Are you my ideal client?

July 23, 2009

Is this YOU? you have a memoir project that’s been on the ‘back burner’ for some time you want to do the writing yourself, but need a bit of guidance you’ve been working at your memoir project, but now you want to discuss it or get feedback you’re looking for help with particular aspects of [...]

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Strategy for the tough bits

July 15, 2009

Sooner or later when writing a memoir, or even notes for a memoir, you’ll get to some tough bits. There are sorrows, hurtful experiences, damaging relationships and many other things that give pain in most lives. How are you going to deal with that? You could of course choose to ignore these hurts and sorrows [...]

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Troll herding, some thoughts

July 14, 2009

I have an inner troll. Some writers call this critter an inner critic, but that’s too tame a concept for what I have to contend with.  My troll has an amazing repetoire of kindness, things like ‘that sucks’, ‘who do you think you are?’ ‘there’s no way anybody will read that’, and my favourite of [...]

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I got started, now I'm stuck.

July 2, 2009

Now that you have a few dozen pages of your memoir written; or you’ve got a prologue drafted; or you have notes, maybe even an outline–you’re stuck. You try to go back to the project time and time again, yet nothing happens. You are too frustrated to continue. You don’t know where you are going [...]

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How to tell if it's time to write your memoirs

June 29, 2009

You know you need to start writing your memoirs when: you keep telling the same stories over and over until your children and friends have them by heart you find yourself waking in the early morning hours with stories dancing in your mind you’ve started to collect notebooks and nice pens, and go fantasy shopping [...]

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How to start writing a memoir 2

June 21, 2009

A memoir can be about your whole life or any part of it you want to write about. Let’s look at a few starting points. 1. Start with a date. In 1975 a friend and I bought an abandoned white clapboard prairie church in a tiny village in Saskatchewan for $300. I’ve got a lot [...]

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How to start writing a memoir

June 16, 2009

If there is one thing I wish for as a writer, it is the blessed state of having written.  Sound odd?  It isn’t really.  A project such as a memoir is a significant commitment of time and energy, and having it written even in first draft feels absolutely terrific.  Only thing is you have to [...]

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It's the little things…

June 8, 2009

Our lives are made up of a great many little things, things we notice enough to connect with, to make meaning out of, to take into our hearts. Sometimes these things are dramas but most often they are not. It is the quality of our notice that makes them important to us. Yet we live [...]

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Why our stories are important

June 1, 2009

We live now in an ever more fragmented, disconnected world. Generations are often segregated. There are adult only communities. Even if we don’t live in such an environment, how do we interact with younger folks when their spheres of interest and ours so seldom overlap? Just a few generations ago many of us had extended [...]

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Notes on an ordinary life – weddings

May 21, 2009

When I tell people that my mission is to help folks write their personal stories, or memoirs, I almost always get a comment that goes something like, ‘my life is so ordinary that I’d have nothing to write’. I beg to differ. I don’t believe there is such a thing as an ordinary life. There [...]

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