Writing a memoir means exploring who we are and where we came from, entering the unknown on our journey and discovering ourselves. We strike out for the gold of truth and honesty, as we explore the spiritual journey that leads us away from known territory deeper into who we are. We use the tools of memory, creativity, and writing.

To find the road and have a focus I use the technique called “turning points.” These are the most important moments of your life, when nothing remained the same after the event. It might be meeting a new person, moving away from your home town, encountering danger, an accident, an illness, or receiving an award or a scholarship, losing a loved one to death, a natural disaster, a birth. Falling in love.

Dorothy Allison, author of Bastard Out of Carolina, says to write “Where the fear is, where the heat is.” That invited us to delve into the heart of our stories, of the high and low points in our lives. Emotion and memory guide us into our journey toward truth and honesty. Judith Barrington says that the memoirist, “Whispers into the ear of the reader.” When we read a memoir, we feel that we are being invited into the secret heart of a person, a family, a time and a place.

When I was little, my great grandmother and my great aunts were busy. They’d wash and hanging clothes on the line to dry in the sun, or cooking—my great grandmother still used a wood cook stove—even in the summer! They’d can the bounty from the garden, or were busy with their needlework. They belonged to quilting bees, and would sit around the quilting frame, chattering and stitching by hand. They cut out designs and patterns using pieces of old clothes, creating ripples of colors as the separate patches came together in a design. As we gather our turning point stories from our memories, we write vignettes in any order. Later they will be quilted together into a work of art.

Another guide on the journey is creating a timeline. After you list your turning point stories, plot them on a timeline that you create out of an 18×24 inch piece of paper. Your memoir will be composed of a couple of major themes from your life but you will no doubt want to write more stories than will end up in your memoir. Look at how your turning points cluster on the timeline –you might find new insights into your life as more memories surface. You can Xerox photos that go with the various turning points, and create a vision board, where you weave the colors and the images.

The more you write, the more you develop your turning points and the sensual details of your life, the more you will remember. And you will weave magic as you write your memoir.

The stuff of memories will be explored today on the Free National Association of Memoir Writers Free Roundtable with Sharon Lippincott, author and advisory board member. Sign up to get the audio!

Truth or Fiction—how do you want to write your life story?

This is a pithy and often difficult question that many memoir writers ponder—and it keeps them from writing. Are you writing—or are you worrying about how to write your story? It’s time to think hard about your choices and get back to your book. You can write—and finish—your book in 2012!

Reasons why you might choose fiction:

• You want the protection of “the fictional wall.”
• When your family and friends ask: did that REALLY happen—you can say “This is a novel. Any similarities between persons living and dead are coincidental.” Or whatever disclaimer you decide you use.
  
• Your memory isn’t good—and you need to fill in details to make a good story.
• Your memory isn’t good—and you don’t have enough “truths” to create a memoir, but you have some ideas and experiences that will make a good book.
• If your story has traumatic truths that “out” someone, you want to be able to create fictional characters to carry the story.

A great book to help you sort out these questions is Robin Hemley’s Turning Life into Fiction.

Reasons to write a memoir:

• The power of your story comes from the fact that it is true—it really happened.
• You want to draw upon your real experiences to help others—by claiming your story as true, you will be a better storyteller and deliver a more powerful message.
• Writing a memoir means exploring memory, meaning, and lived experience, and you enjoy that kind of writing.
• You believe that writing and publishing a memoir offers a significant legacy or lesson—a takeaway that will change the lives of others.
• A memoir can be a legacy, testimony, a witnessing of aspects of life that are real and true—and you want to deliver that kind of work to inform and inspire others.

The History of Sex in the Twentieth Century—what a title! It’s one of the memoirs written by Jane Vandenburgh, our guest for our NAMW member teleseminar. I’m so excited to talk with Jane—as she’s an example of someone who has as she puts it, “Put memoir in my fiction and fiction in my memoir.”

Find out more about how she chose the genres for her books. Click here to read more about the upcoming teleseminar.

More of Jane’s books:

The Physics of Sunset—fiction

Failure to Zigzag-fiction

The Architecture of the Novel—a terrific how-to book

By now quite a few people in my networks have heard that I decided to call 2012 The Year of the Memoir. Why did she do that, you wonder. What will we call next year?? More importantly–what is Snoopy writing in HIS memoir?

