yourpassions.tk

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...