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Are you one of the majority of readers who will be making New Year's resolutions in the next day or two? Perhaps some of those will include resolutions about writing. Maybe you'll resolve to journal every day. Maybe you'll resolve to complete a memoir, or write a story a week. Whatever your resolutions, here's a tip to help make them bear fruit: Commit to it publicly and create a time-linked Action Plan to go with each step. I am resolving to complete my Los Alamos Years memoir by January 1, 2011. Here is the Action Plan I just knocked out in about ten minutes I've had a lot of practice writing Action Plans, and I've completed several book projects, so I could do it faster. Perhaps mine will give you an idea what to include in your own. Sharon's Action Plan for The Los Alamos Years 1-1-2010 Write a draft overview of the story. 1-14-2010. Define purpose and audience Write philosophy of story. What message do I plan to convey? Break overall story into segment...

Sharon

An ailing friend was moaning to me the other day about the fact that having flu the week before Christmas means that she may not get all her baking done. “So what? Just forget it. Life goes on. Everyone will understand. Besides, how many of you really need desert anyway?” “Oh, yes, they do need it on Christmas. I’ll really hear about it I don’t come through.” Later on I thought about that conversation. It’s so easy to hear other angles to someone else’s thoughts. I had an evil idea and sent her a tongue-in-cheek email detailing several possible journal entries that might wreck her karma if she doesn’t leap out of bed and whip up a figgy pudding, along with 80 dozen cookies. Here’s a hypothetical journal entry from her adult son: I know I should spend more time worrying about Mom. She's really trying to do so much, and the fact that she didn't manage to rise from her sickbed and do her usual baking is a terrible sign. Well, she's obviously starting to slip. That just isn...

Matilda Butler runs a column of writing prompts on the Women's Memoirs site. The current one is about point of view and includes some gorgeous photos of Mt. Shasta that visually illustrate her points. She suggests writing about an experience from your own original point of view, and then again from your current one. As an additional twist, you can write again from someone else's point of view. I was not thinking of this exercise when I wrote the following mini-essay in an e-mail to a friend. As I read over it before sending, it came to mind. I realized that in a very few words, I covered all three of those angles. Can you find them? They are somewhat interwoven, which is a good way to make your writing sound organic. Back in the '60s when we were newly weds and living in an $85-per-month ground-floor apartment in Boston, Frau Levy, a sturdily built German-Jewish woman, lived above us. Though she was barely five feet tall in her stocking feet, she sounded like an elephant...

Over the last several days I’ve been totally immersed in moving. My mailing address has not changed, nor has my physical space, but I’m in a whole new place. I’ve entered the world of Windows 7. But never fear, this post is about the mental process I’ve been going through as I make this transition — which is not yet finished — not about computer stuff. As I sorted through files to make sure  my C: drive was backed up before I began the installation, I was strongly reminded of the packing we did before we moved from Washington to Pennsylvania twenty-five ago. I began feeling similarly nostalgic about the XP home I’ve lived and worked in for eight years now. When I finally got brave and made that last click that finalized my commitment to installing, I was torn. I was leaving behind a huge chunk of my past and forging ahead into a brave new world. I did not know what lay ahead, what hurdles I’d have to overcome. As the CD reader spun, I did what any self-respecting life writer would do (...

  Light Chaos by Kevin Dooley I don’t know if it’s the magnetic forces building as we slide into the core of the Milky Way, or maybe I'm wearing a sign on my virtual back that says “Trash My ’Puter” or something like that. My desktop machine (Hotshot) has lost the ability to record sound (think “Podcast Impossible”). Jack, my middle-aged ’Puter Wizard, is in the midst of finals week, and doesn’t want to hear my whining, or even take my money. He does his best to keep me self-empowered anyway. He assures me the sound card does work, so it's a Windows thing, and I “just” need to do a clean install and rebuild the system. “NO!” I yell into the phone. “NOT THAT!” I have, oh, maybe 120 programs installed — true, half can be dumped — but it takes days to rebuild my system. “Deal with it,” he tells me, in much kinder words. Adding insult to injury, last night I discovered my laptop no longer recognizes our home network. The CMU wireless network I connected to Tuesday afternoon fried ...

