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Who would have guessed that Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland would be a source of inspiration to modern memoir writers? I can’t recall the last time I read this classic that I often enjoyed  as a girl. A couple of days ago I snagged a free ebook copy and dug in. I noticed many things freshly. Nobody will be surprised to hear me confirm that Lewis Carroll is a master of metaphor and brilliantly creative. And of course the illustrations delight me even more now than when I was ten. But those are not the parts I’m referring to. I was struck by the candor and complexity of Alice’s conversations with herself. I didn’t even try to count all the various facets of herself she brought into play via internal dialogues. Note that I said dialogs . It’s not unusual to hear recommendations to include internal monolog in memoir, that is, self-talk. But Carroll takes it one step further and has Alice talking to her selves . This technique especially fascinated me, because it seems so true to li...

Everyone’s talking about memoir. It’s a hot genre to read, and definitely a hot genre to write. More people than ever come to writing classes with the stated intention of “Writing my memoir.” I’m firmly in the camp of those who support this intention, but with a caveat: few people who bandy the term around have any idea what it means, or the difference between autobiography, lifestory and memoir.  As you can see from my oft-used “Tree of Life Writing” graphic, memoir is a complex writing form that draws on increasingly polished levels  of simpler writing. At the base is what I refer to as Raw Writing , a form that flows onto the page spontaneously and unedited. Its most structured form is journaling, which is generally kept in a volume for at least a period of time. Freewriting and rants may be discarded as soon as finished. Although it is not included in the Tree image, autobiography is another umbrella form. Memoir is a slice of life, zooming in on a specific time period or topic. It...

Hang on! This is not about astrology or New Age philosophy. I’m working on my personal timeline – again. I made a table timeline years ago, and refer to it often. This one is graphical. I took a tabloid-sized sheet of paper and drew a line across the center lengthwise, placing it in the center vertically. I divided the line into seven decades, since I’m working on my seventh one now. My plan is to add “light” memories, happy ones, above the line, and darker, painful ones below. As I began jotting memories in, I realized it isn’t always clear which side to put them on. Some, like winning the Distinguished Thesis Award, were clearly on top. Others, like being emotionally ambushed by classmates in a grad school class (I’ve forgotten the subject, but not the event) are clearly way down in the dark field. Few are that clear. The majority are basically happy, but nuanced. Becoming engaged, for example. I was a freshman in college in Texas at the time, and my fiancé was in Cambridge, Mass. Al...

NAMW founder Linda Joy Myers has been busy posting about the memoir alternative for NaNoWriMo . In her most recent Memories & Memoirs blog post, she points out that this is National Life Writing Month. She posts four tips for writing a 50,000 word memoir draft this months in lieu of a 50,000 word novel. Linda Joy has been extra busy. She also wrote a guest post for Nina Amir’s Write Nonfiction in November blog giving another eight tips to help you dig deeper as you write. I suspect many writers are like me. It sounds fantastic to write an entire novel, memoir, or other nonfiction book in a single month – one of the busiest months of the year as it includes the Thanksgiving holiday and the onset of the December holiday madness. BUT … I already have three books underway, maybe four. Starting a new one seems counter-productive. So what can I do? Besides, the first week of the months is already history. Here’s an idea: Maybe it’s cheating and maybe it isn’t. Who but me cares...

Kathy Pooler’s Memoir Writer’s Journey blog post, “ The Art of Constructive Feedback in Writing and in Life ”, blew me away. Everyone who works with children in any capacity should read her account of the way her grandson’s soccer coach interacts with his team. Everyone who works with people should read the post and pay close attention to the juxtaposition of that style with the feedback she got on an early writing assignment that shut her down for decades. Her post especially hit the spot because I’ve been deeply reminded lately that strong writing – deep, meaningful writing – generally benefits from feedback of one sort or another, and yet awkwardly given feedback can do more harm than good. In an attempt to prevent such a negative outcome, writing classes I teach, I always give each student a copy of the follow  Feedback Ground Rules : Stories you hear in this room stay in this room! This is crucially important for classes and writing groups to ensure people feel safe eno...