out their own situations as we must all. It is interesting to note that any effort made to give into a situation for the greater good results in learning and I’m always grateful for that.