Searching for Magnanimity ("Memoirs of Finding Forgiveness")

[princessdiana92]

This is a very personal project I'm working on with my friend I met in max security county jail 4 years ago, Rohan. He and I recently met up again and decided to write a book together. So far, our stories have been connecting well together and I'm loving where it's going. 

Keep in mind everything you'll read is true. I know you guys don't usually critique "memoir-esque" writing but I would love any feedback you have for me. Any scenes that stick out to you as needing more details/descriptions, etc. We are both very open to suggestions!

Thanks for taking a look. The writing process has been difficult but very therapeutic. I'm pretty nervous putting this out there but I trust you guys as my inner circle which is the only reason I'm putting this here (and, this is a very, very ROUGH draft...).

Don't hold back.

xoxox

Sneaky T


 Searching for Magnanimity.pdf (221.87 KB)

[justin1023]

Nov 9, 2017 15:31:43 GMT princessdiana92 said:

This is a very personal project I'm working on with my friend I met in max security county jail 4 years ago, Rohan. He and I recently met up again and decided to write a book together. So far, our stories have been connecting well together and I'm loving where it's going. 

Keep in mind everything you'll read is true. I know you guys don't usually critique "memoir-esque" writing but I would love any feedback you have for me. Any scenes that stick out to you as needing more details/descriptions, etc. We are both very open to suggestions!

Thanks for taking a look. The writing process has been difficult but very therapeutic. I'm pretty nervous putting this out there but I trust you guys as my inner circle which is the only reason I'm putting this here (and, this is a very, very ROUGH draft...).

Don't hold back.

xoxox

Sneaky T


 

Hey Tianna, 

Thanks for being willing to share this. I think it's so cool that you're working on a joint memoir with Rohan. This is really wonderful and immensely readable. I would absolutely read a full memoir of you and Rohan's stories weaved together liked you've done so far. I don't have much to critique outside of tightening up transitions which I mention below and in my line notes. The few things I do have are:

One thing missing from your intro is an explanation of your place in the prison. You reference it toward the end of page 2 as if you had explained what you were doing there, but unless I missed it, you didn't really state the reasoning for you being in jail. You do specifically mention it on page 6, but that feels too deep into the narrative. 

I hope it's OK that I included suggested edits for Rohan's section. I'm not sure if you want to or already have, but I think you can take the creative writer's touch to smooth out his story. His story is a powerful one, and I don't want it to get lost in abrupt transitions or missing context. I marked some of these areas, but I think you can tighten his sections up quite a bit if he's OK with it. 

Finally, remember any references to local places or things will be lost on those reading this on the other side of the country or in another country. What is a Wawa? What is PICC? What is NIMA? Things like that should be defined or generalized to make it clear to anyone reading your memoir. 

I really hope you continue this, and I hope this feedback is helpful. Thank you again for sharing. 

Attachments:

Searching for Magnanimity.pdf (373.58 KB)

[Charlie Allison]

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Tianna:

Lets talk about these two essays and the structure used in them, but I suppose this would be more logical if we start, as it were, from the top. Say, with the title. 'Searching for Magnaminity' isn't a bad start, indeed, it gives a sense of action and purpose to your work--however, on the other hand, the title is less precise than I think you mean. Magnaminity, as a concept, is someone being gracious in victory--extending themselves, courtesies and humanities that they aren't strictly obligated to do--and I don't think that's really what you or Rohan is looking for, exactly. Both of your essays deal with themes of confinement, repression and eventual self-discovery and realization. My advice would be to cut the title for now--let it sit, ruminate on it a bit. As you edit and refine your work and Rohan refines his, the themes and priority of them will doubtless shift and allow new issues to be addressed before seeking publication.
Short, short version: Do the title last. Don't try to force your essay to support your title, make your title support your essay--after you've dotted all i's and crossed your t's.
Anyway, on to the meat of the essay.
As is usual for you, you have some wonderful, soaring language here Tianna.

