yourpassions.tk

I wouldn’t call it The Project From Hell, not by a long shot. No, this personal project I’m trying to finish as a test run of Lulu.com ’s on-line Print-On-Demand (POD) publishing services is more aptly named “The Project That Just Won't Quit.” The final result, The Albuquerque Years , will be the culmination of my very first lifestory writing adventure, the story of my preschool years, begun over ten years ago. As I explain in The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing , I began writing this story as a whim, to be able to share my own experience as a very little girl with my then preschool-age grandchildren. I simply sat down at the computer and did a memory dump, in a haphazard fashion, without much order or thought. Toward the end, I decided I wanted to include photos, lots of photos. At that point, WordPerfect stalled out on files with more than a few photos, so the story began breaking up into a vast array of pieces. In frustration, put it away to deal with later. A few months ...

Once upon a time when I was very little, like four years old, we lived at Kirtland Field Air Force base for several months while my father was studying chemical engineering at the University of New Mexico on the GI Bill. Most of the barracks in our part of the base were deserted, but there were no locks on anything, being a military base. We kids were told, on pain of unimaginable consequences, “DO NOT GO THERE!” Did I go there? Of course! I went with Denny, the boy next door and the only other kid as old as me. The memory emerges: It’s dark in here, dark, hot. Pat, pat, pat — my sandals won’t be quiet. Thump, thump — I hear my heart. Plop, plop, plop — I hear Denny’s shoes. I hear him breathing. Is anyone in here? I smell dust, see dust in sunbeams, it’s hard to breathe. What’s around that corner? More hall. Nobody. What if somebody comes here? What's in that room? Crreeeeek. Noisy door. More dust. Little room — little like me. Just two cot frames. Where are mattresses? Do I hear ...

While looking for an old file, I found the following exercise from a communication skills workshop I used to teach. The exercise is about how listening works, but as I read it over, I realized it also has a lot to do with reading — and by extension, writing. Here is the exercise, from my instructor notes, complete with discussion points in green italics: Read the following to the group: Not long ago I was crossing Beacon Street at Murray Avenue. Traffic wasn’t very heavy, but I noticed some kind of disturbance off to the side. Well, I was crossing the street and didn’t want to jam up traffic or get hit, so I continued across, then stopped and looked back. Then I saw what was going on: A big woman in a black dress was pushing and shoving and even hitting two or three young kids. They were maybe ten or so years old...not yet teenagers. They didn’t seem to be fighting back. A crowd gathered. I heard a siren screaming off in the distance, but I didn’t think much about it. Then, a coup...

For two days I’ve been struggling with a new post. It reminds me of the huge, fat earthworms that surface in our yard after a serious rainstorm. Those worms lie there ever so enticingly, but if I reach to pick one up (okay, I hear those twitters of revulsion: “Oh ugh! How utterly gross! I don’t even want to read this!” Hang in there — I’m almost done) it wriggles convulsively, throwing itself end-for-end across the rocks to get out of my reach. If, just for the heck of it and memories of childhood fishing days, I do manage to pick one up and plop it in the palm of my hand, it continues to thrash around with amazing strength, seeking to return to its loamy lair. The essay I’m working on has the same slippery tenacity of those worms. I clearly see the concept, but as I reach for it, it skitters out of reach. I write a few words or paragraphs, but they slide out of grasp. It won’t hold still for the hook. Fortunately, I have no true deadline for this piece. There is only one thing to do w...

Someone recently asked about my alias of Ritergal. “Do you have a split personality or something?” he quipped. “Well, actually, yes,” I replied, “or at least I used to.” I went on to explain that although I had not yet met her, my muse Sarabelle bestowed this name on me seven years ago in 2000. That’s the only way I can explain it. She gifted me with it for the purpose of keeping Ritergal’s Story Site anonymous. I wanted to share some stories, while safeguarding the privacy of others. Ritergal was a great cover, with no link to my “real” persona. Sarabelle knew what she was doing. She knew I’d like that name, that I'd find it dashing and jaunty. She knew it would challenge me. Indeed it did! I felt a bit like a little kid playing dress-up. In the early years I found it easier to write certain things if I put on my Ritergal cape. Ritergal was more daring than Sharon could imagine being. Ritergal could be sassy and true, or gently tender, as the need arose. Ritergal wrote outside S...

