im new here

Hello everyone, I am new to this forum.. I am writing two books or at least trying to... they are books about my life, my family, where i have been what i have seen etc... is there ever any Success in these kind of stories?? should i give details on my stories on here etc.. can anybody give me advice or feedback... also can i use actual names of people in my books??? Thank you...

Welcome to the forum, Virgil.
There are answers to your questions on various threads. It may be good to get acquainted with us by doing some browsing. Specific questions will get a response.

12/28/2010

Hello Virgil..

Welcome to the club. I've seen your question many times before, from
what I've read and my own experience never use real names, first off
publishers will tell you , you'll need their permission and a signed paper. I
always change names, you can check my books out here at Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Joseph+Baraba&x=14&y=16

They have look inside the book and you can read many of the pages. What
kind of books are you writing ?

Cheers..Joe...

Welcome, Virgil,


I am glad you are here. I wrote a true book and used real names and also changed names. If I changed a name I so stated.
The book was an autobiography. I didi ask permission from many of the people.

The signed consent papers are a good idea, but my publisher did not require them. Just be careful what you say
and be certain it is true.

I write poems about real life, and I am trying to write two Books about my family and people we have known, places weve been and things my sisters my self and my wife have gone through.. and the success we have now etc< i have writtin everything I have so far by hand in pencil... can I post a poem i wrote on here? or is that not a good Idea??

My book, To Beirut and Back is a true story. I changed names of some people to avoid any possibility of retribution. The statement in the front of the book says, "Some character names have been changed to protect their privacy."
Those involved know who they are, but it would be a guessing game for others.
I suggest avoid using real names where possible, but don't avoid telling it like it is. Getting permission is not always possible, and then if you do, the person may want to pre-approve what will be written. And that may be a watered-down version of what really happened making the story weak. Best to leave it out in that case.

Ok, short version... my family left Minnesota in march of 1980, we came to Montana, we lived in the woods.. my dad got a logging Job, there was still alot of snow in the little belt mountains so we had to move into town, White Sulphur Springs.. rented a little house, then moved to Reed Point Montana, we stayed out by the yellowstone river in a camper the same one we stayed in when we first got to montana, it was 16 feet long,there was five of us.. Dad was trying to log in reed point also, then we moved to Springdale Montana, rented a house there for a couple months.. now it was november 1980.. Mom and Dad rented a u-haul for one days use and we Left Montana with the U-haul, headed for yuma arizona, after the hard trip from Montana to yuma AZ, my family got a job picking Lemons, Then it was all History, we traveled picking fruit and bumming all over the U.S. I say bumming becouse many many times that is how we made it from place to place, Mom would take me And My little sister into churches in any little town or city, she would say, we are from montana and traveling trying to find work and a place to stay, do you have any work we can do or any way to help us?? Never did a church turn us away!! Some times only 10 dollars for gas but always something.. we stopped in marfa texas trying to get help, by this time my oldest sister had a baby, she was 17.. me and my other two sisters were riding in the trunk of our old buick electra, Mom and dad were inside and also our oldest sister and her baby, and another Homeless couple we met in Mission texas.. The Sheriff In marfa Told my parents to Leave Marfa Texas And never come back.. he gave us some gas and a food Voucher at the Grocery store.. we hardly ever went to school, i had a sixty percent hearing loss in both ears..

Nickle Diming food stamps was common for us kids, if you Know what nickle Diming means.. My parents would give us each a dollar food stamp, we would buy a 5 or 10 cent piece of candy and bring them the change.. I dont care if I ever see a food stamp again!! after a few years of this, my parents started trying to be swapmeet vendors selling mostly junk... so from 1980 to 1992 we lived in a car, maybe an old school bus when we were lucky.. slept on picnic tables on the ground etc... we had scabies head lice etc... ate from the trash once in a while, but mostly ate comoddities government cheese or what ever the food banks gave out... poached a deer when we would make it back to montana.. in 1991 i met a 16 year old homeless girl at a homeless camp in the imperial valley of southern california,called Slab City.. a few months later she and I ran away, my parents new we were, and where we were going.. alot went on after that, but in a few months we were with my parents we all made it to montana and were living and working in the woods.. in march of 1993 I got a job custom harvesting, traveling driving truck and harvesting all over the country.. did this and worked on a road crew as a truck driver untill february of 2000, I wanted to move to minnesota.. My lifelong dream was to get back Home to Minnesota and Make My home there have a small farm and be a long haul trucker and build a small trucking company...

