Articles from The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing

Reading for Better Writing
2007-10-27 16:22:00
My hubby is great at uncovering writing lessons for me. It never ceases to amaze me that a nuclear physicist who took the minimum requirement of lit courses is able to rattle off such stunningly insightful critiques of structure, conflicting detail, character development and other matters of interest to a writer. He freezes up at the thought of writing anything nontechnical himself, but he's a masterful reader, and I'm especially blessed to have the benefit of his skill.Last spring I nearly wrecked my voice reading Haven Kimmel's memoir, A Girl Called Zippy, aloud in the car on a long road trip. This memoir, published in 1991, came at the early edge of the current spate women's memoirs, and due to some weaknesses, it may not make the publisher's cut today. Despite the flaws, it's a charming and delightful story, and we spent lots of time laughing at the humor found throughout.I hadn't been sure Hubby would relate to the book, but he did enjoy it. He also rattled off some flaws b ...

The Story That Herm Wrote
2007-10-25 15:56:00
I’ve spent most of the past week listening to audio books as I lay in bed with pneumonia. I’ll spare you the details of the illness, other than to tell you that I couldn’t concentrate well enough even to read. I’m starting to feel human again, but not quite ready to write a full-length blog. Instead, I will share a story I received from a good friend in an e-mail recently.I met Herchell “Herm” Newman through the Lifestory YahooGroup, (now the Life-Story-Writing Group) about five years ago. Finding one of Herm’s stories in my inbox has always brightened my day. Three years ago I was thrilled to hear that one of his stories had been chosen for inclusion in Chicken Soup for the African American Soul. Now, that’s quite a distinction!Herm’s stories revolve around his family, his faith, and sometimes his career as a fire fighter — an occupation he retired from a few years ago. They are tender to the bone, with just the right balance of meat and sweetness, well-seasoned wi ...

The Project That's Finally Done
2007-10-16 12:05:00
TA-DAH! The Albuquerque Years is finished!This is the last in a series of posts about my experience with Lulu.com as I published The Albuquerque Years, a memoir of my life as a preschooler. The saga began with The Project That Just Won't Quit on August 30, and continued with Part 2 on September 2. In my Lulu Project Update on September 22, I reported on the result of my initial order.Today, I posted the link to the book's own Lulu page. It will remain in the left column, just under the link to The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing. I have chosen to list The Albuquerque Years with no price mark-up, so anyone who wishes to order a copy as an example of Lulu's product quality can do so at nothing more than the cost of printing and postage. Anyone curious to see an example of a project brought to completion by the process I outline in The Heart and Craft, can do likewise. I include a short afterward with an overview of the Lulu Experience.Finishing this project has been a thrill on ...

Photographic Memory Jolts
2007-10-15 15:48:00
There’s nothing quite like a trip through a pile or album of old photos for bringing back memories. I recently ran across this shot of my own family, taken when I was about twelve. Oh, my, do the stories flood back! Here’s a list, in totally random order, of some (excluding the obvious stories describing individuals:The record player — a gift to my sister and me from Santa Claus when I was in first grade. That memory leads to Victor Borge’s recording, It’s In the Book, and the day my little sister repeated some words she had misunderstood from that story. Rather than “Of all the stupid audacity ...” she said, “Of all the stupid odd assy ...” Needless to say, that didn’t sit well with Mother. Which leads to stories of other things that didn’t sit well with Mother. And then there were the children’s records with stories and songs that we nearly wore clear through with repeated playing. Some of those records were plastic coated cardboard, others were Little Golden ...

More Than Just a Table
2007-10-13 08:16:00
It already had a lot of history before it came into our family. I found the old table in the stairwell near the garbage chute in our first apartment in Boston. People put large things there for the janitor to dispose of, and anything you found was fair game. I thought carefully before adopting the table. I knew it would be a life-long relationship.Forty-some years later, this appears to be the case. It still sits in my kitchen. It’s evolved considerably in the interim. For the first couple of years, a blotchy, peeling coat of colored varnish deepened the shade of the cherry wood. In the late sixties I painted it a lovely turquoise, accented with then fashionable antiquing, perfect for the spindled, early American legs. In the seventies, it acquired a coat of lime green paint to coordinate with the next house.Eventually it was too small for our growing family and moved to the basement, where it served a variety of passive purposes. When we moved to Pittsburgh, it obligingly returned t ...

