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Write It or Lose It – Memoir Works

02/08/2011 By Leave a Comment
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 You know you have memories you don't want left behind...Learn how to move them into an unforgettable memoir.KEEPING SPIRITS ALIVE • with Lynn HenriksenMemoir Writing WorkshopWhere: Book Passage, Corte Madera, CA When: Saturday, March 5, 2011 -- 1:30-4:30 pm • $65Call Book Passage, Corte Madera (415) 927-0960 ext.1, to reserve.  If you don’t write it down, it will be lost. Wouldn’t that be a shame? Lynn Henriksen invites you to join her to embrace a special kind of memoir where you’ll capture the character and spirit of an important person in your life as only you can. On this journey of discovery you’ll find your unique voice, move a memory gem into memoir through intriguing prompts, guided activities, partner sharing, and feedback. Find out how truth and imagination merge with all ‘six’ of your senses to awaken understanding, and why you won’t let your loved ones simply slip away. Henriksen has guided hundreds to Tap Memory & Write Memoir and is the

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Destiny de Medici

01/07/2011 By 2 Comments
CW Gornter Catherine de Medici 2011

Okay, so I received a few books for Christmas that I can't help but tell you about. Here's The Story Woman's review of another great read:Once again, C.W. Gortner doesn’t disappoint. The Confessions of Catherine de Medici bring a terrible, bloody time in European history to light through the thoughts and actions of “the Italian Jezebel,” the label her detractors gleefully hung on her. As this intriguing, ambitious, intelligent, often desperate and deceitful woman struggled to maintain Valois–Medici power in France during the 16th century’s religious wars between the Catholics and the Huguenots, I was torn between appreciating Catherine’s heroism and being wary of her insensitivity toward both her immediate family and the thousands of innocent people who perished due to her treacherous, although often ineffective, conniving.Gortner skillfully marries fact and myth, pairs the seers, Catherine and Nostradamus, and places the duty of royalty above all else, in such a way that I

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Happiness is Reading Alice Munro

12/27/2010 By Leave a Comment
Munro Too Much Happiness

Alice Munro is one of the few authors I have read who so artfully relates the throes of the human condition through her characters’ active and reactive thoughts revolving around people with whom they are intimate and others whom they’ve simply met on their path through life. Having just devoured Too Much Happiness, Munro’s book of short stories, I am reeling from the power of her words. I have the habit, when reading brilliant authors’ works, of writing down certain passages that strike me with their eloquence or bite me with their awful truths. The following are several extracts, in italics, from the ten stories in Munro’s newest book (short thoughts from me tagged on without italics). While reading these clips, as they flow down the page and with the characters’ thoughts out of context, I’m hoping the effect will not be too strange. If you take your time with each, and I believe the protagonists’ inner thoughts will grab hold of you like they did me so you’ll be

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Who’s Who?

12/17/2010 By 2 Comments

I’m nobody! Who are you?Are you – Nobody -  Too?Then there’s the pair of us!Don’t tell! They’d advertise – you know! How dreary – to be – Somebody!How public – like a frog –To tell one’s name – the livelong June –To the admiring bog!                         Emily Dickinson

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Make it Personal – Give the Gift of Story

12/06/2010 By Leave a Comment

Most of us have given our mothers cards on various holidays, complete with pat phrases, often via Hallmark, extolling the virtues of millions of moms.  This year take a good look at her—go deep down inside of her and yourself to write a “Mother Memoir” as only you can—one that fits her precisely.  Make it a short memoir, a bio-vignette. This story will be better than any other gift you could possibly imagine giving to her.Yes, she’s your mother, maybe your grandmother, or another woman to whom you felt like a daughter or a son. Have you ever actually stopped to think about who she really is as an individual, as a woman unto herself? What aspect of her being, what quality, action, or anecdote could you draw upon to bring the essence of her character to light in a short memoir?At times she is mysterious, other times transparent. But of this you can be sure, she’s not the same woman to anyone other than you.  Her character is multifaceted, her inner make up complex, but for

