When my friend Kristine gathered her friends at the Delaware Beach, she always brought plenty of craft items for us to play with. Markers and paper, beads and cord or wire. At the end of each visit, we often had hand made art that needed careful removing from the walls. And those who knitted brought their yarn, needles, knitting bags.
Until I joined Those Who Knitted, I brought the tools of my particular craft: paper, pens and works in progress. While the knitters knitted, seated on the colorful sofa or sprawled on the floor, I read a chapter or two aloud to them. Kristine and the rest offered, not just feedback, but response. When my voice failed, a spontaneous moan when I had to finish reading for the day filled me with joy.
We all love for our work to be loved, whether the work is a story or a just-completed scarf.
I believe characters live in one layer of reality and readers in another. It is my job as an author to build a bridge between the two. I strive to share writing struggles and triumphs. Inspired by Jo in Little Women, I began writing at age nine and submitted my first story for publication at seventeen. I haven't looked back since; words, pens and paper, and the keyboard have been my constant companions ever since.
Showing posts with label memoir. Show all posts
Showing posts with label memoir. Show all posts
28.9.11
2.7.11
beachmeansbeach
beachmeansbeach
That was my friend Kristine's special email address for messages and information and organizational data for our annual trips to the beach. The group of eight or more women who gathered in the canal-side condo nicknamed "The Delaware Consortium" by someone I once knew. We talked and knitted, cooked and ate and talked, Talked and visited the ocean, which Kristine always called "the big water."
For the first time since soon after Kristine died, I'll be visiting that part of the world again. I could say this upcoming vacation will be bitter sweet, but not only do I want to avoid that cliche, I have no idea how it will feel to see the places where I last saw my friend, or to visit the places that feature in the memoir she inspired me to write.
That will be the topic of my next post a couple of weeks from now.
That was my friend Kristine's special email address for messages and information and organizational data for our annual trips to the beach. The group of eight or more women who gathered in the canal-side condo nicknamed "The Delaware Consortium" by someone I once knew. We talked and knitted, cooked and ate and talked, Talked and visited the ocean, which Kristine always called "the big water."
For the first time since soon after Kristine died, I'll be visiting that part of the world again. I could say this upcoming vacation will be bitter sweet, but not only do I want to avoid that cliche, I have no idea how it will feel to see the places where I last saw my friend, or to visit the places that feature in the memoir she inspired me to write.
That will be the topic of my next post a couple of weeks from now.
Labels:
creativity and writing,
memoir,
travel
14.2.11
Children and Memory
I never expected to write memoir, but that's a good bit of what I now do. Not only is my memoir Love is the Thread on its way to publication, I also publish the zine Memory Stick. With Issue 7 in the works, I've got memories on the mind today.
Memory Stick includes personal narratives, family narratives and ancestral stories. I started the zine more than a year ago around the time I hit menopause. (Or it hit me.) Friends assure me that the colander-like holes in my memory will mend once my body chemistry stabilizes. In the meantime, I want not only to recall stories from all the layers of my past, personal and familial, I realized how important it is for me to share those tales with others.
Each issue centers on a theme. The upcoming Memory Stick includes stories about the children in my life, from nephews and nieces to some little people I worked with at the kindergarden center where I worked many years ago, and one or two who, despite the decades of difference in our ages, I count as friends.
Many years ago when he was four, my eldest nephew told me, "You're a tall child with car keys." (Tall? Well, to a four year old, I suppose so!) Issue 7 celebrates the child in all of us.
Memory Stick includes personal narratives, family narratives and ancestral stories. I started the zine more than a year ago around the time I hit menopause. (Or it hit me.) Friends assure me that the colander-like holes in my memory will mend once my body chemistry stabilizes. In the meantime, I want not only to recall stories from all the layers of my past, personal and familial, I realized how important it is for me to share those tales with others.
Each issue centers on a theme. The upcoming Memory Stick includes stories about the children in my life, from nephews and nieces to some little people I worked with at the kindergarden center where I worked many years ago, and one or two who, despite the decades of difference in our ages, I count as friends.
Many years ago when he was four, my eldest nephew told me, "You're a tall child with car keys." (Tall? Well, to a four year old, I suppose so!) Issue 7 celebrates the child in all of us.
Labels:
children,
memoir,
storytelling
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