11 AM PST; 12 MST; 1 CST; 2 EST

If you keep a journal, you are already aware of the powerful benefits of a journaling practice—catharsis, emotional healing, clarity, stress reduction, and enhanced creativity, to name a few. But are you aware of the many ways you can use journaling techniques to enhance your memoir writing practice?

Develop character, setting, and reflection

You can use a variety of journaling techniques and prompts for developing different aspects of your memoir, exploring images, concepts, characters, places, and themes—all without the pressure of trying to write an actual scene or story.

For example, to deepen character, you can write a letter to yourself from one of your memoir’s characters explaining an event from her point of view. You might even use that person’s narrative voice to describe your appearance and character as she might have seen you. Putting yourself in someone else’s place is a great way to bring out that person’s voice in your writing. It can also help create a more rounded portrayal of someone.

To recreate place (setting), you can draw maps, make associative word lists, write about how a particular place made you feel, what it contained, and what you loved and hated most about it. You can use your journal to poke into all the nooks and crannies of a place, until you have control over its essence and meaning in your life.

Additionally, because your journal is a place your inner critic is not welcome, she (or he) is forced to sit outside waiting for you to return. Freed from your inner critic, all kinds of insights and forms of expression are possible!

Uncover Your Story

Past journals are like goldmines in which the precious details of memory lie buried and waiting for excavation. But, once you’ve dug up the entries you need for your memoir, what then? Those words and phrases, diamonds in the rough, are not useful without the cleaning, cutting, and polishing that will make them shine. You’ll need to work to uncover the truths hidden within your original, unpolished entries—truths that lie beneath the surface of your writing and reveal the heart of your story. How rough those memory jewels are depends on what and how much you included when you created those entries.

If you’re lucky, and you’ve been a journal writer for some time, your past journal entries outline major events with concrete, sensory details, bits of setting and dialogue, and your emotional responses. But even if you didn’t write fill in all those details, your journal entries contain the kernels of your memories, and they will energize your memoir-writing process. By combining what you’ve written with what you remember, you’ll arrive at a deeper, richer story. Listening to what your story wants to tell you is the real work of memoir writing. 

There are many ways to uncover those precious gems. To name just a few, you can:

• Find past entries with physical, emotional, or contextual details surrounding particular events or memories.
• Highlight bits of prose, metaphor, and other tidbits as you read past entries, then transcribe those excerpts onto the computer, with additional notes, reflection, and any images the writing evokes.
• Look for intense and/or honest emotional reactions to events. Sometimes it’s hard to remember how you felt about something at the time—your journal remembers for you.

Enrich Your Writing Practice

Journaling is so much more than a way to record daily events and process feelings. It’s a sacred space within which you can be vulnerable and open and safe, a place to discover and develop vital aspects of your story. Journaling with intention will enrich all facets of your writing practice, as well as help you find the soul of your memoir.

June Roundtable Discussion–Free for all

With Kate Farrell, editor of Wisdom Has a Voice, and guests

June 9, 2012

4 PM PDT   5 PM MDT   6 PM CDT   7 PM EDT

Creating an anthology of memoirs is a wonderful way to gather voices and diverse themes—and you as the editor can choose your themes, authors, and the voices you want to showcase. Many writers don’t yet have a full memoir completed, but they have amazing stories—and perhaps you do too. Creating an anthology—why, how, and what you need to know—is the topic of our June Roundtable Discussion. I’m so pleased to be in conversation with Kate Farrell, and two of the authors in her anthology Wisdom Has a Voice—Every Daughter’s Memories of Mother.

They will talk with us about how the idea to do an anthology came about, and the steps for creating the anthology. The seed of Kate’s idea came from her own memoir insights as she wrote about her mother who had died, and wanted to share her process of refinement, editing, and healing with others.

Her project, Wisdom Has a Voice, began with writing workshops and evolved into an anthology collection: Every Daughter’s Memories of Mother.

The discussion will include:

When submitting a memoir to an anthology

• Follow the guidelines in the Call for Submissions—each item is important and will determine who is selected
• Write a memoir, not a bio-vignette
• Learn about the selection process
• Be willing to be edited, not just proofread
• Participation in promotion post-publication and its benefit to you

Learning about the benefits of being part of a memoir writing community through anthology publication

• Creating a book community with blog posts and social media
• Learning from the other memoirs in a themed anthology

Writing the legacy of the Mother-daughter relationship

• Issues in writing about Mother in memoir
• Finding the wisdom
• How two contributing authors developed their memoirs about Mother: Laura McHale Holland and Angela Tung
• Benefits to being a contributing author in an anthology

BIOS:

Kate Farrell earned a Masters degree from UC-Berkeley; taught language arts in high schools, colleges, and universities; founded the Word Weaving storytelling project in collaboration with the California Department of Education and published numerous educational materials. She is founder of Wisdom Has a Voice memoir project and editor of the anthology, Wisdom Has a Voice: Every Daughter’s Memories of Mother, 2011.

