In this category, we share excerpts from books—published and unpublished—written by Denis Ledoux over the many years he has immersed himself in memoir writing.
The stories in this section are drawn from the following:
- Here to Stay [an unpublished history of Denis’ seventeenth century Canadian ancestors],
- We Were Not Spoiled [co-written with his mother whose story it is],
- In Another Century [Denis’s unpublished seminary high-school experience],
- Marie Bilodeau [these are family stories that are composed from his memory of his grandmother and from some research], and
- My Eye Fell Into the Soup [ a journal of his wife’s last year before she succumbed to cancer].
We hope you enjoy these stories.

Cancer Diary: Family Celebrates Thanksgiving with Sadness
The following cancer diary entries are from Martha Blowen and me, while celebrating Thanksgiving with the family after her diagnosis.

Turning a Journal into a Memoir
Steps for turning a journal into a memoir
I have been slowly revising my latest book My Eye Fell Into the Soup. This book is the first of a two-book set depicting the two years that Martha and I lived with her cancer illness. I have described some of the writing process elsewhere.
There was a time when writing / organizing / revising this so-personal manuscript was difficult, very difficult, but that is no longer the case. When I was first working on My Eye Fell Into the Soup, I would take it up for a few days and then put it down for weeks.
Revision is not as emotionally draining as creation
Now 8 years after Martha’s death, I am doing in-depth revision and it has proven to be very technical. The feeling part is long past. There’s something about checking the clarity of antecedents to pronouns, about making sure that characters that are so familiar to me are sufficiently explained, about going to an internet dictionary to ascertain that my word choice is indeed the best choice that takes feeling out of the process.
Turning journals into memoirs: are revisions permitted?
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Breast Cancer Diary—How “My Eye Fell Into the Soup” was Launched
Martha’s breast cancer diary was published as My Eye Fell Into the Soup and is a cancer journal/memoir of Martha Blowen’s experience with cancer.

A Cancer Diagnosis
Martha Blowen, my partner in life and in work, died on August 18, 2008, from metastasized breast cancer. The following is from collated excerpts of journals we both kept at the time. (Before she passed away, she gave me permission to share her entries.) The memoir is called My Eye Fell Into the Soup, after […]

Will We Find Cancer There, Too?
DL: Martha Blowen, my partner in life and in work, died on August 18, 2008, from metastasized breast cancer. The following is from collated excerpts of journals we both kept at the time. (Before she passed away, she gave me permission to share her entries.) The memoir is called My Eye Fell Into the Soup, […]

Coping With Chemo—Again
Martha Blowen, my partner in life and in work, died on August 18, 2008, from metastasized breast cancer. The following is from collated excerpts of journals we both kept at the time. (Before she passed away, she gave me permission to share her entries.) The memoir is called My Eye Fell Into the Soup, after […]

The Family Gathers Around Martha
Martha Blowen, my partner in life and in work, died on August 18, 2008, from metastasized breast cancer. The following is from collated excerpts of journals we both kept at the time. (Before she passed away, she gave me permission to share her entries.) The memoir is called My Eye Fell Into the Soup, after […]

Our First Evening Coping with Cancer
Martha Blowen, my partner in life and in work, died on August 18, 2008, from metastasized breast cancer. The following is from collated excerpts of journals we both kept at the time. (Before she passed away, she gave me permission to share her entries.) The memoir is called My Eye Fell Into the Soup, after […]

The Pleura Is Full of Fluid
Martha Blowen, my partner in life and in work, died on August 18, 2008, from metastasized breast cancer. The following is from collated excerpts of journals we both kept at the time. (Before she passed away, she gave me permission to share her entries.) The memoir is called My Eye Fell Into the Soup, after […]

Draining the Cancer from the Pleura
Martha Blowen, my partner in life and in work, died on August 18, 2008, from metastasized breast cancer. The following is from collated excerpts of journals we both kept at the time. (Before she passed away, she gave me permission to share her entries.) The memoir is called My Eye Fell Into the Soup, after […]