Yes, a nod to Yoda. My brothers regularly announced I was the most pig-headed person they had ever met or could imagine. They just did not understand that I was an alien species. Almost true, that. I used to believe there was no way I was related to these people. Aside: How I came to […]
Three Authors on Writing Memoir
Three authors writing in very distinct media (article, book, social media) share how to write memoir. We need to capture our stories as we are losing them at an unprecedented rate.
Blog as Memoir
Yes. I say, “If it talks from your perspective, about you, then it is memoir.” Memoir snobs, and in this current decade memoir is big, so authoritative opinions about what is, and is not memoir are everywhere. I suggest ignoring them. Unless you think that your life is best-seller material, I say, “Don’t worry about […]
Poetry as Memoir
There are many ways to preserve relationships in written records. For those who have hundreds of pages of personal poetry, take the time to peruse what you have captured about family and events set in motion by family members as you create any retrospective about your life or family. Poetry often captures what prose cannot […]
Memoir, Abuse, and Perspective
Two pieces of writing crossed my field of view before I was fully awake today. The first piece was from the New York Times but it was brought to my attention through a writer-friend on Facebook. The NYT article, When Writers Expose the Dead, is about writing memoir. The second piece is The Homeschool Apostates […]
Recursive Images of Memory
I’m working on a memoir, so I live much of my life in the act of looking backward. And boy is my neck tired. Bah-dah-bum. Sorry, couldn’t resist. Seriously though, I do accumulate a bit of tension from living in this state. My childhood before grammar school was fine, a bit isolated, a bit atypical […]