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Memoir: A Cluttered Life–Searching for God, Serenity, and My Missing Keys | Pesi Dinnerstein

February 1, 2012 By 1 Comment
DinnersteinPesi_web

We are  happy to welcome Pesi Dinnerstein (a.k.a. Paulette Plonchak) for her blog tour with Women on Writing! She has written selections for the best-selling series Small Miracles, by Yitta Halberstam and Judith Leventhal, and has contributed to several textbooks and an anthology of short stories. Dinnerstein recently retired as a full-time faculty member of the City University of New York, where she taught language skills for close to thirty years. She has been an aspiring author and … [Read more...]

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Read these memoirs–and words of wisdom

December 10, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Adams, Kathleen        The Write Way to Wellness Allende, Isabel            Paula Allison, Dorothy         Bastard Out of Carolina Angelou, Maya           I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings & other works Ball, Edward               Slaves in the Family Arenas, Reinaldo        Before Night Falls Baker, Russell             Growing Up Balakian, Peter            Black Dog of … [Read more...]

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Writing to Heal: Nicole Johns — the Gifts that Writing a Memoir Gives to the Writer

December 3, 2011 By 2 Comments
Nicole Johns

Nicole Johns is going to speak with Rachael Herron and me at our free monthly Roundtable Discussion. Nicole understands the process of healing through writing a memoir, and will talk about some of the points in this blog post. Thank you Nicole for telling us more about your book! Purge: Rehab Diaries originated from journal entries written between 2000-2004, while I was in college and grad school. At the time I was 19-23. I always kept a journal, and that journal became especially important … [Read more...]

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Tips for Keeping a Gratitude Journal by Jason Marsh

November 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment
jason_marsh

Psychology researchers aren't necessarily Thanksgiving experts—they may not know how to make fluffy stuffing, say, or beat the traffic to your in-laws’ house--but they have become a fount of wisdom on thanksgiving (with a small “t”). Over the past decade, they’ve not only identified the great social, psychological, and physical health benefits that come from giving thanks; they’ve zeroed in on some concrete practices that help us reap those benefits. And perhaps the most popular … [Read more...]

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Tips for Memoir Writing–Fast! | Celebrate National Lifewriting Month!

November 8, 2011 By Leave a Comment
computer typing

    I'm so pleased to be sharing my version of the journey of memoir writing at Nina Amir's special blog to celebrate National Lifewriting Month! This is the month that memoir writers join the fiction folks over at NaNoWriMo to write as much as 50,000 words in 30 days. That is 6.5 pages a day. Can you do it? Are you willing to dedicate a couple of hours a day to see just how much you can write?   Tips for what we'll call MemoirWriMo: 1. Write fast, let 'er rip. 2. Feed your … [Read more...]

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The Personal (Not Private) Essay Dinty Moore

October 11, 2011 By 3 Comments
dinty-moore

If you’ve been part of a writing group, you’ve no doubt encountered the writer who shares his work with others in the room, sits back for what he assumes will be unceasing praise, and then grows indignant when someone suggests that his words are not clear enough to make what he intends fully obvious. “Well, I understood it,” he might snort. “It makes total sense to me.” Perhaps this writer is just reacting out of insecurity (yes, insecurity is a trait most, if not all, of us … [Read more...]

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How Does Your Story Make Your Reader Feel?

September 30, 2011 By 3 Comments
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Jennifer Lauck   When I wrote my memoir Blackbird, I told the truth of how my mother died when I was seven and my father died when I was nine. I also told the truth of how I fell through the cracks of my family support system and found myself both homeless and preyed on by abusers—psychological and physical. These were not pretty stories. I had been trained as a journalist in hard news events, which meant I reported on murders, drug busts, domestic strife, abductions and even gang … [Read more...]

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12 Tips for Promoting Your Memoir Writing or Journaling Blog

May 28, 2010 By
Blog in typescript letters

by Sharon Lippincott, NAMW Advisory Board Member Below is a list of a dozen blog promotion steps I found helpful in getting my first one launched with a bang four years and four hundred posts ago. It was picked up by Google almost instantly -- if I looked for the right thing. When I first began the blog, it was titled "The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing" and it showed up second on the list for lifestory writing and a couple of topics within about three weeks. I haven't looked for ages, … [Read more...]

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NAMW interviews Sue William Silverman

November 11, 2009 By
Sue William Silverman

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP TO PARTICIPATE via telephone  IN THE FREE NAMW Conversational Q&A with Memoirist Sue Silverman–Live!    Interview by Linda Joy Myers National Association of Memoir Writers LINDA: You begin Fearless Confessions with a scene in your therapist’s office. In your book Love Sick: One Woman’s Journey through Sexual Addiction, you bring in your therapist as well as in your first book, Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You. Many writers shy away … [Read more...]

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Tell the Story: Personal Essay Writing from a Memoirist's Point of View

June 1, 2009 By

Tell the Story: Personal Essay Writing from a Memoirist's Point of View In high school years ago as I sat at a brown wooden desk carved with initials and looked out the long windows to see bending cottonwoods, I tried to remember all the rules about essay writing: don't use "I"--say "one" if you're referring to yourself, but DON'T refer to yourself. Prove a point through logic, not story. I'd write something I felt strongly about, only to have to cross it out because I fell into the "I" that I … [Read more...]

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