Real Writing Versus Virtual
2007-10-10 07:05:00
Don’t panic. The writing world as you’ve known it is not ending. Pencils, paper and keyboards will be around for ages to come, but today I want to pull aside the curtain on a writing tool you’ve probably used forever, but never thought about: virtual writing.I can’t remember the first time I heard of the study where a coach divided basketball players into three groups, but I think it was at least twenty-five years ago. He had one group practice shooting 100 baskets a day for a period of time. Another group didn't touch a ball, but visualized sinking 100 perfect baskets, and a third group did neither. It was no surprise that the performance of the last group suffered, but it was a surprise that the players who simply visualized did better than those who threw balls.In Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain, author Sharon Begley details numerous similar studies neuroscientists have conducted to further explore this phenomenon. The evidence is conclusive: merely visualizing actions ...

Delayed Disclosure
2007-10-01 13:50:00
If you search the blog archives or click on the Purpose label, you’ll find a pile of posts about reasons for writing your lifestory. One of the most cogent reasons is eloquently expressed by Rich Turner on the Memorablia page of his website, The Grammar Curmudgeon.He writes:“... Our daughter, who has become interested in genealogy, was urging me to write my memories. She was prompted to this view by our discovery, after my mother's death, of a journal that my mother had kept. Our daughter transcribed the journal, scanned in pictures from old family albums, and put it together in a book that she distributed to most known survivors – my nieces and nephews (her cousins), my brother's widow, and so on. She asked me to edit it, and, when I did, I became aware of experiences my mother had that I never knew about and of a side of her personality of which I was completely unaware. I also realized that there is something to be said for passing on, in some permanent form, what we rec ...

Writing in the Mist
2007-09-28 17:31:00
One morning last month, I awoke to find the world shrouded in translucent, luminous mist. The huge oak tree one hundred feet across the yard was visible only as a dark form.I love misty mornings, but seldom experience them. Lacking a compelling reason, I rarely leave the house before noon. The mist was compelling. I slid into shoes, grabbed my camera and headed out the door. It’s challenging to describe the sensory delight that enfolded my senses. The air was neither warm nor cool, and the moist air enfolded me in the most gentle, nurturing way. It was as if the air and I merged to become one. Ordinary thought gave way to a sense of total awe. The wafting wisps of fallen clouds kissed my flesh, like tender caresses from Mother Nature herself. I felt transported into a mystical world.The street, which runs through the woods along the side of a steep hill, was nearly deserted, so I strolled down the middle, taking the occasional picture of dark tree shapes against misty grayness. If I ...

Lulu Project Update
2007-09-22 09:32:00
I arrived home yesterday from my great adventure in Austin to find The Albuquerque Years awaiting inspection. I’m pleased to report that it passes with flying colors.The cover looks exactly as I expected — except — I got the title wrong on the spine! Can you believe it? This is why you should always order a preview copy of anything you do. I might not ever have noticed this fluke, and probably nobody else would either. I only noticed it when I inspected the spine to make sure it was exactly centered. I’m pleased to report that it is. The error is easy enough to fix, and I’ll simply upload the file again, so it will be correct for future volumes. I’ll also extract the stray comma from the middle of a sentence on the author bio page. Of course that's the first thing I noticed in there ... .(Taking such pains to get the finished product as close to perfect as I can make it is a personal preference. We each set our own standard. You'd have to know the story of how my mother t ...

Stories Help Us Cope With Tragedies
2007-09-15 14:57:00
Telling stories seems to be one of the most natural ways to cope with tragedy. Mixed with the joy of our family's newest addition, is the grief my daughter and her husband are experiencing following a near-fatal accident involving a close friend, Jeff Byers. Jeff survived the accident, but only through the miracles of modern medical technology. He remains in a coma, though signs of healing are appearing, and his long-term prognosis is anyone’s guess.I have never met Jeff, and I don’t remember hearing about him, but each day Chris Mack, my son-in-law, has been writing a blog entry comprised of a story based on memories of his experiences with Jeff, and I’m beginning to feel that he’s my friend too. Chris told me that he wrote the first story, “Because it felt like the right thing to do,” and he continues writing them for the same reason. He agrees that it helps him cope with his own grief and dismay, and hopes it may serve the same purpose for mutual friends who may read t ...

