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Journaling
My first journal entry was written a few days after my eight-year-old birthday. My second was a year later when I rewrote that first entry in my much more impressive nine-year-old handwriting. From the beginning, even at eight years old, writing was how I got to know myself better. When my oldest children were teens, I thought it would be fun to share with them parts of my journal so they could see what was on my mind at their age. They were lazing in our family room when I brought out the letter-sized white binder with a worn leather cover that I'd written sporadic entries from ages eight to eighteen. I read to them my eight year old birthday entry and then a rushed but enthusiastic paragraph I'd written just after doing a a double-flip on the trampoline at age ten. (We were trampoline pros!) Then we turned page after page of entries that were either angry, angsty or a long list of childhood crushes. My children were as embarrassed for me as I was. Clearly, not everything is ...
Friday: About the Book Q & A
How did you come up with the title, The Things They Didn't See ? My first chapter was an assignment for a Novel Writing class. I dashed off a title: Finding Paradise (it couldn’t be Paradise Lost, obviously), never thinking it would be permanent for the next six years. I liked the idea of alluding to a broken family finding happiness again. Years later, the first time I thought my novel was finished, I hired a developmental editor who (among so many very helpful critiques) said she didn’t think the title fit the story. By then the theme of misunderstandings was clear and everything I brainstormed was about not seeing or saying. The Things They Didn’t See came pretty quickly. I love that it encapsulates all they didn't physically see: Jill and her dad can't see each other on either side of the boat; Connor disappears from Roger's view in the water; Jill and Matt both in anguish over what they physically didn't see at the accident. And also the emotional turmoil ...

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