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Finding this card tucked away in a box felt like receiving a love letter from “the other side.” I’ve kept it in the box for so long without reading the message that I’d forgotten its origin, and even the fact it was used. A couple of days ago I opened it, thinking maybe I’d send to someone, and discovered anew that it is a birthday card from my long-gone mother, sent in 1985. It is full of questions about how things were going for me on various projects I’d long since forgotten, and the reminder of her level of interest in my life was touching. Since we lived in the same town during the years I was raising children, I never had letters from her as evidence of this. But the most amazing thing was the message on the cover. “The things I never said...” I was flabbergasted that I’d never noticed or “got” that message before, that she was aware there were some “things she never said” and maybe this was her way of saying them. I did not grow up in a family that openly expressed caring, conc...

It’s easy to forget that a lifestory or memoir really is all about you. “I didn’t want to say too much about that, because I didn’t want to sound like I was bragging,” is a common response to the urging to the question “Why didn’t you say more about that?” Most of us learned early that bragging was to be avoided, and those who were fortunate enough to achieve unusual success in life or receive rich blessings often hesitate to elaborate on them in lifestories. The inverse is just as true: nobody wants to sound like a whiner! And yet, to give nothing but fleeting mention of triumph or tragedy is a form of insincerity and leaves readers wondering what the real story was. It boils down to a matter of telling rather than showing. The problem arises when you are “reporting” on your life, focusing on facts to the general exclusion of feelings and insights. The solution is to put more of yourself in the story. Tell your readers what you thought and felt at the time. What did this event mean to...

You will never, ever, in a million years be that creative and write that well! With nuclear force, Gretchen (my Inner Critic) burst onto the scene shouting these words and a stream of related ones as I began reading Three Bites , a 675 word life story by Leslie F. Miller, found on the most excellent Brevity28 website. Leslie’s imaginative description totally blew me away and seemingly raised the bar out of reach. I knew what was happening; still, I was stunned by Gretchen’s outburst. What was this all about? Two days later, still reeling from that attack's aftershocks, I journaled about it, using the technique I’ve evolved of posing questions — to myself or whatever source of inspiration may be floating around — and then just writing without further thought. I’ve found many powerful answers that way. The answer that morning seemed ambiguous. It didn't address Gretchen's outburst at all. Within a sentence or two, my words turned to the day my hubby and I set out to climb C...

I had a dream — and so did you. Whether we remember them or not, dreams are an integral part of normal sleep. Dreams have rich potential for lifewriters and memoirists, but this resource is seldom tapped. In fact, this resource is seldom even remembered. But considering that the average person spends about two hours a night dreaming (that adds up to something like six years total over an average lifespan), our dream life is definitely worth further exploration for the insight it can provide. and including dream content in stories can add poignancy to our writing. If you write about your dreams at all (sleeping or otherwise), your probably do it in a journal. Journal therapists frequently urge people to keep a special journal by their bedside to record dreams as soon as they wake. With practice and firm intention, it becomes easier to remember dreams and record the key components. Since ancient times people have been curious about what their dreams meant. Information on dream interpret...

“ WOO HOO! I DID IT! ” Even though I was home alone when the last piece of my "impossible" puzzle clicked into place, I sprang from my chair and dashed wildly around the circuit of kitchen, dining room and living room a couple of times in a wild victory lap, waving my hands and yelling. Although I wasn’t sure my aging spine would take it well, I jumped for joy. Oh, sweet, sweet success. YES! YES! My success was discovering a way to create flawless PDF (Adobe reader format) files for digital scrapbooks made from software you already have or can get for free. There are some pricey programs out there to help you lay out scrapbooks onscreen, but as far as I’m aware, they are all geared toward selling print services that will convert any cash in your estate into a legacy of glossy pages encased in premium bindings. I’m talking about eBooks that can be viewed on a computer and require an investment of nothing more than your time and maybe a blank disk. The puzzle sprang from a disc...