My dad always detered me for some reason and i always listened to him, he would say Minnesota is no ****tin good.. so i never went!! when the trucking company I worked for paving roads went out of business, i was working in arizona,I told dad i wanted to go to minnesota.. he said go to montana my sisters Lived there, so i listened.. Dad was still tramping around, He lived in an old van.. mom had passed in 1996, we went to montana bought an old trailer house in townsend, I got a job driving.. our trailer house burned down two weeks later.. that trailer was the first house, if you want to call it a house. 8x40, it was the first house I lived in since 1980, 20 years.. And the 16 year old homeless girl I ran away with in 1991, we had a son he was four.. dad died in 2003, My wife and i have been married 18 years now, our son is 16, we adopted twin baby girls they are four now.. I was under the influienc of my dad for so long, always felt so guilty if I was not there if he needed me, even though he was not a great dad, I always felt guilty if I didnt do what he wanted.. he was 50 when I was born and twenty years older than mom.. mom passed in 1996 she was 53, dad passed in 2003 he was 80 and still living in a 77 dodge van., would be 87 now and im 37, I still want to Live in Minnesota and am determined to do it.. after years of building up our credit,, while trying to pay for funerals, I made sure my parents were together, In White Sulphur Springs Mt..Dad and I had the same name, and over the years alot of dads debts and U-haul trailers and medical bills, caught up with me, and with everything we had to file for bankruptcy in 2008.. that put my minnesota dream on hold.. we are determined to do it..

I have done well I think, I drove over one million Miles in a semi without an accident..
have a house in Montana..
Have a wonderfull 16 year old son..
adopted twin baby girls..
have completed two multi million dollar projects in a platinum mine in Montana, i was the lead man on an underground railroad project and an underground road paving project...
made sure my parents were laid to rest together.
but most of all been with my wife, the 16 year old homeless girl for almost 20 years..
We are still determined to live in Minnesota, and im never giving up on My own Trucking Company... thats my Short long story.. I have been working on writing two books since 1996 but get Discouraged or upset and throw them away.. im trying it again now... Thank you

12/28/2010


Virgil...

I say go for it, the story will flow....Follow your dreams..
Good Luck and always folllow your heart !

Cheers..Joe

Virgil,

Write it. People need to read it. They need hope.
Best luck, I will buy it.

I once knew A lady that could do anything, she never had a nice house fancy clothes or A diamond ring.


She wore Blue jeans and boots, and always a hat. She even had a Chain drive wallett! She was comfortable like that..


She could rebuild an engine, also a carburetor,even A starter and an alternator. She could operate Equipment, anything from Skidders to Dozers, swathers and hay bailers..She could fall A tree, Homelite was her favorite saw


She could patch my pants, make Dinner out of almost nothing..Yeah this lady was really something, she often did our laundry in a bucket! She didnt have an easy life though she would seldom fuss, the nicest house she ever had was an old beat up school bus..


In 1996, I was sitting beside her on her bed. She was dying from cancer had no hair upon her head. Before she went to heaven, she turned to me and said. I love you son, i said i love you too Mom and I kissed her on her head...

My Mom Nov-8-1943 to apri- 25-1996

I am off work today, so im bored and its cold out side..

So--write your book. What are you waiting for? I like your writing. I cannot buy one until it is written and published.

