Memoir
Do you take a look at your feet – ever? Or maybe you only notice them when you go to fit yourself with a new pair of shoes. But do you really look at them? Do you notice changes from chubby feet as a kid to now with slender toes and narrow arch? If only your feet could narrate a [...]
I’m going to write a book report. Some of you may not know what I’m talking about but can probably deduce that I’ll be writing a report on a book. When I had book report assignments in school, I had to discern what the story was about. Otherwise known as “theme,” sometimes I thought I didn’t really get the entire [...]
I read a line somewhere, sometime, during one of many memoir writing researching binges. At the time, I was working backwards. I wrote a memoir, well, a very first draft, and then I read anything I could about the non-fiction category. Headlines stating "Personal essay" or "First-person essay" also caught my attention. I Googled and searched, walked Barnes and Nobles [...]
I heard the call. It wasn’t a whisper or delicate voice or loud words urging me to transcribe thoughts to paper. But the call did sound like an alarm, telling me it was time to awaken a dormant spirit. I was ready to give voice to my ideas, the beginning of my story telling. When I was fifteen, a pink [...]
I reblogged "The Plot of Your Life" because I found it loaded with intangibles yet universal in theme for memoir writers. Memoir writers have accumulated details of their lives that form experiences where a writer can only hope a plot is revealed. And this is where I struggle, straying from my theme. I am motivated to keep developing "Under the [...]
The upstairs bathroom on Carlisle Avenue was at the top of the red carpeted stairs, middle of the hall. This kid’s bathroom came standard equipped with a bathtub, showering capabilities and a toilet on one wall and on the opposite wall a beige Formica counter ran the length of the bathroom. The muddy blue double sink holes, one for Timmy [...]
Dottie-3 mos. Thursday is noodle night. And Dottie knows this. Dottie, aka Tooker’s Girl Lightning, her registered name with the AKC, is a purebred beagle. She is an old gal now, but does not let her age defy her registered name as she circumnavigates the fenced yard’s perimeters with bursts of flash speed like lightning from skies above. [...]
It is only on a winter's day today where the shades of white, grey and black blend together to create a landscape void of color, of life of warmth that I retreat to thoughts of a different season . . . I inhale the warm summer air and my eyes meet the sun’s glow just above the horizon. This is [...]
Distractions in my head keep time with my travels of foot. Like any good shadow, it clings to my thoughts when I am alone or mingling with others, in my work room or in a public arena.My fidgeting brain tracks sensory stimulation of movement, sound and smell like any great horned owl zeros in on a tiny mouse or a [...]
“The Deerfield Commons, it used to be over there, that whole block, with Waukegan and Deerfield roads fencing it in,” I muttered with a heavy sigh looking west as I drove north on Waukegan Road. I say it every time I drive into Deerfield, where I grew up, and pass that intersection. I am flooded with memories and pictures of [...]