Today, I’m hosting Antoinette Truglio Martin and her touching memoir, Hug Everyone You Know: A Year of Community, Courage, and Cancer. Below the book review and summary is Martin’s article, “Five Journaling Tips When Going Through a Difficult Trial.” WHAT DO YOU DO when your doctor informs you that your […]
YOU’VE GOT A STORY to tell and you’ve been thinking about writing a memoir. Maybe you’ve already begun writing and have drafted a few scenes or anecdotes from your early life. And you’ve gotten good feedback from your friends or writing group. Or maybe you haven’t started writing, but whenever […]
IN MY EXPERIENCE as an editor and writing teacher, people often begin writing their memoir in a linear, this-happened-and-then-this-happened way. Or they try to cover too much ground, explaining a lifetime’s worth of events or relationship dynamics all at once. All of that is okay as a starting point for […]
ONE OF THE CHALLENGES of writing memoir is pulling partial memories into full and clear focus, and remembering the concrete details surrounding those memories. You might want to write about your first day of school, the first time you met your stepmother, or your relationship with your father. But when you […]
Imagine: You sit down to work on your memoir. You’ve made an outline of significant life events, and you’ve identified where you want to start. Or you decide to just go through life events chronologically. As you write, you’re attempting to craft a story, but you don’t yet know where you’re […]
When you journal about the people in your life, do you take the time to describe their physical appearance and personality traits? Do you write down the gist of conversations? You might think it’s too time-consuming to record these kinds of details. Or, perhaps you feel you know the people […]
Journal writing is a powerful tool for capturing significant events and memories. For future memoir writing—or if you just want to capture the memories as fully as possible—you’ll want to do more than just write about what happened. You’ll want to go beyond recording the emotional impact of an event […]
Do you write memoir or use real events and people as models for fiction? If so, using your writing journal to flesh-out your characters can do more than help you create well-rounded characters on the page; it can also enhance your powers of observation and improve your descriptive writing skills. […]
Today I’m excited and pleased to post my recent interview with Nicole Johns, author of Purge: Rehab Diaries. Nicole Johns lives in the Twin Cities of Minnesota, where she teaches English. She earned her MFA from the University of Minnesota and a BA in English from Penn State University. The […]
I have just been reading Writer Magazine’s June 2011 interview of Gail Godwin, regarding her recently released The Making of a Writer, Volume 2: Journals, 1963-1969. Godwin’s purpose in publishing her edited journal entries is to inspire other writers by sharing her journey and growth as a writer, as well […]
When I want to write memoir, the first places I go for research (other than my memory) are my journals. They are my memory-keepers, containing more details of events and my responses to them than my feeble mind could ever hold. In addition to my perception of the facts (what […]
