People write to me about the stories they want to tell–haltingly at first, then with a greater courage and sense of purpose. We all know that putting our hearts on the page, even in private, is difficult and requires continual commitment to keep listening to ourselves.

Because that’s what writing is all about–a different form of listening. We listen to the small voice inside that tells us to write about a memory that won’t let us go; we listen to the invitation of our essential or spiritual self to tune into who we are beneath life’s surfaces. We try not to listen to that inner critic or we won’t write at all!

And there is the issue of courage. Our society is not very encouraging about telling our truths or taking time to heal, but perhaps that will change as more memoirs are being written, as more people take that leap into inner listening and invite us to join them.

It would be great to know what your favorite memoirs are, and what you have learned from them.

Do you write and listen to your inner voice–even if it’s only in your journal?

What helps you to capture your inner life on the page–what rituals and inspiration invite you to write?

The last memoir I read: Barack Obama’s Dreams of My Father. I read it before he exploded into the public consciousness and television. It inspired me to listen to him and to find out more about a person who had overcome the challenges he speaks of in his book. I learned about his inner life, thoughts, and turning points, all of which helped shape him into the person he has become. He selected what to tell and how to tell it, which we all must do when we arrive at the publishing stage.
Check my website for a list of other memoirs I think will inspire you to tell your own story. Notice what makes you want to listen in to their stories. Notice what techniques are used when telling an interesting story.

Miles at Easter; Seth and Zoe–kissing cousins

 This grandmother thing is great! Many of you know that my mother and grandmother didn’t want to be grandmothers–I guess they felt it made them old or..who knows? I was always scared about it, wondering if would magically enter some time warp and turn into them, but voila!

Watching my childen’s joys and challenges, as well as listening to acknowledgments from them about parenting–wow Mom, now we understand–is fun, satisfying to say the least and brings much joy!

Writing my memoir and working out the issues of the past cleared a space for a whole new life and pattern of happiness. These things are on my gratitude list.

During this first week of the New Year, most of us find ourselves projecting our dreams into the future–what do we want to do this year? Where are we going?

You may ask yourself questions about your writing life–when will I have time? What was I writing about anyway?

I read somewhere this week about making lists instead of making resolutions–we all know what happens to too many of our resolutions.

List makers can get in trouble too–they look at all the things they have not done and freak out.

So here is a new way to make some lists:

1. Make a list of all your blessings–a gratitude list. Positive psychology books and theories are telling us this is as important, if not more so, than investigating our failures and problems. Try it for a month. Journal about your experiences.

2. Make a list of the 10 most significant turning points in your life–or five if you don’t want to think about it too long. These are the moments when your life changed, when you were visited with a huge new insight.

3. List the 5 or 10 most important people in your life when you were 15. 30; now. Write down their names and visualize them in your mind. Write a word or two about what they gave you and how their influence shows up in your life now.

4. Use these lists to fire up your writing this month. Contemplate the list, the topic, and see what gets your mind moving, what images come up. What excites you, makes you feel something? We need to write where the heat is.

Good luck with this new version of list making. I think you will find it fun.

We begin the New Year bursting with new ideas and resolutions to get back to our writing, to get our memoir started, but after a while, we get bogged down in all our responsibilities to take care of the house, people, and bills that are a part of every life. Many writers I know tell me they are going to “begin my memoir soon,” or “get back to my writing.” Others tell me how busy they are and they just don’t have time, though that memoir keeps bugging them at the back of their mind.

I know how hard it is to find time, but it does not take a lot of time to get started writing. All you need is a small notebook you can carry with you all the time, your pen, and the commitment to sit down for 10 minutes a day.“That’s not enough time,” says a voice in your head.

But it is. In the groups I teach, we do a freewrite at the beginning of class–for 10, maybe 15 minutes. Each time a little gem emerges, an idea has begun to take root, and the writer is always surprised! Happily surprised, saying, “Wow, I didn’t know that story was waiting to be told.” Or, “That wasn’t so hard–I could do this and get some of my stories done.”

Yes, it’s true. Writing for a short time gives you permission not to get stuck in the endless, “I’ll get to it when I have time,” which just disappoints you. This new mantra is, “I’ll write a little each week, for 10 minutes. I can do that!”

Have fun. Get a notebook that you will enjoy using. Get out your pen, and tune into the stories in your heart.