Website: www.wisdomhasavoice.com

Angela Tung is a writer in San Francisco. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Bellingham Review, CNN Living, The Frisky, New York Press, and elsewhere. She is a regular contributor to The Nervous Breakdown, an online magazine featuring the work of published and emerging authors from around the world, and is a writer/editor at Wordnik.com, an online word source. Website: www.angelatung.com

Laura McHale Holland’s award-winning memoir, Reversible Skirt, was published in early 2011 by Wordforest. Her short fiction, features, and essays have appeared in Every Day Fiction, the Vintage Voices 2009 and 2010 anthologies, NorthBay biz magazine, the Noe Valley Voice, and the original San Francisco Examiner. Laura also heads the editorial department of a trade publication covering the electronic payments industry. 


Website: www.lauramchaleholland.com

Welcome to spring!

The roses are blooming all over! Fragrant scenes, birdsong, and blossoms, all shades of green, wafting soft breezes, happy earthworms—spring has sprung! Our minds melt a bit with all this fecundity going on, new life, birth, the fruits of the harvest to come are set. All this growth and new life stimulates our creativity, reminding us to dig into the treasures of our hearts and souls as we write our memoir.

First, I want to say that it was indeed a festival of creativity and friendship at the Story Circle Memoir Conference in Austin. It was like coming home—I’ve presented there almost every year since the conference began 10 years ago—and it was so fun to see colleagues and students. There were groups of people gathering from all over the United States and Canada, and connections reignited, even old connections renewed in person.

I enjoyed a glass of wine here with Paula—a wonderful writer I’ve known online for nearly three years—but finally we met in person!   

Northern California presenters at the Story Circle Conference were well represented by three of us in this photo:

Kate, Amber and Linda Joy

We put our heads together to talk about new projects, and shared our ideas about the conference and presentations. Stay tuned to find out about our creativity spurts as we ate dinner while the Texas wind whipped the trees and tablecloths at our outdoor café. We are going to start something new together, and will tell you about it as soon as we figure it out!

May Events and Tips—Year of the Memoir 

Remember, every month of this year invites you to make more progress on your memoir. Tuning into the glorious light of the season, how are you shining your creative light onto your memoir writing?

Here’s a checklist of questions you can ask yourself about the progress of your memoir.

1. How many words each month/week/day is my goal?
2. How many words am I writing? Keep a running list on your computer.
3. What are my turning point stories—the most important ones to include? List them again and compare to your last list. Maybe you thought of some new stories to add.
4. How many turning point stories have I finished? How many are started?
5. What inspired you to keep writing: List three things.
6. What skill sets do you need to develop? How are you doing that?
7. Remember, writing 500 words a day gets you to a first draft completed manuscript in six months!

There are several stages to writing a memoir, but the most important thing is to keep writing, to invite your muse to the page even when you think you have nothing to say. This happens to me all the time–including when I write the newsletter! But when we are engaged, when our fingers are in place and we are focused on the screen, something clicks in that invites words, creativity, and ideas to come forward. Perhaps you write slowly–I know a lot of people who are frustrated with how much time it takes to get the words out, but you can only write one word at a time! Be patient with yourself. If you write fast, great, let your fingers fly and know that you will be coming back to edit and revise.

The Stages of Memoir Writing

1. Beginnings–first draft, freewrite of your memories, significant moments and turning points. Making lists, keeping dream journals, and interviewing others can help you with your beginnings.

2. The Middle–aka “The Muddy Middle” where it seems you are moving in slow motion through the book; you wonder if you are writing a book! You forget why you are writing a book, and can have small breakdowns as the writing drives you deeper into insights and ahas you are not too sure you wanted to have. But keep writing. It will all get resolved at the end.

3. Last stage–if it’s your first draft, you can smell the ending, you can imagine it. You might even write the last scene just so you know it is there. After your first draft there is more work to do, but now you have downloaded most of the material onto the page and can approach the memoir as a creative project  to edit and revise.

Stick with your writing! There will be rewards for every page, chapter, and revision–it’s a matter of having faith.

_______________________________________________________________________

This month’s guests at NAMW

Free Roundtable Discussion - May 10

Roundtable Discussion May 10—Guest Naomi Rose
Date: May 10, 2012         Time: 4 PM PDT; 5 PM MDT; 6 PM CDT; 7 PM EDT

I’m so pleased to join Naomi Rose to talk about memoir writing this week at our Roundtable Discussion! She and I both like to dig deep into the subject of memoir writing, and look at the layers of self and the riches that can be discovered when writing layer after layer of the truths of our lives. Bring your questions to the call, and the ways that you have learned to dig deep and share those with us. Or bring how it might be challenging to you to become vulnerable in your writing—perhaps you are afraid of what your family will say, or you don’t yet have a perspective on the past the way you’d like to. All that is grist for the mill—of your memoir and our discussion.

