At the Story Circle Network Women’s Memoir Conference in Austin this month I coached several women about query letters to agents and heard their frustrations with repeated rejections. One that stood out to me was a writer who had sent out as many as 60 queries and had no bites....
I’m a California native who has always lived within an hour of the ocean, which means I don’t know a lot about air-conditioning. But I learned about air-conditioning in Austin at the Stories from the Heart VI, the 6th National Women’s Memoir Conference, April 13-15. The rooms were cold, but...
I thought I’d never go to Texas, but Austin, here I come! And it isn’t for the music scene. I’m going to Stories from the Heart VI, the 6th National Women’s Memoir Conference, April 13-15, at the Wyndham Hotel in Austin. Not only that, I’m a conference presenter. My workshop,...
I learned about shame and writing many years ago. I also learned a good lesson about how third person works in memoir — and doesn’t. A memoir student of mine wrote a story about her family living out of a camper by a river in Tennessee during the 1930s, when...
When people ask what I write, I usually tell them about what I’ve published or plan to publish, I never tell them about my four decades of journaling, those thousands of pages I’ve penned. I don’t tell them about the last six years, when I’ve journaled on the computer so...
Truth in memoir is expected, but it’s not always easy to tell. It may be what brought you to the writing desk, but it can also be what scares you away from it. It hurts! Why would you want to put yourself through remembering pain?! There are a few good...
Three years into teaching memoir I met a woman who never lived the life she wanted. Marge was a regal woman with a commanding presence, a deep, gravelly voice, and neatly swept back silver hair. She was new to the retirement community where I taught memoir Thursday afternoons for the...
I hear about it all the time. People tell me they write when they’re inspired. Some write on a schedule, or at least they aspire to. And some people write by the seasons; wintertime becomes a perfect time to create and polish. Author Terry Tempest Williams is one who writes...
I met my writing buddy in 1998, in a writing workshop at a summer conference. We were given a writing prompt and 15 minutes to pour words onto a page before reading them around the circle. Besides being a contract writer for Kaiser’s Northern California members newsletter, Susan was a...
