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The Monroeville Public Library Lifewriters group began meeting five years ago after students in a six-week lifestory writing class I taught at the library wanted to keep meeting as an incentive to stick with their writing projects. All agreed to meet on a regular basis, twice a month, without adjusting the schedule to accommodate absences of any members, myself included. The group has continued to meet skipping only the second meetings in November and December, ever since. We have no formal membership or structure, and our average attendance has grown from around six at the beginning to a dozen today. Only a couple of original members still attend. The rest have cycled in at various points since. Several members contributed short pieces for this post telling about the value the group and lifewriting in general has had for them. Excerpts follow. Ellen: I am passionate about lifewriting because I am telling my own personal story in my own voice. Others can listen if they want, but t...

Kickoff event for Hale Street Gang anthology : Sara Tucker, standing, Idora Tucker, right Today we have a guest post written by Sara Tucker, author of The Hale Street Gang and Me blog . In this post, Sarah tells the story of the origins of the Hale Street Gang, a remarkable group of life writers that I discovered last fall when I visited the remarkable show of their work at the Vermont Folklife Center in Middlebury, Vermont. After viewing the exhibit and surfing Sara’s blog, I was so impressed with what they have accomplished, I had to know more. In the fall of 2008, my mother and I signed up for a memoir-writing class at the senior center in the little town of Randolph, Vermont. Six weeks later the class ended, the instructor left, and we were on our own. Because I am a professional writer, the others decided that I would be their leader. At 56, I was the youngest in the group by about 30 years. Since then, the members of the Hale Street Gang (as we now call ourselves)...

I’m a firm believer in the power of writing groups. Perhaps I indirectly learned their power from my participation in Toastmasters, Int’l many years ago. Toastmasters is based on the concept that peers can use basic training materials to mentor each other as they develop their ability to communicate in groups. In retrospect I realize I received a heap of benefits from my Toastmasters experience: A continuing audience . My fellow club members listened to me time after time, which enabled them to track my progress in a meaningful way and provide helpful feedback. Action deadlines . Speakers must perform, and need audiences. Writers can write in solitude, but the commitment to share with a  group is powerfully motivating. Structure. In the beginning, the Toastmasters manuals provided guidance through initial steps of learning to organize and deliver short speeches. Writing groups that begin with classes also offer this advantage. Over time I moved beyond the manuals, but still ben...

I’ve never been a huge Hemmingway fan, finding the couple of novels I read dull and dissipated. How could anyone possibly drink as much as his characters and still manage to walk around? Besides, the action seemed to move slowly. Maybe it was a guy thing, I decided, determining to abandon this dissolute literary icon. But my opinion has changed. To pass the time on a recent road trip, my husband and I listened to a recording of The Snows of Kilimanjaro and I reached for my Moleskine to jot some notes. Hemmingway may have been writing fiction, but that story has a lot to say to those who write memoir. Intrigued by the recording, I found a book of his short stories at the library, and found more passages of specific relevance in other stories. I admit it. I plan to finish the book, The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Short Stories . Who knows? I may even try another of his novels. Here are three clips I especially liked: Now he would never write the things that he had saved ...

“Is anything too insignificant or silly to write about?” asked Margaret, a frail-looking resident at a retirement community where I was presenting a program on lifestory writing. “Any subject can be fascinating if it’s well written. Do you have a specific topic in mind?” Margaret looked down at her lap and spoke almost in a whisper. “I was remembering the first time I shaved my legs,” she said. “My father didn’t tell me anything about how to do it.” “Oh, that’s a wonderful story!” I replied. “I’d love to hear a story like that about one of my grandmothers!” “I can’t hear!” “What’s did she say?” My reaction had raised everyone’s curiosity. “Do you mind if I tell them what you said?” She blushed and shrugged in agreement, and the large group responded like school kids. Everyone turned to a neighbor and began talking at once. “I remember the first time I shaved …” Men and women alike had shaving stories. Margaret’s shy question had touched every heart in the room, bonding the...

You know how you keep hearing the importance of writing your Truth, and telling it the way you experienced and lived it? And you know how sometimes that keeps your story bottled up inside you? Here’s a radical idea: tell it like it wasn’t. Now before I go any further with this, let me be clear: I am not advocating falsehood, nor do I condone misleading people. But it is true than sometimes you can best convey Truth by breaking away from truth. The most common reason for memoir writers to lapse into fiction is to protect the privacy and identities of other people in your story. You may do this from compassion and integrity or from the desire to stay out of court. You can tell the Truth of what happened while altering enough facts to protect privacy and minimize damage to relationships and emotions – your own included. Another reason is to gain the freedom to tell as story like you wish it had been. Perhaps you’ve always wished you’d signed up for the tennis team,  gone whitewater raftin...