Member Teleseminar—May 18

Journaling for Memoir Writers with Amber Lea Starfire

Date: May 18

Time: 11 AM PDT; 12 PM  MDT; 1  PM  CDT; 2 PM   EDT
How do you use your journal to help you write your memoir? I wrote my entire book Don’t Call Me Mother in my journal, scribbling away in coffee houses, on the train, on my lap, at home in a moment of inspiration. I felt like wasn’t “really writing” yet, so I could muse and gather images and memories without feeling under pressure to “write a book.” Amber will offer many tips, techniques, and skill sets that draw upon your journal to help you sketch and finish your memoir.

Blog Tour – May 18

Dawn Novotny, Author of RagDoll Redeemed: Growing up in the Shadow of Marilyn Monroe , will be our guest at the WOW blog tour hosted at NAMW May 18. Be sure to check in with our blog that day and ask questions and make comments for Dawn. She began her memoir in Linda Joy Myers’ Spiritual Memoir Workshop.

We all face obstacles in our lives. Some days it seems just too tough to go on, battling against our problems. The memoir RagDoll Redeemed: Growing Up in the Shadow of Marilyn Monroe will be an inspiration to everyone who reads it, no matter what demons they face in their own life. RagDoll Redeemed is the story of Dawn Novotny’s triumph over the problems that seemed destined to conquer her.

May 19-20, 2012

Oakland, CA

Write and Publish Your Book in 2012 Intensive Weekend

I’m so pleased to present story crafting and structure at Beth Barany’s local San Francisco Bay Area workshop. Book marketing, publishing, story craft, and more will be covered in this intensive workshop! Read about it here: Write and Publish Your Book in 2012 Intensive Weekend

7 Graces of Marketing Global Conference

 I’m going to London! Lynn Serafinn, one of our member teleseminar presenters and a fantastic presenter at our 2012 Telesummit in April, is gathering people from all over the world to talk about how we can share our work in a holistic way, rather ”hard selling.” I know you writers aren’t wanting to do a hard sell on your memoir–in fact I have trouble getting many of you to realize that selling is not automatically a nasty or bad or intrusive thing. Instead, it’s a way to share our creativity and passion–and our books!

I’m excited to participate in the conference and to meet Lynn in person! BUT–you don’t have to go to London to join in on this three day intensive that will teach you about the “7 Graces of Marketing” and how to stay away from the “7 Sins of Marketing.” The whole conference will be simulcast–so you can attend from the comfort of your desk.

Click the banner below if you are interested in learning more about the conference or to sign up. I’ll be sending back reports!

Memorial Day Membership Sale

We only discount membership a few times each year, so make sure to take advantage of our upcoming membership sale!  From May 23-29, we will be offering new memberships at the discounted rate of $129 and renewals will only be $127.  Regular price for membership is $149.  Keep your eyes out for more details closer to the date. Check our benefit page for all the rewards of membership with us at the National Association of Memoir Writers.

There are so many possible reasons for writing a memoir. You may have had a very interesting life and want to record it. You may want to grapple with some issues that have been hard to pin down. You may even want to use the trials of your life as a message to others, or even a way of sparing them the pain that you went through.

But the one that most calls to me, these days, is the opportunity to catch a glimpse of the soul.

As someone who has written about my life since adolescence, on and off, and struggled with a way of writing that kept me as opaque to myself at the end as when I began, I have come to believe that what makes our life story not only meaningful but luminous is our willingness to be both vulnerable and transparent.

Vulnerability: The Secret Ingredient

Vulnerability tends to be what we try not to show in our public life. In business, in inculcating expertise and fame on the Internet, in financial life, and even often at the beginning of relationships, vulnerability is too often seen as a liability. So it has a secret life, shared with therapists, good friends and family, perhaps, and the solitude of our own hearts.

Yet writing from our vulnerability—if done with sincerity and connection to the inner experience in the moment of feeling it—can be much more than a way to relieve our sense of separation by keeping ourselves deep company. It can also be a prayer that resounds throughout space and time. It can be a way to glimpse our soul.

Often, it’s the very things we want to turn away from in our stories that hold a soul-gift for us. When we make the decision to write about these things, experiences, times, impressions with the intention of honoring those soul-gifts, something large, expanded, healing, grace-full comes out of it. We may go in with some embarrassment or shame, but if also go in as a seeker—looking for what is true within that experience, what rings true—we are likely to find ourselves entered into a stream of aliveness that was true once and is true again now, reclaimed in the moment by our willingness to be with it in a compassionate and interested way.

