yourpassions.tk

Memoirist Alice Siebold claims that she writes the “essence” of truth. That’s all anyone can do. Some people get stymied while writing lifestories in an attempt to ensure all the details are accurate, but when they talk to family members or other people involved in a remembered episode, nobody agrees. How can this be, and how does it affect the validity of your stories? In 1984 I was on the staff of a Rotary leadership camp for young adults held north of Spokane. The junior staff members staged a mock crime witnessed by the unsuspecting campers, and used as material for a mock trial held to demonstrate the workings of the justice system. To everyone’s amazement, no two witnesses gave the same testimony. Elena swore she’d heard gunfire. Quentin claimed the driver had been swigging from a bottle of beer. Ted insisted the Jeep stopped mere inches from human bodies. When the testimony was compared with actual evidence, the gunfire would have had to come from a water pistol. The bottle cont...

Ideas for stories are everywhere, but sometimes you need help to get them flowing. The list below lists resources you can use to help remember stories and refresh your memory on details. Besides serving as memory joggers, several can be used to illustrate and enhance your stories as you write them. Old photographs of you, relatives, friends, events, places, anything meaningful to you. If you have boxes full, select the best and most appropriate ones for each category. Use these as memory joggers while writing, and include relevant ones in your finished copy. Scrapbooks may include programs from plays you attended or acted in, dance cards, invitations, announcements, newspaper clippings, and all sorts of other trivia that ties in with stories. Diaries or journals . If you are an avid journal keeper, you’ll find a treasure trove of memories and insights. One key difference between lifestories and journals is that journals generally record events from the perspective of reactions and feel...

Whether you plan to write random stories about your life, or write a chronological account, a timeline is one of the most useful tools you can create for yourself. Timelines are suggested in most of the basic books about writing memoir and lifestories. I’m personally more inclined to jump in and start working on a project first, and read the instructions when all else fails, or when I get bored and need fresh ideas. But in this case I followed the advice. I began by making a table with one row per year. The table has only two columns, a narrow one to the left, identifying the year, and a much wider one on the right. In the right column I listed key events that happened during that year. I used a hanging indent paragraph style, because some events required more than one line of space, but you could also use a bullet list, or simply double-space between items. Filling it in was easy at first as I put things like school grade, births of my siblings, children and grandchildren, marria...

Several people have asked if I plan to mention the Microsoft Story Template, available for download from the Microsoft website, or the books that have you fill in blanks to complete your lifestory in several dozen questions. I wasn’t planning to mention these, but since the question continues to surface, I will. Quite bluntly, I don’t recommend these tools. I don’t recommend the Microsoft template because its formatting is highly complex, and unless you are a certified Word Wonk, you’ll quickly lose control of it. Your answers will generally exceed the space they allow, and your pictures won’t fit in the boxes they provide. Furthermore, it has a colorful background image of the type that’s much loved by people who sell ink cartridges. The image won’t print all the way to the edge of the paper. It won’t run through a standard copier, and it won’t work with electronic publishing services. The Instant Autobiography kits are a slightly different matter. They are designed for peopl...

I have not read the hugely popular book, The Purpose Driven Life , but I’m a huge proponent of having a purpose. That applies on every level from a purpose for life in general to a purpose for writing blog entries. A clear sense of purpose is the driving force behind any project, and writing your lifestory is no exception. Without a strong purpose, you may sit down and write a story or two, but you are doing little more than scratching an itch in your brain. Once you finish scratching, you’re likely to move on to something else. When you have a purpose, when you see the end result in your mind, you’ll discover awesome staying power. Beyond the motivational value of a clear purpose, it will guide you in deciding which stories to include, what form to use in telling them, and how to organize them for your final package. There are many reasons to write a lifestory. For example, you may want to share your story with current family and friends document the time you live in for future desce...

In recent weeks I’ve frequently been asked what I think of the brouhaha over the lies James Frey admitted to telling in his memoir, A Million Little Pieces . I think the work was fiction. Do I think all memoirs and lifestories that don’t stick strictly to empirically verifiable truth are fiction? No, I don’t, but the answer isn’t as clear cut as it may seem. The matter of memory, what it is, how it works, and what comprises Truth is complex, and sometimes controversial. In another post I’ll write about an event I participated in that inadvertently showed the complexity of perception, the basis of memory. Our stories are personal and unique because no two people experience life the same way, even when they sit side-by-side in the same room. Which account will be “right?” Which account will be “true?” You may have already discovered that at family gatherings, when one person recalls a memory of a certain event, another is likely to chime in with, “No, it wasn’t that way. This is ...

A child born in the twenty-first century in America will never know life without cell phones, television or computers. This child is unlikely to know what it’s like to play freely outside, exploring a patch of woods or riding bicycles clear across town to get an ice cream cone.  This child may never ride on a train or learn to write letters with pencil and paper. Sewing clothing at home may be an amusing idea, and for most, cooking over a campfire will be something they know only from old movies. For many people in our rapidly fragmenting age the urge to write lifestories springs from a  deep-seated need to reach out and establish connections across time to the next and future generations. We feel called to build a bridge from a time of hand-crafted objects and human-operated machinery to an age of electronic marvels we can only dimly imagine. As we foresee an age of instant and constant connection, we want to bear witness of a time when news was gathered over the back fence or at coff...

A few minutes ago I sent out an e-mail announcement about this blog to dozens of family members, friends and acquaintances. Fewer minutes ago I looked at the message in my Sent e-mail folder.   To my chagrin, I saw the following sentence:  “My plans for this site are to post tips and thoughts about writing several times a month.” I don’t imagine it will be very long before my father replies with an e-mail asking, “Why do you need tips to write several times a month?”  My father is the world champ at pouncing on awkward wording! The other sentence he’ll pounce on is “Beyond going to visit yourself, I hope….” He will want to know why he’d go to visit himself! If you are looking at this post as a result of that e-mail, know that if I’d gone for that second cup of coffee before hitting Send, that first sentence would read, “Several times a month I plan to post thoughts and tips about writing.”  The second one would read, “Besides visiting the site yourself, I hope….” One of my mantras for ...

Lifestory writing is the process of transforming your own essence into words on paper for other people to know — daring to expose not only your actions and experiences, but your thoughts, your choices, your perceptions and your feelings. It takes courage to bare your soul for the examination of future generations and making the effort to share yourself with them is an act of great love. This love and courage is the heart of lifestory writing. The craft involves sorting, polishing and refining the raw ore of the words that flow from your heart until they gain their maximum power to touch the hearts of your readers and inform, amaze, or inspire them. You may fear contempt or ridicule, but rest assured that if you feel the urge to share, someone out there needs to hear what you have to say. Some may be indifferent to your words, but many more in times and places you may not be able to foresee will be grateful for the knowledge and wisdom you’ve shared. You may spare somebody grief, comfor...

Hello. Welcome to my blog. I hope this site will become the gathering place for lifestory writers the world over. Before we proceed, allow me to introduce myself. I’ve become something of a nut about lifestory writing myself over the last decade. I began writing stories to share with my grandchildren, shortly after the first was born. By the time I’d written the story of my preschool years, I was hooked. I’ve continued writing stories, stories about family, about school, friends, experiences I’ve had. Some of the stories are funny, some are sad, some are adventures. Some have been shared with family, some with friends, and some not at all. Some may never be shared. Six years ago, after I retired from gainful employment, I began teaching Lifestory Writing at our local Senior Citizen Center and Library. I taught many subjects in my patchwork career, and there was never another I enjoyed nearly as much as Lifestory writing. Few things are as gratifying as having a student proudly display ...