Turning Memories Into Memoirs

Turning Memories Into Memoirs

Author: Denis Ledoux

Publisher: Heinemann Educational Books

Published: 1993

Total Pages: 218

ISBN-13:

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Now would-be writers can learn how to create a meaningful work that invites a touching glimpse into yesteryear. This guide will help them bring the past alive and share it with others in a captivating way, as the author offers advice and skills from his popular workshops. Highlighted with more than 60 photos.


Wired for Story

Wired for Story

Author: Lisa Cron

Publisher: Ten Speed Press

Published: 2012-07-10

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 1607742462

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This guide reveals how writers can utilize cognitive storytelling strategies to craft stories that ignite readers’ brains and captivate them through each plot element. Imagine knowing what the brain craves from every tale it encounters, what fuels the success of any great story, and what keeps readers transfixed. Wired for Story reveals these cognitive secrets—and it’s a game-changer for anyone who has ever set pen to paper. The vast majority of writing advice focuses on “writing well” as if it were the same as telling a great story. This is exactly where many aspiring writers fail—they strive for beautiful metaphors, authentic dialogue, and interesting characters, losing sight of the one thing that every engaging story must do: ignite the brain’s hardwired desire to learn what happens next. When writers tap into the evolutionary purpose of story and electrify our curiosity, it triggers a delicious dopamine rush that tells us to pay attention. Without it, even the most perfect prose won’t hold anyone’s interest. Backed by recent breakthroughs in neuroscience as well as examples from novels, screenplays, and short stories, Wired for Story offers a revolutionary look at story as the brain experiences it. Each chapter zeroes in on an aspect of the brain, its corresponding revelation about story, and the way to apply it to your storytelling right now.


Best of Our Memoirs

Best of Our Memoirs

Author: Luanna K. Leisure

Publisher: Lulu.com

Published: 2016-09-11

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 0578185539

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What do you think about when you hear the word ""Memoir?"" It's quite a bit more than a chronology of someone's life. Take a look inside of this book. You may be surprised, intrigued, saddened, lifted up or perhaps inspired. The writers of this collection of reminiscences have been brave to share some of their life experiences with you. Perhaps you will be inspired to start writing your memoirs.


The Best of Us

The Best of Us

Author: Joyce Maynard

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2017-09-05

Total Pages: 469

ISBN-13: 1635570360

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'This haunting story, penned by a master wordsmith, is a reminder to savor every loved one and every day.' Booklist Indie Next Pick "For Reading Groups" From New York Times bestselling author Joyce Maynard, a memoir about discovering strength in the midst of great loss--"heart wrenching, inspiring, full of joy and tears and life." (Anne Lamott) In 2011, when she was in her late fifties, beloved author and journalist Joyce Maynard met the first true partner she had ever known. Jim wore a rakish hat over a good head of hair; he asked real questions and gave real answers; he loved to see Joyce shine, both in and out of the spotlight; and he didn't mind the mess she made in the kitchen. He was not the husband Joyce imagined, but he quickly became the partner she had always dreamed of. Before they met, both had believed they were done with marriage, and even after they married, Joyce resolved that no one could alter her course of determined independence. Then, just after their one-year wedding anniversary, her new husband was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. During the nineteen months that followed, as they battled his illness together, she discovered for the first time what it really meant to be a couple--to be a true partner and to have one. This is their story. Charting the course through their whirlwind romance, a marriage cut short by tragedy, and Joyce's return to singleness on new terms, The Best of Us is a heart-wrenching, ultimately life-affirming reflection on coming to understand true love through the experience of great loss.


