Tag: autobiography

Memories Are Like A Puzzle

On By Michel McDonaldIn Books, eBookLeave a comment

When I started writing my autobiography I thought it was going to be a breeze.  I just start typing and let the memories flow through and I would be finished in no time.  WRONG!

Having to remember what happened when so many things happened in a single year is like putting together a puzzle with pieces from 20 puzzles mixed together.  Before writing it out, I have to put down time lines on paper.  There are certain things that happened that are so wrong though.  I know they happened but how did they happen at all?

Example: I remember coming home drunk during my sisters birthday party in a specific apartment that we lived in.  I remember my bedroom was in a partitioned part of the living room and I remember plopping down on my bed drunk.  But, it’s impossible because during that time when my sister had that birthday party I wasn’t living with them anymore, I had been kicked out of the house.

That memory is impossible.  It couldn’t have happened during her birthday so I have to assume that it wasn’t her birthday but maybe a summer party instead.

I have to place the wrong puzzle piece in the wrong slot and hope that nobody notices that it’s wrong.  Does that make it fiction then if I make up what happened or is something I should just leave out entirely?  The problem is, it is an integral part of the story since I was 17 years old when it happened.  I’m trying to make a point about teenage alcohol abuse so I have to leave it in the story line.

Another example: I lived in so many different places in a few years but each memory seems like it took years to create but I now know that it was all during 1988-90.  The problem that I face is trying to figure out where I lived and worked and when.  If I watched tv during those times it would be so much easier to remember when I lived there because I could remember what happened in that season of the show.

I do remember living with my parents when the show Roseanne first aired and watching the series premiere with my mom and a few episodes after that but that was the only show I remember watching that was new.

Now I wish I had watched more tv when I was younger.  I wish I had carried a diary or made a resume.  At least if I had a resume I would know where I worked throughout my life, that way I could remember where I lived and what happened.  But nooo….

Oh well, I’m sure it will all come to me eventually.  It is not going to be easy to write this book and I know it’s going to take some time to do.

Autobiography Research

On By Michel McDonaldIn Books, eBook, Gay, NookLeave a comment

I went looking on the Rainbow ebooks website for an autobiography and they don’t have that category so I searched in biography which is empty. So I went to the borders website to find a gay autobiography in e-book format but unfortunately there are 34,537 biographies. They have many categories so you can narrow down your search but there were none in the “gay” category so I thought…. GOOGLE!

Note: I searched Borders because I have $15 borders bucks from doing surveys with e-rewards.com and I’m tired of only being able to get $25 Game Stop cards. I was never really interested in the other rewards they offer but now that I have a Nook I figure I might as well get some ebooks out of it.

So I went to the Google search engine and typed “Autobiography of a gay person” and this is what came up.

glbtq >> literature >> Autobiography, Gay MaleIn its first century of existence, gay male autobiography has become increasingly more open, frank, and unapologetic…

Edward Carpenter’s “My Days and Dreams” was published in 1890. Like other early gay male autobiographies, the book was reticent about its author’s intimate relationships.

This is the very first autobiography of a gay person and it was published in 1890. You know what first came to mind? A book that was published in 1890 is now out of print which means… It’s FREE!

I turned my Nook on, went to the shop menu, chose e-books then typed in the name of this book and it was the 2nd thing in the list and it said it was from Google and it was free!

So now I get to do my research from a pioneer. Although, his experience is going to be totally different from mine given the fact that they were from BLOODY 1890… but still. It will help me anyway.