SENTENCE - on-line diary, blog, autobiography, memoir, web log

www.ralphrobertmoore.com

the official website for the writings of
ralph robert moore

My novel Father Figure, a bestseller for its publisher in trade paperback, is now available for free in PDF format. Click here to go to a page where you can download the complete text of the novel.

autobiographical writings

introduction

Everything I write is about myself. Even when I write about others, real or imagined, I am still, of course, writing about me.

Soon after I started SENTENCE, I decided to include an occasional piece, on the Index page, on what was going on in my life. If I enjoy a particular author, I'm curious what their life is like, and so likewise I thought people reading my stories might enjoy having some idea of what I'm like, outside my fiction.

Originally, these pieces, which I soon titled Lately, appeared about once a month, but at the start of 2001 I decided to post them weekly. That frequency allowed me to go into greater detail not only about the more significant events in my life, but also, and maybe of greater interest, my day-to-day life.

So in the past few years I've written not only about the death of both our mothers, how I lost my day job, and got it back, the time I had to testify in court, and my wife Mary's stroke, but also about all the little events of life, getting repairs done, discovering a new store, showing up for jury duty, getting a bone marrow transplant on a tooth.

In some of those Latelys I recounted events in my life from decades ago, and after writing quite a few such reminiscences, I realized that in addition to the weekly Latelys, I also wanted to write my autobiography. To tell the story of my life, of how I got from was to am.

It's one thing to write about a specific event in life, and quite another to try to put all of one's life down on paper. I soon discovered that in order to have my autobiography make sense, and read as a story, which indeed it is, I needed to eliminate hundreds of memories I had of myself and others, because to include all those memories would reduce my autobiography to anecdote, rather a journey of self-discovery.

That, to me, has been the hardest part of writing my autobiography. While living my life I always felt someday I'd write down all my unique experiences, preserving every memory, but now I realize that can't be done. One day in the mid-eighties, while Mary and I were living in California, we parallel-parked as usual in San Mateo Park, a green pick-up swimming into the space in front of us. The driver hopped out, middle-aged man in work clothes, unhinging the logo'd gate at the back end of the pick-up's bed, pulling out, slanting down, a wide sheet of unpainted plywood, down which hobbled a gray, three-legged weimaraner. "We'll always remember this moment," I said to Mary, as both of us, in the front seat of our Mustang, bit into our roast beef sandwiches, and we will, but the recounting of it, and so many thousands of other memories, will not make the edit.

lately

introduction

I started this on-line diary back in late 1998, as a means of sharing with you what my life is like. Although a writer's interior life is often very exciting, new ideas docking against each other like space ships, most writers don't live the type of exterior lives that produce headlines. I'm no exception. Even so, I hope you enjoy the entries, and I hope they help you to get to know me a little better.

For each year, entries are presented in chronological order, starting with the earliest.