The Dark Knight instructs

Whenever life becomes too hard, I beat a cinematic escape. A few weeks ago: The Dark Knight. Knowing what helps you refocus and recharge can renew your commitment to life’s extraordinary demands.

What does the latest Batman movie have to do with writing memoir? As a child, I immersed myself in the worlds of certain characters and took on their traits. Now such escape offers a different level of perspective.

Toward the film’s end, the questions arise: Should Batman be the hero Gotham City deserves? Or should he be the hero the city needs?

Why not both? Back to my memoir, I need to be both the hero it deserves (doing it well), and the hero it needs (getting it done). I now write for three publications regularly, and delivering publication-worthy content has finally got my writing to the level my memoir needs. I’ve found my uber-standout voice. Now the heroic task is to express that voice on every edited page of my memoir.

Bullets and bracelets insights

Confess I’m a Wonder Woman fan, even at a comics shop, and I feel the need to justify. “I’m a capital-F fan, but you need to understand she’s really, really cool.” But why bother? Why not simply embrace what works for me and gives me pleasure along the way?

George Perez draws Wonder Woman

In 1987, I was 11 and Wonder Woman was relaunched under George Perez’s artistic magic. The relaunch meant I could collect the series from issue one, something I’d never done before. Perez drew heavily from Greek mythology and created characters I still remember better than many childhood friends.

Diana (Wonder Woman) was on a mission: to stop a god gone mad (and later to represent Amazon ideals in man’s world). Then, I was on a mission: escape the abuse of the Northern Territory and return to my faithfully loving Melbourne family. Now, I’m on another mission: tell the story of that escape and the return in my memoir.

A ridiculously simple tool I’ve created to aid my progress forward is the Mission Log. From my sluggish waking moments to my hyped retiring moments, I record the time, and my purpose right now. When completed, I record what I did well and learned lessons.

My first awaress of being on a mission came from Wonder Woman, but now I’m mission-focussed each day. The Log keeps my mind on goals and makes me question how I use my time.