Theory and Practice
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Writing about Our Obsessions
At a writing workshop I attended several years ago, the facilitator said, “Find your obsession, and write about it.” I have to admit that I was resistant to the idea. An obsession is not necessarily a healthy or positive thing, right? I mean, I thought about my obsessive need to check repeatedly to make sure… Continue reading
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What? There’s a Problem with Memoirs?
A few weeks ago, I posted “Let’s Legitimize Personal Nonfiction.” In this post, I recounted my own experience of negative attitudes toward people who write about their difficult personal experiences and called for a firm recognition that personal nonfiction can be literary, and therefore legitimate, writing. Since then, I’ve been researching to discover some of… Continue reading
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Apology to Mature Women Everywhere
Several years ago, I read Abigail Thomas’s memoir Safekeeping: Some True Stories from a Life. A member of my writing group at the time recommended the book, explaining that Thomas offers snapshots from a life in chapters that are often less than a page long and saying that she thought I might like it. I… Continue reading
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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
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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
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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
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 