It was 2004 when my father passed away, that I decided to finish the book I wrote about him and his coming to America. My book entitled, “I Have a Cousin Who Plays the Guitar” is also an introduction sort of speak to my documentary about my famous uncle, my father’s cousin, Saulo Sedano of Los Tres Diamantes. My father would tell us kids when we asked for things that he could not produce or give us by saying “No, but I have a cousin who plays the guitar”.
I couldn’t think of a title for the book because the one I picked had been taken already and then I remembered his famous saying and felt it was perfect. I didn’t know at the time that I would be doing a documentary about my famous uncle but 5 years later in 2009 my husband and I flew to Mexico City and interviewed “El Chivito”. That was his nickname in Los Tres Diamantes.
Many things in our lives can cause us to start writing. The important thing is to get whatever thoughts we have on paper or nowadays, the computer. I started journaling during my 25 year marriage to my first husband because it was such a difficult marriage. And also because I was going through many changes and healing after the suicide of my ex boyfriend, my first real romantic relationship from high school.
During my second marriage I felt it was important to look at all the changes someone goes through from divorce and decided to write my second book that was a compilation of my journals put into a story as a comparison of the two marriages. “Coffee and a Rose” was not an easy book to write but it helped me heal and it is helping me see that there really is a second chance at this marriage thing.
As a retired teacher, I told my students that it doesn’t matter how we write at first, but that the important thing is just write down the first thing that comes to mind. It may not mean anything at the time but as you write a script, a story unfolds and before you know it you have chapters, and then a book. As a scholar practitioner, while I was in the dissertation phase of my PhD program I realized that all the practice I had writing paid off from journaling. We eventually work through the different phases of our life in our writing which is why its so important.