Tell the Story
My methodology, if you can call it that, for writing these posts is to read a book, underlining as I go, and then reread the underlined sections, making little stars or asterisks in the margins, and then, as some theme or focus begins to take shape in my mind, go back through the book one […]
read moreIn this project of reading memoirs and books about memoir, I find myself reading a book like Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (which is not a memoir in the sense that the other memoirs I've read are memoir), determined to find the ways in which it is a sort of memoir, or at least […]
read moreI read Tobias Wolff's novel Old School just before applying for the MFA program I am now working toward completing. In my application letter, I quoted Wolff. To start this post, another quote from the headmaster of Old School: "Make no mistake, he said: a true piece of writing is a dangerous thing. It can […]
read moreI read Mary Karr's new memoir, Lit, before I read The Liar's Club, so before I read about Mary and Lecia Karr's childhood in Texas and Colorado, I read about their trip to Colorado as adults, around the time The Liar's Club was about to be published. This is Mary Karr's account in Lit of […]
read moreInitially published anonymously in 1821, Thomas De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium Eater opens with De Quincey's worrying about telling his story: "I have for many months hesitated about the propriety of allowing this, or any part of my narrative, to come before the public eye, until after my death . . . . […]
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For years I kept secrets in silence. Then, once upon a time, I spoke and wrote them to a handful of people and began to blog anonymously. Today I tell my stories face-to-face, online, and in a memoir coming soon. Telling our stories leads to freedom, empowerment, and growth, for both the teller and the told. Is today your once upon a time, your time to tell your story?
