Beyond Writing Prompts / A Better Way / Hundreds of Memory List Questions (The Memoir Network Writing Books, #1)
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Why Writing Prompts Don't Work "Write about when you were 16," the writing prompt urges, but you wonder, "What about when I was 16?" You feel no insistence. Instead, you turn to How to Go Beyond Writing Prompts and peruse its suggestions. You find in the Teen Years section, "How did you describe 'best friend' then? Did you have one? Describe this person and state what it was like to be with this person. If you did not have a best friend, describe how that felt." As you see, this is so much better than a writing prompt. THE TROUBLE WITH WRITING PROMPTS Writing prompts with their closed-ended questions tend to lead to isolated stories.They are not, by and large, searching for the meaning lost in the morass of your memory, for the contact lens that is lost in the grasses of your psyche. No... The problem with writing prompts is they lead to stories that can so easily miss the energy of a life-your life. They are dams that hold back lifestories from overflowing into the present, stimulating cues that don't force you to consider what happened at those moments that no concocted prompt will detect. It's not that writing prompts may not sometimes be pleasurable to write or that a person may not enjoy sharing them or be grateful for a recaptured memory. It's that they come to you from someone else.The problem is that they are not from within your lifestory. Scroll to the top of this page and select the "buy" button. The financial investment is small, and the writing rewards are great. THE MEMOIR NETWORK WRITING SERIES Whether you are writing a memoir, creative non-fiction, or fiction, the suggestions in this book-as those in the other books in The Memoir Network Writing Series-are applicable. Don't Let Writer's Block Stop You shows you how writer's block CAN teach you to push beyond stuck. How to Go Beyond Writing Prompts gets you rooted in the meaning of your stories. Gone the isolated or irrelevant stories produced by prompts. Write to the End / Eight Strategies to Thrive as a Writer offers a number of techniques and best writing practices to keep you writing. Memory List Question Book: 100s of Not-a-Prompt Questions. Meaningful questions / topics / ideas that help you to reflect more deeply on your story. Start Your Memoir Right is full of practical steps: stop asking yourself if you should write your memoir, find inspiration to begin, and learn techniques of the art of memoir writing ... you can success. Writing Great Memory Lists. Memory Lists are the magic bullet of memoir writing. Recall more details and dates than you had ever thought possible. Write to the End / Eight Strategies to Thrive as a Writer will help you to complete your writing projects and reach the audiences you deserve.
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YOU CAN LEARN TO WRITE FROM THE INSIDE OUT I believe in the power of telling our personal and family stories. These are our hero's journeys, and by telling them we honor ourselves and the people we have come from. An important early task for the writer is go inside and find the story that is worth telling. The story is not about "nice" words; it is about honest words, visceral words. LIFESTORIES FEED US Stories have always played an important role in my life. I grew up in a three-generation home with paternal grandparents who lived upstairs. I heard tales of my extended family and their history recounted by the family storyteller, my grandmother Ledoux. These stories were a food for my soul. I could not get enough of them, and her gift to me was that she was a voluble, entertaining storyteller. I began writing as a short-story writer, drawing on family characters, settings, and stories for my fiction. In 1989, I won the Maine Fiction Award for Mountain Dance & Other Stories. My other titles include What Became of Them and Other Stories from Franco-America (1988), and Lives in Translation: An Anthology of Contemporary Franco-American Writings (which I edited in 1990). In 1992, I published (and it is still in print) Turning Memories Into Memoirs / A Handbook for Writing Lifestories; in 1996, The Photo Scribe / How to Tell the Stories Behind Your Photos; in 2009, The Consumer's Guide to Ghostwriting, in 2013, a memoir?We Were Not Spoiled. E-publication includes the books listed here in Smashwords as well as others. MAKING THE LEAP TO BECOMING A MEMOIR PROFESSIONAL It was a natural leap from my own family stories to helping others to record their stories in well-written accounts that apply all the techniques of fiction writing to autobiography, family reminiscence, and scrapbooking. In 1996, I was honored as Lifewriting Professional of the Year by the Association of Personal Historians. THE MEMOIR NETWORK Today, I continue to work as a writer, educator, teacher, autobiography co-author, memoir-writing coach, editor and publisher. I direct The Memoir Network, an international group of lifestory writing teachers who use my method and materials to lead the popular Turning Memories® and Photo Scribe® workshops and programs. My Memoir Network offers Memoir Professional Packages for individuals wishing to do what we call memoir work in their communities. [http://t...
