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Happy New Year, one and all. It’s hard to believe this century is settling in so fast. I recently realized that when I hear the term “last century,” I now think of the 1900s rather than the 1800s. That means the collective memory I’ve acquired from my family (things I know of great-grandparents and their adventures), together with my personal memories, spans three centuries. That gives me a lot to write about! Speaking of writing, I hope that sometime today or tomorrow, you’ll have a few quiet moments to join me, at least in spirit, with a pad of paper, your favorite pen, and maybe a cuppa whatever to jot down some writing resolutions for 2007. I managed to squeak under the wire on one of my 2006 resolutions: the manuscript for The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing is ready to go to the printer on Tuesday for galley proofs. Talk about cutting it close! That’s the power of a resolution, backed up by a deadline of commitments. No formal release date has been set for the final copies,...

As I sat wrapping gifts this afternoon, I thought back through several decades to Christmases Long, Long Ago. When I was growing up we nearly always wrapped gifts on Mother’s bed. Don’t ask me why we used that unstable location — probably because their bedroom also served as the family room, with Mother’s sewing center and Daddy’s desk located in there. Today I pulled out some ancient ribbon I’ve had stashed away for decades. Readers over fifty may remember the kind that had glossy fibers bonded to a duller base. In the olden days we formed our own bows from loops of this ribbon. We cut notches in the center, tied a thin ribbon tightly inside the loops, then pulled them out, alternating sides and twisting to create a full, puffy bow. These were far more elegant than the preformed plastic decorations in common use today. I took pains with the wrapping, turning edges under to make crisp, straight seams, and folding the ends with origami precision. The finished packages are so lovely, it ...

One of the blogs I keep track of is Soul Blessings , written by Tara, a self-described eclectic thinker. Her most recent post posed a puzzler. A friend is engaging in risky and rebellious behavior at work and reporting on it in detail to Tara. Tara is puzzling over her most honest and appropriate course of action. I’ll leave it to you to read the post and to make your own decision. I include the link here because sooner or later everyone faces a similar dilemma. You may not have had to decide about ratting on Bill Clinton’s equivalent, but you may have known that someone is abusing public or corporate trust in other ways. Perhaps you knew a friend was cheating on a spouse. Perhaps you covered for someone. Would you respond the same way again, or has your point of view changed with age? Stories of your experience with situations like this are self-instructive, and potentially a great way of conveying a value to others. These stories are also a powerful way of gaining insight and clear...

The other day a friend gave me a guided tour of her collection of teapots that fill several shelves in her dining room. This one was from China, and another was over a hundred years old. She found a fancy one with a rose pattern in an antique shop in London. An exquisite Belleek pot occupied a special place. As she showed me each one, she took it from the shelf and fondled it like a pet while she told how she came to have it. “These teapots are like windows on your life. Each has quite a story to it. H ave you written them down?” I finally asked. “No. Now and then I think of it, but I just never seem to get around to it.” She paused. “I think one of the reasons I’ve delayed starting is not knowing how to go about it,” she finally admitted. “Don’t try to do this all at once,” I cautioned her. “Just do one pot at a time. Pick any pot, put it on the table in front of you and sit down with a blank piece of paper and pen. Write a short note telling how you came to have this teapot. Did you ...

Yesterday I wrote a story about the time decades ago that I first made tostadas for dinner and invited my parents to share the meal. To go with the tostadas, I made fresh salsa of home-grown tomatoes and jalapeño peppers grown from seedlings my father had started. The highlight of the story was my horror as I watched my father enthusiastically drench his dinner with this fiery sauce, and then react explosively. He hadn’t realized it was home-made! As I reread the story, I realized that although it made me ravenously hungry for a tostada, the horror and reaction were confined to three or four sentences, and fundamentally, it was a lackluster piece of work. What could I do? Give it a snappier opening and closing! My original opening was: The second or third summer after my parents moved to Richland, my father grew jalapeño pepper plants from seed and gave us a few starter plants for our garden. Those plants thrived in the narrow bed along the back of the house where they had full sun eve...

In the recent past, few people could afford to spend the money to have formally bound copies of their finished lifestory projects made for their families. If you did have them professionally printed and bound, you had to decide ahead of time how many copies you wanted, and that was the end of it. With the advent of POD (Print On Demand) publishing, all of that has changed. You can order a single copy of a professionally printed and bound book, hard bound or paperback, for no more than you would pay off-the-shelf at a bookstore. But, let the buyer beware. Few of the POD publishers are well-suited for working with individuals. Most charge a minimum of $500 for setting a book up. Enter Lulu.com . Without investing a single cent, you can order as many or as few copies as you wish of a professionally printed and bound 250 page paperback book, with your choice of cover design (they have templates to help you set one up) and several pages sizes, for a mere $7.53 (as of December 2006), plus sh...