Writing Your Story as a Way to Regain Your Authentic Self

My own experience is that these memories that are typically shelved away have a soul-essence nature to them. We suffer not only because of how we interpreted the experience in the time frame in which it actually took place, but also because we are snubbing our soul. It’s no secret (though we may well be unaware of its effect in our psyche) that young children are remarkably sensitive, and feel everything, everywhere. When life in the family becomes too difficult to stay completely open to, this erecting of what is perceived as an acceptable self (often called “the false self”) takes over. In this conceptualized self, which accepts certain features and rejects others just as was experienced in the family, the reality of aliveness is no longer available to us directly. We have successfully, though often unconsciously, done to ourselves what we felt was done to us. We have “saved” ourselves by closing down. This closed-down self then becomes our presentation in the world, and—more regrettably—to ourselves.

The process of realizing that we are not living a truly authentic life can be painful, even shocking. If we are not the self we have construed ourselves to be, out of the urgent child-need to protect our vulnerability and openness, then who are we? This can begin a profound journey to find one’s real nature, which—though distinct and individual—also has essential features of every other human being’s true nature.

So when we opt to write from a place of vulnerability, we risk being seen without our long-term protections by those who may read what we write. Yet I believe that there is a way to write your life story, your memoir, from within this vulnerability that rejoins you to your soul in the moment of writing, and later on as well. This catching a glimpse of your soul is so thrilling and affirming that once you experience it, you will not want to write about yourself in any other way.

So here is an example. Memoirs are so much about the particulars, aren’t they? How something looked, smelled, felt, sounded. What it was like to actually be there—not in some conceptual, generic way, but really, right there, right now: standing in front of the brick building you lived in as a child, sensing the atmosphere of your family inside, what might be cooking for supper.

In my book, MotherWealth: The Feminine Path to Money, I wrote in part about my relationship with my mother when I was young—how close to her I felt, and then how estranged from her I felt when she grew severely depressed and unable to connect to me. I originally wrote this book 18 years ago. This past year, I revised it and published it.

Initially, I planned to revise only the discursive, explanatory material before and after the story. But as I read through the memoir part more closely, I could feel those places that were closed down and self-protective: the things not said, or said too quickly, too condensedly. Things I didn’t want to open up to others’ eyes, because I was still seeing the situation through the eyes of an uncomforted child.

For instance, in the original edition, this is what I had written to indicate signs of my mother’s turning away from me:

But that paradise was soon shattered, for when I was nine years old my mother had what they routinely called, in those days, “a nervous breakdown” (a term that covered a multitude of experiences, from world-sorrow to catatonia and more). It had probably been building for a long time, for the summer before she had sent my sister and me to camp, a long and lonely summer away from home; but when she came up to visit, she sat under a tree and wept, while my father stood by helplessly, and her friend, the camp’s art director, asked again and again, “But Lily, what’s wrong, what is it?” and my mother just continued weeping.

Yet when I was in the revising process, 18 years later, by that time I had been able to do sufficient “inner work” to recognize how giving short shrift to that experience of realizing I was going to lose my mother to her depression was more hurtful to me than opening it up and giving myself the kind of recognition I would have wanted under the circumstances. So I waded in, and let the scene open up and take me into it.

But that paradise was shattered when I was nine, and saw my beautiful dark-haired mother weeping copiously under a tree. 

She was sitting on the grass, her head bent over so I could not see her face. Her sobs had an animal urgency, released in gasps and moans and tears. My father stood behind her, looking helpless and dazed. Her friend Pearl stood next to her, leaning down from a standing position, asking with loud concern, “Lily, what’s the matter?”

Around us was the same kind of soft green grass that had so exquisitely held my mother and me years before. Just up the road was a lake, the same kind of lake with the same kind of blue-green water in which my beautiful mother had taught me to swim; but she did not see it, and she did not see me.

From the slight distance back where I was standing on the dirt path, in my shorts and polo shirt, I watched with an uncomprehending dread the three figures in the shade of the tree forming a triadic tableau—one figure sitting, one standing apart, one standing and leaning in—that seemed to have stepped out of time and into some sudden mythic dimension not accessible to a child. The sun made a wide circle of light on the ground just beyond where they were, where the shade from the tree held them, flickering each blade of grass, each flower, into golden illumination. There was light all around them just outside the shadowed circle, the expanse of wide grass beyond lit to apple green by the sun, the tops of the trees nearby lit gold-white against the sky’s deep vast blue.    

I stared at my beautiful dark-haired mother, poised to run to her side but halted by the wildness of her grief and by such public sorrow. Children and their parents walked by in the near distance, their heads turning at the sight of her unplugged cries.

It was Visiting Day at summer camp.

