Ice Breaker
So many people use the word memoir, especially these days, and I wish there was another word for what I mean when I say memoir. I am determined to find a new word and am sure that I will, but it may...
View ArticleAfter Seeing Natalie Merchant
I came to Natalie Merchant late. I missed 10,000 Maniacs, for instance. But once I got out of the cloister of ashram life, I picked up on her pretty quick and even bought Motherland (I say “even...
View ArticleI just like bringing this one to the top of the pile every now & then...
I think that writing memoir is the most potent action I can take in this world. When I sit down to write – not an easy place to get to – I feel all my energies and abilities come into one focus, one...
View ArticleSaturday workshops in Manhattan
I will be offering three Authentic Writing workshops in Manhattan on Saturday mornings -- if you want to do some writing, this is the place to be. All the writing will be from life -- spontaneous and...
View ArticleWriter's Block & Other Things
Last Saturday I was in Soho, waiting to meet for the first time the memoirist Said Sayrafiezadeh. He wrote my favorite memoir of ’09, “When Skateboards Will Be Free” and he had suggested we meet at...
View ArticleFavorite 2009 Memoirs
I have two favorites and I just finished the second.When Skateboards Will Be Free by Said Sayrafiezadeh and Her Last Death by Susanna Sonnenberg.For anyone who has a real interest in current memoir --...
View ArticleWhen Is It Done?
I don’t like that word, “finish.” When something is finished that means it’s dead, doesn’t it? I believe in everlastingness. I never finish a painting. I just stop working on it for awhile.– Arshile...
View ArticleInspiration
“There is a fashion today among many of my contemporaries to treat the events of their past with irony. It is a legitimate method of self-defense. ‘Look how absurd I was when I was young’ forestalls...
View ArticleWords on Memoir by Susanna Sonnenberg
"I felt a sense of frustration and outrage that people started to look for newspaper reporting when they picked up a memoir. The form has never been that -- it's deeply impressionistic. And isn't that...
View ArticleA Worthy Quote by Mary Karr
And you have to make a distinction between literature and sound-byte memoirs. The sound-byte memoir is only worth reading in an airport. I want to create a whole world, like a novel.-- Mary Karr....
View ArticleA Very Good Read
If you have an interest in good memoir and finding out more about the invisible world of Afghanistan, I suggest this great book, East of New York, West of Kabul by Tamim Ansary. Ansary was born in...
View ArticleAnother Recommendation
A wonderful memoir, INKLINGS, by Jeffrey Koterba, just published this year.
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Memoir, Art and What It's Good For
I hear it a lot in our memoir-writing groups. “This is better than therapy!” Yes, it is. Which, to my mind, is not saying much. I think “therapy” is way overrated and I can't wait for it to be thrown...
View ArticleLoren Eiseley quote
I find this perfectly attuned to my experience of writing memoir.In all the questioning about what makes a writer, and especially perhaps the personal essayist, I have seen little reference to this...
View ArticleFor inspiration
I made a friend online about a year ago. I came across her blog, Art on the Run, and we have corresponded ever since. I share today's post, which I found, as a writer, hugely inspiring. Often I find my...
View ArticlePerfection Is Not
If you ask me, perfection and art don't go together. Maybe they do for some people, but the quest for perfection – i.e. compulsion – is an art killer. A writing killer. So many writers I have known...
View ArticleSUNDAY WRITING THOUGHT
It's a strange feeling to write like this. Like I am writing badly on purpose. Because I do not want to write “well.” If I write “well” I will miss something, I will not discover the part of me that I...
View ArticleBEST MEMOIRS, 2011
So far, here in November 2011, I have named five books as my favorite memoirs of the year. Two were published this year and two published in other years.TWIN by Allen ShawnTOWNIE by Andre Dubus IIITHIS...
View ArticleMEMOIR AND FICTION
My parents liked to read. There were tall, filled bookshelves in the living room. I got deeply involved with the Bobbsey Twins and Nancy Drew, then horse books. In boarding school bliss was weekend...
View ArticleFIGHTING WORDS
I finished a book-length manuscript 18 months ago. Then I spent a year re-reading it and fixing little things here and there. Not a full solid year, but it took me a year of finding hidden margins of...
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