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In spite of nature’s best efforts to derail my plans, in the form of Hurricane Matthew, they are proceeding apace, including the plan to design QUIDNON—the houseboat that sails. The hurricane provided a teachable moment on surviving hurricanes aboard boats, confirming many of my intuitions about what makes QUIDNON a safe design for any situation, hurricanes included. We were in a mandatory evacuation zone, and although we could have sheltered in place, I decided to avoid subjecting my family to such an ordeal. And so we jumped in a rental car, drove away from the coast and sat out the hurricane in a motel room. When we got back, picking our way between piles of debris that were littering the roads, we found that the boat had suffered zero damage, but that the entire marina came within a foot or so of being annihilated: another foot of storm surge, and only some concrete pilings would have been left, with the rest of the marina, boats included, w...

I was in third grade when Ike ran against Adlai. I’ve formed a composite memory of that campaign, the only one I clearly remember. My composite image is set outside the door of my third grade classroom. The classroom windows faced northeast, and a thick row of ponderosa pines bordered the school yard about fifteen feet beyond the sidewalk and a strip of grass running along the side of the school. Class began at 8:30, and we were careful to be standing outside our room a few minutes early so we’d be ready to bolt in the door the minute Miss Hones opened it. We usually lined up as we arrived, but as election day grew near, we began to form into two camps outside that door. I stood with the Republican kids to the right, next to the protruding partition separating our room from the next one. The Democrat kids clustered near the partition at the other end by the door. “I like Ike!” we chanted at the top of our lungs. “Stevenson! Stevenson!” they ...

“I’ve been so busy the last couple of weeks I just didn’t have time to write anything, but I promise I’ll have something next time.” I’ve attended hundreds of writing group sessions, and I almost always hear some version of this explanation. In fact, I admit that rather than writing something new, I’ve recycled old stories more than a couple of times myself. Who doesn’t find it a challenge to carve out writing time, at least now and then? If this is a chronic problem for you, here’s a time tested idea: keep a time log for a week. I know. How can you find more time by spending precious minutes a day doing an OCD thing like that ? Here’s the deal. You can’t control an unknown quantity and this is a specialized instance of the concept that writing makes thinking visible . If you know how you typically spend your time, you can find ways to carve out an extra hour or two. If you really want to. The chart below is a relic I recently found while sorting through files from my previous life in ...

I was stunned when conversation at my book club drifted into comments on memoir in general. I’d just mentioned that I’d been appalled at the proliferation of typos and other errors in a memoir I recently read that was, sure enough, self-published.  “I cringe when I read something like that because it casts all self-publishers in a bad light.” But even so, I’d been mesmerized by the story and seconded the recommendation of a previous reader. I could never have anticipated the ensuing, spontaneous discussion. How I wish I’d had my phone’s recorder running. I did scribble a few notes, summarized below: “I’m more forgiving about sloppy writing and errors in memoir … I’m more interested in hearing their story than how they tell it.” “I can overlook a lot of structural stuff because the story is what counts.” “Memoir is about real people, things that actually happened. Most of them are not professional writers and I don’t expect them to sound like one.” “Flaws make memoir credible. If it’s t...

What do you plan to write in 2017? Are you setting writing resolutions for the year? I gave up setting formal New Year’s Resolutions decades ago, but I still do spend some time thinking about what the year may hold and what I’d like to get done. My intentions for 2016 were to get settled in a new home and new community. That included finding local writing community. The year unfolded just as I’d intended. As 2017 rolls in, I do feel settled. I still have a few embellishments to complete, but my previously adobe-colored office is now a cheery pale lemon ice with yards of white shelves on the walls. It has become the comfortable, creativity enhancing “room of my own” that I’ve always dreamed of having, and I no longer share space with the laundry. Sure enough, community roots are spreading. I found a wonderful book club at my local library branch. We’ve connected with several neighbors in our larger community. We’re enjoying family events. Starting to teach again… I was unsure whether I ...

In classes I teach and my current work-in-progress, the second edition of The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing (or whatever name it finally bears), I emphasize the value of writing piles of short, free-standing stories, even if students or readers plan a longer project. Today it is my pleasure to feature a guest post by Kathleen Pooler, author of Ever Faithful to His Lead . In this post, Kathleen explains her writing process, including a long list of resource links. “Your sacred place is where you find yourself again and again.” ~ Joseph Campbell Writing a memoir goes beyond recording a series of life events. It’s about creating a larger story and in so doing developing meaning and connection; striking a universal chord through your unique story. In order to get to that meaning and connection, a writer needs to find the heart of the story. When I started writing my first memoir in 2009, I only knew that I was living a joyful life after spending twenty-five years finding freedom fr...

