Growing Up Wilder, my first completed and published book, was written in diary style. It wasn’t my favorite style, I think I prefer third person the most, but I had heard that it was best to start out writing in first person to help with character development. Being fond of diary styled books, I decided to go that way, plus I figured it would be pretty simple, almost like writing in my own journal except I get to make everything up (How cool is that?!). A lot of what went into the book I actually did experience, though. And, for the most part, the writing was easy.

Except….when it came to dates and the historical aspect. Because it was a diary, every date had to be correct. Sometimes I would accidentally miss a day or put the wrong date on the entry. That wasn’t most of the trouble though. It seems like I should be able to go back and just change the numbers, no problem. But no, changing the date meant changing the day of the week, meant changing what they did because of the different day of the week. And then you have birthdays, and holidays, and baby due dates! Yeah! I had to go back and fix things when I realized one of the babies was several months overdue and the other extremely premature. (Don’t get me wrong, it was fun, and even though I vowed not to do another diary book it is actually coming into a good light in my mind again.)

The historical part…every month, day, hour had to be accurate. Ahh! So yeah, researching followed.

For the writing part, what I missed with writing a diary book was putting in dialogue. I tried adding all I could. My favorite part was that it was pretty easy – like writing your own diary. I felt it was a pretty good choice for my first book.