Articles from The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing

Merry Christmas
2007-12-22 22:51:00
Merry ChristmasWhat a memory rich season this is, perhaps because it’s so full of ritual and repetitive tasks. As I wrapped a few gifts this afternoon, I used some ancient ribbon that I swear could have come from my great-grandmother’s attic. She died when I was four. The ribbon has shiny satin threads — on one side. The other side is dull paper. It works well for puffed bows that are ever so much more elegant than the commercial ones that you simply peel and stick. As I fluffed half a dozen bows, I remembered sitting on my parents’ bed wrapping presents fifty years ago, and learning to make elegant bows. The packages had to be perfectly wrapped, with crisply folded creases, and neatly balanced ends, taped just so.This year my hubby received his Christmas gift early — a record turntable that plugs directly into the line-in port on a computer. This is the first time in a dozen years that we’ve been able to listen to our old LP albums. We converted half a dozen decades-old Ch ...

Melting the Ice Around Your Truth
2007-12-17 20:53:00
My words are stuck. They are not stuck in my fingers. They are not stuck in my mind. They are stuck in my heart, frozen in an iceberg of indecision and doubt. I sense my Truth is in there, but it remains veiled, refusing to reveal itself. How do I move forward?Have you ever felt that sensation? Like you know there is something you really need to write, but you aren’t even sure what it is? You don’t even know where to begin?One of the best ways is to begin is with free writing. Begin by writing the phrase "I can't write about ..." at the top of a piece of scrap paper. Then list as many things as you can think of that you can't write about. Don't worry. You are going to destroy this list as soon as you make it.Then pick one topic and use it as a free writing topic. Sit down with several sheets of scrap paper and a smoothly writing pen — a gel one is excellent, because it hardly drags on the paper — and start writing. When you are tempted to quit writing, pull rank. Exert mind ...

Unravelling the Mystery of You
2007-12-12 21:54:00
After decades of keeping a secret so large he can hardly believe it himself, he needs to tell his story, to know who he really is.— Jesse KornbluthThese sentences appeared on Jesse Kornbluth’s electronic concierge service, Headbutler.com in a review of the book, The Mascot: Unraveling the Mystery of My Jewish Father's Nazi Boyhood, by Mark Kurzem. I urge you to click over to Headbutler.com and read the whole review for yourself, then pick up a copy of the book — or urge your library to do so.Although this book bears the name of Mark Kurzen as author, it was written at the request of his father, Alex, who felt the need to unburden his soul by revealing the past, and he chose his son as the instrument of doing so.I have not yet read the book, though I have ordered it. I don’t need to read it to recognize the truth in Kornbluth’s words about the motive behind it: Alex Kurzen needs to tell his story to know who he really is.To me, that crystallizes the essence of lifestory writi ...

There Are No Mistakes
2007-12-10 23:04:00
Detail of Sandra German quilt, from Sandy's Quilt ComplexDo you ever start writing a story and find it just isn’t going well? Do you then wad it up in disgust and throw it in the trash? Or hit the delete button? There’s hardly a writer alive who wouldn’t admit to that response to frustration, but you may want to think twice before doing it again.Not long ago I attended a program at the library presented by Sandy German, a local quilter of international renown. As she paraded out one dazzling quilt after another, each more stunning and provocative than the last, she explained how each quilt came about. I began to notice that she often commented, “I never plan my quilts. I just start working, and they grow into what they are supposed to be.” Or something like that.I finally had to ask, “Do you ever start a project and find it just isn’t going well; that the whole thing was a mistake?”She paused and smiled her great big Mother Earth smile before she answered, “There are ...

Writing On
2007-12-04 09:43:00
More than ten years have flown by since I first set fingers to keyboard to write stories about my life. Those who follow this blog know how I started by writing about my preschool years. In the interim, in addition to a how-to-book, I’ve written more than 700 stories, personal essays, blog posts and articles, many of which are now published. I’ve always known that the time would come when I’d feel the urge to knit many of the scrapbook stories together into an integrated fabric — a Crazy Quilt of my life, so to speak. That time has come.With The Albuquerque Years now finalized, I’m moving on to The Los Alamos Years. Writing this volume is quite different from my earlier experience. The Albuquerque Years was all freshly written. Nothing in that volume previously existed as free-standing stories. In contrast, I have already written several folders of vingette stories about my school years, and I have way more memories of that time that have yet to be written.The Los Alamos Year ...

