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Ten Free Tips for Writers

02/21/2009 By 5 Comments
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Since life is essentially very good, but times are hard for a lot of folks just now, I'm posting the following tips to help you write your bio-vignette.  I generally like to send out these tips from my ‘Home' page in exchange for your email address for my data base (very important!), but today they are yours, no strings attached.  So do me a favor and write a story to capture your mother's character and keep her spirit alive, just because she deserves it. And, if you would like to contact me with your email address, I'll welcome that gesture... 10 Secrets to Successfully Write Your Bio-Vignette  Write about the "ordinary." In the overall scheme of things, the events that ultimately touch us the most, those occurrences when the spirit shines most brilliantly and where the finest memories rest, often have little to do with earth-shaking events.  It's the elements of day-to-day life that carry the most weight when captured on the written page.    Focus is power. Power

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GREAT “How-to-Write” BOOK GIVEAWAY!

02/18/2009 By Leave a Comment
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Give the Gift of Story will be given away soon. Don't delay, enter by Feb 19, 2009, see details below: Posted by Cami Walker, Founder of 29Gifts.org, on February 13, 2009 at 2:31pm in Great Giveaways View Discussions Fellow 29Gifts member and author, Lynn Henriksen, has made a generous offer. She's offering a copy of her book, "Give the Gift of Story," as well as donating 20% of her book sales for the month of March to help raise the money Mbali (the mother of our movement) needs to make her humanitarian trip to South Africa. About Lynn's book: Give the Gift of Story: Tap Memory and Write Memoir in Five Acts is a stimulating "how-to" book designed to guide you through writing a true short story, a bio-vignette. Activities, memory & writing exercises, and inspiring stories will prompt you to capture your mother's character in a 'Mother Memoir," even if you never thought you could. You will delve into memories with ease, trigger creativity, polish your prose, and find

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Emotion, Passion, Sex Sizzle

02/16/2009 By Leave a Comment
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~Spring sale on Give the Gift of Story guide book~ EMOTION and PASSION are the big buzz words lately. And hasn't SEX been selling since time began? So what's new?   Those three words, emotion, passion, and sex are battered about everywhere I turn from writers' conferences to blogging tips and to all aspects of media and human conversation. I‘m not quite sure why all the buzz at the moment.  It's not as though emotion, passion, and sex in writing or just plain living one's life are new feelings, ideas, or actions, but they have landed front and center once again. The daughters (and now sons) who are writing bio-vignettes for TellTale Souls are doing so through the passion of their souls, and emotion is alive in every sentence they put down.  I you haven't done it, you can still imagine how capturing the essence of your mother's character in a story to keep her spirit alive, as no photograph could ever do, must come from deep within. But you say, "I don't have what

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Be Mine, Valentine

02/12/2009 By Leave a Comment
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             Just a couple days ago something extraordinary ‘happened' to me, that I want to tell you about.       It was heartwarming, so appropriate for Valentine's Day - can't help being a romantic.  I was raised in a wonderful place in the Turtle Mountains of North Dakota at a little country store, Kelvin, just 4 miles south of the US-Canadian International Peace Gardens and 9 miles north of Dunseith, pop. 800!  We, kids, were the Dunseith Dragons, "Blue & White Dynamite, Fight Team Fight."  Yes, I'm reminiscing way back to my formative years where  a "man's" handshake was his word, where the work ethic was not asking, "what's in it for me," but rather, "what can I do for you," where the community came together for what we called a ‘building bee' if someone lost a home or barn or store to a fire, where we could wander the town without fear or supervision and swim in the lake without life guards (luckily, no one drowned).  Of course those were

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Writers Pitch Your Book

02/06/2009 By 6 Comments

The 2009 San Francisco Writers Conference begins just one week from today. It's a terrific three days of stimulating interaction with the literary community. I'll be there pitching my book of bio-vignettes, TellTale Souls: Keeping Spirits Alive One Story at a Time.  Wish me luck! And I hope to meet you there... The Sixth San Francisco Writers Conference 'Building Bridges to Better Tomorrows' February 13 - 15, 2009 Key Conference Features  Friday, Saturday, Sunday workshops, panels and other sessions The 2009 SFWC Anthology: More Bridges (published by iUniverse/AuthorSolutions!) Ask a Pro (formerly Speed Dating For Editors) - Asking questions of and pitching books to New York and California editors Speed Dating for Agents - Pitching books one-on-one to New York and California agents ($50 option) Pitch contests, Open mic readings, Gala party, networking opps galore Our San Francisco Writers Conference Writing Contest Attendees can receive free feedback on their work

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WHAT’S A BIO-VIGNETTE?

02/03/2009 By Leave a Comment

I'll tell you what "bio-vignette" means to me and what my extensive search for it turned up. When I began to teach people how to capture the character of their mothers', I wanted them to tell a short story about "her" that in the telling would give the listener a good idea who this woman is, at her core, by illuminating an anecdote or moments in time on paper.  I asked people to reveal the essence of "her" character in a short and sudden memoir, where "she" is the main attraction. This brings us to memoir, a record, chronicle, or account of a person's life?  According to Inkspell: Memoir is a piece of autobiographical writing, usually shorter in nature than a comprehensive autobiography. The memoir, especially as it is being used in publishing today, often tries to capture certain highlights or meaningful moments in one's past, often including a contemplation of the meaning of that event at the time of the writing of the memoir. The memoir may be more emotional and concerned

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BEWARE – You Might get Hooked!

02/02/2009 By Leave a Comment

"I'm hooked, in spite of myself." Those words from an editor and a woman, who initially didn't find the idea of "Mother Memoir" to her liking, warmed my soul.  After reading the TellTale Souls (TTS) manuscript and the "How-to" Gift of Story (Gift) guide book, she went on to make many comments, I'll share a few:   I confess, I needed to be ‘shown' that this book has value and tremendous appeal. "The Work" made me a believer. There are so many books in the marketplace, and the idea of reading (slogging) through 50 or so stories about other people's "mothers" didn't, personally, appeal to me.  This being said, I found that most of the stories made me cry. I'm jealous of the love they feel for, and felt from, their mothers - stories I don't have. But, when I read through the Gift of Story guide book, I realized that there were aspects of my mother I could write about and be grateful for, because, Lynn, you provide not only latitude, but also charitable thinking in your

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