Throughout the last week I have been attempting different ways to write my Middle School book. I didn't like, or connect to, writing a story about the problems that I have faced -- because in all honesty, I don't remember all the events like the back of my hand. It felt like I was lying to the reader. However, I also did not want to write the book like I did my High School book where I talked about the psychological impact on students, since these are younger kids.
This week I spent copious amounts of time looking at Erikson's Stages of Development.
I knew since the start of writing this book I wanted to focus on what Erikson says is the most important thing to 7-12 year olds: school and neighborhood. And after writing different drafts of a chapter I finally figured out how I wanted to write the book.
I have come up with all the titles for each chapter, and each chapter will be based on something school and neighborhood related -- since psychologically that is most important to the children I am writing for. The first chapter is based on how I was being treated different at school once my mom and dad started fighting a lot and people started to know about it.
I solved my problem of writing style by combining the two writing techniques. I will open each chapter with a story and then write about how I felt, and the impact it had on me -- not focusing so much on the psychological aspects right out; rather, weave them into the writing so it is not obvious.
Below is a section of very rough draft of the first chapter, and what the rest of the chapter should look like.