Sometimes life weighs heavy on my shoulders and the temptation to shrug it off overwhelms me.

I think this is a lovely sentence--with tweaks made, I would even give serious consideration to making it your opener--it would require restructuring your essay a significant amount, but this is a strong enough sentence to be worth considering--start with your inward life and move outward until you meet up with Rohan and then we can see how you changed and adapted from there.
I do have some concerns with the structure of the essay as it stands currently however--while the alternating POVs is a solid idea and can give depth to shared scenes, here it feels as if I'm being pulled, taffy-like between two poles, which I don't think was your intention.
One exercise that I've had some limited success with, but still success, is going through, paragraph by paragraph and saying what I want the audience to get out of it in one sentence. In order for this to be maximally effective, in the editing process I would recommend splitting yours and Rohan's segments apart and putting them into separate documents--both to insure cohesion of tone, language and meaning, but also so you can observe the progression of your thoughts, feelings and arguments.


Questions:

What are your goals for this work? Is it for catharsis? If it's intended for publication, where are you thinking? An op-ed piece or a feature length article in a magazine or newspaper? Is this meant to be a personal reflection that will then be fictionalized? This work runs a lot of genres--some of Rohan's work could be killer flash-fiction (I'm struck by the tight prose and metaphor of 'Spider in the Storm'--I'd encourage him to sharpen it further still and start submitting it to one of the many flash venues out there).
But more to the point, Tianna, what do you want from this? What you have here is a fascinating string of potentialities--any one of which could be chipped, shaped and formed into a compelling essay, op-ed, or fictional piece short of the larger work. But a string of them, each with separate titles, themes, is hard to categorize, and thusly, proportionally harder to move along to a second draft.
Some ideas that use what you already have here as a starting point:
-Combined scene. Work with Rohan to co-wright a recreation of your first meeting--either as a retrospective (dialogue could be a useful tool here to move the essay forward--it would allow you to synthesize a lot of the lovely leg-work and soul-searching into a tight narrative arc.
-Collected flash--Both your and Rohan's style are lyrical and lend themselves to poetry and short, profound summaries of complicated scenarios.

I didn't mark up this copy of your work as much--watch your adverbs! But green generally means I enjoyed it, blue means watch for phrasing and yellow is consider cutting. Even still, I hope that this was more helpful than not--and I'm eager to see what you and Rohan do with it!
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Posted by princessdiana92Nov 9, 2017 at 10:31am
This is a very personal project I'm working on with my friend I met in max security county jail 4 years ago, Rohan. He and I recently met up again and decided to write a book together. So far, our stories have been connecting well together and I'm loving where it's going.

Keep in mind everything you'll read is true. I know you guys don't usually critique "memoir-esque" writing but I would love any feedback you have for me. Any scenes that stick out to you as needing more details/descriptions, etc. We are both very open to suggestions!

Thanks for taking a look. The writing process has been difficult but very therapeutic. I'm pretty nervous putting this out there but I trust you guys as my inner circle which is the only reason I'm putting this here (and, this is a very, very ROUGH draft...).

Don't hold back.

xoxox

Sneaky T


Searching for Magnanimity.pdf (221.87 KB)


Posted by justin1023Nov 14, 2017 at 10:05am
princessdiana92 Avatar
Nov 9, 2017 at 10:31am princessdiana92 said:
This is a very personal project I'm working on with my friend I met in max security county jail 4 years ago, Rohan. He and I recently met up again and decided to write a book together. So far, our stories have been connecting well together and I'm loving where it's going.

Keep in mind everything you'll read is true. I know you guys don't usually critique "memoir-esque" writing but I would love any feedback you have for me. Any scenes that stick out to you as needing more details/descriptions, etc. We are both very open to suggestions!

Thanks for taking a look. The writing process has been difficult but very therapeutic. I'm pretty nervous putting this out there but I trust you guys as my inner circle which is the only reason I'm putting this here (and, this is a very, very ROUGH draft...).