First of all, I trust in the powers of creativity. They are greater than I, or you, or anyone, but the deal is, we have to find ways to listen to that still small voice that whispers brilliance in our ears and we need to find ways to bring our creative thoughts and ideas into form in the world. The idea of a baby is quite different than birthing one, don’t you think? The idea of a book is an idea—until you bring it to life on the page. We need help to get our work born, we need inspiration and support. Techniques and goals.

We need to have a sense of being able to do what we want to do—so declaring it is a way to keep ourselves honest. Think of the writers—Dickens, Virginia Woolf, John Steinbeck among others—who wrote and shared with other writers their creative experiences, their doubts and fears.  Each of them announced what they were working on and in so doing, created intentionality and a goal. As well as a well-oiled support group. The Impressionists did this as well, discussing, painting, trying, failing, and still they painted and changed the world.

Inspiration and Perspiration—how much of each?

Inspiration helps many of us get ourselves planted in the chair to write, but as you know, writing requires some effort, some perspiration, in order for us to wrestle with the various ideas coursing through our brains. We wrestle with technique, with images, with memories. With the Inner Critic, with the voice of family.

But we keep writing. That’s the only way. We learn from our reading—how did that author keep ME turning the pages? Why do I find it hard to put down some books and others I can’t finish. Ask those questions, learn from everyone around you. Have a beginner’s mind.

I have likened writing a memoir to a journey in other posts. This week I began teaching my online workshops and was so jazzed to hear the eagerness in the voices of the students in the workshop. They are engaged in such a creative dance on their journey to a finished memoir.

Here’s what some of them said:

• Writing validates my experience. I feel better about who I am when I write.
• Not writing made me realize how much I need to write to know who I am.
• Writing my memoir has helped me get along better with my mother and ex-husband.
• Writing about the past helped me to let it go.
• The year of the memoir idea made me realize that I want to get my book done this year!

Having a name for the year set an intention for many of these writers.

How do you set your intention?

How do you keep your goal in mind?

Some people journal, some write out intentions and put them up on the wall.

Others put their intention on the calendar and create accountability.

What method do you want to start this week during the first month of the Year of the Memoir?

How many words will you have written by Feb. 1??

Think of Snoopy writing his memoir, and smile. It keeps you open and flexible, smiling. Keep writing!

When you first decide to write, you’re excited—eager to explore the memories and stories that are part of you. Memories shape who you are and where you hailed from. In a memoir, you weave the legacy about your life and times. You know your story—but perhaps the whispers of the ever present inner critic voice interfere with your story flow—what will people think; you should be ashamed; you will embarrass the family. Don’t air the dirty laundry; you know only part of the truth, so be quiet. Your mother will roll over in her grave if she found out you wrote that.

The inner critic can be part of the “outer critics” the family voices that stop you from writing. Perhaps you feel you need to be loyal, to not make anyone uncomfortable. Some memoir writers are told openly by family members not to write a memoir.

These voices are too familiar to memoir writers, making you want to throw down the pen or close the computer, and turn on the TV. You don’t want to lose your family, and you don’t want make them angry or cause a war between cousins. Writing a memoir is an act of courage, even defiance against powerful family dynamics that urge you to keep silent, and to keep the secrets.

When you write a memoir, you reclaim your own voice, your stake a claim to your version of the story. Every family has multiple story lines. There’s the “official” version, controlled by the most powerful people in the family, usually the parents or those who have the most to lose. The “lesser” points of view are most often held by the children or those not in power.

Who decides what version of a story to believe? Who is not listened to? The answers to these questions will be decided by who’s in power. But you have a point of view, you have a story that needs to be told. You have to write past the old voices and the inner critic.

Many families have a “scapegoat,” or a clown—often the most sensitive person who has a unique, even unpopular view of the family stories. Those with the most power may try to suppress these alternative points of view. If you are in that role, it’s your job to tell your story as you see it.