It had been a long and lonely summer away from home. Camp had been my father’s urgent idea, whisking my younger sister and me out of the house as if it were imperative we be elsewhere. Something about the frightened look in his eye and the set of his jaw stopped me from asking questions. Distracted yet efficient, he packed our towels and bathing suits and sundresses into steamer trunks and drove us to the place where the camp bus would pick us up, at the other end of the city. My mother had stayed back at home.

“But I don’t want to go,” my five-year-old sister had cried, less good than I at suppressing her feelings.

“It’s all right,” my father mumbled. “Pearl will look after you.” Pearl was the camp’s art director, and a family friend.

The bus drove away, my father getting smaller, and my sister and I were all we had.

The camp had a beautiful green meadow, and a canopy of trees, and a lake where I could swim. But I could not shake the feeling that I had been sent away; and though I missed my parents I could not afford to know it. It was as if my parents had shoved so many things, so hastily, in some closet back home that they had had to bolt it shut to keep everything from tumbling out in a great, sudden flood, and I feared that even acknowledging my homesickness might be the thing that undid the bolt. My sister, though, assigned to the bunk next door to mine, knew she was forlorn with grief. Each night she would slip under the stall of the adjoining bathroom between our bunks and sneak into my bed. We huddled there and finally slept. My arms around her were all I knew of love, then, and I did not understand how that severing had come about. In the early morning, she would sneak back under the bathroom stall into her own bed, so she wouldn’t be missed.

When Visiting Day arrived, the camp owners patrolled the dining room, insisting we eat our hard-boiled eggs, telling us we would (along with our parents) have steak for lunch. I knew they were just trying to impress the parents, and I hated hard-boiled eggs. So when the owners weren’t looking, I stuffed them in my pockets, later forgetting and coming up with bits of egg white under my fingernails.

When the parents’ cars started pulling up, my pushed-down heart surprised me by leaping up in my chest. My sister, officially allowed to be with me today, started jumping up and down. “Mommy, daddy, mommy!” she cried.

But when we saw them, they were under a tree, and they were not waving, and they were not smiling. My father was standing, dazed, behind my mother; my mother was sitting on the grass, crying; and their friend Pearl (who had kissed us once when we had arrived, then been too busy to look after us) was bending down and asking my mother, again and again, “But Lily, what’s wrong, what is it?” and my mother just continued to weep.*

I wept a bit while writing that; but there were kindnesses and healing balms in those tears. I was right there, alive with what had never been said. I was the witness, even if also the recipient of that loss; and in giving myself that breadth of presence, something in my soul breathed its way back into me. I felt lighter, cleaner, truer. And although that image is still there in my memory—it was not erased by my writing about it—it no longer has that “keep out!” warning, that dangerous vibration. It is still part of my human biography, but it’s been told, now, and doesn’t require retelling and retelling.

My best take on this phenomenon is that my soul sought me in the telling. And when I was willing to be present to the internal panorama of tenderness, confusion, loss, and compassion, I united with my soul through this. That pure child-place got to grow up to who I am now, through that transparent writing; and who I am now became tenderized, purified by returning to that unintentionally abandoned child and giving her the gift of my presence through writing.

So memoir writing can be a way to glimpse your soul—to seek it, to touch it, to regain it, to reclaim it, to take it with you into the rest of your life, to put some old demons to rest, to bring your most precious and beautiful artistry into the art that really matters: who you are, and how you live your life. In this regard, memoir writers have all the blessings in the universe at their disposal, and all the artistry available to be cultivated and given to themselves, their readers, and the divine, as a form of reverence.

———–

*  From MotherWealth: The Feminine Path to Money, revised edition. Copyright © 2012 by Naomi Rose. All rights reserved. www.motherwealth.com

Naomi Rose has designed a unique series of flower essence remedies for writers, including “Self-Compassion (Rewriting the Past)” and “Shining Star (Letting Your Light Come All the Way into the World)”.  For more information, see www.rosepress.com

May 18, 2012

11 AM PDT; 12 PM  MDT; 1  PM  CDT; 2 PM   EDT

We write before knowing what to say and how to say it, and in order to find out, if possible. ~ Jean-Francois Lyotard ~

Journaling can support your memoir writing in so many ways. We are happy to present our guest Amber Lea Starfire for our May 18 National Association of Memoir Writers Teleseminar for a short course in giving your writing more depth and power using journaling techniques.

Writers have always kept journals for a variety of reasons—recording life events, personal growth, healing, and stream of consciousness writing. Do you have a closet full of journals or boxes in storage? Many of us have kept our journals, and may look at journaling as something we do to just get things off our chest. But there are many uses for journaling, according to journal expert, writing coach, and author of Week by Week—A Year’s Worth of Journaling Prompts & Meditations.

Amber will teach us ways to use our journals that will guarantee to keep them on our bookshelves as terrific reference materials for memoir.

