Why, I ask myself, would anyone want to read a book about a mother with two sons in the Red Sox minor leagues (MINOR LEAGUE MOM: A MOTHER'S JOURNEY THROUGH THE RED SOX FARM TEAMS)? But they did! After ten months, my book has sold half of the first printing. I am astounded by this, so I analyze. I had read everything in print on the subject of minor league baseball before I started writing and discovered that I had a unique story to tell...a story of a family with two sons playing for the same pro team, with the same goal: becoming a major leaguer. Neither of them ever made it. There would be no instant name recognition to this story. Still, a mother's point-of-view was unique in the world of pro sports.
But my story also had to be readable. So I wrote my memoir in the best way I knew how. As a former writing teacher, I knew the pitfalls. I needed to have my sons, the two main characters, grab the reader's attention and sympathy. They are likable kids, smart and motivated, so that was no problem. There was plenty of family history to write about. Both boys worked so hard through the seven years in the Red Sox system, yet they were so different.
Now I am at a crossroads before beginning another memoir, this time about my elderly parents in their nineties - their funny habits and idiosyncracies, before the caregiving started. They were each healthy in mind and body until the last several months. However, I plan to chronicle the caregiving, too, since that lasted only a short time for each of them, and Ev and Walt died almost exactly a year apart. They would have passed together, if there was any way they could have planned it. I am still reading memoirs and essays published about caregiving for aging parents. I don't want to repeat what is already out there.
Here is the point. In order to do something different that a publisher will want to print and that readers will want to pick up, I've got to have a new twist, a new hook. And I do. Why? Because I am different from all those other caregivers, and my parents were different from all the other parents - loving toward their children and each other, set in their ways, yet able to charm and joke. They were fun to be around, and Walt's blue eyes created instant girlfriends among the women he met. My mom was sweet and smart, but had a real adamant streak when she decided someone had tried to get away with something. The memory bank I have is different from anyone else's.
It is this memory bank of funny stories that I will recount in order to show how I got through the end of the story. That is my twist. It is difficult enough to hold your parents in your arms while they make the transition. Without the memory bank, it would have been nearly impossible. I am different because my story is different. Isn't everyone's?
