"God, I was so happy, seeing them like that, hearing the laughs and screams, seeing their grins flapping in the wind as they tore around the track. I had to wipe a tear from my eye before they could get off the ride and meet me across the street. Samantha had a huge smile on her face, and her eyes were the size of saucers."
That’s a blog entry that Janice Erlbaum wrote in 2005 about her trip to Coney Island with a young runaway. Over the next few months, her troubled relationship with that teenager would change dramatically--an emotional process recorded in Erlbaum's new book, Have You Found Her.
Today Erlbaum explains how her stories move from diary to blog to final memoir shape, giving us a glimpse--just like that video--behind her pages.
Welcome to my deceptively simple feature, Five Easy Questions. In the spirit of Jack Nicholson’s mad piano player, I run a weekly set of quality conversations with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web writing.
Jason Boog:
On page 225, you have a great scene with Sam and your domestic partner at Coney Island--it's a gorgeous, kinetic scene. Could you just walk us through the process of writing that scene? How did you build it from memory and how did you edit it into this final shape?
Janice Erlbaum:
I originally wrote the Coney Island scene the day after it happened – it’s posted on my blog as an entry called “Coneyworld,” dated August 28, 2005. Continue reading...