You need to create a safe, sacred space to keep writing. Write your story in a protected bubble to help you listen to your own voice. Write frequently, write often. The force of your voice and your writing energy burns through the blocks from the past

1. If the critic voice stops you, take dictation of what it’s saying. Get the voices out of your head and onto the page where you can be more objective. Keep asking, “What else to I want to say that’s important?”
2. Think about where you learned the critic voices. Write down this information. Freewrite—meaning writing quickly without stopping– your memories of power and powerlessness in your life.
3. Visualize scenarios where you feel powerful and in charge of your voice. Use strong verbs. Don’t write in the conditional “would” or “might.” Describe your world and your memories vigorously with bright descriptions, sensual details.
4. Begin with an image. Choose a photograph and write about it. Describe the person in the photo, and what was happening in the photo. Write why you chose the photo. What is it telling you?
5. If the critic voice says: “I don’t know how to write; my family will hate me; how do I know I am writing the truth?” keep freewriting past this voice. If you were silenced when you were growing up, you will need to work through it now.
6. DO NOT hit the delete button when you feel critical of your writing. DO protect your writing. Treat your work like a young seedling that needs protection.
7. Write in cafés, where the sound of life may drown out the critic voices.
8. Remember: if you’ve been abused, neglected, forgotten, or silenced, you likely learned not to value your own point of view. Writing your story can change that. Keep “telling it like it is.”
9. Write for five minutes. Stretch your ability to keep writing—work up to fifteen minutes at a time—doing a freewrite. When you feel like stopping, write for five minutes more. You might be tempted to stop as you get close to core emotions.
10. Make a list of the 10 reasons it’s important for you to write your memoir.
11. List 12 things you will do during the Year of the Memoir to get it done.

It’s the Year of the Memoir—welcome to 2012. At the National Association of Memoir Writers, we are celebrating the full riches of the memoir, and inviting everyone to write their memoir this year.

Writing as you know is about creativity—and keeping yourself creative, actively writing, and engaged with your material. Post-holiday is a perfect time to center on your creative life and get focused.

When you think about it, a large part of our writing lives is spent reflecting, musing, journaling, and being “pregnant” with creative energy and ideas. We need to listen to the voices within—which means we should write, muse, and write some more! We need to stimulate our creative minds, to “fill the well” as I call it, so we have a lot to draw from when we sit down.

The more we use and stimulate our creativity, filling the well with beauty and good ideas, the more it will be there for us when we need it. For inspiration about creativity, I enjoy Rollo May’s The Courage to Create, which I recommend to explore ideas about creativity expressed without jargon. He talks about inspiration and breakthroughs, and explores the role of the unconscious in creativity—one of my favorite sections. 

He makes several important points about creativity:

1.      He says that “the unconscious seems to take delight in breaking through…what we cling to in our conscious thinking.”

2.      The breakthrough shakes up our calm world, the status quo of our thinking.

3.      During the breakthrough, everything is vivid, as we are in a heightened state of consciousness—which intensifies memory and the senses.

4.      The breakthrough comes during the transition between work and relaxation.

Einstein said, “Why is it that inspiration seems to come while I’m shaving?”

Another expert on the creative process, Brenda Ueland, author of If You Want to Write says,

“Inspiration comes very slowly and quietly…the imagination needs moodling—long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling, and puttering.”

So, go ahead and clean your house and prune your roses, while tuning into your creative processes bubbling deep within. Who says that only writers who are avoiding their desks have the cleanest houses? Maybe those who are properly messing about are engaged in the highest level of creativity!

Tips to Enhance your Creativity in 2012

1.      Journal every day for 15 minutes. Writing begats more writing, and invites the flow of ideas.

2.      Immerse yourself in creativity—read a poem, meditate on beauty or something that inspires you.

3.      Go to an art museum and allow other forms of creativity to fill your well.

4.      Take long, or even short, walks, as Brenda Ueland suggests, noticing the details of plants, houses, animals, and people.

5.      Read inspiring literature of any genre. If it is well written, it will fill the spaces within your unconscious mind with good raw material to process.

What is your favorite way to invite creativity?

What are your writing plans for The Year of the Memoir?

Most writers seem to hate marketing, selling, or publicity. The idea of getting the word out about their work seems kind of—well, rude. Are you one of those writers? You’re in good company if you are, but you need to learn some new stuff about how to think about marketing—that is IF you want to be an author who people actually read. Do you want other people to read your book?

The other day someone told me that I shouldn’t advertise so much, that it was off-putting. I understand all too well that sentiment. Just like many of you, I learned, “Don’t toot your own horn, certainly don’t talk about yourself too much or too often. And don’t tell me I should buy anything!!”

Didn’t most of us grow up with rules against telling others that we have something they might need, that we have created something we’d like them to know about. I know that I did. When I was young, my grandmother used to say, “You think you’re something don’t you? Well, you’re nothing. Don’t get so high and mighty.”

