While I was writing my memoir, I had envisioned my book’s cover to be a picture perhaps of an elegant landscape in oil paints of wispy birch trees with their wavy leaves in soft greens, peeling bark in degrees of white to muddy grey and tan. The image would speak to you, inviting you to join me on my search [...]
I launched my memoir, Under the Birch Tree, ten months ago. My book events have wound down and are now inching along in pace with the spring weather. I recently attended three book club events in the past couple of months, and I was surprised at what I learned from them. Book club events are underrated and I underestimated my [...]
There's a lot written about starting a memoir, how to do it, how to organize it, if you have enough reflection and takeaways. And then there’s how to structure your memoir, too. But what happens after you’ve completed your revisions and edits, when you believe you have a finished work ready for the eyes of prospective publishers? Not so fast. Did [...]
The brightness of a sunny spring day and the clarity of a blue sky forced their way into the meeting room's tall windows. Multiple rows of six chairs were lined up like soldiers readying for their commands while a podium stood at the front of it all. The Chicago Writers Conference (CWA) was about to start. This was my first [...]
Recently, a best friend lost her beloved four-legged companion of thirteen years. I thought of how she must have felt: alone, lost, and sad. Eight-week-old Sydney had become family after my friend secured a job and then a new home, both of which she loved. Sydney was her connection to memories of being in a good place, of happiness and [...]
Instead of writing personal truth and reflection why not tap into my imagination with fiction writing? With no formal education or even self-study of any genre of fiction, I figured a slow and incremental start, dabbling in a few slush-piles of personal essays, would be my best foray into turning them into unexplored fictional ground. My delight wasn’t because of [...]
I find most reasons writers write are self-centered, inner directed, maybe even self-serving. Don’t get me wrong. I consider writers to be artists and artists create from the self, personal expressions manifested through words or pictures. But I wonder if there could be more to the egocentric responses." “Why I Write,” a title of an essay consistently pops up in writing [...]
Did you see “Green Book” and “Bohemian Rhapsody,” two movies that recently won Golden Globe awards? Did you catch that "Green Book" was divisive? Did you notice that Dr. Don Shirley didn’t consider his driver a close friend? That Dr. Shirley was estranged from his Black Family? Or how about “Bohemian Rhapsody”. While watching, did you track the [...]
It seems that some of us are always trying to find our figurative home. Maybe for others, they always feel at home. I had written in my memoir, Under the Birch Tree, about making connections and discovering my self. I wondered if my discoveries would continue though my story had come to an end with the publication of my book. [...]
For all memoir writers who have published or hope to in the near future . . . via Of Memoir and (Self) Forgiveness