“Sing your song. Dance your dance. Tell your tale.”
—Frank McCourt, Angela’s Ashes

Process & Craft

PEOPLE TALK
Editor Lisa Dale Norton on how to handle dialogue in your memoir writing (is it okay to invent what you haven’t recorded?).

“CHUNKING IT OUT”
There’s a lot of organization and structural editing that goes into crafting a narrative from a series of interview transcripts and a box of photos; I love Lauren Befus’s analogy of “piecing together a large puzzle” of our clients’ lives.”

TRIBAL & PERSONAL HISTORY, CONVERGED
“I don’t know how people write about real people,” Louise Erdrich said. “If you can’t find a direct quote of them saying what you want them to say, how do you put words in their mouth?” Her latest book, The Night Watchman, is a blend of truth and fiction, real people and real events plus a good dose of the imaginary.

FREE LEARNING OPPORTUNITY
Preservationist Margot Note teaches how to organize and preserve your family and personal legacy during a free webinar on Sunday, March 22 at 1pm.

Voices

THE EROS OF ESTRANGEMENT
In this adapted excerpt from Slouching Towards Los Angeles: Living and Writing by Joan Didion’s Light, Joshua Wolf Shenk explores specificity of place; dislocation and alienation; and what we do and don’t reveal in memoiristic writing.

ORIGIN STORY
FamilyScrybe contributor Taneya Y. Koonce’s musings on how interviewing her grandmothers and learning their stories helped shape her identity.

ANTHOLOGY: “WHY WE WRITE”
“The real reason that we're writing is to create opportunities for conversation and empathy and understanding and to have that present in the pages of this book,” says Randy Brown, a military veteran who gathered 61 authors to make a case for writing about war.

“A MEMOIR AND A RECKONING”
“This, I understood finally, was history: not the ordered narrative of books but an affliction that spread from parent to child, sister to brother, husband to wife.” Alex Halberstadt on writing a family memoir when your grandfather was Stalin’s bodyguard.

More Life Stories?

NO REGRETS?
A recent Wall Street Journal article reports that a growing number of adult children are interested in hearing more of their parents' stories. My thoughts on the so-called trend, and what we can do to ensure that such interest abides.

CHILDHOOD INFLUENCES
Who were your heroes when you were growing up? How did they make a difference in your life? Personal historian Carol McLaren of Arizona–based Unique Life Stories shares recollections of her childhood inspiration, Helen Keller.

The Stuff of the Past

PRECIOUS FAMILY RECIPES
The Internet keeps countless recipes in neat, tidy digital files, so handwritten notecards are quickly becoming cherished keepsakes. The folks at Martha Stewart have advice for how to best preserve them (and there are a lot more factors to consider than I imagined).

PHOTOS TAKEN, PHOTOS NOT TAKEN
“I don’t have the answers...around when to put the camera away and when to keep on clicking. But I do believe we owe it to ourselves to authentically examine how photography fits into our own lives—paying mind to when it enriches and when it detracts from our now.”

ADIEUX
Deanna Dikeman’s portrait series doubles as a family album, compressing nearly three decades of her parents’ goodbyes into a deft and affecting chronology.

THE WHISPER OF FAMILY GHOSTS
“I think about the material things—letters, pictures, tablecloths—that connect children to the houses they left behind. Pieces of paper, bolts of fabric, woven together in a chain and stretching across diasporas.” Hannah S. Pressman on the import-export business of our memories.

...and a Few More Links

• The deeper story behind Dorothea Lange’s most famous photo

• StoryCorps is pulling some of the more heartwarming stories from their archive to uplift during difficult times.

• Combing through thousands of digital images, these photo organizers help to “tell your life story.”

• The eclectic museum safeguarding Selma's long and intricate past

Short Takes