Memory Triggers
2007-12-03 21:08:00
In a post on June 11, 2006, I discussed the pros and cons of using autobiography kits. My personal distaste for the idea of filling in someone else’s blanks and facing the likelihood of leaving many pages empty because the questions are meaningless for your specific life has not abated.However, I’ve always acknowledged the value of “memory triggers” and include over two hundred of them in The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing. As time goes by, I’m becoming more keenly aware of the value an organized set of questions can have for helping people organize their memories.Just a few days ago I discovered GreatLifestories.com, an amazing website that offers a couple of valuable services. It provides a set of thoughtfully organized questions divided into twelve topical chapters to help you work sift through your memories and get the stories written. The questions are general enough to apply to anyone, so you won’t be boxed in with questions (for example, about military service) ...

Write Now — Tomorrow May Be Too Late
2007-11-30 08:17:00
On September 15 I posted a message about Jeff Byers, who was in a coma following a head-on collision on September 7. On November 4, Jeff passed away, without regaining consciousness.Yesterday I learned that a dear friend's daughter — a high school classmate of my daughter, and the mother of two small girls — has a rapidly growing brain tumor with a dire prognosis measured in months.Life can change, even end, in an instant. At the risk of sounding morbid, I feel a strong urge to remind you that we don't always know how much time we have left to follow up on our intention to create a written legacy.Write now: as if this is your last chance to tell future generations things you really want them to know and remember. Don't wait another month to form this new writing habit. And/or write about your experience with sudden or unexpected deaths; about comforting others or receiving comfort.Write on,Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal ...

Buried Treasure
2007-11-26 11:49:00
While I was digging through a drawer looking for something else, I found a treasure buried deep within: my first transistor radio, small enough to fit in a jacket pocket. The last time I specifically remember listening to it was the night of the Great Northeast Blackout, on November 9, 1965. I used this radio for updates on the chaos in Boston, where we were living at the time.I received the radio as a birthday gift five years earlier. Transistor radios were quite the hot item back then, much like iPods are today. I was dying to own one, and I was simply blown away when I found this dream gift by my plate at breakfast on my birthday, together with a charger and rechargeable 9-volt battery. It wasn’t until a couple of years ago that my father told me what a strain this gift had placed on the family budget. “... but I knew you had your heart set on one, and I wanted you to have it.” I fondled the small blessing and thought back in time.Compared to now, teenagers fifty years ago ha ...

How Long Should a Story Be?
2007-11-19 08:32:00
How long should a story be? As long as it needs to be.I could end the blog right there. That pretty much says it all. But, you’d still be wondering what on earth that means? Is it okay for a story to be told in a single sentence? Should it fill one page? Two pages? Is twenty-nine too many?Don’t agonize over length. Each story will dictate its own length as you write. Some may run on for many pages, and others may fit in a single paragraph, like this one:My most embarrassing moment came the year after I graduated from college. I had studied German for two years, and thought I knew a few words. But one evening I attended bridge club, and the the hostess’s mother-in-law was visiting from Austria. She had helped Ossie prepare elegant pastries for dessert. I wanted to tell the woman how much I enjoyed the treats, but she didn’t speak a word of English. Calling upon my best German I said, "Das kuchen sind sehr gut." (The cakes are very good.) She looked at me, shook her head and sai ...

No Right Way to Write
2007-11-14 07:12:00
“I took a class in memoir writing a few years ago and the professor told us that if we were going to be successful, we had to get up at five a.m. every morning and write for two hours. Every day. I knew I'd never do that, so I didn't even start. Is that something you advocate?”Someone in the audience asked this question during a book talk I gave recently. I swear I felt hair rising above my collar as I listened. I think she knew my answer before she finished asking.“What did he mean by successful?” I asked, thinking he may have been assuming everyone in his class aspired to publication and professional status. Not so. By success, the professor simply meant finishing what they started. By this time my clenched fists were waving away at shoulder level and my face was contorted in outrage.“NO WAY!” I shouted. “I absolutely do not advocate that! I don't say anyone has to do anything! Read my book, and you'll see that one of the first things I address is the importance of ...