Don't hold back.

xoxox

Sneaky T





Hey Tianna,

Thanks for being willing to share this. I think it's so cool that you're working on a joint memoir with Rohan. This is really wonderful and immensely readable. I would absolutely read a full memoir of you and Rohan's stories weaved together liked you've done so far. I don't have much to critique outside of tightening up transitions which I mention below and in my line notes. The few things I do have are:

One thing missing from your intro is an explanation of your place in the prison. You reference it toward the end of page 2 as if you had explained what you were doing there, but unless I missed it, you didn't really state the reasoning for you being in jail. You do specifically mention it on page 6, but that feels too deep into the narrative.

I hope it's OK that I included suggested edits for Rohan's section. I'm not sure if you want to or already have, but I think you can take the creative writer's touch to smooth out his story. His story is a powerful one, and I don't want it to get lost in abrupt transitions or missing context. I marked some of these areas, but I think you can tighten his sections up quite a bit if he's OK with it.

Finally, remember any references to local places or things will be lost on those reading this on the other side of the country or in another country. What is a Wawa? What is PICC? What is NIMA? Things like that should be defined or generalized to make it clear to anyone reading your memoir.

I really hope you continue this, and I hope this feedback is helpful. Thank you again for sharing.



Attachments:

Searching for Magnanimity.pdf (373.58 KB)

[princessdiana92]

Nov 21, 2017 16:37:34 GMT Charlie Allison said:

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Tianna:

Lets talk about these two essays and the structure used in them, but I suppose this would be more logical if we start, as it were, from the top. Say, with the title. 'Searching for Magnaminity' isn't a bad start, indeed, it gives a sense of action and purpose to your work--however, on the other hand, the title is less precise than I think you mean. Magnaminity, as a concept, is someone being gracious in victory--extending themselves, courtesies and humanities that they aren't strictly obligated to do--and I don't think that's really what you or Rohan is looking for, exactly. Both of your essays deal with themes of confinement, repression and eventual self-discovery and realization. My advice would be to cut the title for now--let it sit, ruminate on it a bit. As you edit and refine your work and Rohan refines his, the themes and priority of them will doubtless shift and allow new issues to be addressed before seeking publication.
Short, short version: Do the title last. Don't try to force your essay to support your title, make your title support your essay--after you've dotted all i's and crossed your t's.
Anyway, on to the meat of the essay.
As is usual for you, you have some wonderful, soaring language here Tianna.

Sometimes life weighs heavy on my shoulders and the temptation to shrug it off overwhelms me.

I think this is a lovely sentence--with tweaks made, I would even give serious consideration to making it your opener--it would require restructuring your essay a significant amount, but this is a strong enough sentence to be worth considering--start with your inward life and move outward until you meet up with Rohan and then we can see how you changed and adapted from there.
I do have some concerns with the structure of the essay as it stands currently however--while the alternating POVs is a solid idea and can give depth to shared scenes, here it feels as if I'm being pulled, taffy-like between two poles, which I don't think was your intention.
One exercise that I've had some limited success with, but still success, is going through, paragraph by paragraph and saying what I want the audience to get out of it in one sentence. In order for this to be maximally effective, in the editing process I would recommend splitting yours and Rohan's segments apart and putting them into separate documents--both to insure cohesion of tone, language and meaning, but also so you can observe the progression of your thoughts, feelings and arguments.


Questions:

What are your goals for this work? Is it for catharsis? If it's intended for publication, where are you thinking? An op-ed piece or a feature length article in a magazine or newspaper? Is this meant to be a personal reflection that will then be fictionalized? This work runs a lot of genres--some of Rohan's work could be killer flash-fiction (I'm struck by the tight prose and metaphor of 'Spider in the Storm'--I'd encourage him to sharpen it further still and start submitting it to one of the many flash venues out there).
But more to the point, Tianna, what do you want from this? What you have here is a fascinating string of potentialities--any one of which could be chipped, shaped and formed into a compelling essay, op-ed, or fictional piece short of the larger work. But a string of them, each with separate titles, themes, is hard to categorize, and thusly, proportionally harder to move along to a second draft.
Some ideas that use what you already have here as a starting point:
-Combined scene. Work with Rohan to co-wright a recreation of your first meeting--either as a retrospective (dialogue could be a useful tool here to move the essay forward--it would allow you to synthesize a lot of the lovely leg-work and soul-searching into a tight narrative arc.
-Collected flash--Both your and Rohan's style are lyrical and lend themselves to poetry and short, profound summaries of complicated scenarios.

