Theory and Practice
-
Let’s Legitimize Personal Nonfiction
Several years ago, I attended a week-long writers’ conference on a university campus during which participants were divided into workshop groups based on genre, theme, or focus. I was in the group of memoirists whose workshop was titled Writing through and about Trauma. We were eight women who had survived various kinds of childhood and Continue reading
-
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 Continue reading
-
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 Continue reading
-
Blankness or Clutter, How Do YOU Begin a Writing Project?
I have always felt sympathy for my freshman composition students as they anticipate a writing assignment in my class. I know the discomfort of facing a blank screen. I understand the anxiety some students experience when trying to fill the blankness with . . . something . . . something that will satisfy the requirements Continue reading
-
How Much Should We Really Think about Audience?
Lately I’ve been writing about food. I’ve been reflecting on the complicated relationship I’ve had over the years with eating. The way I overate during the summer after my father died when I was twelve, downing box after box of Keebler cookies all those hot afternoons, enough to singlehandedly keep those tree-dwelling elves in business. Continue reading
-
Writing about Family Secrets: God, Father, Power
My career-long exploration of contemporary memoirs has led me to examine stories in which writers choose to reveal family secrets—those skeletons that families try to keep locked in their closets, those uncomfortable truths that they choose not to share with others. Two memoirs stand out for me as good examples of instances in which a Continue reading
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.
Person on the Page 