Marion Roach Smith’s alternate sisterly reality, with Margaret Roach.
CHEAP NOTEBOOKS ENJOY the singular fame of being one of only two things you need to be a memoirist. The other, of course is a pen. You can add index cards to the list, but if you go out into your daily rounds carrying little more than a pen and a notebook you can write memoir. And you know what? You don’t have to believe me. This time, I’m bringing in a reliable witness. [click to continue…]
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JUMP RIGHT IN and enter to win a free, signed copy of my new book, Writing What You Know: Realia. All you have to do be in the contest is leave a short piece of memoir at my on-line writing group at Beliefnet.com, where May is Memoir Month. It’s that simple. I’ll see you there.
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USE THE CALENDAR. I’ve covered this topic before, but guess what? Since I love you like a sister, I have made a calendar for you to use. Oh yeah: interactive, digital, online, and with all kinds of quirky (Quirky? Me?) dates for you to use to get those fingers typing up your personal essays. Now you’ve got no reason not to come along and use it. Here’s how. [click to continue…]
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IAM SO EXCITED TO INVITE YOU to come join the just-launched month-long memoir workshop I’m doing on the giant website Beliefnet, where (with a little prodding from yours truly) May has been named Memoir Month! The workshop is called “Writing What You Know” (sound familiar?). Why Beliefnet? Because I believe that writing what you know is the single greatest portal to self discovery. Come take a peek as we gear up, or register to join the free group class.
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ICALL IT “OUR GREAT EXPERIMENT.” My big sister Margaret calls it “Why not, and can-do.” It’s the release today (on the occasion of my “29th” birthday) of my fourth book by none other than big sister-turned-publisher. I think that’s the most unusual gift Margaret ever got me. Both of us Roach sisters also think it’s a must-have for anyone doing any memoir-style writing–whether in print or on a blog–which is what I’ve been teaching to sold-out classes for 13 years. Margaret says my writing tips helped her finish her own memoir, due out next February, which is how she got the idea to publish them. Get the details (and the book). What a birthday this is turning out to be! [UPDATED 1/11: My self-published book sold to a major publisher and will be re-released in an expanded version in late spring. Meantime, it is unavailable; I'll let you know when orders can be taken for the even more exciting version.]
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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…]
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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…]
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SCHOOL IS BACK. After a long summer of not teaching, I am back where I love to be, three weeks into a new class on memoir. And it’s a great class: Twenty-one eager writers, all with their own tales, all willing to do the work to get the pieces on the page. And each week I ask the same question: [click to continue…]
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WRITER’S BLOCK? NONSENSE. There is no such thing. Despite the fact that writing books are chock full of time-wasting exercises with all manners and ways to get you to emerge from that supposed thing, I say nonsense to all of it since there is no such thing. Don’t believe me? Well, come along with the sisterhood of writing and we’ll change your mind. [click to continue…]
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EVERYONE HAS A STORY. It’s true. And the evidence has never been more obvious. Have you seen the size of the scrapbook aisles at Michael’s or A.C. Moore? Have you read any blogs today, or watched as the number of printed personal essays continues to climb, even as the number of pages of our newspapers and magazines continues to decline? But are we writing it as well as we’d like, or are we just saying more? Would some how-to tips help, perhaps? [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.