I didn't mark up this copy of your work as much--watch your adverbs! But green generally means I enjoyed it, blue means watch for phrasing and yellow is consider cutting. Even still, I hope that this was more helpful than not--and I'm eager to see what you and Rohan do with it!



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Thread Summary
Posted by princessdiana92Nov 9, 2017 at 10:31am
This is a very personal project I'm working on with my friend I met in max security county jail 4 years ago, Rohan. He and I recently met up again and decided to write a book together. So far, our stories have been connecting well together and I'm loving where it's going.

Keep in mind everything you'll read is true. I know you guys don't usually critique "memoir-esque" writing but I would love any feedback you have for me. Any scenes that stick out to you as needing more details/descriptions, etc. We are both very open to suggestions!

Thanks for taking a look. The writing process has been difficult but very therapeutic. I'm pretty nervous putting this out there but I trust you guys as my inner circle which is the only reason I'm putting this here (and, this is a very, very ROUGH draft...).

Don't hold back.

xoxox

Sneaky T


Searching for Magnanimity.pdf (221.87 KB)


Posted by justin1023Nov 14, 2017 at 10:05am
princessdiana92 Avatar
Nov 9, 2017 at 10:31am princessdiana92 said:
This is a very personal project I'm working on with my friend I met in max security county jail 4 years ago, Rohan. He and I recently met up again and decided to write a book together. So far, our stories have been connecting well together and I'm loving where it's going.

Keep in mind everything you'll read is true. I know you guys don't usually critique "memoir-esque" writing but I would love any feedback you have for me. Any scenes that stick out to you as needing more details/descriptions, etc. We are both very open to suggestions!

Thanks for taking a look. The writing process has been difficult but very therapeutic. I'm pretty nervous putting this out there but I trust you guys as my inner circle which is the only reason I'm putting this here (and, this is a very, very ROUGH draft...).

Don't hold back.

xoxox

Sneaky T





Hey Tianna,

Thanks for being willing to share this. I think it's so cool that you're working on a joint memoir with Rohan. This is really wonderful and immensely readable. I would absolutely read a full memoir of you and Rohan's stories weaved together liked you've done so far. I don't have much to critique outside of tightening up transitions which I mention below and in my line notes. The few things I do have are:

One thing missing from your intro is an explanation of your place in the prison. You reference it toward the end of page 2 as if you had explained what you were doing there, but unless I missed it, you didn't really state the reasoning for you being in jail. You do specifically mention it on page 6, but that feels too deep into the narrative.

I hope it's OK that I included suggested edits for Rohan's section. I'm not sure if you want to or already have, but I think you can take the creative writer's touch to smooth out his story. His story is a powerful one, and I don't want it to get lost in abrupt transitions or missing context. I marked some of these areas, but I think you can tighten his sections up quite a bit if he's OK with it.

Finally, remember any references to local places or things will be lost on those reading this on the other side of the country or in another country. What is a Wawa? What is PICC? What is NIMA? Things like that should be defined or generalized to make it clear to anyone reading your memoir.

I really hope you continue this, and I hope this feedback is helpful. Thank you again for sharing.



Attachments:

Searching for Magnanimity.pdf (373.58 KB)

Hi Charlie!! Thank you so much for all the helpful feedback. You're dead-on with the title. That was Rohan's idea at first (but I know it will probably change the further we go). Also, a wonderful suggestion indeed to separate our stories to keep their flow going and then interweave them at a later stage. Already a lot of this is going to be revised and worked on (as any good piece of writing). 

