TODAY’S ARTICLE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE the latest in the Read Like a Writer series, in which I would write about how Sue Monk Kidd Structured her memoir, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter. But when Sunday, the day I write my blog posts, rolled around, I found myself procrastinating. […]
I KIDNAPPED MY SWEETHEART this weekend for a birthday getaway to the California Coast — a sweet spot just north of Gualala, courtesy of AirBnB. We definitely needed some time away from the relentless household chores and everyday responsibilities, and we’ve gotten to the point in our lives where we […]
SOME PEOPLE only write their stories when they’ve got nothing to lose. But others write their truth even if they’re risking their reputation, their livelihood or their close relationships in order to do so. Certainly we can see this in books and movies. Take The Help as an example. This […]
THIS IS THE SECOND OF THREE ARTICLES, in which I discuss Sue Monk Kidd’s memoir, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter: A Woman’s Journey from Christian Tradition to the Sacred Feminine. As I wrote in the First Impressions post, Dance of the Dissident Daughter is a different sort of memoir — […]
IN THESE DIVIDED AND STRESSFUL TIMES, we are experiencing a sort of collective trauma. Every day we read about or watch events unfold that would have been unthinkable only a few years ago: Nazis marching and chanting in the streets of the United States, cars plowing into crowds as a […]
I’M PROUD AND PLEASED to be able to share with you my recent interview with Linda Joy Myers, in which we discuss her new memoir, Song of the Plains: A Memoir of Family, Secrets, and Silence. I first interviewed her back in 2010, when I was working on my memoir. (You […]
DO YOU READ EBOOKS? If so, do you use many of the features ebooks offer, such as highlighting phrases and passages you like, creating notes about your impressions, searching for key ideas, and bookmarking? I know I do. These are useful tools for research — or simply for thoughtful reading. […]
THIS IS THE FIRST OF THREE ARTICLES, in which we discuss Sue Monk Kidd’s memoir, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter: A Woman’s Journey from Christian Tradition to the Sacred Feminine. Originally published in 1992, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, in which Sue Monk Kidd writes about her awakening […]
SUMMER. When everything swelters, and the world seems as though it’s come to a halt in the heat. When you retreat indoors to your air conditioned space or, maybe, travel somewhere exotic just to get away, it’s a good time to journal about the season you’re in. I’ve created a […]
WHAT IS IT ABOUT MEMOIR that fascinates and draws us to it in a way that fiction, while entertaining and enlightening, does not? Why do we love reading such intimate, first-person stories of challenge, struggle, and triumph? Is it, as some would claim, a tabloid-style voyeuristic curiosity? Is is that […]
IN JANUARY OF 2016, I made a commitment to myself—as part of my writing life and to meet my writing goals, I would go on a weekend-long writing retreat at least twice each year. As I searched for a retreat that would suit my needs, I began to realize that […]
THIS IS THE THIRD of a 3-part analysis of This Boy’s Life by Tobias Wolff. In this part, we take a look at the narrative structure to better understand how the choice of structure helps or hinders the narrative. Whenever I set out to examine the structure of a piece […]
