By Marion Roach Smith
THE SUMMER SLUMP. This is a tough time for writers–that time of year when the most seductive set of temptations to not write beckon: the great outdoors and all its wonders. I mean, who can write in this weather? Who can write when you could instead: swim/sail/run/play tennis/golf/hike, whatever? You can. That is, if you’ll willing to do a simple things. Are you? Then come along.
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memoir writing
By Marion Roach Smith
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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IT’S HERE, FINALLY, Sister Marion says. You think she means Spring, or gardening season, or prepare-to-get-into-bathing-suit season? Nope. Not that. Or, more to the point, all that plus this one other altogether totemic annual moment: that first run of holidays (as opposed to the November-December sleigh ride) during which memoir writers are given ample opportunities to take notes. Get out your notebooks, sisters: Your family is on its way to your holiday table! Good fodder coming right up. How to get ready to write it.
PAIGE’S GOOD FRIEND told her that Mary Karr’s Lit was the best non-fiction she’d read in years, that while she couldn’t bear to put it down, the prose was so divine it made her want to stop after each passage just to savor it. This friend is no easy sell when it comes to writing and reading, so OK, said TSP’S Paige: “add that book to my reading list, stat, and here’s why.”
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SOMETIMES MARION CAN BE SUBTLE. And while no particular incident of that comes to mind right now, she’s sure she occasionally is. Though never when teaching memoir writing, so she knows for certain that she was not a bit subtle in a recent class when she simply declared a total moratorium on the self-congratulatory. Let her explain.
THINK IN PROPINQUITIES, says Marion, and yes, she knows: The phrase makes her sound like a librarian. But the wacky word is a reminder to think of your angle shots when you write up a topic like a family holiday. Don’t give us a Polaroid of the day, she says, on your blog or in your journal, but rather some side view that illustrates how you learned a new way to give thanks–like the one she discovered when she brought a New York City cab driver to Thanksgiving dinner. The tale, and the memoir tips.
MARION’S BACK where she loves to be, three weeks into teaching 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 down. Her favorite problem last week was from one fine young writer who simply admitted, “My story is too big.” Ah. Yes. Too big. Whose isn’t? How to wrestle a big story to the ground.
STUCK IN CREATIVE NEUTRAL? NO WORRY. Our writing coach in residence, Sister Marion, says phooey to the idea of writer’s block, and proceeds to prove that anyone can barrel through a “block” with this secret weapon: the friendly ear of a sister or sister-friend. Her plan for pushing ahead on your artistic path.
ARE YOU WRITING SOMETHING? Don’t be shy; everybody is writing something about their lives these days (isn’t that what blogging is?). Though school’s out for the summer where our sister Marion teaches memoir writing, she’s offering up some tactics here to help us sisters get it all down. The first installment is an exercise about finding the story among all those details. You can read it here.
First time here? Here's the idea: TSP 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 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: 
As the suffix of its name suggests, 
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. 
