Marion Roach Smith’s alternate sisterly reality, with Margaret Roach.
WHAT MAKES GOOD MEMOIR? I get this question all the time when I teach. And reading your comments on this makes me think it’s time to limn that line between what is merely some great scene versus a scene that is ready for the writing. [click to continue…]
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ARE YOU WRITING SOMETHING? Oh, come on. You can tell me. Everyone else is writing about their lives. You can, too. But which story? And how to tell it? I teach memoir, and while my class is off for the summer, I’ll continue posting memoir tips here on TSP, hoping you can find the time to get to your story and that I can be of some help. My theory is that anyone who survived childhood has enough material for several books. So let’s get to it. Here’s an exercise; read along and let’s see if it gets you going.
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WRITE IT DOWN. I tell this to my memoir students all the time. Carry a notebook, index cards, write on your hands if you must, but write it down. Keep notebooks in car, next to your side of the bed, in the kitchen; tuck an index card into your back pocket, jacket pocket, jeans pocket. And carry a pen. And they do, and then right around the third class, someone asks, “Write what down?” Ah, what good students. I was waiting for that. [click to continue…]
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ANOTHER FAKED MEMOIR. This time it’s Herman Rosenblat’s book, Angel at the Fence, a story with a story line that was simply too good to be true. Here’s the plot: A boy imprisoned in a concentration camp during World War II is kept from starving by apples thrown over the camp’s fence. The angel? A lovely young girl who years later reconnects with Rosenblat on a blind date in New York City. They marry and live happily almost-ever-after, until the groom gets caught palming off his faked memoir to a relentlessly unsuspecting public. Do I sound unsympathetic to all concerned? I am. But not for the reasons that you might expect. [click to continue…]
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W HILE THE SISTER PROJECT has been up and running only a month, it seems we already know a great deal about one another. How is that possible? One way is through the direct information we share: that Margaret’s my genetic sister, that my sister-friend Paige of “Hey, Little Sister” can really cook. And while pure facts are great, if there is a Number 1 rule of writing (or any form of effective communication) it’s this: Show, don’t tell. [click to continue…]
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IT’S THE HOLIDAYS, the season to make lists. I had planned to write about that, as in what’s on my list/what’s on Margaret’s. But in The Sister Project’s first week online, so many of you emailed and commented about another topic that I’m moved to take it on here. The topic? Missing your sister at this time of year. [click to continue…]
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A S YOU KEEP pointing out in your comments, sisters are slices of a whole tale, the whole tale being the story of a family. Points of view can be very pointed, of course, which is why sisters can sometimes be both irksome and essential at the very same time. After all, they know the other side of our stories, the coin flipped over. [click to continue…]
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FRIEND SLOANE TANEN made Marion a chick shrink. Click to learn why.
First time here? Here's the idea: The Sister Project is a network of blogs about the many facets of the word sister, and the concept of sisterhood. A sisterhood of sister blogs, you could say. Whatever sister means to you, from identical twin to sister-in-law (or in friendship or in feminism), we’ll make room to listen in about it or express it on TSP. Like the slogan up top on our homepage says, “Don’t you have something to say to your sister?” We've got galleries of art and literature by and about sisters, and a Sisterpedia of sisterly trivia...but now we're getting ahead of ourselves. The quick study: Learn more about TSP, and how to find your way around. And oh—a giant, sisterly welcome.
No surprise, really, that sisterhood, often life’s longest relationship and always one of its most important, has been the Muse for so much creative self-expression by women, and also by men.
TSP’s Galleries were created to show off that outpouring of art and craft, poetry and prose. Come see a show or two—no ticket required, no lines to get in—and suggest others whose work we ought to showcase.
As the suffix of its name suggests, TSP's Sisterpedia is the reference section, one we’re hoping you’ll help us grow to maturity by adding your knowledge in the comments. Turn us on to new facts and figures, whether for the branch of our ‘library’ called Sistory (history from a sister point of view, from the Muses of ancient Greece to 60s Girl Groups and beyond) or the one called Sibling Science (what makes sisters tick, genetically and behaviorally). Or just click around and have a good read. See you there.