It’s possible that I was being an irritating teenager when she said that, but there were many other comments that told me that my voice, my desires, my thoughts of expansion, or self-esteem were “too much,” shameful, and selfish. And that has happened to a lot of people, and it leaves its mark.

Writers suffer from a great deal of this ailment. They whisper, they find it hard to speak out, to write their truths, to claim their space, particularly women. When you become a writer, you have to learn how to break long years of conditioning to be silent, or if not silent, to be cautious about taking up space, or being too pushy, or obvious or demanding. Of course we need to be aware of our effect on others, but some of these early teachings serve us badly. We learn not to say what we know, we learn to hide our lights. It takes a long time—too long—to claim our wisdom, to know what we know and be willing, even eager, to share it. It gets in the way of our writing, and once we write, it gets in the way of putting our work into the world where it can do some good.

I’ve declared 2012 The Year of the Memoir, which means I’m dedicated to support and encourage creating—and selling—your memoir. This happens in stages.

1. Arrange your life so you write your memoir. Keep writing, don’t let the inner and outer critics discourage you.
2. Find your voice, write your truths. Sit down and write regularly.
3. While you are writing, you need to imagine your audience, those whose lives you want to affect by your work. You are not journaling privately, you are writing a book!
4. Writing a book, a longer work, a memoir means you want others to read what you have to say and you need to have positive affirmations and visualizations about how powerfully your words will affect others!
5. Imagining your audience means that you will write scenes, you will bring the reader into the world you create on the page. You will start to see your story with the eyes of an observer, which guides your narration and perspective in your memoir.
6. Finish the first draft, then start working on another draft or two. Have someone mentor you through several stages of your book. You will be thinking about your reader, your audience even more now, and wondering how you can reach that audience.
7. Marketing is taking that idea further—that there is an audience who needs your book, people who are eager to read it.
8. Marketing means getting the messages out there that will INVITE your readers to you. You need to make it easy for them to find you.

We writers need to learn new ways to think about marketing—that it is a way of giving to others, not taking from them. We are offering our readers a way to see the world through fresh eyes, to learn something new, to be entertained, to see life in a new way by reading our work. We will inspire others to write, to create, to bring their own vision to fruition.

Think of your writing, your book, and your marketing as a gift.

Join us at the National Association of Memoir Writers to listen to Lynn Serafinn talk about the Gift of Marketing. Her spiritual, holistic and inspiring way to see marketing can turn your mind around and make you see it through new eyes!

 In what ways have you been reluctant to share your work–for money?

What were the childhood messages you got about selling, marketing, and publicity?

In the course of my work as a memoir coach, I have met so many people who have a passion to write. To live that passion, often we have to wrestle with a fierce internal adversary: the critic who says we have to use perfect grammar and eloquent language. It tells us that if we were “real” writers, the writing would flow, we’d write every day, we get published on the first try.

The critical voice says you’re boring, that your words will be a burden to the world. Does this sound familiar? “Why bother, who cares, what makes you think that anything you have to say is important?”

 If you have a “writing wound” caused by having had your creative efforts minimized or ridiculed, trying to write may seem like a battle, fought between the part that wants to write and the part that criticizes.

Memoir writers worry about family too: “Don’t write that story, you’ll shame us. We’ll never speak to you again!” We become afraid to unleash our authentic voices and speak our truths.

One woman in a workshop I was leading wrote a about her young son, a beautiful golden boy of eight, the center of her life. She read to us afterward how important he was, coming into her life after she thought she would never have children, the joy he’s given her, the years when she was in despair about having no children. The group witnessed her story and held her in respectful, embracing silence. Kleenex was passed silently from hand to hand. The room was filled with compassion and support. She finally looked at us and wiped her eyes.

“Wow. I took up a lot of time. I’m sorry.”

Everyone began telling her how deeply the story had affected them, reflecting back what she had written and lived. As she was witnessed by the group, she began to relax and smile. “I’ve never told anyone all this. I have never had the space to do this before.”

 The healing this student experienced was not only in the writing of her story but in the sharing of what had been private. Later she wrote: “Attending this workshop was my gift to myself. It gave me the opportunity to reach deep inside, draw a circle of words around my heart, and share my deepest feelings with a group of fellow writers who were waiting to receive me and hold me with compassion and acceptance. I left the workshop feeling fuller and more whole.”

