Memoirs
Scribbler's Guild is a hub for senior writers where you can find a wealth of information, articles and resources on how to write memoirs so you can leave a legacy for future generations.
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The Joy of Structure
When we first begin writing our memoirs, more often than not, it’s dull. Boring. A recitation of the facts of our life. Devoid of emotion. A bland telling of the stuff that happened without any of the emotional involvement that makes a story great. Meh! And that’s totally okay. First drafts are supposed to be a dull recitation of plot, without all the bells and whistles that make a story come alive for the reader. First drafts are meant to get the ideas out of your head and down on paper or screen so you can do something with them. It’s only as we revise and revise and revise…
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What Comfort Zone Can I Step Out Of Today?
On a Jim Fortin podcast this week, I heard the phrase, “What comfort zone can I leave today?” This really resonated with me. To leave a comfort zone means we need to change, and that’s not an easy thing to do. We like our status quo. It’s comfortable. We understand it. It’s not challenging or painful or hard. We love our routines. I’m reminded of the hermit crab. This little guy carries around the empty shell of another creature as his home and his protection, but whenever he grows too big for his current shell, he must find another, larger one and take a leap of faith that he’ll be…
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When It’s Okay To Act Out
Okay, so you’re writing away and you have no idea what motivates your main character (or yourself at age twelve). Or you can visualize your MC’s best friend, but you can’t hear her voice. Or you’ve finally finished your fifteenth draft and you’re ready to share with your beta readers or your writing group or your editor or (gulp!) your publisher, but you have a niggling feeling there’s something missing. Take a step back and try a couple of editing techniques that are a little different. When we read, we tend to “hear” the words in our heads. If the story’s well-written, we “see” the…
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How Not To Be A Wimp
Using Blind Spots and Limiting Beliefs to Power Your Memoir In my memoir classes, one of my favourite things to do is ask questions of my students to get them thinking more deeply about their stories, their characters and ultimately themselves. One of my students brought up the topic of fear of success the other day. She mentioned that she had a crippling fear of being successful, ie. “a public figure”. When I asked her what she thought was scary about that, she couldn’t tell me exactly, although, for her, it was tied up with public appearances, maybe interviews or readings of her work. They terrified her. It came down…
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Daydreaming as an Art Form
“Idle minds are the devil’s research-and-development department.” — Robert Stacy McCain Daydreaming, a definition: noun The activity of thinking about pleasant things that you would like to do or have happen to you, instead of thinking about what is happening now. Daydreaming appears to be the brain’s default setting when no other external task is occupying its attention. For years, those of us who spent hours inside our own heads were considered time-wasters, dreamers who couldn’t live in the “real world”, unsuited for the practical requirements of daily living. We were called Procrastinators and we were taught to wake up and smell the coffee, stop dithering, get back to work and all the other sensible, pragmatic advice that goes along…
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Description—How Much Is Too Much?
Don’t use a five-dollar word when a fifty-cent word will do. — Mark Twain What is Description? Merriam-Webster calls it “an act of describing, specifically: discourse intended to give a mental image of something experienced.” Or: “a statement or account giving the characteristics of someone or something, a descriptive statement or account.” Narrative (the events), and description (how the character experiences the events), are the glue that keeps your reader stuck in your story. If nothing much happens, if the character is not emotionally engaged, then neither will the reader be engaged. Why is Description Necessary? 1. Description is all about the strategic delivery of important…
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Riding the Razor’s Edge
Recently a writer asked me this question: “How can I turn my ideas into fiction? My short stories tend to be small slice-of-life sorts of things.” This is something that I often run into in workshops and classes. People tell me they only write about true events. They don’t know how to stretch their imaginations to turn facts into stories. They’ve never learned the infinite possibilities behind that magical phrase, “What if?” To turn ideas into fiction, take your true-to-life story elements and take them as far into what-if as possible. The key to making a true story fictional is exaggeration. Make the events bigger than…
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One Artist’s Journey
I like to call myself a recovering artist. I like this description because it has a certain curiosity-piquing je ne sais quoi and it references my lifelong addiction to art and creativity. It also raises the question of why anyone would voluntarily quit the enchanting life of an artist. Spoiler alert — doing shows all the time becomes increasingly physically demanding for an ageing painter. All those classy exhibitions certainly look glamorous on the outside, but behind the scenes, there’s a whole lot of grunt-work, and I was fed up with grunting. There’s a classic artist’s joke — Q. What’s the difference between an artist and a puppy? …
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Creative Writing, Productivity, Structure and Plotting, Theme, Purpose and Outcome, Training, Lessons
How to Focus your Blog Post
Start with the End in Mind Recently, a reader asked me, “How do you write a story with the end in mind? How do you know what the end is before it’s written?” He was responding to a blog post in which I wrote about using constraints to spark creativity. One of the points I made was: “Writing with the end in mind applies especially to writing memoirs. When you first apply a life lesson, a theme, a psychological or theoretical point to the memoir as its raison d’être, you don’t need to think about everything that doesn’t fit the point. “But if you don’t…
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Creative Writing, Organization and Research, Productivity, Prompts, Structure and Plotting, Theme, Purpose and Outcome
Less Is More
This morning, I went into my writing group completely unprepared to write. I had to show up at 11:00 a.m. and I’d been doing something else when the timer startled me with its petulant beeping, reminding me to get online immediately, if not sooner! Now, most times, when I go into the group, I know what I’m going to write — at least I have some idea or framework for the words I’ll be putting down — but for some reason, this morning I had completely forgotten that I had to write this blog post, so when one of my writer friends asked me what I’d be working…