Ten years ago when I wrote The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing , I suggested people use sticky notes for story idea lists. Right now I’m in the process of drafting a revised version of that book. After eight years the last print run sold out. I realized that my thinking on several topics has changed, along with my writing style. While the book is still valid, I realized it needed to be freshened up. Rather than slip it into Print-on-Demand status, the publisher and I decided to put it to bed with honors. It’s taken me over a year to commit to making a second edition happen. I started to revise the existing manuscript, then concluded that it needed to be ripped back to the studs. After more wheel spinning, I’ve created a new vision, a new folder, and a new manuscript, starting from scratch. This is not the same book. I’m pondering new names. When I realized I was spinning my wheels, I started listing key concepts on sticky notes. That wasn’t working well for me. Recalling how easy ...

How exciting is it to read a story full of “it was” or “there were” phrases? Yes, you’ve heard it before – phrases like these are a variation of passive voice, and they put readers to sleep. Let’s explore alternatives. As an example of the difference it can make to switch out dull, boring verbs with punchier active ones, Randall McKee agreed to let me use part of a documentary type story he recently read to our newly formed lifestory writing group. Randall read the “after” version, but confirmed that his first draft was indeed full of the dull form. Since he continued to save improvements over his initial draft, I took the liberty of reverse engineering the passage, especially the verbs, back to what they might have been. The clip below was excerpted from his opening paragraph: … Blake's Barber Shop was next to the Brownfield Hotel on North 6th Street just off Broadway. Outside the shop was a traditional red, white and blue banded barber pole. A hat tree was next to the door. It wa...

Earlier this year I published A Humble Story Lives On , a post based on the work of Amy Cohen, a distant cousin of my husband’s. Amy has been busy over the last several months lovingly publishing a posthumous memoir written by Ernest Lion, another shirt-tail relative who survived the Holocaust at Auschwitz. Amy asked for my guidance in preparing the manuscript for publication, and I became intrigued with her project as well as the story. In this post Amy explains how she came across the story and why she decided to publish it. I find it especially intriguing that a story written late in life with no known plans for publication could be found and brought to the world by a stranger. It just goes to show that you never know where your words may end up. SL: Amy, how did you discover The Fountain at the Crossroads ? AC: I was researching the family of one of my Schoenthal cousins—Rosalie Schoenthal. She was one of only two siblings of my great-grandfather who did not immigrate to the US fro...

In my previous post I touched on Expressive Writing as a way of dealing with post-election stress. I need to expand on that. Writing for stress relief takes more than one form, and spontaneous writing in real time is best known as journaling. I can attest from personal experience that journaling my heart out has been hugely helpful in coming to grips with anger, confusion, and other chaotic emotions. I highly recommend it, and if your topic is a tender one that could cause the chaos to spread of others near and dear to you happened to read it, write it into the fireplace , or the shredder, or delete the file. As great and powerful as journaling is, I’m not aware of any studies showing that it has long-term health benefits. Nor is it reliably useful for calming currently chaotic emotion. Expressive writing is especially powerful for resolving stressful memories after the fact. This research was pioneered by James Pennebaker and expanded upon in over 200 replications in situations rangi...

As much as we’d like to forget it all, it’s hard. Who can forget the finger pointing, the name calling, the conversations you tried not to have before November 8? We hoped it would end the next day, but we knew, most of us knew anyway, that it wouldn’t. Here we are now, stressed, burned out and perhaps more divided than ever. Half the country is rejoicing that they managed to Trump the so-called self-righteous, socialistic feminists represented by That Woman. “Change is finally possible,” they crow. “We can get back to true values, to democracy as it was intended to be.” And on it goes. On the flip side are those who were either Hillary’s True Believers as well as many who may not have preferred That Woman, but they claim a trained seal would be better than that devious, inexperienced, misogynistic bully. The sudden triumph of Trump seemed unimaginable and that half of the country is in deep mourning, highly traumatized. “How can they believe all that stuff?” “How can they just throw ...