During the teleseminar you’ll learn how to use your journal as a tool

• For identifying the important moments of your life
• Accessing deep memories
• Writing lyrically
• Developing scenes, characters, and sensory  descriptions
• Reflecting upon the impact and meaning of your life events

And more.

Amber Lea Starfire is a writer, editor, and teacher with a passion to help others tell their stories, make meaning of their lives, and access their inner wisdom and creativity through writing. Author of Week by Week—A Year’s Worth of Journaling Prompts & Meditations, her work has also appeared in Wisdom Has a Voice: Every Daughter’s Memories of Mother, Enchanted Spirit, the Conscious Mind Journal, Inner Sanctum, and Voice of Adoptees. Visit Amber’s website, www.writingthroughlife.com.

 This teleseminar is a free benefit for members of the National Association of Memoir Writers. If you want to know more about membership, please click here.

I’d be terminally discouraged if I kept track of all the stories I’ve begun and eventually deleted because they just didn’t work. More often I am able to finish them, but only with considerable rewriting, rephrasing, and perhaps a few days of fermentation.

Sometimes when I’m stuck, it’s enough to sit back, breath deeply and ask myself, Just what is it that I’m trying to say? What do I want people to understand when I’m done? What is my purpose in writing this? These questions usually serve to pop things into focus.

The next level of action involves calling or e-mailing a friend, or consulting my husband, who is my resident idea-bouncing partner. He’s especially good at extracting the kernel of meaning from my ramblings, and getting me back on track.

The most powerful tool of all is a writing group. My writing group will listen with great tenderness as I read awkward words, or struggle with a half-formed idea that just doesn’t want to emerge. They are patient and respectful, and they withhold suggestions until I’m ready to hear them. I’m never surprised to hear someone blurt out some seemingly unrelated nonsense that jolts everything into perfect focus and allows the story to flow unimpeded out of the darkness.

I collectively call these helpers Story Midwives. The story that emerges is still fully mine, but they help bring it into the world, robust, thriving and fully formed—though still needing polish.

You can find Story Midwives in writing groups, and you’ll also find them in classes and workshops. Many communities have lifestory and other creative writing classes available in libraries and continuing ed programs, and there lots more online, such as the NAMW writing workshops and roundtables. A quick web search will turn up other online classes and workshops.

Classes do way more than function as midwives. The exchange of ideas and viewpoints in a good class weaves the wisdom of the group into something larger than the sum of the parts, and everyone leaves richer for the experience.

Let NAMW help you birth your story. Sign up for our newsletter and …

When you take a photograph, your image is framed, and this framing brings it to the fore, it makes you see the world in a different way than you would if you were not using that lens as a way to frame your comment on the world around you through the photograph.

Your memoir stories ask you to discover this focus, this attention to detail, so the story will have its own frame and containment. In this way, your story will be a polished jewel that shows a world only you have known, and shares it with us, the reader.

I look forward to Marion Roach Smith’s discussion on this topic and her own example of the Territory of Memoir at the member Teleseminar April 27, 2012. Now, I need to get my camera, I need to focus my story. Anyone want to join me in 1973?

–Linda Joy

I also read a wide variety of fiction. Sue Grafton is a favorite for her wry humor, her occasional eloquent descriptions, and the general adventure of her novels. Rosamund Pilcher’s ability to pen lyrical prose is sublime, and some (but not all) of Anais Nin’s work gives me goose bumps.

When I find authors I admire, I study their style and the way they express ideas or describe scenes. I notice the selection of words, the pacing, the phrasing, the rhythm. Good writing is like a melody. It sticks in my mind. I flag succulent phrases and copy them into a collection I keep for inspiration and illustration.

Over time this exercise has had considerable influence on my writing style. This isn’t just a hunch. I have copies of a few early fiction stories I wrote around 1980. I’ve let a handful of other people read them, and they never believe I wrote that stuff. The plot is horrible and the words don’t flow. They are dreadful. I only keep them as a benchmark. Most of the difference is due to reading and developing more awareness of words. Without a good sense of what works to measure against, no amount of revision is likely to yield much improvement.

Structured classes and exercises from books are good. My writing has benefited from both. Maybe you’d expect a writing coach to say that, but you may not expect her to say that reading widely to study examples of excellent work use may possibly be the most powerful learning tool of all.

Of course I encourage people to buy books written by authors I enjoy, but I also encourage you to visit your local library often and check out arms full of the treasures you find there. In effect, you support the continued funding of your library by continually using its services, and you also pamper your personal budget. I check out at least one hundred books a year. I buy only a dozen or so. At an average price of $15 per book, that’s a huge saving.

While it’s good to read literature as examples, reading writing instruction books is also worthwhile. Check your library’s catalog for books on creative writing in general and writing memoir or lifestories in particular. If you don’t find any, ask them to order a few titles. Most libraries appreciate suggestions and are quickly responsive to reasonable requests for new acquisitions.

