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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...