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Question Assumptions Memoir Labyrinth No.11

11/22/2010 By 2 Comments

Close to a dozen times now I’ve asked you to walk the memoir labyrinth as an extraordinary way to clear your mind and take a new look at people and events.  It is hard to back away from life’s events and experiences to see them clearly. The honest attempt to put our ego and emotions aside is something we, TellTale Souls, constantly work on when writing our bio-vignettes that capture the character and spirit of our mothers or other significant people in our lives.The best way to begin writing memoir is to look closely at your most significant relationships, so it makes sense to begin at the beginning with Mother – Mom – Mama. After all, she was your first relationship, the closest one possible. Like it or not…How often do you give deep thought to the hidden secrets that make mom tick, let alone write down the resulting discoveries? You have certain things, ideas and impressions, stuck in your head about your mother, but are these thoughts, which you hold to be true,

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Memories in Gray of a Mother and her Daughter

10/31/2010 By 2 Comments
Brain

Grey some say. I always spell it gray, so I guess that means I'm one of those wayward Americans, which I am proud to be!—I’m told the King’s English uses an “e” to spell gray. Either way, gray or grey can be dispiriting. Would Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue have connected so powerfully with music lovers if it had been Rhapsody in Gray? Some of us cover the gray in our hair with coats of many colors, and when I hear "the graying of America," I can't help but visualize old, bent folks trudging along into oblivion, and I don’t think that’s the way people in their “Golden Years” ought to be portrayed. I revel in the eerie grayness of fog, and I dream of gray, rainy days when it’s okay to curl up with a book and not feel guilty. And then there are the early morning hours and those at dusk when the world seems to stand grayishly still for a time before giving us the day or the night. Those are often moments of forgiveness, even promise. Treasure to be sure. Gray

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Making a Memoir Teacher Blush

10/18/2010 By 2 Comments

What's a memoir teacher to do when a student makes her blush with humility and delight? Well, this one is going to share Marlene's kind words with you hoping you will follow her lead and write memoir: Dear Lynn,  Your workshop, Keeping Spirits Alive, was just an amazing experience!  Not only did my grandmother’s spirit come to life within me, you, dear heart, suffused my spirit with the passion, joy and unbound excitement to travel in time and space to converse with the many spirits who’ve touched my life over the years and to invite them to be heard and remembered. Your invitation to “look through their eyes;” to see, to hear, to viscerally experience my grandmother as if I were her was a profound experience for me.  What a rare gift you are.  I am so amazed that three hours could so change my life, my perspective and my journey here on this planet.    Thank you for the safe space you created to share myself.  Thank you for the wonderful teachings, tips, and

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Memory: The Conscious Currency

09/25/2010 By Leave a Comment

Memories are currency in more ways than one. What are we without memory? And what will happen to the important memories of our lives and the lives of those around us, if we don’t write them down? On a scrap of paper I recently came across on my cluttered desk, I’d written down a thought about memory I’d picked up somewhere, though I neglected to make note of where. I guess I thought I’d remember who said it—but can’t, so I’ll just say it, anyway. It went something like this, Memory was all I had, the only currency, the only proof that I was alive. I can see why I jotted it down—food for thought, certainly. It got me thinking about some of the elements involved in memory creation. Feelings are imprinted to memory. Often, when a memory is recalled, the exact feelings we felt at the time the memory etched a pathway in our brains is felt front and center. Our personal feelings about an incident or individual, then, are integral parts of each memory. Some memories fade

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Memory in Apricot

07/27/2010 By 2 Comments
Apricot Tree

Some time ago, as tears I thought had dried dissolved into curve of smile, I sprinkled my mother's ashes in my garden under the apricot tree, From which we made amazing jam for many years to come. Touch of cinnamon, of nutmeg, not too sweet... One spring no buds appeared on that pleasing tree.  It was old, it died—as creatures do—tears then on gnarled branches. A simple stump remains, marking. Nice to touch, sensing. My mother winks at me, sometimes, from apricot jam on buttered toast.

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