When pressed to define the distinction between a journal entry and a life story, I reply that in general, journal entries are more spontaneous, often raw and undigested, reports of events and reactions. The journal entry is grapes straight from the vine, newly stomped into juice. Freshly pressed grape juice is a delight to the taste buds. The life story, at its best, is also grape juice, but juice that has fermented, then aged in oaken barrels for long enough to fully develop and mellow. This grape juice takes on overtones of the aging barrel wood, the yeast that ferments it, and all sorts of other factors. This juice delights not only the taste buds, but the soul. (When consumed in moderation....) Life events are similar. We react one way today, and perhaps quite another way in a year or five or twenty. Over time we come to see deeper meaning and connections between the stories in our lives, lending rich overtones of insight and wisdom as we tell and retell them. This is why many “exp...

“Oh boy! Oh boy! Oh boy!” At sixteen months, our toddling granddaughter was thrilled with her new-found ability to mimic what she heard people around her saying. She was picking up several new words a day. “Where did she learn that?” her mother asked. Nobody remembered saying “Oh boy!” but it’s the sort of thing any of us might say without thinking about it, especially when we’re playing with an exuberant toddler. Wherever she heard it, there she stood, gleefully chanting her latest verbal acquisition. I had an extra chuckle remembering an incident the previous day. Grandpa had used a slightly colorful word and been reminded that little ears were recording every word. He and I locked eyes across the room and broke out in huge grins. “You’re thinking of that movie, Meet the Fockers , right?” observed our daughter. Yes, we were. If you haven’t watched that movie, there’s a scene where the main character lets the BS epithet fly with gusto in front of a non-verbal baby. The baby surprised ...

Long time readers, please take note. You may have noticed there are not a lot of links in the sidebar. I'm picky! I only add those I believe will add direct and tangible value to your personal story writing efforts. This morning I added two new links, one to the Old Forty Fives site I wrote about yesterday, and another to Kingwood College Library's American Cultural History site. Stephanie West Allen, author of Idealawg , posted this latter link in a comment on yesterday's post, and it's one of the richest sites I've seen. Thank you Stephanie! If anyone else has favorite links, please do share them, either in a comment or an e-mail to me. Another item I mentioned only passingly yesterday was the Life Story Writing YahooGroup. This group has a long history, and goes through cycles of intense activity interspersed with slower times, but it's a place to post stories, share treasured memories that may inspire others and find story ideas for your own writing. I...

One of the great things about a blog versus a print publication is the ability to include links. Today I came across a super link that’s guaranteed to bring back lots of memories for those of us who came of age in the fifties and sixties. My odyssey began with link from Thelly Rheam in a post to the Life Story Writing YahooGroup . Thelly sent us to the When Life Was Black and White page, which features a flash video about black and white t.v. This site has buttons along the bottom that take you to lots of other memory trigger sites. The one that appealed to me the most linked to the Old Forty Fives page, which has lots of links of its own. Rather than describe it to you, I’ll simply urge you to surf on over. As I write this The Big Bopper is on that website speakin’ about what he likes: “Chantilly Lace, a pretty face, and a pony tail, hanging down…” Suddenly I’m back in 1958 (verified by the Top 100 Songs of 1958 list on the site). I’m in my freshman year of high school, wearing ...

Everyone has major milestones in their lives, like graduating from high school or college, getting married, winning an award or contest, buying a first car, meeting a celebrity, and so forth. I passed a major milestone today: I became the grandmother of a teenager! That’s almost, but not quite, as startling as becoming the mother of a forty-year-old, or turning forty myself. When these major milestones occur, it’s natural to think back to corresponding events. Today I tried to remember my own thirteenth birthday. I remember the excitement of looking forward to becoming a teenager, but try as I might, I do not remember the actual event. And, though I blush to admit, I do not remember the specific birthdays when my children became teenagers. These were big days at the time, but the memory does not linger on. You probably have similar lapses of your own. What does this have to do with writing lifestories? This incident of mine merely underscores the fact that we don’t remember the details...

This is a day that the Lord hath made. Let us rejoice and write stories in it. — Sharon Lippincott I've had a busy week. Our daughter was here for Thanksgiving with her toddler and husband, and shortly after they left, I came down with a bug (fortunately short-lived). Consequently, I haven't spent time writing for a week now. This could have been a disaster for the blog, but fortunately I had a small backlog that I could pop into place with a few clicks of my mouse. My backlog is now depleted, but it won't stay that way long. I woke up with my head simply buzzing with blog/story ideas. Knowing all too well how important it is to honor my muse Sarabelle when she pays me a visit, especially such a bountiful one, I headed straight to my computer and started half a dozen new posts. If my backlog gets too full, I'll simply post more often for awhile. One of the insights she gifted me with was the fact that I now have ninety-four posts in this blog, which began on February 7...

