March 29, 2024

Archives for 2015

Your Memoir as a Movie

Do you love movies? To me, there’s nothing so satisfying as sitting down to immerse myself in a new story. The first few moments need to capture my attention so I can’t look away. I make sure my tea is nearby, and that my kitties are ready to settle down on my lap. Once the kitties are there, I won’t be getting up for at least an hour or more as the story weaves its magic around me. It grabs me with a scene, in a moment where I’m drawn into a world not my own. I’m inside the scene, inside the … [Read more...]

Libel and Invasion of Privacy in Memoir

So many memoirists Linda Joy and I work with are concerned about legal issues surrounding libel and invasion of privacy that it's high time we get clear about what you can and cannot do in memoir here on our blog. I obtained the information below about libel and invasion of privacy at a session I attended at Pub U  in April (notice—next year Pub U is happening in Salt Lake City, April 8-9), where attorney Jonathan Kirsch was helping a bunch of publishers and authors wrap their mind around the … [Read more...]

Transformation in Wild—The True Inner Journey

Last week, my writing group celebrated our annual holiday gathering by seeing the movie Wild. Prepped with the excitement and the long wait for the release of the movie, we settled in to see how the filmmakers and Reese Witherspoon as Cheryl Strayed would translate the book onto the big screen. Earlier in the year, we had met the “real” Cheryl at a daylong writing conference where, in a graceful and authentic way, she shared her stories of living and writing the moments that were so profound in … [Read more...]