yourpassions.tk

Looking at the pile of library books I have ready to return tomorrow, I realize that the absolute best writing class I’ve ever taken has consisted of trips to the library. I love reading memoirs and autobiographies. I’m a sucker for the details of other people’s lives. I read for fun and to learn, but I also keep my writer’s hat on when I read. I pay attention to the way the content is structured, and I always keep an eye out for elegant wording. I also read a wide variety of fiction. Sue Grafton is a favorite for her wry humor, her occasional eloquent descriptions and the general adventure of her novels. Rosamund Pilcher’s ability to pen lyrical prose is sublime, and some (but not all) of Anais Nin’s work gives me goose bumps. When I find authors I admire, I study their style and the way they express ideas or describe scenes. I notice the selection of words, the pacing, the phrasing, the rhythm. Good writing is like a melody, and it sticks in my mind. I won’t copy specific phrases, bu...

Have you ever wished you could trade parents with a friend? Have you uttered some version of “You won’t believe what my mother did now!”? Maybe all your life you’ve wished that you could live in Mr. Roger’s neighborhood and be loved, “just the way you are.” Nearly everyone has felt that way about their parents at one time or another, if not their whole lives. But precious few people write about that in their lifestories. Most of us feel that writing about parental shortcomings is disrespectful, unloving or unappreciative, and even if we wish we could change them, we do love them, and don’t want to portray them to the world in a negative light. After all, we all make mistakes as parents, we could all do better, but we do the best we know how at any given time, and hope our children turn out well. It’s only later that we see what we could have changed, if we’d only known what and how sooner, and we cringe to think what our own children could write about us! I recently finished reading I ...

Old Blue, the Heretic posted a comment to the last message, Getting Focused . He is partial to the close-up photo. I especially appreciated his comment, and tend to agree with it, but there is more to the matter, and the long version of my reply deserves its own post. My first thought was that if I took that picture today I would zoom in on the kids, because that’s where the real story seems to be. I've found that both my writing and my photography have benefited from editing hundreds of family photos spanning more than a century and realizing how poorly composed many of them were. I took some of those pictures myself. Twenty years ago I snapped a gag photo of our son standing in front of a harbor near Tacoma with his hand held out to catch a rainbow. Only a few years later did I realize that I should have been thirty feet closer to George, filling the viewfinder with him catching the end of the rainbow. That day, I simply pointed and shot and got my mother, a good chunk of the re...

One of the most common shortcomings of lifestories is lack of a clear focus. Each story you write has its own purpose or theme. That purpose helps define the boundaries of the story and how much detail to include. You could compare it to cropping photographs to focus the interest. For example, consider the following pictures. The first picture shows a boy and girl sitting together in a swing. What’s the story here? The kids? The yard? The array of toys? The second picture shows the same children on the swing set, but the clutter is gone. The children stand out clearly, while the yard and surroundings are still part of the picture. The third picture is cropped to focus specifically on the children. The surroundings are almost irrelevant. They show only enough to give the picture context. Which is the better picture? Aside from esthetics, it’s a matter of personal preference — and purpose. With a little help from a photo editing program, the same photo yielded all three results. The firs...

After I posted the last message about the Muse, I felt a tiny buzz in my head. It flitted around like a pesky mosquito, nibbling at the membrane of conscious thought. I gave up and went out to the sun porch where I sat gazing at the misty woods, vibrantly green after the recent rain. I let my mind run free, and it turned to the Muse. On impulse I spoke to her. “Dear Muse, you are so helpful to me. I thank you and wonder, what is your name? Muses are supposed to have names.” “I’m so thrilled that you care!” she trilled. “I thought you’d never ask. My name is Sarabelle.” I couldn’t hide my chuckle. “Sarabelle. That’s a nice name. It reminds me of  Clarabelle Cow, Minnie Mouse’s friend.” “That’s one reason I don’t tell people my name very often. But she was a sweet cow. I knew her well. Now keep thinking. What else does my name remind you of?” “Hmm. Let me think. Sarabelle, Sarabelle… Ah! Yes! Cerebral!” “Not bad! You catch on fast. Tell me more.” “You live in my head, like part of my bra...