 Every week writers ask me: how do I get more writing done? I just can’t get to it. Stories swirl around in my head, but…

 This is a typical, but daunting problem. All of us are so busy, that sitting down to find creative thoughts, or to even know what we are thinking seems impossible. Writing a memoir does take an effort of energy and intention. We must think about the past and figure out which aspects of the past that we want to choose–after all, life is long and complex; and then–what words to use? How much to tell? The inner critic starts yammering–”you can’t write that, they’ll disinherit you!”

 With all that noise it is easier to take a walk, do the dishes, or dust the mantle. Many writers marvel how clean their house is when they are supposed to write.

 What to do?

First, schedule your writing date in your datebook. Get rid of distractions. Turn off your cell phone! Don’t answer any phones! Turn off your email announcements and chimes.

Second, keep a writing journal either online or in a notebook, jotting down what you were writing last and what the story or vignette was about. Then each time you want to write, you will have an easier time finding yourself and your voice.

Third: announce that you are going to write to your best writing buddy and ask your friend to keep you accountable. Create your own support group. You don’t have to show her the writing, just have her ask you if you did it, and how long you wrote.

Fourth: If that inner critic is bothering you, write down what it says and put it aside. Take a few minutes for this. You inner critic also does things like TEMPT you not to write. It is not always a nasty voice. Sometimes it is sweet: “Oh, you have worked so hard, you deserve a rest. Sure you scheduled that time to write, but just sit down, put your feet up, and pop in a movie. Take it easy.”

Try these techniques and soon you will develop new habits. The way to get more writing done is to make writing dates that are shorter, such as twenty or thirty minutes. You will be surprised at how much you get done!

 Keep writing!

Sometimes there are moments when the whole of life comes together in a moment, an image, an insight and we have a perspective that casts light on the past in a new way. I notice this with my children and grandchildren from time to time.

 A few weeks ago, my grandson Seth stood in his father’s shoes. My son was smiling alongside him, and Seth was holding his hand. I was not caught in the past of not having a father do that with me, or lost in the abandonment as I once would have. I was in the present with a father who loves his son, a son who adores his father (and mother) and all was right with the world.

Alfriston path

I just returned from my research trip in England and have been musing over history in all its forms. I realize all over again that I’m fascinated with history. Those who know me would laugh at that comment, as my choice of profession–therapist–is about personal history as is memoir writing. My books Becoming Whole and Don’t Call Me Mother are about personal history and its impact on the present. And now my novel  Secret Music takes place in another time and place–the 1930’s and 40’s, before and during World War II. But the main characters live in the seventies, and each of them has to cope with how that history has affected them and haunts them daily.

Fleet Street and St. Paul’s Cathedral

Gun embattlements at fort in Newhaven overlooking the English Channel

I had a couple of goals for my trip: to find out what happened to the adult Jewish refugees–I knew that many were interned on the Isle of Man, but was not sure of the circumstances. And I needed to find a village for my luthier character, a violin maker, to live in after the war. What a hard job I had!:)

London was wildly full of people, and not all of them were tourists either. I stayed in the Bloomsbury area near where Virginia Woolf lived–another fun research aspect for my trip–and tramped the streets. Day and night they were crowded with people. I experienced the enormous crush of the population of London everywhere I went. And when I left the excitement for the country, I enjoyed the beauty and silence of the small towns and villages.

The Imperial War Museum is always inspiring as a place that holds significant history and the library there held the answer to my Isle of Man questions. You’ll have to read the book to find out more.

I found a village for my luthier too–Alfriston, about 8 miles from the town of Lewes, the County town of Sussex, meaning the largest town in the area and a county seat.

Attached are some pictures of Alfriston you might enjoy. It is a quintessential English village beleagered by too many tourists in the summer but on this sunny Sunday, it seemed classic and eternal. English history is celebrated everywhere–every square foot of ground has a story. Books by the cash register are sold about the war in major bookstores–so much connection to history everywhere.

I’ll write more about this later, but wanted to share my thoughts about the presence of history for all of us, both personal and societal.

And for the writers out there, the way I found out the important details for my book was to read memoirs–the very personal story of how larger events impacted each person’s life.

Keep writing, and if you need to research your book, enjoy!

St. Andrews church in Alfriston

When I grew up I occasionally attended the Baptist Church. This was an uncomfortable affair–the other kids came to church with their parents; the other kids had mothers and fathers. They seemed to know their way around the church, and didn’t take Sunday School all that seriously.

