[In this essay about writing and revising his memoir, author Bill Thorness generously shares his experience creating and publishing All Roads Lead to Rome: Searching for the End of My Father’s War –ED] Inspired by a cache of letters from … Continue reading →
Writing It Real Contributor Judy Gruen has a second memoir out. I had the lucky experience of interviewing her about how she came to write her memoir, Writing Bylines and Blessings, Overcoming Obstacles, Striving for Excellence and Redefining Success, and … Continue reading →
This week we are hearing from author and Writing It Real member Morgan Baker. You can listen to her reading an excerpt of her memoir Emptying the Nest: How to Get Better at Saying Goodbyes during an interview with Hippocampus … Continue reading →
Dear Mother, Dear Father, Dear Sister, Dear Brother, Dear Grandmother, Dear Grandfather, Dear Aunt, Dear Uncle, Dear Friend, Dear Neighbor, Dear Librarian, Dear Doctor, Dear Professor, Dear Roommate, Dear EX, Dear College Advisor, Dear Therapist— Who in your life had … Continue reading →
“Memoir that bears witness to history, I’ve come to realize, is never a simple matter of finishing,” author Mimi Schwartz writes at the end of the preface to her new memoir, Good Neighbors, Bad Times Revisited, about her Jewish father’s … Continue reading →
Earlier this spring, I received a review copy of Writing the Novella by Sharon Oard Warner, and I continue to pore over it. I have loved many novellas in my time, often without even realizing they are novellas. Warner’s method … Continue reading →
In 2018 and 19, I worked with Writing It Real member Marilea C. Rabasa consulting on a second memoir she was compelled to write and wanted very much to get right. She wasn’t happy with the way it was unwinding … Continue reading →
This past weekend, I was in conversation with fiction writer and memoirist Nahid Rachlin about her books and writing career. for my radio show on KPTZ ?In Conversation: Discussions on Writing and the Writing Life.? It had been over a … Continue reading →
Part One To get a feel for short memoir, you might enjoy reading from Writers’ Digest magazine’s column called “5-Minute Memoir.” Here are links to a few of the columns: Writing from the Mat Hidden in Plain Sight The Beauty … Continue reading →
Mining the Three Freewrites: Whether you have done these freewrites ( see Part 1 and Part 2) ?in the course of one writing session or over several days, find out what the freewrites have to tell you about an essay … Continue reading →
Contest judge Stan Rubin, a master teacher, poet and friend of writing, wrote that Emma Hunter’s essay: Gracefully lives up to its rather daunting title, with wit and philosophical sweep. Concisely renders a dual vision — adult and child, the mundane and the cosmic — … Continue reading →
Tarn Wilson delivered this paper for a panel on “Hydra-Headed Memoirs & Well-Connected Essays” at the 2015 Nonfiction Now conference. I am delighted to have her permission to post her words for Writing It Real readers. Tarn’s lovely memoir is … Continue reading →
Before embarking on a third revision of A New Theology: Turning to Poetry in a Time of Grief, an intense book-length personal narrative, I worked with writer, photographer and shamanic practitioner Pam Hale Trachta for guidance in knowing what I … Continue reading →
Not long ago, Writing It Real member Dorothy Ross wrote to me about her newest project — recording the narratives she’s written about her life for her family to have in the form of audio files. I listened to a … Continue reading →
Flying home from Scandinavia in late August, a little uncomfortable in the cramped airline seat, I was remembering stretching my legs on a trip I’d made to Norway years before.
Continue reading →Last week we posted Part II of my interview with Tarn Wilson about her memoir The Slow Farm. We talked about different ways of bringing back memories and how to write from a child’s viewpoint as an adult. This week, … Continue reading →
Last week we posted the first part of my interview with Tarn Wilson about her memoir The Slow Farm. Tarn and I talked about how she used artifacts to reconstruct the past and how she structured her book. This week … Continue reading →
I am a person who saves things, from the obviously important letter my father wrote me right before he passed away to the “might need it someday” notes from middle school. I have shoeboxes of unorganized photographs, rocks and shells … Continue reading →
I am pleased to publish this interview with award winning memoirist Sue William Silverman about the writing of her newest memoir and her advice to those of us who write from personal experience. The Pat Boone Fan Club: My Life … Continue reading →
Our writing contest guest judge, Molly Tinsley, is now reading and making her selections of three contest winners in the recent Writing It Real contest. While we are waiting for the results, we are reprinting her article about writing memoir. … Continue reading →
Sandra Hurtes created a blog, felt she had a book there, and engaged in the process of selecting and shaping the entries and adding to the material to create a book-length account of herself as writer. The result is the … Continue reading →
When you read the following excerpts from Rhonda Wiley-Jones’ memoir, At Home in the World: Travel Stories of Growing Up and Growing Away, you’ll likely remember incidents from your own youth when you learned important things about yourself, perceptions that … Continue reading →
Are you thinking of self-publishing and wondering what the process is like? It never hurts to hear from one who has successfully navigated the process. With humor and self-awareness, Rhonda Wiley-Jones takes us on her journey as writer turned self-publisher. … Continue reading →
When Writing It Real member Rhonda Wiley-Jones published her travel/coming-of-age memoir, parts of which she had worked on through Writing It Real contests and editorial help, I was eager to hear what she’d learned in her process of moving from … Continue reading →
As the writers among our circles of family, friends, colleagues and associates, we are often approached to write addresses and eulogies, toasts and speeches. On September 19, 2013, I presented the keynote address at Providence Hospice of Seattle’s annual Pediatric Luncheon. … Continue reading →
This week we are proud to publish the first of three winning essays in our recent contest. In choosing Hildegard Hingle’s essay as the first place winner in Writing It Real’s 2013 spring and summer writing contest, guest judge Terry … Continue reading →
Applying her method of reading as a writer reads to Pam Houston’s Contents May Have Shifted, Judith Kitchen asks, “So is this memoir, masked as novel? Or novel, masked as memoir? That’s one of the first questions that a reader of this … Continue reading →
For our community read this past March 2013, the librarians in Port Townsend, where I live, chose Pam Houston’s novel Contents May Have Shifted, a story, they felt to be about love and freedom in middle age, something dear to … Continue reading →
When otherwise good girl Barbara McNally is caught having an affair (for the second time), her marriage ends within weeks and with it, so does the image she created for her two teenaged girls and the man she married right … Continue reading →
After years of writing, editing, publishing authors and teaching, Jack Heffron knows why we get stuck and how to work around that and back into our material. He’ll be teaching with Meg Files and Sheila Bender at our Writing It … Continue reading →