Whether you read literature or writing instruction books, make it a habit to read often, and practice writing like the masters you most admire.

At NAMW this month, we are so happy to welcome Naomi Rose, author of MotherWealth: The Feminine Path to Money. Naomi is a coach, author, publisher, and wise woman who will talk with us about the value and importance of writing our stories. Here is what she has to say about her presentation:

A memoir can be a way not only to make sense (and even art) of your life, but it also can so anchor your relationship to the deeper strata of your true existence that, years later, re-reading your book can align you with your most essential being. This was my experience writing MotherWealth: The Feminine Path to Money—and also reading it, again and again, over the years. I found that the directness and honesty of what I had written in a time of great vulnerability later anchored me to what was real, just by re-reading what I’d written. Interestingly, the subject of the book—the relation between money and the Feminine way of being—is even more widely appropriate now, in our spiritual and economic times.

Date: May 10, 2012

Time: 4 PM PDT; 5 PM MDT; 6 PM CDT; 7 PM EDT

How to Sign Up: You can sign up at the bottom of this page.  Only people who sign up will receive the audio download after the event.

What participants will learn from our discussion

About writing a memoir:

• Writing a memoir about a trying time in one’s life can bring forth the gifts of that time into your awareness—both while writing, and afterwards (as was my experience writing MotherWealth)
• The gifts gleaned through writing about a trying time can be so ongoingly real that even later, when the crisis has passed, the wisdom from that time that’s recorded in the book remains to teach you, remind you, whisper you home. 
• Vulnerability, which is pretty much avoided in our culture, is necessary for deep writing (and deep living); and writing about a vulnerable time in a willing, open-hearted way is not only good for the soul’s healing, it is also a prayer that resounds throughout space and time. There are surprisingly compassionate gifts that arise from the willingness to be vulnerable in writing.
• Our life, if told with compassion, honesty, and beauty, is a gift to others as well as ourselves.

About money and the inner life:

• As far as money and wealth are concerned, we need the feminine way to guide us into true prosperity. If we only follow the external, patriarchal model, we may end up with money, but not with our inner wealth—which is really what we seek, and is our connection to infinite spirit.
• We have within us, especially as women, inner wealth that only rises to consciousness when we make room for it. This inner wealth, which often goes against the current of our existing culture, connects us to our true nature, which completely supports us. To get to this “MotherWealth” place, it helps to connect with our mothers (in life or in spirit), and to the Divine Mother. Then, from a place of presence, we can receive the outer manifestations of this inner wealth.

Biography

Naomi Rose is a writer, book developer, and publisher in Oakland, CA.  The creator of a unique approach to writing, “Writing from the Deeper Self,” she works with first-time book writers to help them bring forth the books of their hearts. MotherWealth was the first in her series on Money & the Inner Life (the current book is a revised edition). She is a featured book-writing columnist on Creativity Portal, and the publisher of Rose Press. 

You can visit Naomi online at:  www.essentialwriting.com    www.rosepress.com     www.motherwealth.com

Memoir Writing Workshop  at the National Association of Memoir Writers

Memoir writers need to be consummate storytellers, grabbing for our craft toolbox the techniques that make all stories great: well-rounded characters, an interesting plot, scintillating scenes that make us feel, see, smell and taste. We have to translate our inner world of memory to that of story, and do this seamlessly to the reader is drawn into our story world and gets lost in it.

At NAMW we are so pleased to offer a special workshop on Story Crafting with our own popular teacher, Jerry Waxler.

Teleclass 4 weeks starting April 16, 2012

Mondays, April 16, 23, 30, May 7, 2012

3 PM PST, 4 PM MST, 5 PM CST, 6 PM EST

90 minute workshop 

Memoir writers need to be consummate storytellers, grabbing for our craft toolbox the techniques that make all stories great: well rounded characters, an interesting plot, scintillating scenes that make us feel, see, smell and taste. We have to translate our inner world of  memory to that of story.  Read more here.

Celebrating Poetry, Adrienne Rich, and National Poetry Month

Many of you come to memoir writing from poetry—that is how I got started writing my personal stories. My first autobiographical stories were in poetry form. Studying poetry helped me to learn about imagery, choosing words carefully, finding ways to write shorter.

We will be having guests that are poets and memoirists, fiction writers and memoirists—the whole range of writer talents. If you are a poet or enjoy writing poetry, celebrate your love of words all year long, but find moments to celebrate every day in April to celebrate National Poetry Month. Write a poem a day!

