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NEWS FLASH: RITERGAL INTERVIEW NOW PLAYING IN STORY CIRCLE NETWORK PODCAST! I love being on the cutting edge of new technology, so I was especially excited about the invitation to be a guest on Story Circle Network’s August podcast , produced and edited by Becca Taylor. I’ve been interviewed on radio talk shows before, but this was different in several ways. On a live radio show, there is no safety net. Whatever you say is what listeners hear. Podcasts are recorded before they are posted, so if host or guest happens to have a coughing fit, or says something gauche, editing that part out is as simple as removing a sentence from a written document. You even have the opportunity for “do overs.” Becca didn’t need to edit this interview, but it was nice knowing she could. We just had a grand old time talking about lifestory writing in general, how I got involved with it, the benefit of Toastmasters for writers, writing groups, blogs, the conceptual basis of the blog and book name, The Hea...

The last couple of days I’ve been feeling rather growly, and I attribute the reason to all the time I’ve been spending writing blogs and workshop proposals, researching book promotion strategies, and . . . the list goes on. The point is, I’ve been doing everything but write more stories. My heart is pining for “real writing.” This afternoon I said Enough is enough. I’m not good for anything else until I take care of me! I gathered up the huge file jacket I use to keep folders with print copies of my stories and took it out on the sun porch where I could see the massive, centuries old oak tree at the far end of the small meadow we call a lawn, and the lushly wooded hillside above us. Surrounded by this nurturing scenery, on a day with perfect temperatures, I flipped through stories, looking for something to send to The Elder Storytelling Place , something to post on my still empty collection of Gather articles, and perhaps even something to send to local papers for print publication. A...

Beginning writers are generally advised to “write like you talk.” Stories about personal experience generally come across best when you write in a conversational tone, like you are talking with a close friend. This isn’t always easy to do. Words flow out of our mouths without a lot of conscious thought, so trying to match the precise wording that we use orally can be a challenge. Some people use sentence fragments in writing, for example “Never walked alone at night after that!” and claim “ that’s how I talk.” I’ve listened closely to those people, and aside from idioms like “ could be, ” never once have I heard them use a sentence lacking a subject. Now and then people let sentences trail off without finishing them, but I have yet to see anyone write such a sentence in a story. I see two things happening here. First, avoiding the use of “I” is typical of the way people write in letters. I do it myself in e-mail. It may not sound egotistical in speech to repeatedly say “I,” but it be...

I’m having a mellow afternoon, sitting out in the sunshine, revising the manuscript for a collection of stories from my preschool years. I call this collection The Albuquerque Years . These were the very first lifestories I ever wrote, an experience I tell about in The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing . More than once I’ve assumed the collection was finished, and more than once I’ve been surprised when I reread it and discovered that many stories were missing, and that the ones there could be told better. I’m working on several aspects of the stories, but for now I’ll tell you about a new discovery, or at least one that’s new to me. One paragraph tells of my toy sewing machine: When they came home, Mommy and Daddy brought me a tiny chain stitch sewing machine that had been in Mummo’s attic. It never worked right and even Mommy could only make tangles on it most of the time. But I liked having it. That isn’t adequate to describe my memory of that treasured toy. I kept thinking of th...

I feel a bit behind the curve. Though he may be the best-selling author in the world, I only discovered novelist Paulo Coelho a couple of weeks ago, and I just finished reading The Zahir . I’m awestruck. I can see why this was the best selling book in the world in 2003, even before it was released in the United States. In this book Coelho makes a profound point about the power of telling our life stories. The main character is involved in a journey of self-discovery and must free himself from old attitudes and limitations in order to obtain what he seeks. (I don’t want to give away the plot for those few of you who may not have read the book yet.) The key to his chains is telling stories about his past. Once told, the stories lose their power to trap him in his status quo. For most readers, taking the path of telling stories to free themselves from the past would be a matter of faith and intuition. Those who have been following the field of memory and neuroscience will assure you that...