Before the crack of dawn this morning I woke up, glowing with excitement about a essay idea that probably came from a dream. The vision was luminous and the concept was crystal clear. I knew that the minute I sat down at the keyboard, print-ready copy would pour forth in minutes. How could I risk drifting back to sleep and forgetting? Sarabelle is a ferocious taskmaster. I slid from between my warm covers out into the cold, dark room, reaching for robe and slippers. I came down to my computer and ... I had fifteen e-mails. And ... I answered a couple. And ... here I sit, looking at a puddle of story that melted in the heat of the thought required to respond to those e-mails. Turning my mental energies to the thought required to craft those replies was blowing a strong wind across the surface of the previously mirror-still pond reflecting my idea. Rats! I know better! How could I let this happen when I left my cozy bed for the specific purpose of recording it before it went poof ? Well...

Now that Thanksgiving is out of the way, most of us will soon be swept up in a rush of holiday activity, whether that’s Christmas, Hannukah, or something else. It’s gift-giving time for nearly everyone, and many are looking for creative ways to trim costs this year without making it obvious. Here’s a thrifty idea for parents, grandparents, and other family members (or friends!) you’d like to encourage to get started on writing their lifestories — create a lifestory gift box. This is a gift that can reap dividends lasting for generations. You can keep it basic, or get as elaborate as you like. Suggested contents for a basic box include: The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing , by Sharon Lippincott One or more packs of blank index cards for capturing story ideas A new pen A pad of writing paper (not a fancy book — such things are intimidating to write in) A blank printed timeline (you could enter basic information to get them started) A neatly written or typed list of stories you hope ...

Turkey Day is nearly here. The radio is my head playing “ Over the River and Through the Woods ,” that old Thanksgiving classic I learned in second or third grade. I love that song, even though I never have seen that much snow as early as Thanksgiving. The other traditional Thanksgiving tune that stick in mind is the hymn, “ Come Ye Thankful People, Come ,” which I just discovered was written in 1844, the same year as “Over the River.” Thinking back over my personal Thanksgiving history, I find a lot of variation. Childhood Thanksgivings in New Mexico varied. Some years we visited my mother’s family in Las Cruces, where most of my cousins lived. Those years enough food for a small army filled my aunt’s kitchen table, and tables for eating were set up in the living room for adults and an enclosed porch for the kids. Other years we went to visit my father’s parents in Clovis where things were a little quieter. Or we stayed home in Los Alamos, enjoying the meal with various combinations o...

Those who've seen us know that not a thing could come between us. Many men have tried to split us up, but no one can. Lord help the mister who comes between me and my sister, and Lord help the sister who comes between me and my man. I remember hearing this song on the radio as a very young girl, and again in junior high, sung in a school talent show by two cheerleaders who were best friends, as close as sisters. These lyrics, excerpted from a song originally written by Irving Berlin, have been adapted and recorded by a long line of singers, and they express the ideal of sisterhood: women bonded by birth, presenting a united front against all odds — yet sometimes turning against each other. Memoirs about the mother-daughter relationship would fill several shelves, but none that I’m aware of focus on the sisterly one. My thoughts have ranged in that direction the last few days, and I’m surprised that this niche seems to have been overlooked. Thinking back through stories told by f...

Have you ever wished you could watch movies of your ancestors and how they lived, or at least hear their voices? Although it's too late to capture your ancestors on video StoryCorp is doing something about that for future generations. They recognize the value of hearing voices from the past and are dedicated to preserving them. They are an independent nonprofit project whose mission is “to honor and celebrate one another’s lives through listening.” Jerry Waxler wrote an inspiring blog post on Memory Writers Network about his heartwarming experience with StoryCorp. Realizing that a very small percentage of the world’s population will ever be able to visit a StoryCorp studio, they have begun urging people to use their own equipment to record interviews with family members and others they care about. This Thanksgiving, “StoryCorps asks you to start a new holiday tradition—set aside one hour on Friday, November 28th, to record a conversation with someone important to you. You can ...

Yesterday in what I just discovered was an ironic twist, I learned that November is National Life Writing Month . I learned about it when Linda Joy Myers mentioned the occasion while introducing Denis Ledoux, author of Turning Memories into Memoir , as her guest on the National Association of Memoir Writers monthly teleseminar. “As you know,” she said, “November is National Lifewriting Month.” Without elaborating, he confirmed that he knew. Then he went on to enchant us with a sticky web of thoughts about finding the myths in our lives and stories. This morning I discovered the irony. Denis Ledoux is the originator of National Life Writing Month , but I did not discover this from him. I learned of it when Google led me to a page on Angie Pedersen’s Scrap Your Stories site. She tells how he has been helping both new and experienced memoirists find and express their stories since 1988, and includes a list of Denis’s tips for writing lifestories, and a link to his resource page. Linda...

