Magical Memoir Moments

If It's Worth Doing, It's Worth. . . a Guest Mini-memoir

DK Matai, a blogger and business executive I met in Geneva several years ago, sent out a message to his incredible world-wide network of friends that seemed like a pure gem of experience to me.  My father’s favorite saying was, “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right.”  DK’s story is a more elegant, eloquent…

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Google Trends and Memoir

Have you ever used Google Trends?  You can find the website here.  The home page tells you what subjects are “hot” because they have appeared frequently and recently in both blogs and news sources online.  Right now, for example “Kemba Walker,” star of the University of Connecticut basketball team, enroute again to the Final Four…

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Memoir as a Healing Art

Becoming Whole:  Writing Your Healing Story by Linda Joy Myers belongs in your library of books about memoir.  Like Tristine Rainer’s Your Life as Story, Maureen Murdock’s Unreliable Truth: Memory and Memoir, Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones, and Patty Miller’s The Memoir Book, all of which have been mentioned or reviewed here, this book…

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What Have You Learned From Your Students?: A Mini-Memoir

If I had to boil down the answer to the question above to one word, what would that word be?  Curiosity, honesty, courage, persistence, gratitude, hope, forgiveness, love? And how did I learn it?  Was it from the student evaluations which came in a big, heart-thump-inducing envelope with CONFIDENTIAL stamped all over it?  Was it…

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Mini-Memoir: How Long Have I Been Teaching Memoir?

How long have I been teaching memoir writing? On its face, the answer is, “not very,” but I can also truthfully say “about 40 years.” How can both be true?  The recent teaching comes in the form of workshops I have blogged about previously– three sessions at the Fetzer Institute and two about workshops given…

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George Bush's Memoir Book Deal: Decisions

Well folks, the deal is struck.  Our former president will in fact write a memoir to be published by Crown.  Apparently he wrote 30,000 words already!  That’s more than 500 words/day.  Pretty good productivity, wouldn’t you say? Read all about it in this blog from the Huffington Post.

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What Are Your Memoir Questions?

One of my blogging friends, Sonia Marsh, (http:gutsywriter.blogspot.com) introduced me to a Mennonite blogger from Paraguay, Betty Wiens (http:bettywiens.com).  I am grateful for the connection and recommend both blogs to you, dear reader. Betty Wiens did something on her latest series of posts that I would like to try.  She polled her readers:  what would…

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Memoir and the Beautiful Sentence: Lenten Season Thoughts

My Lenten season reading this year includes Marilyn Chandler McEntyre’s extended meditation on the prayer of St. Patrick. I have written about Marilyn in previous blogs and have read several books of her poetry.  My appreciation continues to grow for her spiritual and literary wisdom as I read more of her work. Christ, My Companion…

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Does Facebook Cause Vanity? A Memoir Dilemma

One of my Facebook friends, Karin Larson Krisetya, a former Goshen College student now a graduate student and young mother living in Indonesia, recently noted wryly that she had search through 63 photos before finding one good enough for her profile. She wonders if Facebook causes vanity. Here’s her explanation to her friends about trying…

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August 2, 1969

The Frugal Traveler: A Mini-Memoir

The pattern started on our honeymoon, 1969, 40 years ago.  Stuart had $600 in his checking account when we got married.  I spent all the money I earned that summer– the summer of my 21st birthday, the summer of Woodstock and the moon landing, and the summer of our wedding– on the wedding dress, flowers,…

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