Hi Dev,
Thought I would share my “What would Dev do?” experience that helped me out this week.
My Mum passed away last week after a long struggle with cancer. It was peaceful and surrounded by family. I volunteered to present the eulogy at her funeral service.
In an initial team meeting with my sisters and Dad, we came up with a mind map of all the aspects of Mum’s life what we wanted to talk about. This was great, but when it came to sitting down to write, I got three lines down and got stuck there.
Once push came to shove, and it was time to really get cracking, I thought back to the Gunnas class earlier this year. I remembered that you told us about the method of voice recording the story in order to get it out of your heart and onto the screen. That evening, as I sat in my car while my daughter was doing soccer trials, I recorded on my phone a piece for each of the thought bubbles on the mind map.While it felt weird, and while I did get a little blubby through the emotional parts, I was able to get down a good chunk of material.
That night I typed it all in verbatim, and the next morning did a rough edit. Ended up with about 2,600 words to work with. Later that day I read what I had written to my family. They were so happy. We fixed up a few details and by the next day I had the final copy ready for the service.
Yesterday was Mum’s funeral, and it went so well. It was so easy to read because that’s how it initially came out. It really came from the heart and it showed. Got lots of laughs and there was lots of blubbing. Thankfully I managed to get all the way through without any tears. I received so many positive comments about the eulogy. I was so happy, and I feel I did my Mum and my family proud.
All thanks to the help of that little tip you gave in class. Not a self-pubished novel, but a work that I am really proud of.
Thank you.
Roy Meuronen
Canberra, Australia