You are Talented and Original

Brenda Ueland, in her wonderful classic If You Want to Write, says everyone is talented and original. All of us need to share our ideas with the world; it is part of our right as human beings to express ourselves. Ueland says that criticism destroys creativity. So-called helpful criticism is often the worst kind.

Whenever I got discouraged about writing I’d read and reread Ueland’s book. It’s full of wisdom and a positive spirit about our deep, inner creativity. She says we must write freely, as if to friends who appreciate us and find us interesting. We should write as if they are saying to us, “Tell me more, tell me all you can. I want to understand more about everything you feel and know and all the changes inside and out of you. Let more come out.”

If you want to write, think about how you can create space for writing in your life, a time where you can nurture this spark into a roaring blaze. Think of yourself as a listener, a translator. Focus inward and hear the stories that whisper to you in a low key; tune into your desire to capture your grandmothers’ history, your mother’s face, or your father’s character. The creative spark lives in everyone—just feed the flame.

Even after completing two books, I still wrestle with words, phrases, and internal permission to write my truths. We all need to urge the creative self forward, to tune in and listen.

If you are to write your memoir in the coming year, find some regular times, journal and freewrite, and tell yourself, “I’m talented and original.” Positive affirmations go a long way!

Writing Prompts

1.         Name ten reasons you want to write stories from your life.

2.         Write about what being a “real” writer means to you.

3.         What did you learn about writing, creativity, and artistry as you grew up?

4.         What are your favorite stories? List at least ten you grew up with. List the last give books you read and why you liked them.

5.         Describe the town, city, landscape you grew up in. Include buildings, weather, your favorite things.

6.         How did the place where you grew up shape you into the person you are today?

7.         What family stories that you overheard as a child fascinate you? Write some of them down as fast as you can. Don’t stop to correct or edit.

Today I have the great pleasure of being the host on Day 1 of the Virtual Blog Tour of author Lynn Serafinn whose book The 7 Graces of Marketing: how to heal humanity and the planet by changing the way we sell launches on Amazon on Tuesday December 13, 2011.

Lynn Serafinn, MAED, CPCC is a certified, award-winning coach and teacher, marketer, social media expert, radio host, speaker and bestselling author. Her eclectic approach to marketing incorporates her vast professional experience in the music industry and the educational sector along with more than two decades of study and practice of the spirituality of India. In her work as a promotional manager she has produced a long list of bestselling mind-body-spirit authors. Passionate about re-establishing our connection with the Earth, she supports the work of the Transition Town network in her hometown of Bedford, England.

Today, I’d like to share with you a recent interview I had with Lynn when I got to ask her some questions on 7 graces/sins and collaboration.  I hope you enjoy it.

Linda Joy Myers: What are the 7 deadly sins of marketing and why should we avoid them?

Lynn Serafinn: This is a huge topic, Linda, so I’ll just give a very short introduction to the idea here. And as your readers are writers, I would like them to consider that “marketing” in my definition doesn’t just refer to advertising, but to anything in the business of “selling” ideas. From that angle, both politics and journalism could be considered “marketing”. And as writers, we are also in the business of “selling ideas” by engaging our audience. So consider these principles carefully when approaching your own writing, and see how it changes how you write, and its impact upon your readers.

Ok, now to answer your question. In my book, these are what I call “The 7 Deadly Sins” of marketing:

1.                  Disconnection

2.                  Persuasion

3.                  Invasion

4.                  Distraction

5.                  Deception

6.                  Scarcity

7.                  Competition

As you get to know these “deadly sins” in the book, you’ll see that they are all built upon each other. That is to say, Disconnection is the foundation of all the others, and each one in turn opens the door to the next.

If we are in a disconnected relationship with our Self, with Source, our businesses or with other people, our marketing is always going to be created through the lens of our Disconnection. We will fail to see that our role as marketers is to connect, inform, inspire and empower our audience. We will create marketing that is persuasive, invasive, and dishonest in some way, because our aim will be to “land the deal” rather than to communicate.

Linda Joy Myers: What are the 7 graces of marketing and how can writers benefit from understanding them?

Lynn Serafinn: These are “The 7 Graces” of marketing from my book:

1.                  Connection

2.                  Inspiration

3.                  Invitation

4.                  Directness

5.                  Transparency

6.                  Abundance

7.                  Collaboration

You can see that each one is a counterpart (or “antidote”) to each of the 7 Deadly Sins above. Just as Disconnection is at the foundation of all the other “Deadly Sins”, Connection is at the foundation of all the other Graces. When marketers (and writers!) work from a place of Connection, everything changes. We no longer exploit people or the planet, because we feel a deep, inner Connection to them. Similarly, when we write from this place, it opens the door to our being able to create marketing and writing that inspires and engages our audience with dignity and grace (Inspiration and Invitation).