I recommend you look in your community for a writing group. They are everywhere. It's nice to have the camaraderie to keep you enthused about your writing. If you don't have aspirations of writing the great novel that leads to fame and fortune, you may want to join those who are now writing ebooks and publishing at Smashwords and Google ebooks, etc. That does not mean you publish before it is polished; it just means you can publish. You don't need to throw away your manuscripts. There is a thread at this forum for posting first chapters. I recommend writing a page a day for 365 days - that will determine if you can stick with it and gives you 365 pages to edit the next year... good luck. That's quite a history in your life.

It's not always the facts that make the books, it is how those pieces are written so they grab a reader....keep that in mind and keep writing. You definitely have a way with words.

my community is very small, However we are looking into moving.. the nearest bigger town is Billings montana 45 miles away.. and nothing much here where we live.. but im still doing ok i think, I will not stop this time im going to do it.. i am wondering how much detail to put into what im writing, I would like to go into real detail like explaining What a Budd wheel is etc.. what is a good program for the computer to use for writing?? Thank you all very much...

You have many questions that researching through Google to some experts who are willing to share with you might provide answers. Some of the self-publishing and vanity publishing sites offer nice, free ebooks to help you with your writing. Do you have a community college anywhere near? Adult education at a local high school? They often have creative writing classes worth taking for the general information they provide.

As for whether you can use real names in your books. If you write an autobiography and include real names, you need to have legal releases from each of those people and every word must be true (exact). You may wish to consider whether you wish to write an autobiography or whether you wish to fictionalize your story and change it a bit for your own legal protection.

In general, no one reads autobiographies from ordinary people, no matter how enthralling they are. However, there are exceptions - never give up just because the rule is against you...fiction is also hard to sell.

Be aware, that many enter this career and few succeed. It is not necessarily lack of talent that is their failing - there are just a lot of books published and the competition is growing in a time when people have less money to spend on books and are quite selective - finding known authors a safer bet for their hard-earned money.

This forum has the opportunity to have an online critique group but it just doesn't seem to get off the ground. Maybe those who have posted first chapters and to the writing threads might talk to each other about such a group. Just a thought.

i was wondering if anybody would be interested in a book or autobiography from an ordinary person, that is a concern of mine yes... My family is however mentioned in the book Into The Wild On page 44 and kristen Stewart played my sister Tracy, in the movie etc... i actually started writing my book in 1996 i was snowed in at a truckstop in Kansas city and had nothing to do so i started it then,I have thrown it away many times since, its hard to write about some things, and when I get to my wifes part people will cry.. I have so much to tell.. and so many lessons learned and things to teach...

12/29/2010

Virgil.

E mail me and I will send you a copy of my first book
so you can get an idea of a biography and the way I
wrote , you can read it and see how easy it is to write
in the first person..Always willing to help another author.

Cheers..Joe

"...welcome then..." said the goblin who had following from some while back now, knowing that humans always made it far more complicated than it was, explaining "...get it wrong first, and then get it right later, for without making those first errors one cannot progress now, besides if there is one thing that I can promise you, it's that it will turn out very differently from how you intended it to be, if only because in rewriting ones works one sees the idea differently each time...", in fact, the goblin loved that line something worth reading twice is worth writing twice, his reason for reposting then, and definitely his advise to anyone planning on writing a book now

