yourpassions.tk

If you want your story to shine its brightest, you’ve got to drill down to the core. That means going through it, sentence by sentence. The good news is that most sentences are simple enough and will pass without further ado. A few need further attention. Use these examples to find and fix those few. We continued our trip on to Koufonisia, a lightly populated fishing island for a very late lunch. At a glance, after adding the missing comma between island and for, most people would be satisfied with that sentence. It’s clear and grammatically correct. But let’s try a few things. Commas slow the eye down, so let’s move the qualifying phrase to a spot before the noun: We continued our trip on to the lightly populated fishing island of Koufonisia for a very late lunch. That’s better, but let’s try something else. Our trip continued to the lightly populated fishing island of Koufonisia, where we enjoyed a very late lunch. Better? I think so, but wait – when I was a h...

“I have piles of old journals. Can I use those as my memoir?” This question comes up in almost every class I teach. The short answer is “No . But you can use those journal entries as a resource.” Here’s why and how. Take a look at the Tree of Life Writing image in the right sidebar. Notice that Journal Entries fall at the foot, below the ground, out of sight and light. Those journal entries feed into Story , that appears first as Essays and Stories. Those component stories and essays feed into the composite Memoir. If you are using your journal to best advantage, you write with no boundaries . Your entries may ramble. They may not be coherent. You may omit detail or obsessively dwell on detail. You may write things that will send certain relationships up in flames if you don’t consign those pages to flames before anyone reads them. You may reveal things to those pages that would embarrass you or others, or betray their confidence. But aside from all that, reading journal entri...

Today I am pleased to host an interview with creativity coach Sue Mitchell, “The Memoir Muse,” about the challenges new lifestory and memoir writers face and some tips on avoiding them. SL: You explain on your website that your passion is to help people overcome obstacles and reluctance to begin or continue writing their memoirs or life stories. What are the most common obstacles people bring to you? SM: Most clients come needing some form of outside approval. They want to know if their writing is any good. They wonder if they’re going about this in the “right” way. They worry about offending others by sharing their view of what happened. I help them understand the messy nature of the writing process, teach them to set their own criteria for success, and help them give themselves permission to tell their stories. It’s also typical for beginning memoir writers to find that writing a memoir competes with other priorities in their lives, time slips away, and they don’t get to their ...

“What are we both doing right now?” asked a friend during a Skype session the other day. “Holding a conversation…” “We are talking about writing. We are NOT WRITING!” Oh! Yeah. I got the message. In our defense, the logistics we were discussing were important, but indeed, we were not writing . We continued to talk a few more minutes about all the things we do that aren’t writing, such as: Run to the grocery store to buy last-minute items for the dinner we just decided to fix. Finally remember to put in (or take out or fold) that load of laundry. Finally remember to call and make a dentist appointment. Send out publicity for an event. Vacuum the floor. Clean the car windshield – inside and out – and then vacuum the car interior. Meet a friend for coffee. Check Facebook. Scan the news. Work a Sudoku, play “one game!” of FreeCell, etc. That’s a very short list. Then we logged off of Skype with the promise that we’d touch bases in two hour...