Category Archives: Author Background

The Memoir brought to print

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When I began writing, I had no idea what I would ultimately be doing with my completed manuscript. I spent no time planning for the future and instead either wrote or edited whenever I could. Consequently, several months passed by before I even began to investigate what the next steps might possibly be. Somehow, I knew that I had to just keep on writing. I just kept my attention focused on the task at hand, the new manner of self-expression that I had been granted.

Agraduation-1311224pproximately thirteen years prior to beginning The Primal Contradiction, I was given the opportunity to return to school in order to finish college and obtain a bachelor’s degree. While I was there, I quickly learned that I enjoyed writing immensely and that my instructors recognized the aptitude growing within me.

Over the next few years, I spent nearly all of my days off from my current job writing papers for school, eventually earning a Bachelor of Science in Business & Management. It truly was a special time in my life that I will always treasure and never forget. But unfortunately, I was unable to transform what I had learned into any kind of meaningful purpose—not until many years later when I realized that I needed to begin the process of writing a book.

Although the ideas and memories that came to me while working on the manuscript seemed to be originating from somewhere outside of me, I readily took them in and really enjoyed transferring them to paper. It was a challenge that I never shied away from. I never lost the initial excitement that I had found when I began. I was able to write the bulk of the story down in just over four months but definitely needed to spend the following year making the whole thing more readable.

Soon, I began to inquire and then understood exactly what I would need to do with the
completed manuscript. The information I found was quite pointed—little hope, if any, was granted to the first-time-attachment-2-1240615writer. Finding someone who would consider taking on a new author was described as being nearly impossible. But I began sending letters to literary agents anyway, perhaps a hundred or more over the next few months. Not one recipient showed any interest. The majority did not reply.

I read about self-publishing and found there were other alternatives available to me, so I decided to pay for the privilege of being an author. The whole process was quite organized and completed in a timely manner. In effect, the process of having a book brought to production in this way simply entailed pre-paying for all that was provided. I was given some amount of control, and I was also quite pleased with the overall results. I never really knew how much I wanted to write a book until I was able to open up and turn the pages of my own.

The origins of a memoir

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Until the day before I actually began working on “The Primal Contradiction”, I had never in my life thought seriously about sitting down and writing a book.

I was supposed to tell my story in this way, describing everything about my search for the truth.

I was supposed to tell my story in this way, describing everything about my search for the truth.

The immensity of such a project seemed unattainable to me, well beyond anything I believed I was even capable of. Early in the morning on that day, however, I earnestly asked for help, for a way to be lifted from the everydayness of the mundane existence I seemed trapped in, neither knowing the reason why nor having the faintest inkling of what the answer might be that I was searching for. And then, all at once, I clearly perceived the message unfold within my awareness.

I knew my direction had been pointed out to me and that, along the way, others’ perceptions would need to be considered before my own. I was supposed to tell my story in this way, describing everything about my search for the truth. Consequently, I knew that I would be doing exactly what I had always wanted yet feared to do: reveal exactly what had happened to me more than thirty-five years ago.

As a young boy, I grew up believing that my observations were sound, that interpretations and classifications were important. I was overflowing with personal opinions, committed to upholding a system that I employed to evaluate everything that was experienced in life. However, at one point when I was a young adult, the hard-and-fast manner in which I had always perceived was suddenly and completely transformed by a power I had never known of before. All of my condescending thoughts and behaviors came to an abrupt end, and the powerfully deceptive preoccupation with self-will allowed me to go free.

Stripped of the familiar, predictable pattern of thinking that I had always known, I was abruptly suffused with a sense of awareness so foreign that I was forced to find a way to exist in a world I had previously not known. I had to let go of nearly everything I believed was true about human nature and adopt a new position from which to view the world. Almost immediately afterward, I began learning a way to be, discovering a method of living that alleviated the painful affliction of self-centered arrogance along with its devastating compulsions of prideful disdain and indignation.

Because of having lived through such episodes of personal transformation so long ago, I was ultimately able to see the truth about myself and finally did realize that I needed to share some of these extraordinary stories with others—perhaps even provide new understanding or grant a measure of insight to another. When I began writing, a mysterious, intense power subsequently pulled me through each of the chapters, enabling me to remember circumstances that I had forgotten long ago while encouraging me to maintain my focus as well as follow its direction. All along the way, it helped me to weave through the labyrinth of memories and recall the specific details that precisely describe the experiences garnered during a significant portion of my lifetime.