I occasionally use the following two paragraphs in a PowerPoint presentation during writing classes to illustrate the point that stripping words to their bare essence is one of the most effective ways to emphasize the power of your message: I look up at the gnarled oak tree, starkly outlined against the sky and see a single dry leaf clinging tenaciously to the largest limb. Every other leaf in the woods fell to the ground weeks ago when we had that last fierce wind, but this leaf may still be there until the tree buds in the spring. The leaf reminds me of my mother, clinging stubbornly to life long past the time when it seemed her body was ready to let go. (83 words) Lifeless oak leaves cling tenaciously to skeletal branches. Well into winter, they stubbornly resist gales, unwilling to separate from the reality they've known. My mother was the ultimate oak leaf. (30 words) The most common response after several seconds of silence is “How do you get from number one to number two? I ...

Photo by Jurvetson You know the image of the writer as a starving, tortured soul, each agonized word blurred on the page by sweat beads dripping from his brow. He writes in longhand, on a hand-hewn log desk, by candlelight, wrapped in rags against the wintry blast, with only a crust of bread to sustain his unworthy efforts, and page after page of tormented efforts are wadded into balls and tossed into the fireplace for a bit of added warmth. He makes frequent stops to sharpen the quill with which he writes or to fill the inkwell into which he dips that plume. He may occasionally resort to chopping kindling to gather his erratic thoughts, mind churning in sync with his stomach. In the depths of his heart, he knows these efforts will pay off. His words will be pressed upon millions of pages and stir the hearts of readers with passion second only to his. You know the image. You may even relate to that image and fear to write because of it. I say to you now, forget it! It’s only a myth. Wr...

In one more week, 168 hours, we’ll be watching the early returns. This awful election will finally be over, and we’ll begin to have a sense of what direction things may go in the next four years. But I can't help wondering, is the light at the end of the tunnel a train? Each presidential election for the last couple of decades has grown more distressing to me. I can’t recall the last time I voted for a candidate because I thought he or she was well-suited for the job rather than voting for the lesser of two evils. That is more true this year than ever. As I contemplate this election and the state of the nation, I feel a strong urge to record these thoughts and my general political history for posterity. I want future generations to know how troubling this campaign has been for me and why I don’t trust or believe either candidate; why each one scares me, for different reasons. I want them to know my views of the issues of the times. I also want them to know about our family politica...

I’m a great fan of Natalie Goldberg. Not long ago I read her book, Living Color . The book is filled with Natalie’s glorious art, in all its aberrant color. Natalie explains her color choices on page 3: I was delighted one day to paint an adobe house blue. Stepping through the belief that I must paint mud brown, I experienced an explosion of energy and freedom. It was as though that blue paint were a sword slashing through illusion, bringing me into direct connection with the house’s essence. Objects began to dance unhinged from their proper pigment. That man is green, those sheep are maroon, that horse is scarlet, I suddenly wanted to shout with a new-found freedom as I gazed around me from the hilltop where I had drawn the blue house. Her explanation about using color to learn metaphor is hazy, but I was intrigued with the idea of playing with color that way. It reminded me of a post I wrote in September about the origins of the Inner Critic. I felt bold. I wanted to play with color...

Secrets! We all have them. Many will go with us to our graves, perhaps because they are so trivial we forget them. Ybonesy reminded me of a couple with her RedRavine post about a minor mishap she had as a newly licensed driver that she and her passengers attempted to cover up with a Secret. I wrote a comment about early driving secrets my sister blackmailed me with for ages. This type of secret is bush league compared to the Secrets discussed by Polly Kahl in a blog interview with Howard Dully, co-author of the NYT best-selling memoir My Lobotomy . In Part 2 of the interview, Polly explains her early life, the subject of a memoir she recently finished and is shopping around. For me, the meat in her material is her description of the interviews she had with people in her past as she researched and wrote her story. She interviewed family members, neighbors, all sorts of people, and got varying responses. Of one man who was twice her age of 14 when he had sex with her, she says, “...wh...