When i was a kid we had many old chevy trucks one particular with a 292 inline six engine.. That old 292 would go no matter what. It was in an old 65 chevy one ton. My family made the trip from Eureka california to Granite Falls Minnesota with that truck pulling a 16 foot trailer, It was a travel trailer but we were stranded in California so my dad and i stripped all of the aluminum off of it and sold it for scrap to buy gas and just used the floor as a flat bed. The rod bearings in the old 292 engine were so bad the engine almost sounded like a diesel it rattled so much. we stopped in Helena Montana at a wrecking yard and tore apart two old engines robbing the rod bearings out of them and installing the best ones into our old truck. We ran 90 weight gear oil in the engine and made it the 2000 mile trip.. I was 16 and followed in a 1959 G.M.C. truck with a 270 inline six. the clutch in the 59 GMC went out in Jamestown North Dakota.. my Dad un hooked the trailer from the 65 chevy put it on the back of the 59 GMC, and on a chain pulled both of them, with me steering the last 250 miles to Granite Falls Minnesota. After we were there i had made some money farming for my aunt and i put new rod and main bearings in dads 65 chevy, my parents soon left Granite Falls Minnesota and went to Ehrenberg Arizona (in July). I stayed behind to suposedly work on my aunts farm. when my parents got to Arizona dad called and said he needed me in down there, that Mr Bayles, the owner of the Ace hardware In Blythe California gave him several tons of scrap iron.. so off i went to Arizona by myself driving the 59 gmc truck.. I had replaced the Clutch with a used one out of a junker on my aunts farm. In July It was Hot! the whole trip. I had overheating trouble for the first few hundred miles untill i bought a new radiator cap in Omaha Nebraska.. Then in Dodge City Kansas the throw out bearing went out. This old Gmc had the original push style floor starter, If you know what that is? With the throw out bearing out I had to start the truck in gear and with the push style floor starter made it interesting to push it while giving some gas on the accelorater pedal. The old truck had bias ply tires on it and on rutted roads was a bear to handle, but on concrete highways that had no ruts it was good. I always looked forward to a concrete highway. I would stop and sleep with my legs hanging out the window the cab was too narrow to lay in. I made the trip all the way to Tom Wells road exit five almost to Ehrenberg Arizona when in the heat of the day i was exhausted, the right front tire blew out and I went in the ditch just like i drove down there on purpose. the rubber from the tire came up so hard and fast blowing so violantly it broke both of the passengers side headlights out.. I made the 1850 miles in two very long days.. It was 1989 I was 16..

1/11/2011

Virgil..

How's the book coming along ?


Cheers..Joe

Virgil,
you have taken the first step. I think writing about personal experiences is good. Getting it out of the mind and on paper is also good therapy. What you write can also be an inspiration to others. A never-give-up attitude is rare these days and you appear to have it. I believe you will find a way to write and find the time to do it. Associate with other writers, as DK suggested. Once you have everything down on paper or on the PC, don't rush to publish. Have fellow authors review your work. Remember, it took you many years to live the life you are writing about, and it may take some years to realize your dream of being published.
Persistence and determination is the strongest element in making it happen.

I wonder how E. Don Harpe did with sales of South Town Rinky Dinks, his story of growing up. It seems autobiographies are popular among friends and family (as some author's works are not read by their friends and family) and regionally if regional experiences are mentioned in the book. It's the rare autobiography that grabs the public as a whole unless the author has some hook or celebrity status. Some do make it: Into the Wild is a recent example. Chris Gardner's homeless story made it. There are others. Out of the millions of books published, it takes a lot of optimism to believe in one's story. I think it's critical to get an agent to want the story and find the right publisher. I don't think the smaller options are really enough to push an autobiography. Since E.Don Harpe had a following from his music connections, his may have had a chance. He also has a knack for turning a story that is appealing.

virgil tatro wrote:

i was wondering if anybody would be interested in a book or autobiography from an ordinary person, that is a concern of mine yes... My family is however mentioned in the book Into The Wild On page 44 and kristen Stewart played my sister Tracy, in the movie etc...

From a review of the film Into the Wild (2007):
"Dierker, Keener, and Stewart play hippie, flower-child type roles and allow Hirsch to show off how modest and unselfish he is. This is the family he deserved to have from birth and he is the son they wished their lives had earned them. At their best, all four together give some of the most emotionally charged moments in the film."

The film obviously portrays your (hippie?) family as loving, and that life on the road has its advantages. If you can develop this theme together with the harsh realities of homeless living, I think you have the makings of a very good book.

The hook...