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Thanks to the efforts of his creative wife Vivian, on May 9 this year, about thirty people helped Don Duncan eat his words. We were all gathered at the Whitehall Public Library in Whitehall, Pennsylvania to celebrate the conclusion of The Power of Memoir , an eight-week series of classes  that I had the pleasure of leading. Each week a dozen eager students gathered for two hours to learn a few pointers from The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing . During the class, they read stories based on their assignment for the week. Each week we had a predictably wide spectrum of stories. Some, like the one about a woman’s first date with the undertaker who became her husband, had us howling with laughter. Stories about growing up in foster care touched our hearts. We shared memories of growing up around the South Hills region of metropolitan Pittsburgh, holidays, and other aspects of life. At the conclusion of the class, students brought their favorite stories to a Saturday morning event at th...

The pictures above have deep meaning for me, and I think they are likely to strike a chord with most viewers, evoking memories of their own. I want my stories to have that effect. I want readers to see themselves in my words, finding new ways to see old situations and become more fully themselves. I recently found this left-hand picture from 1973 in a pile I was sorting through. Something in it stirred me, though haziness dimmed my response. I decided to try restoring it. I scanned it with my Epson V600 scanner using Professional mode on the scanner interface. I used the Color Restoration tool and the Unsharp Mask tool set to high. That produced over 90% of the result you see on the right, but I wanted more. I cloned out spots on the pillow and sharpened the picture a bit more. Then I added a warming yellowish tone to approximate the wall color I recall. The crisp, haze-free result makes me feel like I’m “back in the picture,” especially when I view it full size and zoom in on details....

Dreams do come true – the day dream kind, the wish upon a star kind. I know this because many of mine have. I know they have because I wrote them down . Two examples stand out and show how writing dreams down can benefit life writers. Moving to Pittsburgh Around 1983 I began dreaming about moving away from what I considered to be the serious career limits of life in Washington’s Tri-Cities (Richland, Kennewick and Pasco). That was during the hey day of the goal setting movement, at least for me. So I drafted a list of everything I wanted when we moved, even though no move was in sight. That list had over twenty items. Among other things it included Major university. Major corporate headquarters A house with high ceilings A stream in our backyard. (That was pure whimsy, nothing I expected to get.) I stuck that list somewhere and forgot about it.  In 1985 my husband accepted a job transfer from the Westinghouse Hanford Nuclear Project to the Westinghouse Nuclear Center in Monroeville, Pe...

Sometimes you read a story and know something is “off,” but you can’t put your pencil on it. Chances are, the story’s rhythm or “music” is the problem. Most people are aware that rhythm is an inherent facet of poetry, especially classic, rhyming poetry. But if you went to the mall and asked random people if they thought stories have rhythm, the typical person would give you that lopsided, raised-eyebrow look that implies she thinks you’re nuts.  “What do you mean, rhythm in a story? Like in a song? Foot-tapping rhythm with a beat?”  “Any kind.” You shrug. “Well . . . no. There’s poems and songs. That stuff has rhythm. Stories, not so much. No. Stories don’t have rhythm. They’re just plain old talking like people talk." The fact is, plain old talking does have rhythm, at least when thoughts flow freely. Even the occasional “uhm” or stumble is rhythmic. For example, read aloud the following two sentence excerpt from a YouTube interview between Kathleen Pooler and Susan Weidner. As...