“There is no such thing as an average memoir, but if there were, Karen Walker’s story, Following the Whispers — Creating a life of inner peace and self-acceptance from the depths of despair, would not be among them.” So begins the review of Following the Whispers that I wrote last month after reading this remarkable book that is hot off the press. Rather than going into detail about the book here, I encourage you to click over and read that review. I was especially impressed with Karen's amazing ability to compress a huge chunk of life into a mere 163 pages, and ...

You’ve heard the saying “It’s five o’clock somewhere” used to justify an early cocktail hour. Likewise, on any given day, it’s somebody’s birthday. If you happen to read this on your special day, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU! I shall use your occasion to talk and write about birthdays and writing about them. Anyone who has a few years on their timeline has some birthdays that they remember more fondly than others. The fond memories may include parties — surprise or otherwise, special gifts, special celebrations. The not-so-fond ones may include ...

Today’s post features a guest writer, Herchel “Herm” Newman. I’ve known Herm for many years now, primarily through his writing and YahooGroups postings, though we do e-mail offline now and then. We met on the Lifestory Writing Yahoo Group, perhaps seven or eight years ago. Over the years he’s posted around one hundred stories, and each one has been tantalizing, full of rich love and Truth. A few years ago one of his stories was selected for inclusion in Chicken Soup for the African American Soul. Currently Herm is also a member of the Life ...

Every now and then threads from different corners of my experience converge and twist together, forming a vortex of intense meaning. This just happened again to remind me that writing Truth takes many forms, and that life writing can include fiction. The first thread: discussions in a couple of online groups about the nature of Truth. A general agreement emerged that there are levels and facets of truth. Factual truth and meaning don't always coincide, and for the purposes of memoir, meaning trumps fact. The second thread: an e-mailed link to a TED video of Isabel Allende's talk, ...

Lifewriters of the world, rejoice. In response to growing pressure from writers overwhelmed by the economic crisis and other stress sources, leading grammar authorities announced that many basic grammar rules that have plagued people for centuries are being suspended. “These demands came partly from the burgeoning Print-On-Demand and related self-publishing venues. Authors seeking to gain control of their own destinies feel unfairly burdened by the need to have professional editing. This decision will allow them to maintain their integrity and self-respect as they churn out material ...

When you write memoir you can only directly describe your own thoughts and sensations. If you are writing a scene that includes others, you are limited to writing what you can observe or what they tell you. For example, it’s entirely appropriate to write “The air was precisely skin temperature, and I was tempted to run naked to celebrate the return of summer, but I was afraid old man Jones would peak through a knothole in the fence, and I didn’t want to be sullied by his eyes.” You can write that about yourself, because you know your own thoughts. You can’t ...

Turn off the Internet. Unsubscribe from all your mailing lists (well, okay, you can keep the one or two most meaningful). Close your e-mail window and only check e-mail once or twice a day. These draconian measures appeared on a list of advice for writers who were having trouble getting to their writing. Are you one of those people? Have you ever kept meaning to sit down and write and then realized that days or weeks had gone by without having touched paper or opened your story file? And it seemed like just yesterday that you If you haven’t had that problem, please get in touch ...

I’m proud to have Irish ancestry on my mother’s side of the family. One branch left as recently as the Potato Famine, the other left earlier. I know quite a lot about the more recent immigrants. They were coal miners, arriving first in Braidwood, Illinois then moving down to New Mexico where the family dug in. Maybe it’s that Irish blood in my veins, or maybe not, but Celtic music is among my favorite, and I feel most at home on earth in summer, surrounded by green. Perhaps those roots explain the dreamer part of me. Three years ago my husband and I spent ten glorious ...

Nearly every time I speak to a group or teach a class, someone asks about copyright: “Aren’t you afraid that someone will steal your ideas or posts and use them somewhere else?” “How do you protect your work so nobody can copy it?” “If I read someone else’s story and subconsciously copy something they said, can I be sued?” “If I want to include something someone else said, how much can I use without violating copyright?”Like all authors, I put a lot of work into what I write, whether that’s a blog post, a book chapter, a ...

Just as there is more than one way to skin a cat (or so I’ve been told — I’ve never met anyone who claims to have skinned one), there is more than one way to kill a chicken. This is but one of the many fascinating pieces of trivia that I learned from reading the memoir, Growing Up in the Texas Panhandle by Pat Flathouse, who also writes Pat’s Place, a Blogspot blog. Pat describes the way her grandmother wrung chickens' necks. This added a third alternative to the two decapitation methods I knew from my family. Many other tender memories are included in this ...

For most of my life I’ve thought of my father as a background person in my life. He was always around, eating dinner with the family every night, taking us on picnic and camping trips, and occasionally directing my sister and me to clean up the kitchen on nights my mother may not have bothered. He was handy to have around for help on math homework in high school. But he was not much of a conversationalist, and much of our interaction took place through the filter of my mother. For example, she would tell me, “Your father doesn’t like thus and such,” or “Your ...

I didn’t intend to go so long between blog posts, but life happened. I’m writing this on the plane on the way home from a week-and-a-half of emergency Granny Duty in Austin, helping our daughter tend her tots after a serious knee injury, while her husband was out of town. Chasing up and down endless flights of stairs after an 18-month old streak of greased lightening and her 3½ year old big sister is enough to fill nearly every minute, but I did manage to squeeze in some precious family history research time in Austin’s magnificent history centers and archives, and ...

I got sucked into the parallel universe of Google this morning, which is way too easy to do. I’m working on The Los Alamos Years, a sequel to The Albuquerque Years, and wanted to check the elevation of Walnut Street relative to Villa Street on the other side of the mesa top our house stood on. Google Earth answered that, but then another question arose about where someone else’s house was, and that led me into GoogleMaps, and that led me to Street View, and I ended up virtually walking home from high school. The virtual walk went a little bit faster than the actual one would, ...

Roses are red, Violets are blue. Blog readers are sweet, They keep my words new.On this Valentine’s Day I send a special greeting to each and every reader, and a huge message of gratitude for all your inspiring and thought-provoking comments. I’ve often said that I write primarily for myself, because I love to write, and in a sense that’s true. My thoughts take shape as I write. I discover new ideas, new perspectives, and the world takes on fresh shapes and colors as it filters through my fingers. But, the longer I write, and especially the longer I write for this blog, ...

Some stories get stuck halfway out. Or they may not get out at all. We feel them stirring within, writhing and turning, kicking to get out, but the harder we try, the harder we push, the more tightly they stick in their spot. I’d be terminally discouraged if I kept track of all the blog posts I’ve begun and eventually deleted because they just didn’t work. More often I am able to finish them, but only with considerable rewriting, rephrasing, and perhaps a few days of fermentation. Sometimes when I’m stuck, it’s enough to sit back, breath deeply and ask ...