For anyone who wants to know what it is like to write a memoir it is easy to give a brief philosophy that partially addresses that question. That is if you do not get yourself emotionally involved and in tears, you are not honest enough with what you are writing.

What brings people to read about tragedy is because it is like watching or looking at a car accident and not being able to look away. It is emotional and we want to see it. We are drawn to our emotions by our emotions.

The link between writing a memoir and bringing back those emotions is a lot like that car accident we want to gawk at. If you have not brought your personal car accident back to life in the writing it won’t be emotive enough for anyone else to want to gawk at.

When I wrote My Ambulance Education, it brought back horrible memories. There were calls I refused to talk about and did not want to write about. But after lots of soul searching and prompting from friends and colleagues I went to the dark memories I had and put them down in black and white. After writing some of those stories I was thoroughly emotionally drained, drenched in sweat with burning eyes. Maybe those emotions came across in the book and maybe not. But they came back when I was writing them.

Reliving those events also reemphasized to me why I am where I am now. My Ambulance Education helped me become a college professor and I am still trying every day to help people as well as help the EMTs and paramedics on the ambulances. My sincerest hope is that the paramedical practitioners who grace our emergency medical services will benefit from my current work as much as I have gained from working amongst them.