-
Why I Wanted Lucille Ball to be My Mother (Memoir)
Mike Douglas introduced his next guest. We had one of those mahogany console black and white televisions that were popular in the 1960s. It reigned as the pot-bellied god of our living room at our house in McKeesport, Pennsylvania. Music played on the Mike Douglas Show as Lucille Ball walked onstage. I recognized her from Read more
-
Five Qualities of Good Writing
What distinguishes effective writing from writing that somehow misses the mark? What about our writing invites readers into our message and keeps them reading to the end? Based on my years as a writing instructor, writer, and reader, here are what I have found to be some of the qualities of good writing. 1. Surprise Read more
-
Telephonophobia (An Experiment in Memoir)
My thanks to Bear River Review, in which this essay was published. The sound I heard that morning was from one of those Bell telephones, still in common use in the 1970s, with a rotary dial and an actual bell with a mechanical clapper. It jangled its urgent ding-a-ling-a-ling, demanding attention. I sometimes recall one Read more
-
How to Gain Your Reader’s Empathy: The Case of a Partial Jewish Identity
As a memoirist or personal essay writer, one of your goals may be to elicit empathy from your readers. Perhaps you want readers to understand your perspective on an experience. Or you hope that readers will sympathize with you as the teller of your story. In other words, you may want readers to put themselves Read more
-
Art or Therapy? Two Important Facts about the Benefits of Writing
The terrain of your memories may be a minefield. As you venture in looking for past experiences to write about, you may happen upon stories that you feel you shouldn’t tell. You may find things that you don’t want to think about, details about people that you think should be kept private, or past life Read more
-
Why You Should Write Micro-Memoirs
They combine the truthfulness of memoir, the conflict-focused tension of fiction, and the precision of poetry. They are brief, tightly woven nuggets of narrative energy. When Beth Ann Fennelly published Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs, she added another sub-category to the genre of flash nonfiction. Micro-memoirs capture seemingly insignificant moments in a life and discover Read more
Do you write about yourself and your experiences? Do you write about traumatic events in your life? Or, do you struggle to find time and motivation to write?
If so, this blog is for you.
Recent Posts
Person on the Page 