Last night at a book signing event, I was asked a question I hadn’t heard before. “What do you do about the older women, the ones who grew up in the Great Depression and thereabouts, who have never been comfortable talking about themselves?” The woman asking the question (I’ll call her Jill) is curious about her mother’s life, but she assured me there was no way her mother would write stories. Mom’s too modest, and furthermore, she believes her life has been as plain and ordinary as mud. The question stumped me. Many people are deterred by the perception that their lives are dull. I’ve written about that. If you think this of your own life and still want to write, that’s one thing. But you can’t force someone else to write. If they do it to appease you, the results will surely lack spirit, and probably not go beyond basic facts. After some discussion, we came up with a plan. This woman will get a digital recorder, formulate some questions designed to loosen Mom's memory, and inter...

Few people think about layout in connection with writing stories, but it can play a critical part in helping your reader enjoy the story. People generally frame pictures before hanging them on the wall. Carefully formatting your stories before you distribute copies is much the same. The most common formatting question I hear is, “Should I double space between paragraphs?” “Since you asked, the answer is no.” If I’m not asked, I don’t comment. Double spacing between paragraphs is not wrong, but it isn’t the accepted standard for publication. I have concluded that after leaving school, most people write nothing but checks, business letters, and e-mail. Double spacing between paragraphs is the accepted standard for business correspondence, and perhaps most office reports have drifted into this standard also. Thus the tendency to write stories like business letters. Taking a historical perspective, when I was in school, professors required that term papers, theses, and other academic docu...

This post is a thank you note to Ronni Bennet, creator of The Elder Storytelling Place , a blog I wish I’d started. Ronni created this site as a place where anyone with at least a half-century of life experience can post (short) lifestories, and the world can read some very fine ones. A person could spend lots and lots of time on this blog. Right now it’s only in its fourth month, with a total of 78 stories, so you could conceivably read them all in a long afternoon. (That is rapidly changing.) But the stories on this site are only the tip of the iceberg. Ronni includes links to three other “Elders ’ Storytelling Websites” and many contributors have websites with stories. This may be a story web with no boundaries. I’m so glad Ronni has started this site, and I hope that submissions snowball. It’s a treat to read other people’s stories. No two are the same. Some are funny, some heart-rending, some informative and some thought-provoking. Each is written from somebody’s heart. I hope ev...

You’ll find lots of strong meat in Jerry Waxler’s blog, Memory Writer’s Network . I’ve added Jerry to my Blogarithm watch list (accessible via the subscription link in my left column). Jerry’s training and experience as a therapist may be the key to his unusual insight into human nature and life writing. In a recent post, Storytelling Lessons for Memoir Writers , he wrote: Many successful writers recommend that you learn the art of writing stories by emulating the books you enjoy reading. My problem with this method is that once I dive into the story I stop thinking about writing. If you’ve been following my blog for any length of time, you may recall that I’m one of the people who make this recommendation. Jerry’s comment alerted me that some amplification is in order. For me, the main benefit of reading authors I admire is in shaping my thinking. For example, Rosamund Pilcher (one example of dozens I could cite) excels at description and evocative wording. As I read her books, I pau...

Today marks a major milestone for me. The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing: How to Transform Memories into Meaningful Stories hits the shelves. Let me fill you in on some back story and features of the book. This book evolved from a growing pile of handouts I made over the last several years. After several years, many overlapped, formatting was inconsistent, and trying to figure out which handout to use for what group had become a headache, so I decided to consolidate all the handouts in a unified collection. I had it printed at the local UPS copy shop, directly from disk, an economical approach I highly recommend. That original volume was over one hundred full-size pages, and cumbersome to reprint. The obvious solution was a formal book. In 1994 Lighthouse Point Press published my previous book, Meetings: Do’s, Don’ts and Donuts. That book went into a second edition, and we enjoyed working together so much that I contacted them about this new project, which they were also enthus...