Memoirs are tricky things to write and, as in all things, timing is everything. I don't think my book October Sky (originally released in hardcover as Rocket Boys: A Memoir) would have been half so well received had I not waited until the era I wrote about had receded into a sort of timelessness. As it is, 40 years later, the story has been a phenomenon ever since I first penned a short article for Air & Space magazine telling the simple story of six boys who lived in a small West Virginia coal town and, at the dawn of the space age, decided to build their own rockets. Within a year, I had a contract with Universal Studios for a major motion picture to be based on a book I was still writing.

Timing, however, isn't absolutely everything. Here are some other tips I learned in the process of writing October Sky.