The trouble with writing about the wilderness is that there is almost none of it left, and so, although more and more writers are born, grow up and appear in print, fewer and fewer can possibly have even an approximate acquaintance with the wild destroyed world on whose splinters we stand. — Edward Hoagland I recently found that quote on Susan Albert's Lifescapes blog. It especially appealed to me because I grew up on the edge of the wilderness, and live on the edge of a forest today. Nature and wildlife have always been dear to me, and it's hard for me to imagine not being able to wander in the woods. Sometime back I wrote this paragraph about the mountains of northern New Mexico: Those mountains shaped my life and my abiding love for the woods. Alone among the towering pines, I was my own best self, free from all expectations, pressures and competition. I knew even then that the forest had healing powers. The memories from those mountains pull me back to being my own best ...

A cheery, lilting song has been running through my mind the last few days. It goes something like this: Oh bring the turkey, golden brown, the mashed potatoes light, The cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie, my, oh what a sight! We'll eat and eat until at last, we've had too much, but then, Thanksgiving comes but once a year, so we can get thin again! I learned this song in third or fourth grade in music class and we probably only sang it one year. We learned dozens of those songs through the years, but this is one of the two or three that stuck in mind. I call this one my “Thanksgiving Carol” and I always hear it sung by children's voices all around me, with my own voice belting it out right along with them. The tune takes me back to my early childhood Thanksgivings. Those all blur together. Many years we went to visit one set or the other of the grandparents (I was fortunate that all four of mine lived to become great-grandparents), and there were often lots of cou...

Someone recently asked what I’ d recommend as the one single thing they could do that would help their writing the most. I answered with one word: Toastmasters . Most people think of Toastmasters as an organization devoted to improving me mbers’ s peaking skills. It definitely does that — with a number of fringe benefits. The primary value of Toastmasters is the practice you gain in learning to organize your thoughts. To make a point in the five to seven minutes available for club speeches, you must pare your material down to its bare essence. There is no time for clutter or extra material. This process of digging for golden nuggets of meaning transfers into all areas of communication. Your conversation becomes more precise. If you are in sales, you’re bet ter equipped to assess needs and define benefits with laser-like precision. If you teach, you’ll l del iver streamlined lectures that emphasize the main message in a smooth and logical flow. Your writing will become lean and spare....

A few days ago Herm posted a comment about the blog That's Not How I Remember It . Herm's concluding descriptions lit my day: ...He sandwiched the meat of laughter between the bread of raised eyebrows. When I finished he simply said, "That's not the way it happened at all." I rewrote with the flames of my memory and the icicles of his testimony. It melted into something that was reality for both of us. Wow! Sandwiching the meat of laughter between the bread of raised eyebrows. Flames of memory versus icicles of testimony. Don't those analogies just give your inner writer joyful goosebumps? Herm is one of my "virtual" writer friends. We met several years ago in the Yahoo Lifestory group. The first story he posted had me sitting on the edge of my chair in admiration. A couple of years ago his story, "Denied the Prize," was published in Chicken Soup for the African American Soul . Obviously Herm has an innate gift for story telling and depic...

My posting rate has slightly slowed lately due to minor technical problems. I understand that these problems will probably go away if I switch to the new Blogger format, which also gives advantages like the ability to assign categories to each post. Now, how cool will that be, to find all the posts on, say punctuation, with a single click? In another month or so, the choice will no longer be mine. Blogger will switch everyone. So, why on earth have I dawdled, rather than immediately switching? Now, that’s a story I’ve never written. It goes back to my junior year in high school when I read George Orwell’s novel, Nineteen Eighty Four in English class. This novel made my skin crawl. I grew up in Los Alamos, NM, where nearly every family had at least one member with a Q clearance, the highest security rating at the time (as far as I know), and for much of the time I lived there, security guards limited entrance to the town to residents and invited guests. Perhaps the novel made more of an...