For me, I took it as seriously as I did regular school. What was it that I needed to learn that would make life easier at home? What was this special hope in being “saved” that would make all the difference?

I got saved several times, but each time things were the same at home: my grandmother was still angry at my father, my mother and my grandmother fought and threw dishes as usual. I believed, but it didn’t change my world.

One thing that did alter the difficulties I felt was the immense and vast plains landscape around me. I would launch myself into the deep blue sky, smell the sweetness of the wind as it blew across the plains, and listen to the birds sing in the trees. Fireflies on summer nights were magical, and I was sure that this splendid world was meant for peace. I was sure that the sun and the roses that my uncle grew and the homemade bread made by Aunt Helen were clues to this better world, and I think I was right about that.

Eventually I realized that my own struggle and story and my spiritual search were the same. I yearned for something larger than myself to show me that there was more to life than my grandmother’s dour and depressed view. I found the path through therapy, through music, art, nature, motherhood and meditation. Those were my paths.

Each of us has a path to healing and transformation that we are looking for. Each of us has a story about that path. I have found it helps to write that story, to write the journey of your life, your search for yourSelf, for forgiveness and inspiration, for all the ways that spirituality makes itself manifest in your life. In the center of the story will be you, who you are, who you have been, and who you are becoming. Start that story today.

Today I found out that Aunt Mary, one of my great-aunts died. She was 84, her husband, my Uncle Reuben is 94. For those of you who have read my memoir, you might remember my great-grandmother Blanche–the one who taught me about eating strawberries out of the garden, the one who told me about the stories of her life all the way back to the 1870’s while we lay on the featherbed. My grandmother Lulu was her oldest daughter, and then she had six other children. My uncle Reuben is the last of those children, and Aunt Mary was his wife for the last sixty years. It is hard to watch the old ones go, the elders who would gather around the kitchen table and tell the stories from their own childhoods, teasing Blanche the way my children do now.

Aunt Mary always had a smile and made the best jello desserts, you know the kind with marshmallows or pineapple. She was a farm woman all her life. She worked beside Uncle Reuben in the fields, she knew all about driving  a tractor, milking and feeding the cows, pigs, and chickens. She tended a garden, cooked three large meals a day, and liked watching her daughter ride the quarterhorses they raised. She thought children should run and play and laugh, learn about the land and animals and living things. The condition of the hayfield and the corn was something to talk about after dinner while we watched the fireflies flicker against the soft night. She would wink when she talked, like she was sharing a secret.

I am thinking of you Aunt Mary, wherever you are. Your smile, your kindness and winks, and your down to earth ways are what I carry with me always.

When someone who touched your life dies, consider creating a memento with your words. A poem about their favorite phrase or expression, hobbies, or signature gestures are things we can appreciate ourselves and pass on to the next generation. Light a candle for that person, write a poem to them, addressing them directly. These rituals give meaning to our lives and help us preserve the memory of our loved one.

Writing our stories can put us into a caldron of insight, feelings, and situations from the past that we may want to avoid. The writers in my groups talk about this dilemma as they move back and forth between putting the pen on the page, and trying not to–because if they did, what would happen? What forbidden words might come out? What flood of feelings might erupt? How do we write under these conditions?

The critic is always there, commenting, muttering, and well, criticizing: Who do you think you are? How dare you betray your mother (father, aunt, grandmother, sister, brother) by writing those things? It’s just not good enough; the person on the other side of the room writes so much better than I do; is this a waste of time; I should be doing other worthwhile things; this is just a narcisstic, self-centered activity.

Voice from family and society enter into the critic voice. One of my favorites, which I react to with a grumble: “When will you stop being stuck in the past?”
I know that other memoirists and personal essay writers run into that adminishment too.

However, we do need to balance the past and the future in our work. If you feel you are drowning in the past, use a focused writing exercise to bring you into the present.

1. Describe exactly where you are, the landscape, setting, and sensual details of where you are.
2. Write about the people around you–describe clothes, expressions, body type, attitude. What movie or novel character do they remind you of?
3. Write about the best day you can imagine. Bring yourself into that place through the details in your writing.
4. Happiness imagined affects the brain positively. Write about what makes you happy.

Writing the truth frees us from the trap of secrets, frees us from the voices of guilt and shame. Writing is a risk, a challenge, so pick up your pen. Imagine only the voices of praise around you as you watch the words flow.