Not Quite What I Was Planning

Not Quite What I Was Planning

Author: Larry Smith

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2009-10-13

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 0061750913

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Deceptively simple and surprisingly addictive, Not Quite What I Was Planning is a thousand glimpses of humanity—six words at a time. One Life. Six Words. What's Yours? When Hemingway famously wrote, "For Sale: baby shoes, never worn," he proved that an entire story can be told using a half dozen words. When the online storytelling magazine SMITH asked readers to submit six-word memoirs, they proved a whole, real life can be told this way too. The results are fascinating, hilarious, shocking, and moving. From small sagas of bittersweet romance ("Found true love, married someone else") to proud achievements and stinging regrets ("After Harvard, had baby with crackhead"), these terse true tales relate the diversity of human experience in tasty bite-sized pieces. From authors Jonathan Lethem and Richard Ford to comedians Stephen Colbert and Amy Sedaris, to ordinary folks around the world, everyone has a six-word story to tell.


The Skin Above My Knee

The Skin Above My Knee

Author: Marcia Butler

Publisher: Hachette UK

Published: 2017-02-21

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 031639226X

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The unflinching story of a professional oboist who finds order and beauty in music as her personal life threatens to destroy her. Music was everything for Marcia Butler. Growing up in an emotionally desolate home with an abusive father and a distant mother, she devoted herself to the discipline and rigor of the oboe, and quickly became a young prodigy on the rise in New York City's competitive music scene. But haunted by troubling childhood memories while balancing the challenges of a busy life as a working musician, Marcia succumbed to dangerous men, drugs and self-destruction. In her darkest moments, she asked the hardest question of all: Could music truly save her life? A memoir of startling honesty and subtle, profound beauty, The Skin Above My Knee is the story of a woman finding strength in her creative gifts and artistic destiny. Filled with vivid portraits of 1970's New York City, and fascinating insights into the intensity and precision necessary for a career in professional music, this is more than a narrative of a brilliant musician struggling to make it big in the big city. It is the story of a survivor. One of 2017's 35 over 35 One of the Washington Post's Top 10 Classical Music Moments of the Year


The Memoir Project

The Memoir Project

Author: Marion Roach Smith

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Published: 2011-06-09

Total Pages: 140

ISBN-13: 1455501824

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An extraordinary "practical resource for beginners" looking to write their own memoir—​now new and revised (Kirkus Reviews)! The greatest story you could write is one you've experienced yourself. Knowing where to start is the hardest part, but it just got a little easier with this essential guidebook for anyone wanting to write a memoir. Did you know that the #1 thing that baby boomers want to do in retirement is write a book—about themselves? It's not that every person has lived such a unique or dramatic life, but we inherently understand that writing a memoir—whether it's a book, blog, or just a letter to a child—is the single greatest path to self-examination. Through the use of disarmingly frank, but wildly fun tactics that offer you simple and effective guidelines that work, you can stop treading water in writing exercises or hiding behind writer's block. Previously self-published under the title, Writing What You Know: Raelia, this book has found an enthusiastic audience that now writes with intent.


The Best of Me

The Best of Me

Author: David Sedaris

Publisher: Little, Brown

Published: 2020-11-03

Total Pages: 358

ISBN-13: 0316628255

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“Genius… It is miraculous to read these pieces… You must read The Best of Me.” —Andrew Sean Greer, New York Times Book Review A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice A CNN and Christian Science Monitor Best Book of the Month For more than twenty-five years, David Sedaris has been carving out a unique literary space, virtually creating his own genre. A Sedaris story may seem confessional, but is also highly attuned to the world outside. It opens our eyes to what is at absurd and moving about our daily existence. And it is almost impossible to read without laughing. Now, for the first time collected in one volume, the author brings us his funniest and most memorable work. In these stories, Sedaris shops for rare taxidermy, hitchhikes with a lady quadriplegic, and spits a lozenge into a fellow traveler’s lap. He drowns a mouse in a bucket, struggles to say “give it to me” in five languages, and hand-feeds a carnivorous bird. But if all you expect to find in Sedaris’s work is the deft and sharply observed comedy for which he became renowned, you may be surprised to discover that his words bring more warmth than mockery, more fellow-feeling than derision. Nowhere is this clearer than in his writing about his loved ones. In these pages, Sedaris explores falling in love and staying together, recognizing his own aging not in the mirror but in the faces of his siblings, losing one parent and coming to terms—at long last—with the other. Taken together, the stories in TheBest of Me reveal the wonder and delight Sedaris takes in the surprises life brings him. No experience, he sees, is quite as he expected—it’s often harder, more fraught, and certainly weirder—but sometimes it is also much richer and more wonderful. Full of joy, generosity, and the incisive humor that has led David Sedaris to be called “the funniest man alive” (Time Out New York), The Best of Me spans a career spent watching and learning and laughing—quite often at himself—and invites readers deep into the world of one of the most brilliant and original writers of our time.


