How photos, poems, and quotes can add to your writing

Our poetry reading yesterday afternoon at Pages: a bookstore was a huge success. I read many of the poems included in my memoir, Leaving the Hall Light On: A Mother's Memoir of Living with Her Son's Bipolar Disorder and Surviving His Suicide, plus a few newer poems. Using that material and receiving so many kudos from those in attendance yesterday makes me so happy that I never faltered about adding poems (and photos and quotes) to the book. Almost as soon as my memoir was published one of the first reviewers said, ¦.The poetry and photographs add an extra dimension that is missing from most memoirs like this since as a reader you get much closer to the reality of what is being described on the page¦. (Mark Shelmerdine, CEO, Jeffers Press). Another reviewer said my book is poetically visceral. Those statements helped validate any misgivings I had in adding other creative works into my manuscript. I really hadn't thought of putting photos in my book until my publisher … [Read more...]