Two days ago I thought of a great blog topic while I was out walking. I’ll remember it, I told myself, making mental notes to help. That night as I lay in bed half asleep, another couple came to mind. Yesterday the same thing happened while I was out in the yard. Each time I promised I’d remember. Here I sit, ready to write. Where are my ideas? I scratch my head. I yawn. I chuckle. That often loosens up stuck memories. I’ll get a cup of coffee , I think. But no, the coffee doesn’t help. What happened? Where are my ideas? How many times have I written, and told students, “ Keep paper and pencil handy! When you have a story idea, write it down! ”? I hang my head to hide the redness of my face. I’ve failed to take my own advice. I haven’t written my blog ideas down. They’re in there somewhere, lurking in the dark recesses. Maybe. Or, maybe, because I failed to pay homage to my muse, she retracted the gifts. My muse, the one I share with lifestory writers everywhere, is a fickle muse, or m...

A reader explained in a recent e-mail that she’d been writing in circles about a difficult memory from the past and suddenly things tumbled about in a most amazing way. She realized that in her wheel-spinning, she’d been focusing on all the things that were wrong — things she “didn’t have” that she’d wanted. Then she began to look at the other side of the equation. She considered ways the difficult situation had worked through her life to make her a stronger person and began to see all the things she did have. She realized that the experience had been crucial in forming her into the person she is, and she rather likes the person she is. Her outlook on life has changed since making this discovery. The way she writes about her life has changed. She has found new joy and passion. She hadn’t been aware that she was writing for self-discovery. Her original intent was to explain a situation in the hope of helping her children avoid some mistakes others in the family had made. She did not wan...

Sometime ago my husband and I attended a slideshow at the library presented by a couple who had gone on a trek in the Nepal Himalayas. One slide showed a Buddhist monastery where they had an audience with the Lama of Nepal, who had just ended a thirty day fast. The account was terse. “He ended his fast. We had to wait a couple of hours before we met with him. After that we hiked on to….” Everyone in the room was left hanging, and the first question was about that interview. “What was it like? What happened? Tell us more!” More recently I listened to a man read an account of his experience liberating a Nazi concentration camp in World War II. The account was factual and brief. When he finished, the questions were along the lines of “How did you feel about this? What was your reaction? Tell us more!” Maybe none of your stories will be as spectacular as a personal audience with a renowned Lama, or liberating a death camp, but you surely have some of your own that could leave people on the...

A dear friend of ours lies in the hospital in critical condition as I write this. I’ll spare you the details other than mentioning he’s in a coma as the result of complications following what should have been routine surgery. As the hours and days crawl by, we continue to hope, but thoughts of the other possibility keep nudging their way into awareness. “This sounds like a journal entry. I thought this was a blog about Lifestory Writing,” I hear some of you thinking. You’re so right. That previous paragraph is a sort of journal entry. But it does tie in with lifestory writing. We’ve known this man and his family for a third of a century. Though we’ve always lived a considerable distance apart, we’ve visited each other, traveled together, and shared many fine adventures. However, I have never written any stories featuring this friend and his family. Today I realize that whether now or later, those adventures will come to an end. When the time comes, as it must, what would be m...

So now you are sitting at your desk, or the kitchen table, or in the bookstore coffee shop, you have a pad of paper and a couple of pens, and you know what story you want to write. You pick up that pen, and place it on the line at the top of the paper, but that’s as far as you get. Your fingers freeze. They simply won’t move. Just to make sure, you scribble a tiny spot at the bottom of the page, and verify that there is ink in the pen. You scratch your head, yawn, stretch, and try again. Still nothing. You get up and fetch a fresh cup of coffee. That’s it. Coffee, strong and black. That’s what fuels writers, right? That or whisky, ala Hemingway. Wrong. Neither coffee nor whiskey help at all. Coffee makes you feel more nervous about being stuck, whiskey makes you quit caring. The words are still stuck. Suddenly doubt sets in. What was it that made you think you could write? Just why is it that writing these stories down seemed so all-fired important? I’m not a writer , you tell yourself...