Writing a book

Some years ago I set about writing a book about my short career in the army during the 1960’s.  To say it was a labour of love would be a lie as in reality the actual writing was an ordeal.  I never thought for one moment the amount of effort that would go into just trying to recall events during the nine years I had chosen to write about.
For a start I had to figure out the correct order of things, should I write chronologically or should I write about events in some sort of random fashion that suited some ill thought through process.  Of course I decided to start at the beginning, a middle and then have an end! How silly was I to think there was any other way.  My other problem was should I write a squeaky clean version of my near on nine years as a British soldier, no swearing, heavy drinking, mad womanizing and all sorts of other bad behaviour?  I opted for a slightly “sanitized” but honest recollection of how it was and what I did with some minor confessional stuff just slipped in here and there.  Major confessions will have to wait a good number of years I think.
I think it has taken me about 5 years to complete the short work of some 95 pages of A5 text comprising  35896 painfully written words.  I am still not happy with the book in its entirety as there are still silly spelling and grammatical errors discovered every time I read it.   However, I have mastered the chronology now and where possible linked the event in my life to one of “historic” importance at the time I write about.  For example, the assassination of John F Kennedy, the Vietnam Anti War riots at the US Embassy in London and of course our dear old pal Colonel Gaddafi of Libya when he was only a junior army officer in the Libyan army.
Well, the books sits on MyEbook at http://www.myebook.com/index.php?option=ebook&id=2532 only waiting for me to take the time to post it on another publishing site in paperback form and see if I can actually sell it.  If only I had a penny for every one of the 27,650 viewings it has had !! 
My short story, “A Summer Affair” ( http://www.myebook.com/index.php?option=ebook&id=20876 ) is also doing well with 6648 viewings so perhaps I need to concentrate my mind on my next writing venture!