I've taken Justin's suggestion as well, to incorporate more about the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program from the very beginning. And I love your suggestion, Charlie, of working together with Rohan to create a first scene describing our first meeting, thinking up some dialogue, etc. that's kinda what I was going for with my beginning (also why I want to stick with meeting Rohan in jail as the opener, though I do like the suggestion to begin with that sentence you picked out). 

As far as publication goals, we want to have this as a full book (can't quite call it a novel). There are a ton of memoir type books out there but I think what kinda sets this one apart is the two separate yet connected stories. It's been crazy writing this so far and feeling like our stories just keep reflecting each other in certain ways (and of course, that reflection will come much later when we interweave the two). 

Good point that right now the separate sections are difficult to make into a wholesome draft, but I think we are just going to have to see where this goes. I have a good feeling about it and so does Rohan so we are just going to keep working off that and see what we create. Can't thank you both (justin and charlie) for reading it and giving helpful feedback. It really helps knowing there's at least an inkling of something here. 

p.s. Charlie, I didn't see a pdf of your comments if you attached it? 

[princessdiana92]

Nov 14, 2017 15:05:45 GMT justin1023 said:

Nov 9, 2017 15:31:43 GMT princessdiana92 said:

This is a very personal project I'm working on with my friend I met in max security county jail 4 years ago, Rohan. He and I recently met up again and decided to write a book together. So far, our stories have been connecting well together and I'm loving where it's going. 

Keep in mind everything you'll read is true. I know you guys don't usually critique "memoir-esque" writing but I would love any feedback you have for me. Any scenes that stick out to you as needing more details/descriptions, etc. We are both very open to suggestions!

Thanks for taking a look. The writing process has been difficult but very therapeutic. I'm pretty nervous putting this out there but I trust you guys as my inner circle which is the only reason I'm putting this here (and, this is a very, very ROUGH draft...).

Don't hold back.

xoxox

Sneaky T


 

Hey Tianna, 

Thanks for being willing to share this. I think it's so cool that you're working on a joint memoir with Rohan. This is really wonderful and immensely readable. I would absolutely read a full memoir of you and Rohan's stories weaved together liked you've done so far. I don't have much to critique outside of tightening up transitions which I mention below and in my line notes. The few things I do have are:

One thing missing from your intro is an explanation of your place in the prison. You reference it toward the end of page 2 as if you had explained what you were doing there, but unless I missed it, you didn't really state the reasoning for you being in jail. You do specifically mention it on page 6, but that feels too deep into the narrative. 

I hope it's OK that I included suggested edits for Rohan's section. I'm not sure if you want to or already have, but I think you can take the creative writer's touch to smooth out his story. His story is a powerful one, and I don't want it to get lost in abrupt transitions or missing context. I marked some of these areas, but I think you can tighten his sections up quite a bit if he's OK with it. 

Finally, remember any references to local places or things will be lost on those reading this on the other side of the country or in another country. What is a Wawa? What is PICC? What is NIMA? Things like that should be defined or generalized to make it clear to anyone reading your memoir. 

I really hope you continue this, and I hope this feedback is helpful. Thank you again for sharing. 

Thank you so much for the feedback, Justin!! Super helpful and much appreciated on all accounts. 

Please feel free to suggest edits to Rohan as well. He's really happy to see that you guys are actually interested and reading. 

Great suggestion on incorporating more about WHY I'm in the jail in the first section. I've gone back and added that in and I think it helps a lot. Also in describing little things that the reader wouldn't know like PICC (Philadelphia Industrial Correctional Center), where Rohan and I first met and NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness), where Rohan now works. That stuff is easy for me and Rohan to breeze past since we know what it is and the outside eyes really help make that clear.  

Thank you so much again for reading this. sorry I've been behind on responding and also in reading your work. I promise to get better.
More memoirs to come.