Photo by JasonDGreat Will Argentine ants take over the Formicidae world? It sounds possible. I was reminded of the lyrics of a children’s counting song, The ants go marching one by one ...  as I read an item in the December 2009 National Geographic about Argentine ants. They are gaining dominance around the world by their ability to get along well with one another. They are forming genetically consistent “super colonies” that enable an ant from one nest to mingle freely in another, preventing competition among queens and internest wars. Apparently this proclivity for peace allows them to solidly expand their territory, crowding out native ant species and interfering with local ecologies. I'll leave it to you to read more about this peril. How strange , I thought as I read this. If ants can dominate by peaceful behavior, could humans do the same? If people with a peaceful mindset link up and live from a center of love, peace and gratitude, will we eventually overwhelm and cr...

“Inspiration happens, but it has to catch you working,” advises Gina Mazza, creative alchemist extraordinaire, as she discusses the process of writing in the audio interview posted below. Gina is the author of Everything Matters Nothing Matters , an eloquent blend of riveting spiritual memoir with a well-defined path readers can follow as they pursue their own spiritual journeys. Her book is one of a large number of multi-niche memoirs that appear on the shelves of the travel section, spiritual life, healing, recovery ... even the food section of bookstores and libraries. The combination of personal experience and message is powerful, giving readers deeper understanding of a process I discuss in an article, What is a Self-Help Memoir . During our interview Gina explains how her book evolved into a published volume from a concept she blurted to an agent during a pitch for another book. In keeping with her dual-track book, she also gives listeners some general guidelines on creativity th...

A few days ago my daughter told me about accepting a “Thankfulness Challenge.” She’s posting tiny “I’m thankful for ...” statements on Facebook at least once a day. After she told me this, I took a look. The instructions are simple: Every day this month until Thanksgiving, think of one thing that you are thankful for and post it as your status. "Today I am thankful for..." The longer you do it, the harder it gets! Now if you think you can do it then repost this message ......as your status to invite others to take...the challenge, then post what YOU are thankful for today.... Then I checked her posts. They are tiny indeed. Typical ones include: Today I am thankful for deodorant. Today I am thankful for sarcasm. Today I am thankful that others have louder voices than mine. Today I am thankful for ear plugs ... helpful when the children are fighting over toys. Today, I am thankful that my husband did not die on mile 24 of his marathon -- no matter how much he thought he was goi...

There’s nothing like a party to bring out people’s best stories, especially when stories are the reason for the party. On November 10, members of the Monroeville Library Life Writers celebrated National Life Writing Month with a Festival of Lifestories . Ten experienced members selected one story each from their growing collections and read it to a room packed with family members and friends at the Monroeville Library , our generous host. As group facilitator, I served as Emcee for the event, introducing a full spectrum of stories. Story topics ranged from a matched pair of stories about “How We Met” through travel stories, war stories, grieving stories, and high school memories to straight humor. Everyone had a great time, whether they read stories or listened. It was a powerful illustration of the variety of stories that emerge from such a group, and several in the audience expressed interest in learning more about writing life stories. The event also provided a great way for this cl...

Photo by  Polina Sergeeva   Has a pain complex developed around our favored genre of memoir? Someone recently observed that to be interesting a memoir has to be about pain and suffering. Perhaps I exaggerate the intent of that remark, but as I think about it, I’ve been hearing variations on that theme in a number of places lately. For example, “People are interested in reading about struggle and how you overcame obstacles.” “My life is so ordinary. Nobody would want to read about it.” “Conflict. That’s what sells.” Maybe that last statement is the crux of the matter. “What sells.” Or more precisely, what publishers are buying in hopes that we also will. Scanning down the current Amazon “best-selling memoir list” search, I see titles like Chronicles, Volume 1 , by Bob Dylan, Realding Lolita in Tehran , by Azar Nafisi, Dreams from My Father , by Barack Obama, Night , by Elie Wiesel, It Stops with Me , by Charleen Touchette, and An Unquiet Mind , by Kay Redfield Jamison. None of these b...

Many memoir authors take ages to write their book. Jeannette Walls took about five years to write The Glass Castle . Other outstanding memoirs that have not made it to the best-seller list — yet — are Linda Joy Myers’ Don’t Call Me Mother , Karen Walker's Following the Whispers ,  and Heather Cariou’s  Sixtyfive Roses . Each of those books reportedly took about twenty years to write. So how did Sarah Palin manage to crank out Going Rogue (which topped the best-seller list weeks before its release) in only four months? Answer: she had help, and she is Sarah Palin. I have not checked for details, but it seems safe to assume that agents and publishers were pestering her with offers months before she committed to writing the book. Another huge advantage she had was a compelling reason to write. For better or worse, whatever personal motivation she may have had, the over-arching importance of this book will be its role as a political platform document, and Sarah is obviously committe...

