“Do not think your truth can be found by anyone else.” --Andre Gide
Hurricanes, Typhoons and Earthquakes
“Of course, you should throw in weather as you write about your brother, how it was raining out the day you finally realized he was always going to be better in school than you, that no teacher would praise you the way they did him. Or it was snowing out the last time you saw your grandfather. He was lying small and broken in his bed and the flakes were big and slow out the window. Weather is a rich and important quality in writing because it’s a real and affecting thing in human life. Lace it through your work.” --Natalie Goldberg, Old Friend from Far Away: The Practice of Writing Memoir
Tell me a story where weather played a predominant role. Describe it so we can feel the wind, sense the ... [Continue Reading]
Responding to Suffering
“You can hold back from the suffering of the world, you have permission to do so, and it is in accordance with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could have avoided." --Franz Kafka
Tell me about a time you responded to the suffering of someone outside your immediate circle of concern.
... [Continue Reading]Leaving Out What Isn’t a Story
“The best memoirs, I think, forge their own forms. The writer of any work, and particularly nonfiction work, must decide two crucial things: what to put in and what to leave out.” --Annie Dillard, An American Childhood
