Re-imagining my story

Many know I’m writing a book about the recovery from an accident where I fell 15 metres off a building in 2014. It was no easy journey. Neither is the completion of a perfectly packaged book for a publisher to support printing and distributing the work.

Recently, I employed a professional editor to review a chapter and a half. She gave me a few pointers I will incorporate and felt I could revisit the story in a more logical professional manner – in a way separating myself to become the reader a little more.

So I am working on a memoir exercise book, gradually piecing the story back together, by pulling it apart.

The difficulty with the story is how it was not written as a recollection. I did not decide to tell my story after recovery in a thoughtfully clear moment.

It was written during the events occurring. For this reason it inhabits the mind and embodies the voice of a person suffering from Brain Injury, of me suffering from Brain Injury. I am trying not to lose that voice to who I am today. I didn’t write the book. Paul from 2014 after falling 15 metres off a building wrote the start of the book. That is the person I want to convey as the storyteller to future readers.

This week I looked at the theme of the story.

Here is a list of words I made that embody the story’s theme;

unexpected, passion, interest, life, unknown, judgement

The exercise book had accomplishment, disappointment, victory, fear and gratitude as words to encapsulate the story I wish to tell. I felt ‘accomplishment’ was a word closest to the heart of the story. All the hard work I’d done paid off in the end. That is an amazing achievement when I read or recollect the worst stages of recovery.

I could combat struggle through confidence and strength. Strength in what I wanted in the end had to be overarching to influence me at the darkest times. Comparison and judgement were detrimental from an internal or external perspective. I had to follow my interests and passions to get through it. I learnt the value in focused listening to my needs for the first time in my life because if I didn’t, then I wouldn’t be here today.

That’s a little summary of this week. It is good to lay out the story. Within time (7 more years maybe, who knows), I will get that publisher and review/edit the over 250 pages again 🙂

Never give up. We all have a story.