To my mind, a character who routinely muttered and mumbled would seem eccentric, to say the least, if not sullen or belligerent. An image that comes to mind is an old estate caretaker, wiry and bent with age, given to conversing with plants as he prunes them. Another is a street person suffering some form of mental illness. Not long ago I read an adventure novel, which charity demands I refrain from naming. I’ll refer to the author simply as Jane. The two main characters were teenagers of extraordinary intelligence and achievement. The imaginative plot held my interest, but as I read, I quickly became distracted by the number of times these brilliant, well-behaved young people muttered and mumbled. Hardly a page went by without one or another of these words appearing in at least one dialogue tag.  Maybe I would have been less aware of this if I didn’t teach classes in Writing Dynamic Dialogue , but having fairly recently completed an in-depth study of that topic, I took a closer look. ...

Earlier today I read a review of a book, Muses, Mentors and Monsters , by Elizabeth Benedict. The book features a collection of tributes from thirty writers to mentors who  changed their lives. I immediately thought of the mentor who changed my writing life by kicking it off. Lacking the opportunity to put this into a book, I'll pay tribute here to Larry Sparks , my main mentor while I was an off-campus grad student in the psych department at Central Washington U in the seventies. I doubt I would have made it through the mazes in that program if Larry's office hadn't been available as my centering spot. This gentle balding giant with the translucent cinammon buzzcut and droopy, pale blue eyes constantly urged and teased me to set aside my wild ideas of a counseling career and settle in to write. "You are the best writer I've ever had in any of my classes. That's what you excel at, what you do best. It's something you can do at home with your kids, and you c...

 Photo by Churl   A new tradition is being established today — the National Day on Writing , officially recognized by the US Senate . It  officially began at 12:01 EDT today. Every citizen is encouraged to submit a piece of writing, This may be anything from a polished story or poem to a shopping list. According to an article in today’s Pittsburgh Post-Gazette , Danielle Koupf, a doctoral student in English at the University of Pittsburgh, is trying to collect "scrap writing" in her gallery, including lists, sticky notes, homemade signs, letters and journal entries in order to "showcase the unacknowledged, ephemeral writing the pervades ordinary life." Memoir and other life writers may be especially interested in a special page on the National Association of Memoir Writers site that include an interview with founder Linda Joy Myers. Rather than dwell on the details, I encourage everyone to click over the the Post-Gazette page, the NAMW page, and the official Nat...

I’m stuck. At a dead end. At my wits’ end! I do not know how to handle this new writing challenge. This challenge is writing code for a new web page design that has become an obsession. I am determined to make it work, though it is beyond what I currently know how to do. I’ve got the basic structure in place, and just discovered one fatal design flaw. I know it can be done. I’ve seen the concept elsewhere. Right now I’m exploring my options for forging ahead and see that they are not much different for writing code than they would be if I were stuck writing a story that was mired down. As I see it the options  include: Continue by trial-and-error . I know a lot already, and sooner or later I’m bound to stumble on a solution. Keep surfing the net in search of solutions . That’s how I learned most of what I know. Find a book . I can learn nearly anything by reading about it, and the library is full of books. Take a class . I love classes. I learn from the questions other people ask as we...

Photo by Liz West from Flickr.com Words are the raw ingredients of communication. When we speak, we use inflection and pauses (together with facial expression and body language when we have visual contact) to add layers of meaning to the words. On the page, punctuation serves the same purpose. Just as tone of voice may vary to suit the speaker’s intent, so might punctuation. Compare these two examples to see what a difference punctuation can make. Dear John, I want a man who knows what love is all about. You are generous, kind, thoughtful. People who are not like you admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me for other men. I yearn for you. I have no feelings whatsoever when we're apart. I can be forever happy—will you let me be yours? Gloria * * * Dear John: I want a man who knows what love is. All about you are generous, kind, thoughtful people, who are not like you. Admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me. For other men, I yearn. For you, I have no f...