A Day of Infamy Recalled
2007-09-11 12:22:00
Although I’m not tuned into the calendar just now, when I sat down to check e-mail, I realized that today is the anniversary of that Day of Infamy. Memories flooded back, and they deserve blog space.Around 9:25 on Tuesday morning, September 11, 2001, I was driving to a Computer Club meeting at our Senior Citizen Center when I heard something about a plane flying into one of the Towers. Is this a replay of some historic happening? I wondered, but I couldn't recall a time when a plane flew into the World Trade Center. Maybe it's like War of the Worlds, I thought, though it was a bit early in the day for such shenanigans, and I was listening to NPR. It sounded awfully real.“And now we'll switch to (??) for live coverage from the World Trade Center ...” Feeling strangely unsettled, I switched the car off and went inside. When I saw the crowd glued to the television in the lounge, I knew. This was real! Gasping for breath, I dashed down the hall to our meeting room and found early ...

A(nother) Child Is Born
2007-09-09 20:48:00
Anna Sophia, our newest granddaughter, arrived safe, sound, and healthy on September 7. She and her mommy are doing great. Dad is proud as a peacock, and big sister is fascinated, at least so far. Grandmama is swamped. Keeping up with a two-year-old is more work than it seemed thirty-several years ago. Also more fun. Today the two of us went to the weekly Free Kids' Show at Ruta Maya, a coffee house in Austin. This is the place to take tots on Sundays in Austin. The place was SRO. The show featured a juggler who specializes in juggling machetes — heady stuff for wee ones and beyond comprehension for grannies. Although my own list of story ideas is growing by the hour, it's time to take a Grandmother Break. I shall resume blogging in two or three weeks. Until then, keep those fingers flying across the keys or pages.Write on,Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal ...

Deja Vu
2007-09-06 20:29:00
I’d like to thank Bhaswati for reminding me of one of my favorite Natalie Goldberg quotes:“Writers live twice. They go along with their regular life ... But there’s another part of them that they have been training. The one that lives everything a second time. That sits down and sees their life again and goes over it. Looks at the texture and details.” — Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the BonesI’m starting to think that we may even squeeze more lives out. As I worked intensely on writing, editing and polishing The Albuquerque Years, I essentially relived my preschool years, experiencing more richness and meaning than I did the first time throughRight now, I’m in Austin, visiting our daughter, whose second daughter will be born tomorrow. In an unexpected way, I’m reliving those Albuquerque years in yet another way. This afternoon I spent some time in the backyard with soon-to-be big sister Sarah, who turned two in July. Sarah spent about half an hour arranging small rock ...

If You Don't Tell Them, Who Will?
2007-09-03 12:09:00
In The Albuquerque Years, I write of visits to Aunt Phoebe. She wasn't a biological aunt, but she and Uncle Wayne more or less adopted my mother's father, giving him a job and a place to live when he was a vagabond (aka homeless) teenager in southern New Mexico. My grandfather worked for Uncle Wayne for many years, and even after he and my grandmother were married, they lived on the Crowder's property for a few years. So, in truth, they were more family than most of the relatives.Anyway, as a small child, I wasn't terribly aware of ages, except for Aunt Phoebe's mother, Ma Plowman, who lived with them. To me as a preschooler, Ma was a scary old hag who chewed tobacco and used a spittoon, wobbled on her cane when she walked, only had a few teeth, and ... you get the picture. I did not want to be around Ma!As I wrote The Albuquerque Years and began thinking more deeply about the Crowder family's relationship to mine, I realized that Aunt Phoebe was probably old enough to be my moth ...

The Project that Just Wouldn't Quit, part 2
2007-09-02 11:46:00
I’m pleased to report that I was finally able to upload my finished files to Lulu.com, and place an order for one copy. Perhaps this project will be the exception, but there are always flukes that show up in the first copy. When I’m satisfied that all is as it should be, I’ll post a link to the file on Lulu.To my surprise, the process has been far more complicated than I anticipated. It sounds so simple to get your manuscript laid out just the way you want it, “print” it to a pdf file, and upload that to Lulu. Indeed it was that simple for the Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing manuscript (that was working with a traditional publisher, not Lulu). The challenge there was getting Word to behave with all the graphics I used.This time, Word behaved surprisingly well, but getting the pdf right was another matter, and I even used Acrobat to “distill” it. I won’t elaborate on the details here, though I may post them to the Lulu user forums and elsewhere. Unless you are a ser ...

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