“I urge you to pursue preserving your personal history to allow your children and grandchildren to know who you were as a child and what your hopes and dreams were.” --Oprah Winfrey

Write a letter to your great, great, great, great grandchild, or another imaginary child far in the future, and tell them who you were and what mattered to you. Share your wisdom about life.

 “The best classroom in the world is at the feet of an elderly person.” --Andy Rooney

Tell me about an old person who taught you something, by word or example, and what you learned.

Directions to My Heart first you start off with listening follow the hi-way of conversation but notice when I stop breathing pause there go no further use your right and left blinkers to make eye contact watch for the curve of a smile enter there and drive forward you will have to loop around and around the cul-de-sac till you find the locked gate there you must wait till dusk come with a hush and a young woman brings a silver key of starlight and unlocks the passageway you may enter slowly the terrain is rough with debris from past accidents along the road discarded tires, broken bumpers no longer effective at keeping anyone safe watch for shards of glass and be careful of the trap door it can be triggered at any moment, by not listening, by ... [Continue Reading]

"It always comes back to the same necessity: go deep enough and there is a bedrock of truth, however hard." --May Sarton

What’s the bedrock of truth in your life right now?

"For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die." --Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

Make a list of the seven books that have had the greatest influence on your life—not necessarily your favorites or those with the most beautiful language—but rather, seven books that came along at a time when their message ... [Continue Reading]

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” --Eleanor Roosevelt

Tell me about your dreams.

“One ought only to write when one leaves a piece of one's own flesh in the inkpot, each time one dips one's pen." --Leo Tolstoy

 Tell me about the price you pay (or have paid) for being a writer.

"At the end of the day people won't remember what you say or did, they will remember how you make them feel." — Maya Angelou

Describe someone who made you feel loved. Make the description so vivid that the reader feels loved, too.

“In the past, memoir was the country of old people, looking back, a reminiscence. But now people are disclosing their lives in their twenties, writing their first memoir in their thirties, and their second in their forties. This revolution in personal narrative that has unrolled across the American landscape in the last two and a half decades is the expression of a uniquely American energy: a desire to understand in the heat of living, while life is fresh, and not wait until old age—it may be too late. We are hungry—and impatient now.” --Natalie Goldberg, from the introduction of Old Friend from Far Away: The Practice of Writing Memoir

In the heat of living, what do you want to understand about your ... [Continue Reading]

“I have walked through many lives, some of them my own, and I am not who I was, though some principle of being abides, from which I struggle not to stray.” --Stanley Kunitz, The Layers

Respond to these three prompts, each for fifteen minutes. Do them in a row:

Who I used to be

Who I am today

Who I am becoming