Which came first, the Abba tunes or the musical plot? We all know the answer to that. The tunes in the musical Mamma Mia were hits in the years 1977-1982. Although the concept for the musical obviously came somewhat earlier, work on it did not begin until 1997, fifteen years after the last songs were released, and the movie wasn’t released until nine years after the stage play opened in 1999. Anyone who has seen this musical surely noticed how the two dozen tunes integrate  so seamlessly with the plot that anyone who wasn’t already familiar with the tunes could logically assume they were written for the purpose. Aside from incorporating voices of the actors and slight adaptations to segue them into the plot in places,  changes to the original tunes were so minor as to be imperceptible. So why do I claim this totally fictitious, over-the-top comedy musical is a model for writing memoir? Precisely because it takes isolated fragments of story (each song is a tiny story) and pulls them...

Sometimes you have to turn a story inside out to find the real one. Angela, a writing group friend, has been struggling with a story that just didn’t seem to be going anywhere. “It doesn’t have any tension,” she observed. “Nothing is really happening. Nobody would read more than a page or two.” “So, why did you write this story? Why is it important to you?” another member asked. Angela’s voice was tentative as she began to explain. When she got to one element she had stashed in a single paragraph near the end, she exclaimed, “I really have two stories here!” A jolt of electricity pulsed through the group. We realized that her true and powerful story is buried deep inside the presenting story. That tiny seed of real story is where all the conflict and tension is, and the outer story seems almost dead, because it is only a shell. After Angela pulls the true story into the dominant position and gives it proper attention, the dull part will become relevant and lively.   A mental movie ran...

Beyond all the words is a place of great silence. I recently read this sentence (or one much like it). I wish I remembered the source, but all I recall is being struck by its simple profundity. The context referred to endless talking, but my mind instantly shifted to writing. Serious life writers, whatever form we choose, may find ourselves awash on a sea of our words. We write story after story, journal day-by-day. Words fall from fingers like autumn leaves from the tree of life. I write, as many others do, not only to leave a legacy of personal and family history for future generations, not only to share with friends I know and haven’t yet met, but for understanding and insight. Journal entries, vignettes, essays, scribbled diagrams and mindmaps — these are all dots of understanding. Eventually dots connect into pictures, words into stories, and stories into understanding. Until I read about the place of great silence, I assumed my words would pile up forever, and to what avail? No...

Imagine that you have a magic crystal ball that sees the past as well as the future, able to change the shape and color of events. The other day I was blessed with such an experience, though the ball was nowhere to be found. It happened in the early morning as I wrote in my journal. As my coffee began to kick in and my fingers limbered, I began writing about a person from my school years, someone I’ve always believed “made my life miserable.” I’ve even been known to claim (only partly in jest) that said person “ruined my life.” Suddenly I dropped my pencil as a voice in my head blurted out a startling message: She didn’t ruin your life. She didn’t even make you miserable. If anything ruined your life, it was the way you compared yourself to her and came up short in your own view. Plus the way she had a few people skills you hadn’t yet learned. But that had nothing to do with her and everything to do with you. Besides, was your life really ruined, or simply nudged around an inevitable c...

Heather Summerhayes Cariou's book, Sixtyfive Roses: A Sister's Memoir , is not new to this blog. I published a review of in on Amazon back in June introduced here by a post on June 2, and I've referred to it a couple of times since. There is much to appreciate in this book, and two of them are especially relevant to the classes I teach on writing sparkling description and dynamic dialogue. Heather is a master of both. Today Heather has agreed to be my guest for the second in a series of mini-interviews especially for readers of The Heart and Craft of Life Writing.  In this interview, Heather explains how she was able to craft compelling descriptions of places from times long past and dialogue about events that happened thirty or forty years ago. As a bonus for listeners, she gives several tips that will help anyone with writing dialogue, description, or really anything. The interview lasts for 14 minutes. You can listen on the player below, or click the link to download it...

  Photo by Slagheap at www.flickr.com This morning I jotted down some memories of September 11 in my journal. As I wrote, I thought of the intense fear the occasion called forth, the fear that life as we had known it had crumbled as surely as the Twin Towers.  That triggered a related memory of a day a couple of years later when I experienced a blinding flash of the obvious, realizing in an instant that hate is not the opposite of love, FEAR is the opposite of love.  I felt those shackles of fear break free as divine, sublime love flowed into my being. My spirit soared in awe and gratitude. For several days I floated on a cloud of bliss, feeling free and strong, exploring the plethora of ramifications of this blessed “knowing.” I wish I could tell you I've been 100% confident and joyful ever since. Not so. I still  get the willies now and then about one thing or another. It may be news related, like the situation in Iraq or healthcare reform, or it may be more personal, such as fam...