Tag: Family
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Memoirs, privacy, fame, and family
Unlike Ed Sullivan who became famous for pretending to be no-man, Frank McCourt became famous for being everyman. His memoir, Angela’s Ashes was one of the early books in the modern memoir movement that demonstrated that sharing private life can raise social awareness.
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Is this the year to write your parent’s memoir?
To counter the reasons to stall, focus on the many reasons to proceed. When you see their lives unfold as a story, you will gain a deeper insight into their humanity. They had hopes, desires, pressures from their parents, and if they were like most people, they defied their parents in ways that may still…
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Catch-up grief: how visiting my brother helped me grow
As I write my memoir, these 32 years later, I discover the gaping hole his death created, as if I was postponing my grief until I was mature enough to better understand what happened. I now watch our relationship unfold in slow motion, and this time I intend to learn as much as possible about…
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Fearlessly Confessing the Dark Side of Memory in this Memoir of Sexual Abuse
Some dark memories are so compelling they draw you in and frighten or upset you. If you try to seal them back in their crypt, they remain squirming in the dark. Or you can face them fearlessly, and stay with them until you can shape them into a story. By using your words to describe…
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Reading error teaches a writing lesson – or – A good character is hard to define
Part of relating to a good story is to feel a personal connection with its characters. Now I need to develop the knack of portraying the people in my life onto the pages in my memoir. I have attended workshops, and read how-to books about this skill, but it has been eluding me until recently…
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The powerful story of an ordinary woman
As I ponder the memoir Off Kilter, I find another dimension that offers me uplifting hope and optimism. By writing her story, Linda has performed a remarkable service to herself and her readers. She has broken the code of silence, and exposed her family dynamics to the world, where we can all compare notes. In…
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Listening Is An Act of Love
by Jerry Waxler Last week, when I was visiting WHYY studio in Philadelphia I saw the mobile StoryCorps van and interviewed facilitator Mike Rauch about what StoryCorps does. It intrigued me so much, I went back to Philly last night to hear Dave Isay the founder of StoryCorps speak at the National Constitution Center. He…
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