I recently had a leisurely lunch with a longtime friend, a rare luxury. During the course of the conversation we discovered that our memories of a project we collaborated on over a dozen years ago are as different as night and day. Each of us gives the other credit for instigating the undertaking. “What a great story,” I replied when I heard the other side. “That’s not how I remember it, but it sounds good.” “What do you mean? How do you remember it?” My version was like a mirror image. “No way!” My friend plans to do a journal check to see “how it really happened.” “I’m eager to hear what your journal says, but if it's different from my account, I’ll remind you that initial perception shapes memory, and we may have perceived it differently to start with. What difference does it make? We’re happy with the outcome, so probably we're both right, or the 'truth' is a combination of our memories.” I went on to suggest that we each write the story of how this project began so...

Last week I read a letter written for the purpose of defending and rallying support for an important cause. The letter is unlikely to achieve that purpose and could even sabotage the effort. Among its flaws, it failed to clearly state the purpose, and supporting evidence for a poorly organized list of complaints was lacking. The effect was somewhat like scattering dots on a piece of paper without adding numbers so they can be connected to reveal a recognizable shape. I had a sense of déjà vu when I read this letter. It reminds me of stories in my grandmother's autobiography. Her collection of a hundred or so memories consists mainly of disorganized recollections that lack sufficient detail and background information to render them meaningful to anyone who didn't know her well. My grandmother wrote her autobiography in 1980, not long before she died. It was the first time I'd heard of an "ordinary person" writing an autobiography. I was impressed by the fact that s...

If you’ve had any reluctance about starting to write your own lifestory, a blog post and comment I read today should send you scurrying to your keyboard to get started. I’ve been blog-surfing, trying to find a template with a three column format that I could adapt for my own use here. In the search, I found a moving tribute posted on October 23 by Don Quixote announcing the death of his 97-year-old grandmother. In this tribute he mentions that he didn’t spend much time with her or know her well. This post had a number of comments, and I clicked to read them. One was especially relevant to us here: I sat in my grandmother's funeral and listened to all they had to say and realized that I didn't know her at all. I also knew that I'd never bothered to get to know her. She was just this old lady who featured in my childhood for a while and who faded out when my parents moved us away. Stupid way to be, eh? I could write pages of speculation about why those two...

“The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think.” — Edwin Schlossberg For many of us this thought encapsulates the underlying reason for writing lifestories: To pour our own hearts and thoughts onto paper as a context for others to think and examine their own lives, beliefs and choices. What more could we hope for? Admiration? Praise? Gratitude? Or simply to be remembered? There are no wrong or poor reasons for writing. Writing is its own reward, and all else is icing on the cake. For me, stimulating thought in others is the ultimate icing. And thus I blog. How sweet it is to have such an opportunity and outlet. Write on, Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal

I recently found this item in my e-mail inbox. Anyone who has been reading this blog for awhile knows that I don’t make a habit of raiding my inbox for blog material, but this exploration of True Friendship deserves special attention: A simple friend, when visiting, acts like a guest. A real friend opens your refrigerator and helps himself (and doesn't feel even the least bit weird shutting your beer/Pepsi drawer with her foot!) A simple friend has never seen you cry. A real friend has shoulders soggy from your tears. A simple friend doesn't know your parents ’ first names. A real friend has their phone numbers in his address book. A simple friend brings a bottle of wine to your party. A real friend comes early to help you cook and stays late to help you clean. A simple friend hates it when you call after they ’ ve gone to bed. A real friend asks you why you took so long to call. A simple friend seeks to talk with you about your problems. A real friend seeks to help you w...

As technology marches on, some of our toughest writing challenges have nothing to do with finding topics or the right words to express our ideas. For example, for the past week I've been writing blog entries from afar as we visit an ailing friend. I have my list of topics with me so I won't be at a loss for content ideas, and the words flow easily enough. That's not a problem. The problem is with equipment. My wireless connection works, but not reliably at any given time. It fades in and out. The Blogger server has not been any more reliable than my wireless connection. When the two hit a low at the same time... I won't alarm or bore you with the full list of geek talk. These are high-level challenges that most writers will never face. The more common tech problems involve things like forgetting to save a file and losing a story when the electricity flashes off, or screaming vile words at Word when you can't get a photo to stay where you want it in a document. Here...

Many, if not most, lifestory writers begin by writing short stories about various topics. One day they discover they have an impressive pile of unrelated stories and wonder what on earth to do with them. Here’s the answer: “Crumb cake? Stories? What’s the deal?” you may well ask. Just as there are many recipes for crumb cake, there are many recipes for weaving assorted stories into a finished anthology. Here are a few common ones: Simple story album In my forthcoming book, The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing , I refer to finished collections of stories as albums, similar to photo albums or music albums. Photo albums generally have themes, such places and seldom have more than a few words describing date, place and names. The photos stand on their own. You can do the same thing with your stories. Just arrange them in a pleasing order and call it an album of short stories, each complete within itself. Theme album Just as some photo albums are about specific eve...