The Memoir Workbook

The Memoir Workbook

Author: C S Lakin

Publisher:

Published: 2017-12-19

Total Pages: 134

ISBN-13: 9780986134791

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Stories are powerful, and humans have been telling stories since the dawn of time. Do you feel driven to share what you've gone through and the insights you've learned in life? Do you long to tell your story but don't know where to start? The Memoir Workbook will show you, step by step, all you need to know to tell a powerful and well-written memoir. With pen in hand, you'll mine your memories and begin to put them in a coherent order inside the pages of the workbook. Passages from memoirs and writing prompts will help you get your creative juices flowing. Whether you want to publish your story or write it for yourself, this unique workbook will help you learn the most effective ways to convey your life experiences onto the page. Inside, you'll learn these essential aspects to memoir writing: How to identify your unique story as well as the things that make your story universal The many ways memoir can be structured, with examples to help you decide how to lay out your story How to determine a beginning and an ending point Ways to bring your story to life with sensory detail What "voice" is and why it's important to write from the "mature self" How to craft distilled dialogue that is engaging and sounds natural How to protect yourself and others when you write your memoir What theme is and why you need one How to pick an appropriate title for your memoir Writing a memoir is a journey of the heart. The Memoir Workbook is a light that guides you along the path, from start to finish.


Reading Lolita in Tehran

Reading Lolita in Tehran

Author: Azar Nafisi

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2003-12-30

Total Pages: 386

ISBN-13: 1588360792

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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • We all have dreams—things we fantasize about doing and generally never get around to. This is the story of Azar Nafisi’s dream and of the nightmare that made it come true. For two years before she left Iran in 1997, Nafisi gathered seven young women at her house every Thursday morning to read and discuss forbidden works of Western literature. They were all former students whom she had taught at university. Some came from conservative and religious families, others were progressive and secular; several had spent time in jail. They were shy and uncomfortable at first, unaccustomed to being asked to speak their minds, but soon they began to open up and to speak more freely, not only about the novels they were reading but also about themselves, their dreams and disappointments. Their stories intertwined with those they were reading—Pride and Prejudice, Washington Square, Daisy Miller and Lolita—their Lolita, as they imagined her in Tehran. Nafisi’s account flashes back to the early days of the revolution, when she first started teaching at the University of Tehran amid the swirl of protests and demonstrations. In those frenetic days, the students took control of the university, expelled faculty members and purged the curriculum. When a radical Islamist in Nafisi’s class questioned her decision to teach The Great Gatsby, which he saw as an immoral work that preached falsehoods of “the Great Satan,” she decided to let him put Gatsby on trial and stood as the sole witness for the defense. Azar Nafisi’s luminous tale offers a fascinating portrait of the Iran-Iraq war viewed from Tehran and gives us a rare glimpse, from the inside, of women’s lives in revolutionary Iran. It is a work of great passion and poetic beauty, written with a startlingly original voice. Praise for Reading Lolita in Tehran “Anyone who has ever belonged to a book group must read this book. Azar Nafisi takes us into the vivid lives of eight women who must meet in secret to explore the forbidden fiction of the West. It is at once a celebration of the power of the novel and a cry of outrage at the reality in which these women are trapped. The ayatollahs don’ t know it, but Nafisi is one of the heroes of the Islamic Republic.”—Geraldine Brooks, author of Nine Parts of Desire