As our Connection deepens, we move on to be able to be more direct and simple in the way we communicate (Directness). When we become more direct, people start to understand what we say, and trust us more. As we feel more trusted and supported, we in turn become more “transparent” (Transparency), and we also become more generous and giving (Abundance), both of our time and our wisdom. We begin to see that there is enough for all in this world, so long as we live in harmony with the flow of Nature. And when we reach that state of being, we no longer feel the need to compete, as we have nothing to “fight for” anymore.

Linda Joy Myers: Tell us how collaboration in marketing works better than competition.

Lynn Serafinn: Again, I’ll try to make this relevant to writers as well as to the actual practice of marketing. First of all, you can see that Competition comes from a place of separation and Disconnection. As marketers, Competition results in our giving ourselves permission to pull out all the stops to dominate our “competitors”. This attitude has caused many tragic results in the world of marketing. One example is how food manufacturers use dangerous chemical pesticides on crops, or equally dangerous (to animals and humans) growth hormones in cows, just to increase their yield so they can corner the market. If they were operating from a place of Connection, this kind of cut-throat and reckless behaviour simply wouldn’t occur.

In my marketing, everything I do is founded upon Collaboration. Even many of my so-called “competitors”, who also do book marketing campaigns, will support me (and vice versa) in my promotional ventures. The result of marketing from true and genuine Collaboration is nearly always a win-win-win situation. I say “win-win-win” because in addition to me and my collaborators, I am including the audience. Audiences benefit from collaborative marketing because they generally get more value from the Collaboration.

As artists, we are up against the competitive world all the time. In my experience as a musician (which I was for decades), I found Competition only ever to be a destructive element. It shuts down creativity, and actually causes us to be less innovative. Studies with school children have proved this.

As solo writers, we can sometimes feel isolated and alone when we write, so you might wonder how Collaboration comes into play. The first way is to write from the spirit of Collaboration. Draw upon all you know, and from everything you read and see around you. There is no such thing as writing in isolation; when I wrote my book The 7 Graces of Marketing, I did an enormous amount of research of other authors’ works. I even spoke to some of them to bounce off my ideas. I did a lot of blogging and gave a lot of talks to get feedback from the audience, to see what they thought about the ideas and what needed changing or clarifying. If we work in a competitive state of mind, we would tend to hide our ideas and never benefit from the wonderful benefits of co-creation and Collaboration with others.

———-

I hope you enjoyed this interview with Lynn Serafinn and that you’ll check out her book The 7 Graces of Marketing: how to heal humanity and the planet by changing the way we sell at http://the7gracesofmarketing.com/book-launch/pages/pre-launch.html

Here’s why:

The 7 Graces of Marketing Telesummit

A FREE 7-Part Online Happening!

December 6th-9th, 2011

Register at http://the7gracesofmarketing.com/free-telesummit

When you visit the page at the link above and request a “launch reminder”, you will automatically receive a FREE pass to Lynn’s 7-Part online happening “The 7 Graces of Marketing Telesummit” with an illustrious panel of 24 bestselling authors and world-renowned speakers and media experts on society, business and marketing coming together to discuss how we can bring ethics and values back our business and marketing practices, and restore balance to our health, our economy and our natural environment.

Here’s the spectacular list of guests speakers for the event:

Dr. Joe Vitale * Greg S. Reid * Dr. Eric Pearl * Dan Hollings * Pamela Slim * Liz Goodgold * Allison Maslan * Suzanne Falter*Barnes * Tad Hargrave * Misa Hopkins * Richard S. Gallagher * Ward Vandorpe * Barbara Altemus * Andrea Conway * Renee Baribeau * Renee Duran * Michael Drew * Chris Arnold * Jeffrey Van Dyk * Tanya Paluso * Kate Osborne * Shelagh Jones * Paula Tarrant * Lynn Serafinn

You can listen to the telesummit online in the comfort of your own home, and even ask questions during the broadcast.                          