I’m dimly aware of a truck passing along the road below me. Cracking one eye, I see the dark of night has given way to the grayness of early morning. I glance at my bedside clock and think how cozy and warm I am, how delightful my mattress feels, and how cool it will seem when I slide out of bed. One thought leads to another and soon my current writing project is running through my mind. I let my thoughts wander over events I plan to write about, focusing on details as vividly as possible. As I rewind my mental video to zoom in on a specific scene, I realize the advantage of replaying the scene. I can go back again and again until I’m satisfied that I’ve attended to every available detail. Suddenly I’m struck by the fact that some of these details are things I failed to notice at the time of the actual event. I have the advantage all these years later of moving around the scene, considering it from a dozen different angles, pre-writing until I get the story just right. I’m finding elem...

Getting a book ready for press can turn into a family affair. My daughter Susan has been proof reading the manuscript for The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing. Like her father, she’s especially good at finding tiny inconsistencies, and I appreciate her sharp eye. As writers, we grow so accustomed to our own words that it’s quite difficult to them freshly. Our mind tends to replay the words we recall writing rather than read the specific contents of the page. Susan is a talented and experienced writer in her own right, specializing in marketing and public relations pieces. When she got to the section of the manuscript on overcoming writer’s block, she commented on her own methods of dealing with this challenge: I used to get terrible writer’s block when trying to do brochures or press releases. I found that the more frequently I wrote, the less often I’d have writer’s block. But, when facing a deadline and facing writer’s block – one thing I did to get around my blo...

Did you know that writing about your past experiences can actually improve your current health? Perhaps not all stories are magic bullets for healing, but writing about distressing events has demonstrable benefits, as documented by James W. Pennebaker, PhD in his book OPENING UP: The Healing Power of Expressing Emotions. This report is a summary for executives, combining a 249-page book into a few sentences. Dr. Pennebaker is Professor of Psychology and a researcher at the University of Texas. He formulates theories about health and tests them by conducting experiments using his many undergraduate students. For this book, the premise is that holding back or inhibiting ones frustrations is work and affects short-term biological changes and long-term health and thinking abilities. To test the theory, students performed various tasks and their vitals were measured before, after, in six weeks and after five years. Tests included blood pressure, heart rate, skin conductivity, per...

Over the last few days I’ve had an exciting epiphany of sorts. Everything you read about writing lifestories and memoirs encourages you to express lots of emotion to add color, life and credibility to your accounts. This is good advice. Expressing emotion does that — if you can do so authentically. Many people are able to use visualization or a similar technique to recreate past scenes vividly enough to experience the emotions anew. Others are able to imagine what they must have been feeling and express it in a credible way. Another group of people have never been more than vaguely aware of any but the strongest emotions. To a significant degree, the way we experience emotions is hard-wired at birth. It relates to how our brains work, and no two brains work the same way. To put it in simplistic terms, emotions are generally thought of as a right-brain function, and many people are primarily left-brain dominant, favoring thought over feeling. It’s similar to being right-handed or left-h...

I haven’t written much about the book I’m working on since the very earliest blog entries. Not surprisingly, the title of the book is THE HEART AND CRAFT OF LIFESTORY WRITING. I have to tell you that I’ve been going through absolutely every challenge I write about within the process of writing the book. I’ve had to pull disparate pieces of this and that together. I’ve had to write transitions, and document facts. I’ve had to reach out on faith into the nether world, trusting that the right words will appear, and every time they have, though not always as quickly as I’d like. The good news is that I just passed a major milestone. I finished what I intend to be the final edit. There are still half a dozen items on the list that must be checked off before it is press-ready, but I’m pumped. Passing this milestone of having all the structure and order the way I want it, the words flowing smoothly, and the formatting under control reminds me that we need to celebrate often as we write. Cele...

When is the last time you sat down with a box of crayons and drew a picture? If you’re like me, it’s been awhile. My last post was about the budget information I found. In the same folder I found a crayon drawing I made five or six years ago of the backyard I played in as a preschooler. I decided to scan it in and write about it now. The picture wasn’t that vivid when I drew it. The scanner magically intensified the colors, much to my liking. I had an absolute blast drawing that picture. I drew the willow tree with me in my swing. I drew the chicken house in the back, and put my sandbox under the tree. The sidewalk where I learned to skate is on the right, with the fence covered in honeysuckle. The clothesline is behind the fence to the right, and the mysterious storage room I was never allowed to explore is in the top right corner. When I drew the picture, I relied on my memory. Since that time, I’ve found old photos that showed me some errors in my memory. My sandbox was not behind ...