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My heart is full of words and stories and pictures and aches to spill them forth. Yet, nothing emerges from my fingertips. The stories refuse to take form, insisting on remaining hidden for the time being, not ready to face the light of day. Here I sit, staring at the screen, realizing I can’t force these words forth before their time. I recall a day last summer when I ate a peach, resplendent with stunning reddish gold undertones and strong red highlights. However, as picture perfect as it looked, it was not a perfect peach. The fragrance was faint, and although it was no longer hard, it didn’t feel juicy to my questioning finger. The flesh inside was pale and dull. When I bit into it, it tasted like a peach with half the flavor bleached out. The texture was mushy and slightly grainy, not dripping with juice as a perfect peach should be. Appearances can be deceiving, I reminded myself. There is no way of knowing for sure at the grocery store just how a slightly under-ripe peach will r...

Your family will notice your mistakes. At least some of them will. And that's okay! Last week I had a brainstorm: I'd print out a copy of Tosh and the Water Guns to mail to one of my grandsons with another gift. I hoped he'd get a kick out of reading a story that features him as the central character. Two days later, the phone rang. It was Tosh. My story had made it from Pittsburgh to San Diego in jig time. He didn't call specifically about the story, and he hadn't finished reading it yet; however, he did let me know that he'd “kind of” read my story. “And I found a typo,” he reported. I thought I detected a bit of glee in his voice. “Really! You found a typo? What typo did you find?” I asked. “You said rally when you meant really,” he informed me. “Wow! That's great! You have really good eyes, and I'm glad you told me about it so I can fix it,” I assured him. “I'm proud of you.” I could feel him glow all the way across the country. I doubt he expec...

Last night I saw a vision expanding the context and value of lifestory writing that gives me goosebumps. Through a series of coincidences (if you believe in coincidences), I have become involved in FMHI, the Follow Me Home Initiative. This exciting project is being spearheaded by Kathy Brown , assistant professor of communications on the Greater Allegheny campus of Penn State. Her class will provide outreach for seniors in the local community through collaborations with Blueroof Technologies Research Associates. The goal of the collaboration is to teach seniors to use computers by writing their own lifestories. The students will mentor seniors through the FMHI while using lifestories as the catalyst for learning. This means that the students need to learn the basics of lifestory writing themselves in order to coach the Seniors as they go along. That's where I come in. I met with the class last night to go over the basics of how to get their troop of Seniors started on their writi...

Close-up of puddle in my driveway, October 2007 In her January 19th blog post , "Why I'll Never Write Your Lifestory," author Diane Chamberlain states, “Your life story, while it may be fascinating, may not make for good reading. A good, readable story requires a structure and focus, and most life stories don’t fall neatly into readable form.” The same day I read an item in the Denver Post about school children who are interviewing grandparents and writing about their family history. The article tells how Colorado writers Irv Green and Andrea Gross collected over thirty stories from young writers and published them in a book, Relatively Speaking. The article also notes that grandchildren are more apt to be interested in written legacies than the author’s children. These two items are in interesting juxtaposition. On the surface they may sound a bit contradictory, but a closer look shows otherwise. It may be true that an ordinary life may not fall into a neat and compe...

Moan, groan, bitch and whine. I’m entitled to a pity party, and you are all invited. What?! You say you don’t want to come? That you have other more urgent plans, like watching the bread in your pantry grow mold? Can’t say as I blame you. Who wants to attend a pity party? Nobody, that’s who. Including me. I don’t even want to attend my own. So, why do I write about it? Because it’s real. It’s true. It’s me, and it’s now. Yes, Accuweather.com assures me that tomorrow the sun will shine, but right now I’m feeling bogged down. Word is giving me fits (have I ever mentioned how much I hate Microsoft Word? And like OpenOffice?) as I work on my presentation for Story Circle Network’s Stories From the Heart conference that begins on February 1. I’m in over my head in trying to configure the wireless card for the laptop I converted to Ubuntu. I broke the rules on an Absolute Write Water Cooler forum game thread. I’m tired even thinking about figuring out how to put downloadable files on my ...

I’m cleaning out a drawer in the hall bathroom. This bathroom has seldom been used since our youngest left home, longer ago than I care to recall. Searching in the back of the drawer, I find a pink plastic tube that holds a stick of something that looks like green wax. On a hunch, I remove the clear cap, swivel up the stick, and apply a bit to the heel of my hand. The green stuff turns vivid cherry pink. My thoughts fly back to the year I was twelve. I spent lots of time that year eyeing Tangee lipstick at the Woolworth’s makeup counter. The junior-sized fake gold tube with a slider bar on the side held a stick of translucent, pale orange waxey goo that was said to turn the perfect color for any woman, based on her body chemistry. A barrage of memories connect with this one: secretly putting Tangee on at school and spending the whole walk home chewing it off, wallets and purses big enough for lipstick, comb, mirror, and all your friends' school pics, the girl’s dressing room/res...

