THE SINGLE MOST common question I’m asked about writing a memoir is, “How do I start?” How do you begin when there’s so much to say, so many pictures and memories and thoughts rumbling around in your head? How do you sort out the core of your story amidst the […]
THROUGH THE WORK I DO to support journaling and memoir writers, I often meet people who want to write about their lives, but who are not really interested in publishing or promoting what they write. They don’t want to write a memoir — a theme-based work about one aspect or […]
Memorial Day is a day set aside to remember and honor the fallen men and women who died in the course of war and in service to our country. It is a day to remember who they were in their daily lives, a day to remember their stories, and to […]
The article, “The Centenarian’s Secret,” in the 5-Minute Memoir section of February’s Writer’s Digest Magazine caught my attention. In it, author Diane Speare Triant describes her chance meeting with 103-year-old Nelson McNutt and of subsequently writing and publishing an article summarizing his life story. After his death two years later, […]
When you journal about the people in your life, do you take the time to describe their physical appearance and personality traits? Do you write down the gist of conversations? You might think it’s too time-consuming to record these kinds of details. Or, perhaps you feel you know the people […]
While researching my mother’s letters and journals for my upcoming memoir, A Mother Like Mine, I came upon the following entry, revealing one of the reasons for her incessant letter writing: Another fear had to do with my defective memory, fear of the darkness in the cave where my own […]
While choosing which journal writing techniques to include in my course, Journaling for Memoir Writers, I was reminded of the power of Legacy Letters to explore aspects of ourselves and our life experiences we wish to preserve for the future—whether it’s as a gift for friends and family members or […]
AS JOURNAL KEEPERS, it’s important to think about what will happen to our journals when we are gone. Or even — and of course we hope this never happens — an accident befall us. This may seem like a morbid topic and something we’d rather avoid thinking about, but our […]
