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Moment on a Bridge in Western Maryland (An Experiment in Memoir)
A police officer stood in the road ahead signaling for me to stop. I had just left the campus of the community college where I taught and had driven less than half a mile when I saw him standing under the freeway overpass. He seemed to be stopping traffic for no reason. No one else Read more
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How to Leave Your Problems on the Page
Do our problems define us? Have our past experiences, especially those that were difficult or troubling, made us who we are? Are they an integral part of our identity? In their 1990 book Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends, family therapists Michael White and David Epston observed that people sometimes define themselves in terms of their Read more
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The Sign (An Experiment in Memoir)
One year a few weeks before Easter, we in the hills of Western Maryland received a sign. As the new light of a spring morning appeared over the mountains, a man trudged down Baltimore Street in Cumberland dragging an eight-foot log cross. He shouldered the cross beam and leaned forward at an acute angle, pushing Read more
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How to Begin a Personal Essay
No one wrote more provocative first lines of poems than Emily Dickinson. Who could read an opening line such as I felt a Funeral, in my Brain or I heard a Fly buzz—when I died and not feel compelled to read on? When we write introductions for personal essays, our impulse may be to rely Read more
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This Is Only Partly True
Try this. Freewrite about a time when you faced a personal conflict. You might choose a time when you felt vulnerable or embarrassed, a time when you thought that you were treated unfairly, a time when you believed that you failed at something, or any other tension-filled time. Begin anywhere and write about the experience. Read more
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The Arrival (An Experiment in Writing about Family)
On the day Mother arrived, I went to the post office. Michigan was in the midst of its winter deep freeze, temperatures below zero day after day. Ice patched the roads. Until now, Mother had always refused to visit. Two years ago, I moved here to the outskirts of Ann Arbor. I came to pursue 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.
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