Memoir
Last month, I wrote here about retiring from the past and embracing the future. The thoughts sprung from the decision to retire my website. But before I could move forward, I reined in the memories from its inception to now. In 2013, I created a website, developed from writerly beginnings on Blogspot where “Magical Thinking” took me to places [...]
A rusty paper clip held them together. Typed letters, faded from the dark-inked punch of typewriter keys filled lines on discolored pages rimmed in muted brown. Stories told here were pulled from a brown envelope written over forty years ago by my then college self. The pages took me back in time to settings and places where words were heavy [...]
Watching the Nutcracker ballet for the first time from the fourth row of the amphitheater when I was a little girl opened my heart to wanting to be a ballerina. I was so close to the dancers that I could see the details in elegance, their lithe bodies floating with a grace and joy I envied as musical notes took [...]
Walking near my home through Harms Woods, or standing in my backyard on a soft winter’s night searching for the moon between the house’s roofline and the big oak’s limbs, or perhaps sitting low in a stuffed chair in the library in a carved out space among tall bookshelves, or even typing this at my desk where I write, I [...]
After a lengthy hiatus from writing memoir to write a second book, my first of fiction, I returned to memoir, and recently completed an essay about my mother and I during her final months of life . . . or so I thought. Yes, grief was palpable throughout the paragraphs, yet, when I read the essay a final time before [...]
Early one sticky morning while on a walk through the woods, I tried my dexterity at selfie-videoing (is that what it's called?) I found it takes practice, and an artistic eye. My face moved in and out of the frame, my head moved up and down, though I was not agreeing to anything. Perhaps it was a lack of hand-eye [...]
I recently saw a question posted on a social media author group page, of which I am a member, asking if any writer has earned out the amount she has put into the (hybrid) publication of her book. I read the fifty plus affirmed comments and their details. Sure, every author hopes to cash in on an investment that has [...]
I owe you an apology. I haven’t seen you in two months with no attempt to say hello with even a scribble of a few sentences. We haven’t tangled in sorting mixed words or found clarity in excavating unclear meanings or built a solid structure from a wobbly one in a long time. It’s not that I haven’t thought about [...]
At first, I don’t notice it. But then a celery green tip catches my eye. It pokes through a pot of grey cracked dirt, nudging up against the pot’s rim, reaching for sunlight and air. What a surprise! I wonder how it has enough strength for fresh growth during a winter’s dry dormancy and dim light. I was hopeful for [...]
Last month I wrote about how the definition of memoir, characterized by a single incident during a part of one’s life (not an entire life), can hold writers back from writing their memoir. As a writer, maybe you can’t see one outstanding incident to create memoir; there are many experiences that happened to you. And maybe you can’t see a [...]