“Everyone has at least 100 pages of stories about their life.”
That’s what Mount Vernon resident David Osterberg believes. Osterberg has finished work on his own memoirs with the help of Bob Campagna, and a book release party will be Saturday, May 31, from 6:30 to 8 p.m. atvAbbe Creek Gallery and Fine Arts.
Osterberg said that the writing process took roughly a year to complete.
“It just felt like time to get some of my life story down,” Osterberg said. “For my nieces and nephews who live on the West Coast, may seem like an eccentric uncle.”
And Osterberg focused on keeping the memoirs brief, picking and choosing what memories in his life to focus on to be engaging with readers.
“I know my dad had done his own memoirs with Bob years ago when he was 92, and he had roughly 100 pages of really interesting experiences of how he grew up, his coaching baseball and the like,” Osterberg said.
“And then he had 100s of pages of information on all these people he had met and dined with over the years that was less interesting, and I made my mind up then if I ever wrote a memoir, I’d keep it to 100 pages.”
One of the longer stretches in the book was explaining how Iowa passed a mandate that established the renewable energy standard, being the first state in the nation to do so.
“That just felt like it needed that depth to better explain,” Osterberg said.
Osterberg said that working with Campagna on the project also really helped.
“He has great pictures either he has taken or can identify the best of yours to be preserved as well,” Osterberg said. “He’s encouraging throughout the writing process as well.”
Osterberg said the hardest part of the book was deciding what should or should not be included, including how much he wanted to talk about people that were in his life at different points.
“It all comes back to what gives the readers the scope of my life and all I’ve accomplished,” Osterberg said. “I spent sometime hitchhiking around France in my early life, and it’s hard to remember what it was like at times since that was so long ago, but that’s what you try to do in a memoir.”
Osterberg recommends people think about their own life stories and highly recommends working with someone like Campagna to help organize the project.