And while we are thinking about poetry, I want to take a moment to celebrate the life and work of Adrienne Rich, who died recently. She inspired me in the 1970s as a woman who put into words things that had not been said before, a woman of courage, using words to excavate a new reality for women, a new language. In the new memoir by Cheryl Strayed, Wild, Cheryl talks about reading Dream of a Common Language on her trek on the Pacific Crest Trail, as inspiration, as sustenance. To save room in her backpack, she would burn the books she had finished, but Dream of a Common Language was left intact, the extra weight offering a different kind of relief, spiritual food.

• What are your favorite poems?
• Write about how poetry has affected you, inspired you, given you courage.
• Write out a poem that you love, stay with the words and images, then journal about what they mean to you.

What I learned at the National Association of Memoir Writers Telesummit

For a few more days, you can still sign up for the NAMW Telesummit and get the free audio download! The Telesummit was such a valuable “course” in writing and publishing your memoir, we wanted to make it available for you for a longer time.

Every time I do the Telesummit—twice a year for four years!—I get ready for the 6 hours on the phone, setting up my kitchen as the communication center with hot tea, snacks, the telephones, call in numbers, bios and books by the presenters, and my laptop! All this is in front of my window which overlooks a blooming wisteria, blossoming roses, and birds. A great way to spend the day!

And what a day it was March 30 when we started off with Mark Coker, who created Smashwords, a digital formatting and distribution company for eBooks. I plan to release Don’t Call Me Mother as an eBook soon, and found out why to choose Smashwords for this release. Tune into the audio to learn all about formatting, publishing and selling your eBook and how Smashwords can help you with this. You can be a published author within a few days—IF—and we stressed this—WHEN—your book is fully copyedited and proofed so you give the public a book you can be proud of that can get good reviews. You will NOT get reviewed with typos and errors—or you might get reviewed—but it will not be complimentary. All the presenters underscored the need to work hard to get your book in perfect shape.

Dan Blank was next, generous and upbeat—he took time from his brother’s wedding parties to talk with us! Thank you, Dan.  Read my review of Dan Blank’s discussion about platform here.

Tessa Smith McGovern, founder of eChook, a digital chapbook publisher talked about the reasons we should publish our shorter pieces—to build platform, and to enjoy the rewards of our writing life—and ways that eChook can help us achieve our writing goals. She is offering to extend her contest to invite all of you to submit. Find out more about this here.

Brooke Warner and Linda Joy Myers talked next about the need to write in flow, to write quickly the first draft—using a right brain approach—freewriting. And, Brooke is an advocate of outlining as a way to harness the freeflowing creativity of the right brain and focus it into a structure and form. I have recently become an advocate of this method, as my right brain is a little TOO fluid sometimes.

In 2013, we are launching a coaching-mentor program called Write Your Book in Six Months to help writers dig in, focus, and get that first draft done. Support and skills help writers accomplish their goals.

Find out more here, and sign up for our blog posts about mindsets, skillsets, and writing a longer work.

Lynn Serafinn is the author of 7 Graces of Marketing and teaches how to change our mindset from negative ideas about marketing to the idea that you are sharing what you love with others—to help them with something they need to do or learn. It’s as simple as that!

Writer’s Resources

 Story Circle Conference

April 13-15  Austin Texas

I’m teaching “Writing a Spiritual Memoir.” Think about Austin in spring, wildflowers, networking.  A welcoming warm conference for women.

Stories from the Heart VI will bring women from around the country to celebrate our stories and our lives. Through writing, reading, listening, and sharing, we will discover how personal narrative is a healing art, how we can gather our memories, how we can tell our stories. We welcome readers, writers, storytellers, and any woman with a past, present, and future. There will be opportunities to explore difficult or hidden issues, expand our relationships with other women, and discover different modes and media—such as art, dance, and drama—for sharing our stories. Come, learn, share, celebrate with us as we honor our stories! Read more here.

Write & Publish Your Book in 2012! Intensive Weekend
Saturday May 19th – Sunday May 20th

* Beth Barany, “Best Book Marketing in the 21st Century” * Catharine Bramkamp, “Navigating Today’s New Publishing Choices” * Linda Joy Myers, “How to Make Your Personal Story Irresistible for Your Readers” * Drew Merit “Use Improv to Rock Your Writing” * Ezra Barany “How to Use SEO to Get Massive Traffic To Your Book and Your Business”

http://eastbaywritersweekend.weebly.com 

Writer’s Digest Annual Contest

Enter your memoir, short story, poems in this valuable contest.

http://www.writersdigest.com/writers-digest-annual-writing-competition

WRITER ADVICE ANNOUNCES ITS 7th FLASH PROSE CONTEST

http://www.writeradvice.com

WriterAdvice, www.writeradvice.com, is searching for flash fiction, memoir, and creative non-fiction that grabs, surprises, and mesmerizes readers in 750 words or less. If you have a story or memoir with a strong theme, sharp images, a solid structure, and an unexpected discovery, please submit it to the WriterAdvice Flash Prose Contest.

DEADLINE: April 18, 2012