Category: How To and Tips
Translating Letters While Keeping the Correspondent’s Voice Intact
Ruth Zelig on writing Letters from Brazil, Reflections on Migration and Friendship In order to write my epistolary memoir Letters from Brazil, Reflections on Migration and Friendship, I needed to translate 100 letters I received from a friend in Brazil, written in Portuguese, and mailed over the course of twenty years. I saved that correspondence […]
Memoir Can Be a Time Capsule by Sharon Dukett
I spent many years writing a memoir. Back when I started in the 1980s, I didn’t even know what to call it. I wrote several chapters on lined paper in cursive because I didn’t own a computer yet. I had a typewriter, but based on my typing skills, I would never complete a book unless […]
WRITING AND YOUR SUBCONSCIOUS: HOW TO FUEL YOUR INSPIRATION by Dr. Cristina LePort
Sometimes, when we write, the words arrive as if someone were dictating them, and we are not entirely aware of how it happens. This is what we call inspiration. Many writers think of inspiration as a mysterious force. It appears suddenly, like a gift from the gods, and disappears just as unpredictably. When it comes, […]
Long Story Short by Kathy Anderson
“The general reading public has no idea of what goes into a short story because it is literally short and can give the impression that the writer sat down and rattled the thing out in an hour or two.” —Annie Proulx How long did it take you to write those stories? is the hardest question […]
Where it Comes From By Pam Troy
It began over a decade ago with a woman’s face. I knew her name immediately — “Gwennoelle Duday.” Also known as “the Witch Duday,” or, with lowered voices, “Herself.” A stout woman in her thirties, with a crown of blond braids pinned up beneath the wide-brimmed palmetto hat that shaded her stern blue eyes, her […]
How a Garden Taught Me to Write by Alexis Lathem
“It occurred to me while picking beans, the secret of happiness” – Robin Wall Kimmerer It was the year I stepped out of one life and into another. Over the last summer I lived in the city, I began to volunteer on weekends at an organic vegetable farm just outside of New York City. I […]
DON’T LET BACKSTORY SLOG THE PLOT By Christina Hamlett
Chapter One: I am Born. Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) […]
What Burnout Taught Me By Hayley Hughes
“I was a people-pleasing, high-achieving perfectionist” – what burnout taught me It’s possible the message in the wind, sky or the trees isn’t about fighting for a fairy tale. Maybe it’s about being receptive to finding the fairy tale in the most unexpected places. These days, I believe this. So much so that it’s the […]
So You Want to Write a Memoir? By Carol Teal – Writer, Teacher, Book Coach
We’ve all had experiences in our lives that we may want to document. Other people might find resonance in your journey, relief that they were not the only ones to suffer, perhaps sidestep some of life’s calamities, or celebrate some of the joys through reading your story. A successful memoir takes your personal history and […]
The Inspiration Behind Rules for Mothers by Julie Swendsen Young
I was twelve when my stay-at-home, farmwife mother took a parttime clerical job in our small, very rural county. The decision for her to get a job wasn’t spoken of in front of my sisters and me, but it was likely for financial reasons. Our tiny subsistence farm provided all the food we needed but […]
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