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As I stood at my ironing board touching up the buttonhole edge of several shirts, I got to thinking about ironing in the Good Old Days. I remembered gathering clothes from the line out in the yard, sprinkling the shirts and other things that needed ironing, then stashing them in a plastic bag. This was a great delaying mechanism, gladly welcomed by those of us in the League of Professional Procrastinators, because the bag had to sit for a few hours for the dampness to become uniform. The challenge was to get back to the task before the clothing mildewed in the bag. My first ironing experience was with a small toy iron and a tot-sized ironing board, just like Mommy's. As I remember, the iron had a little light in it to simulate heat. I think that required a battery, but if it did, it was the only battery-operated item I had until my transistor radio in junior high school. I remember watching my grandmother iron with flat irons heated on her stove, and with a kerosene iron when they ...

In The Soul of Money , Lynne Twist explores two contrasting attitudes toward money and things in general. The prevailing attitude is one of scarcity and competition. The alternative is sufficiency, an attitude that leads to collaboration and a healthy flow of resources. My purpose here is not to explain these concepts or to advocate for them, though I think you'll find the differences fascinating and inspiring if you take time to read the book. As she explores ways of changing attitudes, she explains a concept lifestory writers may find useful. She points out that the words we use in our thoughts about (money) shape our attitudes about (money) as well as expressing them. She has found that becoming aware of the wording of thoughts is the first step toward changing attitudes. Awareness creates the opportunity to rewrite internal scripts and thus change attitudes, for example from scarcity to sufficiency. Many people have found a parallel situation in writing about past experiences....

The other day I saw a watercolor of a house. It was drawn from a corner, extending the house into three dimensions. Shading, shadows, and perspective added extra depth. Trees, bushes, grass and blue sky breathed life and color into the scene, and a tricycle and toy wagon in front added a warm, human touch. As I gazed at the sketch, I thought about writing, and the various ways we can use words to add depth, color and life to stories. I immediately determined to write about this, but when I sat down and began writing, my words slid all over the page. I felt like a toddler trying to create a Van Gogh with fingerpaint and quickly fell into mental gridlock. Throwing up my hands in frustration, I retreated to other tasks. Gradually I remembered my own best advice: Write on Purpose. What's my purpose here? I asked myself. My initial thought as I viewed the vision was that skill as a writer develops over time, just as the skill of the sketching artist does. The artist learns to use a var...

For several years before Yahoo! abruptly pulled its plug, I contributed to the Yahoo! Lifestory group almost daily. Every time I'd post something about a personal memory, I pasted the email body into a continuing WordPerfect document, together with the date. As a result, I have over one hundred pages of prime memory scraps recorded in a sort of album of random stories, all written in short periods of time. In reading through this collection, I noticed one that I wrote in response to a member who mentioned that she was striving for balance. My reply was a form of freewriting, a technique often recommended for overcoming writer's block. If you have ever experienced this affliction, perhaps you'll appreciate these recycled thoughts: What is this balance you are looking for? Time for writing about life and time for living it? The pain preventing balance of body in chair? The delicate balance between gushy detail and rich description? Balancing an egg on a pole on the tip of you...

What fun I'm having! I've put off cleaning out some old files for weeks, and finally dug into them. In the process I found the old notebook I used as a diary in high school. It isn't easy to read today, because I taught myself Old German script for writing it, to ensure privacy. Fortunately I did keep a master key, so I can still decode if I were so inclined. But that wasn't the fun I'm referring to. I may go back to that another day, but I found something more interesting. Stuck in those pages were several sheets from a notepad giving a day-by-day account of all the dates my future husband and I had on our whirlwind summer romance. No details are recorded, but none are needed. With the simple prompts of date and place, it all comes flooding back. Oh, the stories! Being an incurable binge and impulse writer, the urge to stay up all night and write is strong, but I'll let it go at typing up the list so it won't get lost again. I can use that list as the basis...

Have you ever stopped to think about the power of words? Depending on how they are used, words can weave endless webs of confusion. form walls to hide behind. come between us like coils of razor wire. create fear and mistrust. Or they can encourage others to dare new things. comfort a broken heart. build bonds of friendship. teach eternal truths. break shackles of fear. These things are true of all words, whether spoken or written. Your stories will show what's in your heart, so before you decide about sharing a story, look into your heart. If you find anger, fear, hurt, and other darkness, showing it to others may not have a good outcome. When your heart is brimming with respect, gratitude, understanding and love, your stories will touch hearts with soft wings. Keep in mind that like spoken words can never be unsaid, written words can never be unread. Use the power of your words with discretion and write a legacy of love. Write on, Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal

Earlier this week a friend sent me a link to a New York Times article about First Sgt. Charles Monroe King, who wrote a 200-page journal for his infant son, in case he didn't make it back from Iraq. He began the journal before he left, which was before the baby was born. He continued to write while he was over there, and finished it while he was home on leave last summer, getting acquainted with five-month-old Jordan. That finished story must serve as a father-in-absentia for Jordan. Sgt. Monroe died in the service of his country Oct. 14 when an improvised explosive device detonated near his armored vehicle in Baghdad. Reading the journal excerpts in the article brought tears to my eyes. This father wrote an “Instruction Manual for Life” to guide his son. It amounted to a form of insurance — insurance that his beliefs and values would be transmitted to the son he loved so much and died to protect. His son will draw the dividends from that investment for the rest of his life. I...

Lots of people begin the new year with a resolution to have a more positive attitude. I'm all in favor of that, and I'm in favor of positive writing too, and perhaps paying attention to how you write will shed light on your attitude and the way you think. The positive writing I have in mind today is phrasing choices. I promised a friend I'd to print a copy of my mother's Christmas candy recipes, and this morning I opened that ancient document. Before printing, I realized a few awkward spots in the comments I added after each recipe. This document was several years old, and I've begun noticing things now that I wasn't aware of back then. One particular phrase stood out: “Mother didn't do everything the hard way ...” As I thought about that statement from a stranger' point of view, I realized that on a subliminal level, this statement implied that she was some sort of martyr, that she valued doing things the hard way, or that she stubbornly clung to tradi...