How To Outline A Memoir A 3-Step Guide To Organization

How To Outline A Memoir A 3-Step Guide To Organization How to Outline Your Memoir (in 3 Powerful Steps) For aspiring memoirists, one of the trickiest hurdles comes after the beginning moment of inspiration. You get the brilliant idea to write a memoir, sit down at your computer all ready to spill out your story, and†¦you realize you don’t know how to start.Now you might be hit by a flurry of doubts:Where should I begin writing my life-story?How do I know what to include in my memoir?How can I make sure that other people want to read about me and my story?If you’re asking these questions, the solution is simple: write an outline. In this post, we look at how you can turn your assorted memories into a rock-solid outline that will make it that much easier to write (and publish!) your memoir.Why outline?According to Zadie Smith, there are two types of writers in the world: micro managers and macro managers. They are sometimes known as plotters and pantsers. If you’re the former, you may already have started outlining your memoir in your head - so skip ahead to th e next section for concrete tips and get the ball rolling on your outline.If you’re a pantser (someone who writes â€Å"by the seat of their pants†), you may need convincing as to the benefits of outlining. In a nutshell: a week of outlining now could save you a year of torturous revision down the road. Outlining - and figuring out such things as theme and scope - can give your story a sense of purpose before you even start writing it. It’s particularly important for memoirists to have a firm grasp on this before entering the drafting stage. Otherwise, they’re particularly susceptible to simply spilling unstructured memories on paper. Tip: 1 week of outlining now can save you 1 year of torturous revision in the future. As you write your memoir, you may recall another compelling moment from your life or come to an epiphany that might change the thematic direction of your memoir. You should never hesitate to explore them. However, a â€Å"goal without a plan is just a wish,† as Antoine de Saint-Exupà ©ry said. It’s good to spend some time on an outline and have an initial roadmap in front of you, so that you know in which direction you’re heading - and what point you’re trying to make.

Mosasaurus Facts and Figures

Mosasaurus Facts and Figures The name Mosasaurus (pronounced MOE-zah-SORE-usis) is partly derived from the Latin word Mosa (the Meuse River), and the second half of the name comes from the word Sauros, which is Greek for lizard. This ocean-dwelling creature is from the late Cretaceous period (70 to 65 million years ago). Its distinguishing characteristics included a blunt, alligator-like head, fin on the end of its tail, and a hydrodynamic build. It was large- up to 50 feet long and weighing 15 tons- and subsisted on a diet of fish, squid, and shellfish. About Mosasaurus The remains of Mosasaurus were discovered well before educated society knew anything about evolution, dinosaurs, or marine reptiles- in a mine in Holland in the late 18th century (hence this creatures name,  in honor of  the nearby Meuse River). Importantly, the unearthing of these fossils led early naturalists like Georges Cuvier to speculate, for the first time, about the possibility of species going extinct, which flew in the face of accepted religious dogma of the time. (Until the late Enlightenment, most educated people believed that God created all the worlds animals in Biblical times and that the exact same animals existed 5,000 years ago as do today. Did we mention that they also had no conception of deep geologic time?) These fossils were variously interpreted as belonging to fish, whales, and even crocodiles; the closest guess (by the Dutch naturalist Adriaan Camper) was that they were giant monitor lizards. It was Georges Cuvier who established that the fearsome Mosasaurus was a giant member of the family of marine reptiles known as mosasaurs, which were characterized by their large heads, powerful jaws, streamlined bodies, and  hydrodynamic  front and rear flippers. Mosasaurs were only distantly related to the pliosaurs and plesiosaurs (sea serpents) that preceded them (and which they largely supplanted from the dominance of the worlds oceans during the late Cretaceous period). Today, evolutionary biologists believe they were most closely related to modern-day snakes and monitor lizards. The mosasaurs themselves went extinct 65 million years ago, along with their dinosaur and pterosaur cousins, by which time they may already have been succumbing to competition from better-adapted sharks. As with many animals that have lent their names to entire families, we know comparatively less about Mosasaurus than we do about better-attested mosasaurs like Plotosaurus and Tylosaurus.  The early confusion about this marine reptile is reflected in the various genera to which it was assigned in the course of the 19th century, including (take a deep breath) Batrachiosaurus, Batrachotherium, Drepanodon, Lesticodus, Baseodon, Nectoportheus, and Pterycollosaurus. There have also been close to 20 named species of Mosasaurus, which gradually fell by the wayside as their fossil specimens were assigned to other mosasaur genera; today, all that remain are the type species, M. hoffmanni, and four others. By the way, that shark-swallowing Mosasaurus in the movie Jurassic World may  seem impressive (both to people in the fictional park and people in the real-life movie-theater audience), but its completely out of scale: A real, 15-ton Mosasaurus would have been an order of magnitude smaller and much less impressive than its cinematic depiction- and  almost certainly  incapable of dragging a gigantic Indominus rex into the water.