Not long ago I discovered Write Your Life , written by Seniorwriter, aka Marlys Marshall Styne. (I just added her site to my Links list.) The post I landed on, Teddy Turns Fifty , was about a teddy bear she bought as a gift for her newborn niece, Cynthia. Cynthia and Teddy just passed the half-century mark. The post is delightful, and so are the comments. One comment mentioned what appeared to be a pile of diapers behind a shoulder. Seniorwriter replied, “Yes, Karen, I imagine that is, indeed, a stack of cloth diapers. I don't suppose that any other kind existed back then.” My monkey mind hopped from that comment to a personal memory about disposable diapers. I had extensive experience with cloth diapers at an early age. I was eleven years old when my baby brother was born, so I was thoroughly familiar with every aspect of changing, rinsing the messes in the toilet, washing, hanging the wet rags on the clothesline to dry, then folding them. Changing diapers can’t be avoided, but th...

Some of the most poignant truth about life comes from novels, and that truth can have deep relevance for life writing, about our own life and others. Although I am not a quilter myself, I am attracted to the art, and recently became hooked on The Elm Creek Quilts series of novels by Jennifer Chiaverini. I just finished reading The Quilter’s Legacy , and a short passage on the final pages rings so true as it sums up the heart of life writing: "Sylvia looked up from the guide, her gaze fixed on the New York Beauty quilt, but her thoughts far away. Whoever this Amelia Langley Davis was, she must have known Sylvia's mother. The details from her journal could not possibly have referred to any family but the Bergstroms. But if she was such a “dear friend,” why had Sylvia's mother never mentioned her—or had she, and had Sylvia carelessly allowed the stories to pass by unheard? Her mother had confided little about her life before coming to Elm Creek Manor—but Amelia Langley Davis ...

The story I started in the last post about story catching goes on. I learned that Stephanie and I needed to go beyond that interview. My understanding was that it would be a great help if I’d just write down a few memories from my childhood. That seemed simple enough. Or so it seemed, at first glance. In a post about six weeks ago I mentioned that having finished The Albuquerque Years , I was moving on to The Los Alamos Years . Many readers may relate to my report that I’ve been feeling a little stuck with that project. Aside from life getting in the way over Christmas time, I was getting bogged down in detail and doing battle with my Inner Censor. Yesterday brought an amazing breakthrough that benefited both needs: Stephanie’s project, and my own “stuckness.” I was ready for a quick break from the intense concentration I’ve maintained for a couple of days as I worked to prepare my presentation on “Picture Perfect Pages” for a session at the 2008 Stories From the Heart conference sp...

Story catching seems to be catching on these days, especially across generations. Just before I wrote the last blog post, I received an e-mail from my granddaughter out in Oregon. Her sixth grade class is doing a legacy project to record family histories and she asked to interview me. Of course I was more than happy to oblige. What an interesting challenge this is turning out to be. She included the following list of interview questions in her e-mail so I could think about answers before we talked. What were your goals and dreams when growing up? Why did you choose those goals? What kept you motivated to follow your dreams? Who was your mentor or inspiration? What obstacles occurred when you were trying to reach your goals? How did you overcome these obstacles? Did your goals and dreams change along the way? Did you help change anyone else's life? What were some life lessons that helped you along the way? What events in your history stand above others? What has been precious to you...

Two years ago, they were strangers. Then a chance encounter led to a deep friendship and a 100-page biography. Now, Bob Sather may know Al Vaicius' story better than even the Plymouth resident does... So begins a wonderful tale written in the Minneapolis Star Tribune by Jenna Ross. The article does a fine job of telling the drift of the story, but after I read it, I was suffused with curiosity. I recognized that Bob Sather was applying the fine art of lifestory writing in the role of “story catcher” to immortalize the life of another person, and I wanted to know more. The fact that I found this article illustrates one wonder of the Cyber Age. The fact that I was able to track Bob down via an email to Jenna Ross was another. During a recent phone conversation I asked Bob how he handled the interviews with Al. His account was close to what I'd read in the article, and included these points: They met over coffee once a week or so, a good way to keep the atmosphere relaxed and t...