Jan 9
Are your characters living bold, brave lives?
The answer to that question and the 5.75 questions in this video may inspire your characters (and you) as they live their boldest life on the page.
Box of Crayons, an innovation agency, offers this video and others about living an authentic, creative life while doing great work.
Below are three previous blog posts with tips for writing your memoir:
Do you have a character in your memoir who needs to be fleshed out but you don’t have enough information to do so? Try these techniques:
How to Fully Imagine Your Memoir:
Deepen your memoir by imagining character thoughts and feelings
Need fresh ideas for describing your characters? Read this post:
Memoir “The Tender Bar” inspires unique character descriptions
I was intrigued this week when I saw a twitter feed about three-word memoirs. People were reflecting on 2011 and summing it up in three words. It made me think about what I would write for my own miniature memoir.
That, in turn, reminded me of my personal theme for 2011 — one that I chose last year for myself to represent progress and to reinforce my pursuit of learning and creativity.
As it happens in life, I experienced some fairly negative and toxic events in 2010. I thought about my response and decided I could build a more creative legacy of what I aim to accomplish as a writer, friend, daughter, and spouse if I focused on the positive. Read more
“A writer, or any man, must believe that whatever happens to him is an instrument; everything has been given for an end. This is even stronger in the case of the artist. Everything that happens, including humiliations, embarrassments, misfortunes, all has been given like clay, like material for one’s art….Those things are given to us to transform, so that we may make from the miserable circumstances of our lives things that are eternal, or aspire to be so. If a blind man thinks this way, he is saved. Blindness is a gift.” –Jorge Luis Borges
I don’t have many “off” days. What I mean is, I’m pretty good at handling life’s little surprises. I wasn’t always so cool and collected. I used to obsess and worry and play the repetitive mind-game as well as the next person. But over the years, I worked hard at letting all that go. I was motivated to change.
I knew I was making progress the year my son turned 13. It was the morning after Halloween. I opened the front door to pick up the newspaper, when I saw it—somebody, in the middle of the night, had thrown a gigantic pumpkin at my brand new car. The car’s rear end was demolished, the trunk caved in, and my deductible was $1,000 (which I didn’t have at the time because I’d just purchased the new car). I was stunned. I felt as if somebody had sucked up all the air in the world. Read more
As writers, one of our tasks is to create mental pictures by combining just the right combination of words on the page. This is exactly what makes writing challenging, rewarding – and maddening.
Those times when I’ve hit a wall and need to step away from the keyboard, I find inspiration from the advice of Anton Chekhov, often called, “the father of the modern short story.” In a letter to his brother Alexander, Chekhov wrote:
“I think descriptions of nature should be very short and always be à propos. Commonplaces like “The setting sun, sinking into the waves of the darkening sea, cast its purple gold rays, etc,” or, “Swallows, flitting over the surface of the water, twittered gaily” — eliminate such commonplaces. You have to choose small details in describing nature, grouping them in such a way that if you close your eyes after reading it you can picture the whole thing. For example, you’ll get a picture of a moonlit night if you write that, “on the dam of the mill, a piece of broken bottle flashed like a bright star and the black shadow of a dog or a wolf rolled by like a ball, etc.”
Chekhov’s correspondence with his family and writing contemporaries reveals a trove of advice and insight.
For more Chekhov advice, read his six principles of good writing and an example of how he offered writing feedback.
I don’t do New Year’s resolutions anymore. I guess I’m at the age where I see each day as an opportunity to flex my resolve. But I do find the beginning of the year a great time to reflect back on all I achieved in the preceding year and set new goals for the next one. I do this in all areas of my life and in different phases. Phase I of my New Year’s plan is to start a gratitude list.
For ten to twenty minutes, I write a list (in a sparkly new journal) of things I’m grateful for. The beginning of my list looks something like this:
I’m grateful for:
1. My family who not only loves and encourages me but also helps others in the world;
2. My writing partner, Carly, for pushing me to stretch my comfort zone and believe in myself;
3. My friend J.M. for making me use my brain and heart in ways I never knew I could; Read more
Instead of making a list of New Year’s resolutions, my friend Nicole likes to have a theme – a single statement that encompasses a key idea that she wants to focus on for the year. For 2012, I decided to adopt a writing theme – one that would help me focus on the power of imagination.
Sometimes it’s easy to over think the writing process. I’ll worry if I don’t know where my story is going. I begin to doubt myself and the project. Then I have to remind myself (again) that we write to discover, to find out what happens. It’s okay if I don’t know everything that’s going to happen.
In The Story Behind the Story: 26 Stories by Contemporary Writers and How They Work, author Stephen Dobyns says he was inspired to write a book of short stories after hearing advice from writing mentor Raymond Carver. Dobyns asked Carver how he had written a particular story:
“He (Carver) said the first sentence had come into his mind and he just followed it. The sentence was something like: “He was vacuuming the living room rug when the telephone rang.” Carver said, ‘It came into my head and so I tried to see what came next.’ In such a way had the story unwound itself.”
After the first sentence, the whole process had been a process of discovery. Read more
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