Last month I wrote about Ronni Bennet’s blog, The Elder Storytelling Place , alerting readers that you can submit stories there for publication. I’m a firm believer in taking my own advice, and yesterday’s edition featured my story, “ Profile of Courage .” This story does tell of a specific event in my life. However, it’s more than a mere narrative. I link two stories to tell a tale of a hero of sorts, a young man who dared to try eight times to get a date for prom, and how that story involved and inspired me, at the time and decades later. It’s not a simple story. It also chronicles the initial flutterings of feminist, activist seeds germinating in my tender heart, long before the faintest green shoots appeared. That’s a lot of story to cover in a mere 720 words. I originally wrote this story in August, 2001, so it’s well-aged. I didn’t set out to write with any specific purpose other than to chronicle the memory and immortalize Walter’s courage. It has been sitting in my file, both ...

One of the touted features of Writing Practice or Morning Pages is allowing your fingers to run free of your Inner Censor to open new thought-branches and discover new ideas and connections. That happened to me this morning. I sat down to write about things I am especially grateful for today. Before I wrote a single word about gratitude, I found my pen moving off into the storm we had two days ago. In only a few lines, I reached a branch. I could write about this angle or that. I chose “that.” As I started writing about “that,” I found another branch and thought of the crooked path my words were following. My wild mind raced ahead of my pen and I had a clear image of the trails in the woods about a quarter-mile down the road from our house on the “wild side” of the road. Dozens of acres of woodlands spread along the hillside. It’s too steep for development, so it remains Mother Nature’s domain, a buffer zone. I love to hike in that suburban wilderness where magical things are found. S...

You've heard the old saw, "A picture is worth a thousand words." That can work both ways. It may take a thousand words to explain what's happening in a picture. A combination of pictures and story is ideal. Most people think of adding photographs to life stories, but there are several other kinds of pictures that add interest and value to the story. In The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing , I suggest including maps and floor plans with your stories. For example, I'm working on a compilation of stories about the first six years of my life. For most of that time we lived in the same house. I will include this floor plan for that house, the best I can remember. I drew this on the computer, but graph paper and a pencil would have been lots easier! It isn't exactly right, even yet, but you can see that it was quite a small and simple house. When I pair this with photos like the one below that shows the front of the house, the fireplace, or other spots in the ho...

Back in 1978 my mother was visiting for a few days. One morning as she sat at the kitchen table eating breakfast, she began to muse. “I don't know what I want to be when I grow up,” she said. “I've been a mother, a secretary, a teacher, a shoemaker, a milliner, a seamstress ...” she paused for breath. “I don't know what to be next.” As things turned out, she became a multi-media artist in the pre-computer-age definition of multi-media, meaning water color, oil and acrylic paints; stained, etched, sandblasted and shaped glass; photography, batik and various other fiber arts; and I  probably missed a few. She once had a one-woman show of pieces all based on a photograph of a wasp on a flower that my father had taken. She rendered that wasp in stained glass, batik, various cloth treatments, paints ... you name it, she did it. Thinking over my mother's life a dozen years later, I remembered that breakfast table conversation and realized how rich and varied her life was. It ...

Most of us have memories we’d rather forget, but forgetting isn’t an option. Writing about the situation often pulls the plug on the power these memories have on your mind, but it takes a lot of time to write, and you may not want to run the risk of having your words discovered. Take heart. Take hope. And talk, if only to a candle. A candle as therapist? No, I have not lost my mind. Quite the contrary, I think I found it. I recently wrote a post about reading Paulo Coelho’s book The Zahir , and the importance he places on telling stories as a preliminary to becoming more loving. Although this injunction intuitively rings true, he doesn’t give directions on how to go about it. Coelho’s first book of note was The Alchemist , published in English in 1994, and I must be the last person on the planet to read this book. Aside from selling millions of copies, it is always checked out in libraries. Where have I been? I finally reached the top of the reserve list at the library the other day a...