They seemed to gather at once, sparrows and wrens, an occasional cardinal and woodpecker, swooping in to demand space and food. It became customary to watch the birds crowding on only four perches jutting from the tube-shaped feeder, as apparently, we’re on the same schedule for breakfast, lunch, and dinnertimes. I’d notice the flurry of activity, until one time it [...]
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com Before my mother’s passing and when she would ask me questions, of which I don’t remember specifically what they were—something about how we live our lives, why bad things are happening in the world—I tried to answer in simple terms as I am not one for offering deep philosophical explanations. “You have an answer for [...]
I’ve all but forgotten about my anniversary. This memory-maker was neither of a person nor of a place, but with a thing. When “three years ago on this day” popped up on social media, a promotional ad I had created for it, I was prompted to remember the soon-to-be anniversary. This time, it wasn’t about the big memory itself, the [...]
At a recent get-together with my now twenty-something nephews, I saw their once little boy smiles and tender eyes in each of their now matured-men faces. I couldn’t help but to remember them from years ago, their arched necks looking up when walking narrow city streets in Chicago, fearless busy bodies scaling jungle gyms at the playground, mesmerized focus while [...]
Prior to my memoir going to press, my hybrid publisher forwarded me “first pages.” As a first-time author, I was unaware of such a thing, a PDF file of how my finished book would look. First pages was essentially a last call, an opportunity to use a phone-a-friend lifeline to correct errors missed in copyediting or proofreading, and to check [...]
Last month I posted “truth didn’t set me free.” It was about my experience one early January morning in a courtroom. I read the post a week later and then took it down. As a memoir writer, I didn’t like how I wrote it; there should be more meaning to the experience than what I had written. But I wondered [...]
I sized up the sock I was knitting. While following a standard pattern—a one size fits all—I realized my almost-completed-sock would not fit my smaller-than-average foot. I thought about how the term sometimes can’t be taken literally, as for clothing, for example, or figuratively, like for a weight-loss program. I was reminded how “one size fits all” didn’t apply [...]
Since I’ve been a memoir writer and a defender of the genre, I’ve been righting what I believe is an inaccuracy. By definition, memoir focuses on one segment, an event or experience of a writer’s life. But I would argue to widen the lens and say a book can still be called a memoir even if told with multiple events [...]
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com I recently had an opportunity with the National Association of Memoir Writers (www.namw.org) to talk about my memoir, Under the Birch Tree and other points about writing my book. During this hour-long virtual book club, the topic was transforming autobiography to memoir. However, so many points to make in so little time, so thought [...]
Photo by Oleksandr Pidvalnyi on Pexels.com When recently rifling through a slush pile of started-but-never-finished blog posts, I came across one I remembered where noise in silence appeared to be the topic. I thought about what is silence and the absence of it. Are we ever really in a state of silence? I thought I'd pick up where [...]