Color Me Obsessive, part 2
2007-11-09 20:49:00
You’ve probably dumped the contents of your junk drawer or its equivalent out on a table and gone through the items. You know the joy of finding forgotten objects, the surprise at some of the debris you’ve accumulated, and the lost objects you retrieve. You know the satisfaction of putting the “keepers” back in nice tidy order.After finishing the list of emotions that I wrote about last post, I feel somewhat as if I took my heart, turned it upside down over a sheet of paper, and shook out the contents for exploration. I was amazed at the quantity and variety of emotion words it holds. I sorted the initial tumble of words into alphabetical order to check for duplications and added others as Sarabelle sent them along. What I have right now is a basic array. Soon I’ll start sorting and clustering, and perhaps I’ll discover that there are only a dozen piles and that most of the words are other ways of saying similar things.The resulting list will be a gold mine as a thesaurus ...

Color Me Obsessive
2007-11-07 07:36:00
Ebullient. Effervescent. Inspired. Words fly around my mind like popcorn at its climax. It all started with a writing practice challenge from Ybonesy over at Red Ravine to set a time for five minutes and write, non-stop, listing every emotion we could think of. Five minutes: now that’s a challenge I can do. I can spare five minutes. I recently bought a tiny timer to keep on my desk, mostly to prevent the pizza from burning while Sarabelle has control of my brain, but also to time freewriting exercises. When the timer beeped, I had a list of 64. I was pumped, stoked, thrilled, energized. I was also hooked.For two days now, clusters of words have sporadically popped afresh. Yesterday afternoon I dared to hope I’d top 100. Before supper I’d surpassed that goal. Then the fire flared again, and by the time I went to bed last night, the count was up to 185, and 200 seemed possible.Some nights I would have lain awake, obsessed with the search. Last night I fell asleep the minute my head ...

The Season Is Upon Us
2007-11-04 08:58:00
Sometime in the next couple of days I’ll have to venture out of my lair and into the commercial sphere. I know things will be changed. The Halloween decorations will be gone, replaced with red and green Christmas decor. It’s that time again!This brings a couple of lifestory-related thoughts to mind. One is to urge you to write about holidays past. The focus right now is on Thanksgiving and Christmas.You don’t have to write whole stories if you don’t have time, but as you think of them, jot some notes. Remember those index cards I keep harping on? Keep a few with you for this purpose. You might include a title line (which may change when the actual story is written, or not be used at all if you incorporate the memory in another story), and perhaps a few words or sentences to jump start the flow when you get back to it. Story idea lists are another option.The other thought relates to gifts. A book of your stories would make a stunning holiday gift. If you haven’t started yet, i ...

An Apple With a Difference
2007-11-01 19:34:00
Can you imagine letting a 25th anniversary slide by unnoticed? I almost did that yesterday, but something tickled a neuron before the clock struck twelve. This event I remembered was a milestone, marking the beginning of what has become a remarkable lifestyle change for our whole family.To put things in perspective, travel back in time with me to the evening of October 31, 1982. Immediately after supper, my husband took our older son out trick-or-treating. They only went one place, and acquiring the treat required a credit card imprint before they returned home with the loot: a single apple. This wasn’t just any old apple, it was an Apple ][+ computer, with dual external floppy disk drives, and an extra 24 K of memory. That’s right. That machine ran with a whopping 48 kilobytes of memory!The main purpose of the purchase was to allow our son to scratch his itch to learn programming languages — he’d already mastered machine language so he could create new games for his Atari. He ...
Apple

Ghosts of Halloween Past
2007-10-30 21:12:00
It seems like only yesterday I was trekking around the neighborhood with a paper bag. All the kids on our street in Albuquerque went around together. I can barely recognize myself in the photo above. I think I see my little sister there, but I have to guess at the others. I think three of these kids moved away soon after this.How simple things were back then. A mask and maybe some odd pieces of clothing was costume enough, which is good, because that’s all my family could afford at the time while my father was going to the University of New Mexico on the GI Bill. But it wasn’t just a matter of economy. Costumes fifty some years ago were generally simpler and more imaginative.So were the goodies. I remember orange and white candy corn, and orange “circus peanuts.” Maybe a few jaw breakers or sticks of chewing gum. In later years there were a few mini-Hershey bars, and some people gave out iced sugar cookies or cupcakes. Some spoil sport always handed out the “untreat” — a ...

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