Posts Tagged ‘Memoir’
Re-Entry
Cathy and I just got back from our week at the Vermont College of Fine Arts Postgraduate Writers’ Conference in Burlington, VT. Last year, due to cancelled flights, we had no choice but to drive from our home near Columbus, Ohio, to Burlington. This year, we decided we’d do it again. On the way out,…
Read MoreReunions: A Writing Prompt
It’s been a period of reunions for Cathy and me. Last weekend, Cathy’s side of the family gathered in our native southeastern Illinois. At breakfast, on the day we drove back to Ohio, a woman approached our table. She turned out to be the girl I dated in high school before I dated Cathy. Finally,…
Read MoreOn the Outside: The Writing of Memoir
I never learned to swim. Unlike most country boys who learned when their fathers tossed them into a pond and they had to keep themselves from going under, I remained grounded. My father couldn’t do the tossing because, as many of you know, he had no hands to lift me, having lost his in a…
Read MoreQ and A: Details as Doorways
Cathy and I are back from a book festival in Louisville, Kentucky. We were delighted to catch up with an old friend and to make a new one. During dinner after the festival closed, our new friend asked a question: “What was an odd dessert you made for yourself when you were a kid?” My…
Read MoreUsing Photographs in Memoir: An Illustration
In the photograph, my mother isn’t looking at the camera. Instead, she’s looking down on her nephew, who must be about two at the time. He holds onto her hand. He’s dapper in his playsuit, his chubby legs bare from knees to ankles where his short white socks and his baby shoes anchor him. Still,…
Read MoreSensory Trails and the Writing of Memoir
On Saturday, Cathy and I drove out to a living historical farm. The weather was pleasant—temps in the low-80’s with little humidity—and it was a pleasure to get out into the country. We walked up a lane along a field where a man was using a reaper-binder to assemble wheat shocks. We passed the chicken…
Read MoreMemory as Resurrection: A Writing Activity
Cathy and I have had an odd feeling after selling her family home. She still tears up from time to time when she realizes our attachment to our native land has just become a bit less firm. For the past nine years, she’s been in that home four days out of each month, as she…
Read MoreStart Small: Writing Memoirs and Personal Essays
This will be a brief post since it’s about small approaches to writing difficult material. That’s exactly what I’m doing now. I’m writing a memoir about something very personal and often times uncomfortable. I’m giving myself an hour each morning to write a small section. Unlike my usual strategy of telling a story from beginning…
Read MoreBegin with the Details: Writing Memoir
Down a lane off County Line Road in Lukin Township, Lawrence County, Illinois, a pile of rubble, which used to be the farmhouse where I lived with my parents, lies surrounded by briars and weeds. Some years back, one of the giant maple trees I remember from my childhood fell on the house, and it…
Read MoreIt Is What It Is: Writing Memoir from the Voices of Our Pasts
My father had a penchant for colorful sayings. “Can’t never did nothing,” he often told me when I complained I couldn’t perform a task. “You’re breeding a scab on your ass,” he said when I misbehaved. “You’re just talking to hear yourself roar,” he said when I got too chatty. And, of course, when I…
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