Marion Roach Smith’s alternate sisterly reality, with Margaret Roach.
SOMETIMES I CAN BE SUBTLE. And while no particular incident of that comes to mind right now, I maintain that I can be. Sometimes. I’m sure of it. Though never when teaching memoir writing, and so I know for certain that I was not a bit subtle in a recent class when I simply declared a total moratorium on the self-congratulatory. Let me explain.
{ 6 comments }
NO MORE WRITING EXERCISES. Have any of those stupid prompts or morning pages ever gotten you published? Has writing from the right side of your brain, or getting in touch with your angel’s feather, or scribbling pages put you where you want to be as a writer? I doubt it. I suspect that those manners of nonsense have instead stolen what little time you had for writing. How do I know? Because the memoir class I’ve taught for 12 years is filled with people recovering from those very exercises, people whose sole relationship to writing was practicing, not writing for real. Right now, I’m running two Master Classes consisting of a total of 24 people who have made the New Year commitment to finish their books by the end of June 2010. They are writing for real. Want to join the wave of success? [click to continue…]
{ 2 comments }
READY, SET, WRITE! That’s how most people think writing a memoir will go, whether it be in blog form, a series of essays or a full-length book. There once was a time when I was terribly polite about this work and what it requires. At cocktail parties when someone asked me what I do, and just above my string of pearls I’d smile and reply, “I’m a writer,” and nearly to a person, he’d say he was going to write when he retired. Nodding, I’d wish him the best with it and slink off to find the canapés, wondering what was wrong with me that I was going to devote my whole life to writing, when clearly people who were smarter than I could put it off until they got around to it. [click to continue…]
{ 10 comments }
THINK IN PROPINQUITIES. It’s a phrase that makes me sound more prim librarian than not, I know, but I love that word “propinquity,” and its reminder that you think of your angle shots when the topic you want to write up is Thanksgiving, for instance. Don’t give us a Polaroid of the day, but rather some side view that illustrates how you learned a new way to give thanks. It happened to me when I brought a New York City cab driver to Thanksgiving dinner. [click to continue…]
{ 4 comments }
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…]
{ 4 comments }
A SISTER-FRIEND FROM OUR extended network, writer and yoga instructor Joely Johnson Mork, sent us the following piece back in December, during which time all of us were otherwise engaged making other kinds of lists. But I keep thinking of Joely’s offering, and wanted to share it. One week after a loss she was certain she would never write about, the death of her best friend, I asked Joely, a former student in my memoir-writing class, if she thought she could simply bring in a list of thoughts related to the event. She actually she wrote a series of three lists, about her last visit with Mary. I offer them here, in another busy time of year, to again help us take stock of what we value. [click to continue…]
{ 7 comments }
Years ago Marion's shrink told her she needed to come up with a version of her childhood she could live with. She thought he said "aversion," and promptly took hold of a hideous tale of woe she particularly liked. It was thousands of dollars later that she finally sorted out the distinction. (Sloane Tanen illustration.)
I TELL STORIES. That would be Margaret’s version of our tale, the suggestion being that she writes the truth. For me, even that distinction is a story. About 30 years after riding the bus with Andy, and on the couch of a good psychiatrist, a question arose about my childhood that made me realize I was in the right hands, professionally speaking. The doctor was not one of those who wanted me to relive everything, instead wanting me to move on with some alacrity. I liked that, especially when he summed up his outlook for his clients this way: [click to continue…]
{ 16 comments }
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…]
{ 30 comments }
MARION LOVES WATER, Margaret (left) earth.
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.