Beginnings

I have a "working" title and subtitle:

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Mike Parker's life in small letters

I will meet with Mike tomorrow for our first collaborative session. I am going to buy a new tape recorder. I wish now I had taped all the phone calls of our coast to coast courtship/marriage. Those hour to three hour daily talks over fourteen years (and the three after our divorce when we were negotiating with that large computer company) would have been great to catalog. Mike would have loved the idea of recording for posterity but c'est la vie. I was listening and journaling throughout.

Where to start? I am a novice writer so I am open to all suggestions. I am reading, scribbling in and following the advice of Pam Brodowsky and Eric Neuhaus' book, Bulletproof Book Proposals. I joined the Biographer Writers Group and plan to attend my first local meeting in Cambridge, MA next Sunday. I watched all the sessions of the first annual Biographer Writers Convention on You Tube. I sent in a modest donation to the Maine Humanities Council; I need all the friends I can get.

I ordered my own copy of the documentary film, HELVETICA. Mike was featured in that film, describing the development of that typeface and his involvement with it.

I have been a Trustee of Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance for the past few years and I will look to our membership for help whenever I feel like it. I have a Writing Coach, Maggie Butler with whom I meet weekly; I have participated in (four) her Weekend Writing Retreats and will continue to whenever she offers them.

I am a member of two other writing groups: the SunSeekers, a memoir group of fabulous women who bonded at a MWPA Haystack Retreat (Deer Isle, ME) three years ago. Our group is led by best selling author, Meredith Hall (Without a Map). We meet quarterly for an entire day to share our writing and challenge ourselves with exercises. I consider these women (Anne Zill, Jennifer Lunden, Scotty Friar, Irene Dickinson, Tammy Smith and Meredith) to be sister travelers of the pen and best friends. Another MWPA Haystack group last year led by Suzanne Strempek Shea (Shelf Life, Songs from a Lead Line Room, Selling the Lite of Heaven) is spinning off a writing group starting next month with my long time buddy, Meg Weston and fellow seminar friends, David Treadwell and Deb Pfeffer along with several of David's writer friends.

I am enrolled in two other upcoming seminars: Monica Wood's group (Any Bitter Thing) at MWPA Linekin Bay Resort at Boothbay on October 1,2,3 and both the workshop and seminar of the Key West Literary Seminar in January, 2011 (I attended KWLS poetry seminar last January) I am not sure who my instructor will be yet at KWLS. The annual fund raiser for MWPA is this coming Thursday and I, and 8 others, are going to be having dinner with Joyce Maynard (To Die For, At Home in the World, Labor Day). I am planning to ask Joyce about her writing seminar next February at her home in Lake Atitlan in Guatemala-Mike and I were at Lake Atitlan and Antigua in the early 1990s. I know what the travel will involve. I am not sure I can physically handle getting there.

I am exposing myself to as much wisdom and experience that I can. However, as Maggie keeps reminding me, JUST WRITE, and I do that at least four hours a day.

Please comment. I appreciate suggestions.