I was one of those children who found refuge in books—burrowing down in bed at night, the golden light of a flashlight creating an illuminated cave as the light played across the pages. Great stacks of books were piled on my night table, and I made my way quickly through them. Books were a refuge, they were my friends, and…
Today as I got up and remembered that it’s International Women’s Day, I thought about the history of the women in my family–my great-grandmother Blanche who gifted me with her stories from the 19th century, and the idea that hard work is a valued part of life; my grandmother, Gram, who raised me, who started off as Lulu, a farm…
In the last post, we examined the inner critic—how it can sow seeds of doubt about the validity of your story, and how we can worry about how the family will react, claiming that their own version of the past is the only “true” one. My advice was to accept that you are not alone! That all writers have doubts…
When you begin to write a memoir, you soon discover several layers to the process: there’s the emotional angst most people feel about writing about themselves, the worry about exposing yourself and your family to public scrutiny when the book is published. And there are questions about the craft of writing a story. After all, your story is so much…
What Made Love Warrior a Best-Selling Memoir? A Free Webinar Monday, April 17, 4 PM PDT/7 PM EDT With Brooke Warner and Linda Joy Myers of WriteYourMemoirInSixMonths.com To sign up, Click here: http://writeyourbookinsixmonths.com/love-warrior-free-webinar In Love Warrior, Glennon Doyle Melton has written about emotional pain in a way that most memoirists struggle with. She grapples with addiction, painful insecurities, her husband’s…
Happy New Year—it’s 2017! I like to begin the year, not exactly with a list of resolutions, but with ways to feel inspired. For many, it was a tempestuous fall season with the election and a lot of emotions that were stirred up by national and international events. Many of my writing friends told me that they comforted themselves with…
I just returned from a retreat sponsored by She Writes Press, an event offer by my publisher in gorgeous Boulders Resort in Scottsdale, Arizona. Brooke Warner, my co-teacher for the Write Your Memoir in Six Months course for the last five years, is also the publisher for SWP. The amazing stark landscape of Arizona with its cacti, road runners, and…
We all have a story to tell, but ah–how to tell it, that’s what keeps us at our desk, scribbling in our notebooks, looking for the scenes and moments that we carry in our hearts. Our job as memoirists is to translate what we know and remember to the page, to put images and wispy memories into language and story.…
It’s not a place you might have heard of unless you are thinking of literary sites, but that was my plan—to visit a location where “place” was one of the characters in the story. Haworth is three train rides away from London, and you have to get off at Keithley and get a bus or cab into Haworth itself. A…
‘Tis the season for writing conferences! As you know, we writers tend to be solitary people—we have to be willing to slave at our desks alone for months and years while we write our book. Some writers are so dedicated to their writing they’re cautious about taking the time away and spending money, but sometimes we get a much needed…