Guest Bloggers

Guest Blogger Frances Lefkowitz

Today’s guest blogger, Frances Lefkowitz, writes about the importance of family stories and keeping memories alive. Telling stories ‘round the table, can increase well-being, reduce anxiety and depression, reinforce feelings of closeness among family members, and build resilience for navigating life’s normal ups and downs. Stories about something good coming from something bad are particularly therapeutic. When something bad happens, but you find a way to use it to your advantage, you redeem (and transform) the negative experience. The tales need to be structured, with a beginning, a middle, and — most crucial — an end, a conclusion that makes sense of the situation and gives it meaning. Tips for getting the storytelling started: 1. Share photos: Albums, yearbooks, holiday photos, loose photos in shoeboxes. 2. Start and continue traditions. Rituals contribute to stories. 3. Share stories during mealtimes. Frances Lefkowitz has spent over twenty years writing and publishing. The…

Prompts

This happened . . . Prompt #402

Today’s prompt is inspired by a talk Ianthe Brautigan gave on March 5, 2001. Memoir is a journey. Just because it’s your life, don’t think you know the end. A beeper could go off and change everything. Life is like a box of chocolates . . . you don’t know what you got until you bite into it. Sometimes your life makes sense after you write and digest your findings. Ianthe suggests writing a memoir in an unusual way, not “this happened and then that happened.” To start: Write excerpts from your past. Write your stories. Don’t worry about where they will go. Tell your story as if sitting around a campfire. If you need inspiration:  Make a collage from magazine articles/photos about what you want to write about. Look at these when you need a nudge to write. Once you start writing, let go of how you should write….

Just Write

How to Write A Memoir— Part Two

How To Write A Memoir, Part 1 lists a variety of methods for writing personal stories. Part 2 continues with revision and the business of writing. Take care of yourself Writing one’s life story can be difficult. While writing, take good care of yourself. Anytime you are feeling overwhelmed by this writing process, set your work aside. Take a break, get some fresh air, visit with a friend. Read helpful, supportive material such as Toxic Mom’s Toolkit. Organize When editing, save your “cuts” in separate files (either paper file folders or on computer files). You might be able to use these darlings in another personal essay. Use manila file folders to store print material: newspaper articles, photos, handwritten notes, letters, brochures, etc. Revising In the revising stage, delete what might cause embarrassment. Fine tune for accuracy. Shape like a gardener pruning a hydrangea. Take a few snips here, cut a…

Just Write

How To Write A Memoir — Part One

Your Life. You lived it. Surely you can write about it. Right? In How To Write A Memoir, Part 1, we’ll discuss methods and ideas about writing personal stories, with links to published memoirs. How To Write A Memoir, Part 2, we’ll cover organizing, revising and more. You can write in chronological order, or build your story around pivotal events. In the beginning, it doesn’t matter what structure you use. Write in a style that is comfortable for you. Try one way and if isn’t working for you, try something else. Memoirs written in chronological order (with back story woven in): To Have Not by Frances Lefkowitz  and Grief Denied by Pauline Laurent. Rachael Herron, A Life in Stitches, assembles her stories around her knitting experiences. For the first draft, it’s fine to jump around in time. Don’t worry too much about making sense in the early stage of writing….

Guest Bloggers

The Power of Storytelling—Now Proven

Guest Blogger Frances Lefkowitz writes: The life of a freelance writer is full of the uncertain (“where will my next assignment come from?”) and the mundane (“did I spell that source’s name right?”), coupled with high deadline pressure and middling compensation. But every once in a while, I get to track down fascinating regular people and ask them to tell me stories. That’s what I did for a recent article for Good Housekeeping on the power of storytelling. The assignment was to write about the new evidence that storytelling has benefits for the health and wellness of individuals, families, and communities, and I had to read my fair share of academic research journals and talk to my fair share of M.D.s and Ph.Ds. But I also got to sit back, relax, and listen to tall tales. The best, most enduring stories, it turns out, are those that contain both hardship…

Prompts

What games did you play? Prompt #32

Today’s prompt is from To Have Not, a fascinating memoir by Frances Lefkowitz. When us kids used to walk down 16th Street to the schoolyard or across Sanchez to the corner store, we’d keep a lookout for cool cars. When one drove by – a red mustang convertible, a tiny MG, a black Jag with the silver cat ready to pounce off the hood – whoever saw it first would point and say, “That’s my car!” We could play this game anywhere, my brothers and their buddies and I, shouting the words loud and fast to drown out anyone else who might be thinking about claiming the same car.  You could even play it alone, whispering the three magic words while walking home from school or sitting in a window seat on the bus, leaning your drowsy head against the sun-warmed glass. Then the car would speed through traffic, carrying…

Book Reviews

Frances Lefkowitz — To Have Not, a memoir

Frances Lefkowitz, author of To Have Not,  has written a memoir about her remarkable life: lifting herself up from the hard scrabble of a “have not” life in San Francisco in the seventies to attending an Ivy League college on a scholarship. She writes with clarity, honesty and humor, showing her unique perspective on life. Here’s an excerpt: “But time, like traffic, moves on. In a moment that lasts maybe a year or two, everything that was clear about the world becomes hazy and then sharpens up again, like the view through a camera lens as you twist the focus in and out. What you once knew without thinking begins to clash with the evidence darting out at you from all around, from TV and movies and comic books and magazines and even real life . . . This is the  moment when you discover that there are people out…

Places to submit

Flash Fiction Online

Frances Lefkowitz has been published in Flash Fiction.  Here’s what Flash Fiction has to say: Every month, Flash Fiction Online is proud to publish what we think is some of the best darn flash fiction (500 to 1000 words) there is. Each issue includes three original stories by both new and seasoned authors. Although many on our staff have a fondness for the speculative, we enjoy and select fiction in any genre. Founded by Jake Freivald in 2007, Flash Fiction Online has been published by Anna Yeatts since September 2013. We believe good stories should be free to readers—our goal is to help foster appreciation for short fiction. At the same time, we’re eager to support writers. We offer pro-rate payment for stories (as defined by the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, $0.05/ word). All our stories are read blind, with the author names and other identifying material…

Guest Bloggers

Guest Blogger Frances Lefkowitz – “Are your parents still speaking to you?” The Dangers of Memoir

“Are your parents still speaking to you?” This question—a darn good one—comes up pretty much every time I do a Q&A. The short answer is “Yes.” My parents and siblings are all still talking to me; we still get together for holidays and birthdays and no blood gets shed. But this is not the case for other memoirists; I know several who are estranged from their families. Discussing family matters, revealing secrets, shining light on our most vulnerable and tragic moments including bad behavior or naive mistakes, and getting just our version into print, so it sounds like the official word on the subject: If this is what we do when we write memoir, then offending the people in our lives is one of our occupational hazards. The long answer is that this question is a great opportunity to discuss the distinction between the process of writing a memoir or…