Before I talk about personal perspective writing, I want to explain why it’s been months since I last posted here. As can happen, life got in the way. I had cataract surgery and the recovery has not been instantaneous. I’m fine and my vision is great, but it’s taken months, not weeks, to be out the other side. Additional things that got in my way include the pandemic and a loss of momentum that I couldn’t seem to avoid. The good news is that my family was around in Florida this winter, which I allowed to distract me in the best way as I continue to live a fulfilling life.
I feel I’m back now and excited again about writing. Work on my second book has begun, along with planning for how to boost visibility and reader outreach for my first book.
So… What do I mean by perspective writing? For me, it’s writing I get enthusiastic about: telling stories from my perspective because I experienced them. Equally important, it’s my goal to tell the stories of some of my remarkable contemporaries who don’t receive enough notice.
Lin Manuel Miranda emphasized the idea with a quote I’d heard from him before. In a conversation with Trevor Noah on The Daily Social Distancing Show on June 15, 2021, he said, “You have to write what’s missing.”
That’s what he did with In The Heights and Hamilton. He saw people whose stories hadn’t been told and wrote them.
In Outside The Spotlights, I included stories of people I knew and told the story of my career, which is the tale of how technology came to Hollywood, told by some who helped make it happen. People who were there to participate when it was defined, built and launched. It’s a story of thinking outside the box, innovating new ways to do things and taking chances on previously untested methods.
We helped businesses thrive, shared the vision for new ones and birthed new jobs in the process. The people in the book played vastly different roles, but each is a proven change leader and believer in the ability of a team of like-minded, talented individuals to achieve the unexpected. I was lucky to have been part of it and telling others about it is a privilege. I want to shine light on stories that demonstrate what’s possible when you combine the strengths of multiple brains to envision what can be.
Memory can be incomplete or even downright wrong on occasion, of course. The stories I tell aim to be accurate – from personal perspective.