If you are reading this after Dec 9th, 2011 you can still access the playback for a limited time when you register at http://the7gracesofmarketing.com/free-telesummit

This telesummit is a completely free
“no purchase necessary” gift from Lynn 

FREE GIFTS

When you buy Lynn’s book on Tuesday December 13, 2011, you can ALSO receive the MP3 download of all 10 hours of this historic telesummit, plus a complete library of beautiful personal development gifts from authors, speakers, coaches and other enlightened professionals from around the globe including one from me:

The Spiritual and Transformational Journey of  Memoir Writing

Teleseminar with Mark Matousek and Linda Joy Myers

To claim your FREE pass to the 7 Graces of Marketing Telesummit

and read about the free gifts, go to:

http://the7gracesofmarketing.com/book-launch/pages/pre-launch.html

Thanks for reading! As usual, please feel free to share your comments and thoughts below. I love reading your feedback.

AND… be sure to follow Lynn tomorrow when the next stop on the Virtual Blog Tour is Roy Martina, who will be interviewing Lynn on marketing disease, traps and the positive side. To visit that “stop” on the tour, go to http://emotionalbalance.com/2011/11/29/what-is-the-7-graces-of-marketing-with-author-lynn-serafinn  

Last week at the teleseminar hosted by the National Association of Memoir Writers, Jason Marsh, one of the directors of The Greater Good Science Foundation spoke with me about the power of art and social connections to help the healing process. Thanksgiving is one of our “official” gratitude holidays—while also being the “eating holiday.” There has been an astounding amount of research about how writing and writing a “gratitude journal helps to heal and create an ongoing sense of greater happiness and satisfaction in life. Happiness—we all want that, don’t we? Below is an article by Jason about the research and suggestions for what you can do to improve your life.

Happy Gratitude Day—Thanksgiving!

Keeping a Gratitude Journal—Jason Marsh

Researchers have identified the great social, psychological, and physical health benefits that come from giving thanks and zeroed in on some concrete practices that help us reap those benefits. Perhaps the most popular practice is to keep a “gratitude journal.” As we’ve reported many times over the years, studies have traced a range of impressive benefits to the simple act of writing down the things for which we’re grateful—benefits including better sleep, fewer symptoms of illness, and more happiness among adults and kids alike. We’ve even got our own “community gratitude journal” on Greater Good.

The basic practice is straightforward. In many of the studies, people are simply instructed to record five things they experienced in the past week for which they’re grateful. The entries are supposed to be brief—just a single sentence—and they range from the mundane (“waking up this morning”) to the sublime (“the generosity of friends”) to the timeless (“the Rolling Stones”).

But when you dig into the research, you find that gratitude journals don’t always work—some studies show incredible benefits, others not so much. To understand why, I took a closer look at the research and consulted with Robert Emmons, arguably the world’s leading expert on the science of gratitude and an author of some of the seminal studies of gratitude journals.

Emmons, a professor at the University of California, Davis, shared these research-based tips for reaping the greatest psychological rewards from your gratitude journal.

• Don’t just go through the motions. Research by psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky and others suggests that journaling is more effective if you first make the conscious decision to become happier and more grateful. “Motivation to become happier plays a role in the efficacy of journaling,” says Emmons.
• Go for depth over breadth. Elaborating in detail about a particular thing for which you’re grateful carries more benefits than a superficial list of many things.
• Get personal. Focusing on people to whom you are grateful has more of an impact than focusing on things for which you are grateful.
• Try subtraction, not just addition. One effective way of stimulating gratitude is to reflect on what your life would be like without certain blessings, rather than just tallying up all those good things.
• Savor surprises. Try to record events that were unexpected or surprising, as these tend to elicit stronger levels of gratitude.
• Don’t overdo it. Writing occasionally (once or twice per week) is more beneficial than daily journaling. In fact, one study by Lyubomirsky and her colleagues found that people who wrote in their gratitude journals once a week for six weeks reported boosts in happiness afterward; people who wrote three times per week didn’t. “We adapt to positive events quickly, especially if we constantly focus on them,” says Emmons. “It seems counterintuitive, but it is how the mind works.”

In looking over this list, what strikes me is how keeping a gratitude journal—or perhaps the entire experience of gratitude—is really about forcing ourselves to pay attention to the good things in life we’d otherwise take for granted. Perhaps that’s why the benefits seem to diminish when you start writing more than once per week, and why surprises induce stronger feelings of gratitude: It’s easy to get numb to the regular sources of goodness in our lives.

