Memoir writing is a tool for introspection
So instead of leaving that pile just sit there and bother me in its messiness, it's more fun to search through the piles, and turn them into something beautiful and sensible. This exercise of finding...
View ArticleStory untangles distorted memories and reveals truths
by Jerry Waxler (Listen to the podcast using the player control at the bottom of this post or download it from iTunes.) During one fateful day in ninth grade, I discreetly positioned a science fiction...
View ArticleMemoirs as a journey from blindness to sight
I felt a little cheated that it took the author so long to start looking within himself. Then I look at my pile of memoirs and realize that most of the authors continue through the darkness for a...
View ArticleAre Memoirs True?
When we read fiction, we believe all sorts of wild things -- travels to foreign galaxies, imagining fantastic creatures. But when we read memoirs we want to believe the events really happened. This is...
View ArticleLink isolated anecdotes into a story with the power of your beliefs
A memoir starts with a single anecdote. Then another, and another. In our imagination, we know these events formed our life. But other people can't read our imagination. They can only read what's on...
View ArticleMemoir Writing as a Form of Therapy
After all this work, I finally found a way that begins to make sense. Rather than speculate who I might be, I simply can review who I really am. Memoirs are a fascinating window into the workings of...
View Article10 Ways Writing Helps Develop the New You
And yet, even in these years of social involvement I continue to spend time alone, writing. My words create a sort of social currency, allowing me to share myself in surprising ways. In fact, putting...
View ArticleThoughts are the Soundtrack of a Memoir
Occasionally one of Berner’s two sons says or does something that triggers a round of musing. Within each of these reveries, time moves more fluidly, leaping from one generation to another, like the...
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