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This afternoon I took a walk in search of the first coltsfoot blooms of the season. They usually appear on March 21, give or take a day, but this year winter has hung on longer than usual, delaying their appearance more than a week. This winter has been a difficult one, filled with reminders of our mortality. Never have I been more eager for the appearance of spring! I was even more eager to see them today after receiving an unexpected phone call from my brother in Richland, Washington. Kathy Utz, a dear friend I’ve known for 43 years, died a couple of weeks ago. The news felt like a sandbag hitting my solar plexus. I had no idea she was ailing, and I’d planned to call her later today to wish her Happy Easter. Since my brother knew no details, I called a mutual friend to get the rest of the story. Talking about our grief and sense of loss helped us both. Story is like that. It’s how we make sense of things, individually and collectively. I had to know more details to calm my shoc...

“Writers are always selling somebody out,” wrote Joan Didion at the beginning of her first essay collection, 1968’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem . This sinister quote was included in Boris Katcha’s feature article on the New York Magazine site discussing Didion’s brutally personal new memoir, Blue Nights . Katcha considers Didion’s words “a statement of mercenary purpose in the guise of a confession: not a preemptive apologia but an expression of grandiose, even nihilistic ambition.” How might this apply to “ordinary people” writing lifestory and memoir? How many memoir writers have grandiose or nihilistic ambitions? My previous post, “ Above All, Cause No Harm ,” emphasizes that shadows give depth to a character, and that speaking our truth may be inconvenient or painful for others. So, yes, in a sense, even without Didion’s mindset, memoir can be seen by some as a betrayal, in at least a small way. Most thinking people will agree that this is a matter of degree. Mentioning that...

I’ve been following Susan Payne’s Blog The Water Witch’s Daughter (written under the pseudonym SuziCate) for at least a couple of years and each time I read it, I’m enchanted with the combination of breathtaking photos and heartwarming insights, touching stories and snippets of life. Susan recently published her first book, Stepping into the Wilderness , an anthology of sixty encouraging posts from her blog. Each contains five thought provoking questions to promote inner growth through reflection or journal writing. In addition, each piece contains five writing exercises for enriching the writing experience. Each contains five thought provoking questions to promote inner growth through reflection or journal writing. In addition, each piece contains five writing exercises for enriching the writing experience, and in this post she shares a touching story with prompts for you to write about parallel experiences. “Is my letter crooked?” I adjusted the large “N” stretching across he...

“You can’t write the truth of someone without mentioning their warts and wrinkles as well as their angelic smile. And how can  you write about the warts and wrinkles without causing them distress?” This question comes up in one form or another in every memoir and lifestory class I teach. Everyone hopes for stone tablet truth to guide them, but alas, there are no hard and fast rules. But take hope and use these tips to guide your decisions: 1) Write privately first . It’s therapeutic to get angry feelings on the page, out in the open where you can see them. Sometimes simply writing the reasons for your rage focuses it, and the reasons may look ridiculous or blown out of proportion. Perhaps that’s enough and you can burn, shred or delete the words and all will be well. If it isn’t well, think care-fully before sharing your thoughts lest you cause greater damage to self or others, or paint yourself into an unforeseen corner or difficult situation. I speak here of rage, but other e...

In this post Guest Blogger Judith Newton shares the back story about the food theme that serves to weave together numerous subthemes in her newly released memoir. My memoir, Tasting Home , is about the healing and connecting powers of cooking and eating with others, a theme that came to me early in my life. Since as a child I’d found my mother’s meals to be the most secure form of nurturing I’d received, for me, as an adult, cooking became the only sure way I knew to create a sense of home. Tasting Home deals with some painful episodes in my life, but I wanted readers to experience the ways in which cooking helped me to establish emotional connections and a sustaining sense of joy. It is for this reason that the memoir is loaded with scenes in which I invite readers to the table, by recreating what the food tasted like, what surroundings it was eaten in, and the ways in which it bound me to others. Food memoirs were popular by 2009 when I began Tasting Home. Some came with reci...

After whizzing past this blog’s seven year mark three weeks ago, I’ve realized how much ground we’ve covered. It’s time to review of some basics, and terminology is a great place to start. I’m often asked to define and explain the  differences among six terms in common usage for describing written accounts of personal history. This overview should answer any questions. Autobiography — a chronological account documenting events of your life from birth through the present. Given the amount of material that is generally covered, these works tend to emphasize basic facts with relatively little reflection and insight. Memoir — a narrative account of a specific, bounded aspect of your life. You can write many memoirs to emphasize different facets. Typical examples of memoir content include military service, career experience, surviving a hurricane, illness or various sorts of abuse, or perhaps your experiences with quilting, cooking or a favorite sport. Formal memoir is an integrated story ...