Has anyone read the new James Patterson memoir "Stories of My Life" ?

[anobserver2]

37. Deception #9 in Memoir: "Outline!"

In Patterson's memoir he has one "chapter" titled "Outline! Outline! Outline!" and he claims this is what he tells students
when he speaks at schools.

But I recall stumbling upon a newspaper article a long time ago, where the reporter stated Patterson told these young
students at an elementary school: "Don't become a writer."

I remember this because: I remember feeling shocked - and thinking: How dare he say this to young students! Who is he to tell kids they should NOT become writers? Good grief!!!

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I also think Patterson does a lot of theatrics with his claim of writing everything by hand on yellow legal pads that he has stacked up for journalists to come and see, to "prove" he is working on dozens of projects at once.

You know what? I could buy 100 or so yellow legal pads. I could stack them into 30 or so stacks. I could handwrite some scribbles on the top page of each legal pad stack (and make sure I have placed one handwritten page face up, on top of each of the 30 or so stacks). I could invite some reporters over and point to these stacks and say, "See? 30 projects I'm working on -- all at once! All by hand!"

And gee, the journalist could then take photos of my 30 stacks of - blank - legal pads.

So I do not believe he "outlines" as he describes he does. I think he has duped reporters. And I think he is often on a computer.

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I also think one way he prepares for his books, like this memoir, is to make a: "List of Things To Do."

There are certain things he wants to "do" in the book. Certain lies he wants to tell. I wrote a list of 25 such examples, meaning 25 things in this memoir I think are lies, but he wanted to include for certain reasons.

I thought about posting such here online, but after much thought, I think I will keep it to myself. But it wasn't hard to write such a list. What was harder was staying awake while reading his memoir -- and getting through it, as it sometimes felt like torture to me.