Indeed, Emmons told me that when people start keeping a gratitude journal, he recommends that they see each item they list in their journal as a gift—in fact, he suggests that they “make the conscious effort to associate it with the word ‘gift.’” Here are the exact instructions he gives participants in his studies:

Be aware of your feelings and how you “relish” and “savor” this gift in your imagination. Take the time to be especially aware of the depth of your gratitude.
“In other words,” he says, “we tell them not to hurry through this exercise as if it were just another item on your to-do list. This way, gratitude journaling is really different from merely listing a bunch of pleasant things in one’s life.”

So why might this particular practice do such good for our minds and bodies? Emmons points to research showing that translating thoughts into concrete language—whether oral or written—has advantages over just thinking the thoughts: It makes us more aware of them, deepening their emotional impact.
“Writing helps to organize thoughts, facilitate integration, and helps you accept your own experiences and put them in context,” he says. “In essence, it allows you to see the meaning of events going on around you and create meaning in your own life.”

It has become common for therapists to recommend writing about unpleasant, even traumatic events. Similarly, says Emmons, gratitude journals may help us “bring a new and redemptive frame of reference to a difficult life situation.”
Though he does have suggestions for how to keep a gratitude journal, Emmons also stresses that “there is no one right way to do it.” There’s no evidence that journaling at the start of the day is any more effective than journaling before you go to bed, for instance. And aesthetics really don’t matter.
“You don’t need to buy a fancy personal journal to record your entries in, or worry about spelling or grammar,” says Emmons. “The important thing is to establish the habit of paying attention to gratitude-inspiring events.”

 Today in the New York Times, an article reviews the findings of Emmons and other researchers. Check it out! Start your Gratitude Journal today.

Those of you who have been writing memoir know that it’s not just as simple as sitting down and letting words pour forth out of your fingers. It is a journey—I’ve written about that before—and it’s a challenge emotionally. We run into all kinds of memories on that journey, and we need some help along the way to keep us from sinking into the darker memories and to help us heal and forgive–a positive side benefit of writing your story. In order to find greater peace and happiness, we have to write down what went wrong first so we can see it with a new perspective, as a story.

I draw upon my therapy background to help guide my students into the calmer waters of memoir writing, while also supporting them in the excavating the darker caves of their memories.

I’m pleased this week to be speaking with Jason Marsh, one of the directors of The Greater Good Science Foundation about How Art Can Heal—The Power of Compassionate Connections.

He has this to say about the importance of art in creating a good quality of life.

“A recent wave of studies is suggesting that art can play an important role. This research suggests that creating art–through writing and other methods–brings many of the same therapeutic benefits as maintaining close relationships. What’s more, studies have found that art can boost important qualities–including greater empathy–among people who consume art, not just those who create it.”

Jason is co-editor of the book The Compassionate Instinct: The Science of Human Goodness, an inspiriting collection of 33 articles collected from the Greater Good online magazine.

In an article the “Compassionate Instinct” Dacher Keltner says that scientific research confirms we are biologically wired to feel good if we help to alleviate another’s suffering. Kristin Neff writes on the blog http://greatergood.berkeley.edu a great article about the importance of self-compassion. This becomes an important tool for writers. Guess what is one of the greatest impediments to writing a memoir: yes, the Inner Critic, that nagging, negative voice that stops you from writing your true thoughts, even though you are alone at your computer. Your negative voice aims its sights way down the road toward publication instead of staying right where you are: in the first draft of your manuscript.

I love this quote from Kristin’s book The Science of Self-Compassion:

“As I’ve defined it, self-compassion entails three core components. First, it requires self-kindness, that we be gentle and understanding with ourselves rather than harshly critical and judgmental.

 Second, it requires recognition of our common humanity, feeling connected with others in the experience of life rather than feeling isolated and alienated by our suffering.

 Third, it requires mindfulness—that we hold our experience in balanced awareness, rather than ignoring our pain or exaggerating it. We must achieve and combine these three essential elements in order to be truly self-compassionate.”

These links on the Greater Good Science Foundation site offer some great articles about happiness, compassion, raising children to be healthy and happy, and the power of mindfulness and meditation to create new positive parts of the brain. Our brain is always growing and changing, which supports the research on how writing helps to heal.

Please join us at the National Association of Memoir Writer special membership Teleseminar to find out what Jason has to say about how to create and draw upon compassion as you create your art, and the ways this can benefit your life.