Who would think that a lifestory or memoir would be co-authored? Rather surprisingly some excellent ones are. I recently finished reading The Turkey Farm – Behind the Smile , a gripping memoir about Jennifer Keefe’s life. Jennifer survived, among other things, the brutal murder of her mother, being raised by the hippie farmer and occasional drug dealer her mother didn’t get around to marrying after she divorced Jen’s alcoholic father, early exposure to drugs, endless betrayals by family members and her first husband, and facing down her mother’s murderer. In the end, it is a story of triumph. You can read my formal review of the book on the Story Circle Network book review site . Quite aside from the content, this memoir is worth mentioning for many reasons. Among them is the fact that it is co-authored with Cheryl Archer, Jennifer’s best friend, whom she has known since grade school. In an account on Citizen.com , the electronic arm of The Citizen of Laconia (NH), the women tell of ...

The holiday season is approaching approaching like a freight train, and legions of people are looking for inexpensive gift ideas this year. Here’s an idea for you: Give the gift of yourself. If you have already been writing life stories, this may be the perfect year to compile an anthology of your stories, lay them out nicely in a single document, and upload them to Lulu.com or Amazon’s CreateSpace for printing. You can produce a fully professional volume in your choice of hard or soft cover for a fraction of what it used to cost. For example, a 220 page paperback in the standard “trade” size of 6" x 9" lists right now for $6.25 base price on Lulu.com. I used Lulu.com last year to publish The Albuquerque Years , a memoir of my life as a preschooler. It is 88 pages, full of photos, a slightly larger, wider page size (7.44" x 9.68") to accommodate the pictures and it sells (without any markup) for $6.29 on the Lulu website. You can also download a free eBook version...

For various reasons, I have not actively encouraged people to post lifestories on the Internet. Today I heard a chance remark that sent my thoughts around a corner. As I talked about lifestory writing with a Senior Center program director, she mentioned how much she wishes she had stories about her grandparents, who are all deceased. “With the Internet, it is so easy to find out facts about people, and who your ancestors were, but there aren’t any stories,” she lamented. “Wow!” I replied. “You are so right. If people put stories, even general ones, on a website, maybe in forty years one of their descendants would find it after everyone had lost and forgotten about paper copies.” The idea of thinking forty years or more into the future about something changing as fast as the Internet taxes my imagination, but it’s worth a shot. I would not post anything highly personal, and I wouldn’t post anything with enough specific information (like birth date and place, address, phone number, and s...

In his essay , Politics and the English Language , George Orwell shared a list of five Writing Tips. Rule #4 is   Never use the passive where you can use the active . This may be the single most valuable tip for improving your writing that you’ll every hear. A search for “passive tense” turns up more than a million links to advice urging you to reword your work and frame it in active tense.> I’m not going to dwell on that advice. I’m going to share the second most important tip: Get rid of the dead would .  An example of dead would follows: In the summer my friend Annie and I would often pack a picnic lunch. Then we’d head for the beach where we would set up our umbrellas. We would rub Coppertone suntan lotion on each others backs and settled onto our towels. Sooner or later the guys would show up and .... Compare that passage with this revised version that does nothing more than eliminate would : In the summer my friend Annie and I often packed a picnic lunch. Then we headed for ...

I’m grateful to Blogster for this blog site, and for everyone who reads it. I’m grateful for a huge long list of other things. I’m a great believer in the power of gratitude — the attitude of gratitude, that is, not just the word. I didn’t always understand gratitude. In fact, although I’ve known the word forever, it’s a relatively new concept to me, as a state of mind anyway. Sure, I always knew the importance of being thankful, but for me, being thankful doesn’t have the same ring to it, the same gut feel, as gratitude, and it's not nearly as powerful. I’m grateful that I learned about gratitude, and have come to understand the importance of this simple emotion in enhancing both mental and physical health. I first began to focus on Gratitude as a specific mindset three or so years ago when an invitation to join the first 42 Day GoGratitude experiment arrived in my e-mail. Each day for 42 days, I received a zany thought-prompt about gratitude. The founders chose 42 days, because ...