I've been working on my memoir for 10 years. As you learn just how long it has taken me to write it, I can feel your breathy sigh and see your inquisitive brow asking, "So what's taking you so long?" I read my first draft once and then I thought of my current draft and the two are not the [...]
From Under the Birch Tree As I lugged my stuffed granny cart home I stopped a few times to watch a basketball game, and then a baseball game in the field across the street, continuing on with people-watching who are carrying on with their business. I stopped time to be in the moment and lie down on the cool stiff [...]
An excerpt . . . My emotions voiced their opinion one night. Talk in my head revolved. I cried for the memories of the past and the emotions I would pack with me, masked on my face and wrapped around my heart. Feeling lost and disconnected during the unemployment days was never too far away. I traipsed Michigan Avenue from [...]
Fears can be crippling, even stoppers of your tracks. Others seem to have many different fears - fears of spiders, heights, escalators, swimming. How did we learn to be afraid? Babies and toddlers appear to have no fears. As they become children they take on life experiences which may be good, but then some may be bad, hence a fear [...]
“Oh, didn’t you know my middle name is, ‘Grace?” I’ve often said in jest to diffuse my embarrassment of any immediate physical error – a stumble, a knock over the filled water glass, a trip over the dog. Though I am no gazelle-like, willowy ballerina – a poster person for pure grace – my short, stocky legs and thick, but [...]
an excerpt... I heard the call. It wasn’t a whisper or a delicate voice or loud words urging me to transcribe thoughts to paper where I hoped to see ideas born into stories. The call went off like an alarm, telling me it was time to awaken my spirit. I received my calling when I was fifteen, accompanied by a [...]
. . . an excerpt. . . My middle-aged hands fingered the black and white photos interspersed with yellowing color Polaroids. As I searched for the one of my mother, burrowing deeper inside the box through layers of years, the wavy skin and popping veins from the top of my hands caught my attention. I always thought I had my [...]
"There are two basic approaches to creative nonfiction," according to Lee Gutkind, author of You Can't Make this Stuff Up, - memoir/personal essay and immersion nonfiction. I get how immersion is creative nonfiction but the memoir/personal essay part still remains unclear as to how that genre could be under the creative nonfiction umbrella. Gutkind writes that creative nonfiction, referred to [...]
. . . exerpt from Under the Birch Tree We took photographs in front of the picture window at our brick house on Carlisle Street because it was the perfect suburban backdrop. Two-story homes sat like gems on their velvet lawns set with oak and maple trees and manicured hedges. I remember my picture was taken there on my first [...]
I've been writing now for over ten years. When I started, I didn't have much to say, but I had much to say. What I mean is, I had many thoughts I wanted to express but I couldn't seem to get it all down. I knew in the end, there was a story, a lesson, perhaps. And my challenge was [...]