Barry Petersen Shares Memoir Writing Advice
While his wife struggled with Early Onset Alzheimer’s Disease, one journalist discovered that there were few resources to help family members cope with this lonely disease.
Today’s guest on the Morning Media Menu was CBS News correspondent Barry Petersen, talking about his new memoir, “Jan’s Story: Love Lost to the Long Goodbye of Alzheimer’s.” He wrote the memoir to help guide other family members through the process of this painful illness.
Press play below to listen.
Petersen offered advice for aspiring memoirists: “When I approached this, I just said, ‘I’m going to write this the way it really happened.’ I tried to that. I didn’t try to sugarcoat it. I didn’t try to hide the criticism against me. I didn’t try to pretend that somehow I was the right person in every incident, because sometimes I was wrong.”
He concluded: “I felt people could learn from that–take a look at what I screwed up, take a look at what I messed up. Because you are going to face the same kind of decisions. I think if you are brutally honest with what you did right and what you did wrong, then you have the genesis for a true tale.”
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