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"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...

I didn’t know then that I was writing scenes for an eventual book; at the time, I was just blogging about a great day we’d enjoyed together while all the details and dialogue were still fresh in my mind.

Later, when I realized that I was writing a book about my relationship with Sam, I reread all my old journals and blog entries about her, and recycled some of them wholesale for the manuscript.

So the scene in the book is nearly identical to the original post, with a few more details added for emotional context.

Want to read more memoir advice? Check out the rest of Erlbaum's interview, here at The Publishing Spot. Just follow these links:

Erlbaum showed us How To Negotiate A Book Deal.

Then she explained How To Become A Memoir Detective.

After that, we discussed "One of the dirty little secrets of writing professionally."

Then, we focused on The Fine Art of Journal Writing.