My son and I were invited to attend the Homecoming kickoff assembly at his high school Monday morning. While he’s not officially back to school yet (It will be another month before we find out when the doctor will release him to return to class,) he enjoyed stopping by the school and soaking up his fifteen minutes of celebrity status in front of the entire student body. Here’s a video:
Tag: Memoir
Before and after life turns on a dime
It’s true what they say about life and dimes. Two weeks ago, plus one day, my life was turned into a violent tailspin when my sixteen-year-old son was hit by a semi-truck while riding his bike.
So many things went right that morning, despite the great and horrible wrong that landed us where we are today. The driver of the truck stopped and helped my son rather than hitting him and driving away. Local first responders arrived on the scene in record time and rushed my son to the closest emergency room. A helicopter crew then took my son quickly to another hospital in a nearby city where a first-rate neurosurgeon literally saved his life.
I was later told that my son would be dead if everyone hadn’t reacted so swiftly. If even one person had faltered that day, I might be in mourning right now rather than living in a hospital, watching my son make miniscule yet amazing improvements each and every day. Continue reading “Before and after life turns on a dime”
Creative nonfiction writing exercise: Your name
As I mentioned in my last post, I am going to be doing a lot of writing this semester in my creative nonfiction course. I am working my way through my first reading assignment and am already coming across small writing exercises that I would like to share with you. This post might turn into a series!
Writing Exercise
For today’s creative nonfiction writing exercise, you will write two paragraphs about your name. The first paragraph should be strictly objective, while the second should be more subjective. In other words, the first paragraph will contain facts about your name. The second will tell what it is like to be YOU while wearing the mantel of your particular name. Here’s an example from Writing True: The Art and Craft of Creative Nonfiction: Continue reading “Creative nonfiction writing exercise: Your name”
I dreamed I rode my horse
Last night, I dreamed I was riding my old horse, Ruby, who’s been gone now for at least a decade. She’s a flighty old nag even in my dreams. Ruby had this annoying habit of flopping her head backward constantly, which always left me with the fear of being head-butted as I rode her. Once her son, Stormy, was old enough, I usually chose to ride him instead when I had the option.
In my dream, I was riding Ruby along a country road, and she kept throwing her head back at me as she always did. Up ahead, several other horses milled about on either side of the road. They perked their ears up as we drew closer, and Ruby grew increasingly agitated. Unfamiliar horses always made her nervous. I too grew anxious, clamping my fists around the reins in an effort to maneuver her past the other horses without incident. Continue reading “I dreamed I rode my horse”
My Final Paper | Teaching Life Writing as a Life Skill: Normalizing the Deviant Self via Personal Narrative
I finally finished the class I was taking this semester and turned in my 22-page final paper on Thursday. Yay! While I shared several of my earlier papers here on my blog throughout the semester, this paper is just way too long for that. So, I decided to see this as an opportunity to explore a new (to me) publishing platform that I had previously only used for reading: Scribd.
It turns out, Scribd is super easy to use. You can embed your documents right into your blog as I have done above so your readers don’t even have to leave your website! You can also charge people to read your documents on the Scribd website. I’m not going to do that with this paper, though. You may feel free to read it here in tiny text, or click through to the Scribd website or app to read it for free at your leisure! Continue reading “My Final Paper | Teaching Life Writing as a Life Skill: Normalizing the Deviant Self via Personal Narrative”
I’m suffering a little spring nostalgia
I’m feeling a little sad today. The redbud trees are slowly beginning to exchange their flowers for leaves. It may have been cool this week, but summer will soon overpower my favorite season, and we’ll be wilting in the sultry steam of a central Illinois summer.
This time of year always reminds me of my Grandma Webster who passed away just over nine years ago now. I was pregnant with my younger son when Grandma left us, so I will always be able to recall just how long she has been gone.
When I was a kid, I used to sneak down the hill by Grandma’s house with a pair of scissors and cut a few twigs of blooming rosebuds to surprise her with. Every time, she showed her appreciation for the gesture as if it was the first time. She had a way of making every single one of her grandchildren – so many of us now, I’ve lost count – believe ourselves to be her favorite. To this day, I am still fairly confident that I was Grandma’s favorite. But then again, so is everyone else!
Another treasured spring memory is a composite of all of the times I went mushroom hunting with my grandma in the woods by her house. Morels are plentiful in the woods of my homeland this time of year. When I was a kid, it seemed as though everyone I knew made a mass exodus into the local woodlands to search for this delectable treat. For a few short weeks, we’d have fried mushrooms for breakfast, and then again as a side dish at lunch and dinner. Unfortunately, I’ve never been any good at finding them myself. Continue reading “I’m suffering a little spring nostalgia”
Annotated Bib: “Creative Transcendence: Memoir Writing For Transformation And Empowerment.”
This week’s Annotated Bibliography entry reviews an article by Diana Raab, a researcher and memoir writer who explores “the transformative and empowering dynamics of writing a memoir in connection with transcendent/pivotal experiences.” You may view the full text here.
Annotated Bib Entry
Raab, Diana. “Creative Transcendence: Memoir Writing For Transformation and Empowerment.” Journal Of Transpersonal Psychology 46.2 (2014): 187-207. Academic Search Complete. Web. 2 Apr. 2015.
In this article, Raab discusses a study she conducted in which she examined the works of five writers who have written at least one book-length memoir. The purpose of this study was to determine the impact on the participants of writing about events that have transformed their lives. Participants were chosen who had 1) written at least one memoir that was prompted by the occurrence of a pivotal or transformative event in their lives, and 2) reported that writing a memoir about the inciting incident(s) provided additional transformative and empowering experiences for the writer. Individual stories were analyzed in an effort to identify their similarities and differences. Continue reading “Annotated Bib: “Creative Transcendence: Memoir Writing For Transformation And Empowerment.””
My son, the writer
My 8-year-old is writing a book for a competition at his school. Yesterday, he brought his notebook to town with him so he could work on his project while we waited for my cracked windshield to be repaired. He likes to use waiting room time constructively and always brings something to read or work on.
At one point, my son stopped to ask me to list all the foods I cook for dinner that “he really really likes a lot” (I could only think of tacos.) You see, he is doing a life writing piece and couldn’t remember what we’d had for dinner on a particular day he was describing, but he could remember it was something he liked a lot.
Since I wasn’t much help, he finally said, “I’ll just use tacos,” and got on with it. He didn’t let himself get hung up on that insignificant detail but instead chose something that acted as a fair representation of the truth. This is an essential concept to keep in mind when writing nonfiction, which many readers consider to be completely “true.” Sometimes obsessing over getting a tiny detail just right is counterproductive. There comes a time when you need to just come up with a fair representation and get on with it. Continue reading “My son, the writer”
The Stories We Tell | An analysis of Mary Gordon’s “The Shadow Man: A Daughter’s Search for her Father”
This semester, I am taking a graduate-level course in women’s life writing, partially in an attempt to generate interesting and intellectual content for my blog. Throughout this course, we will be writing “course autobiographies” on some of the texts we are reading. The following is my analysis of Mary Gordon’s The Shadow Man: A Daughter’s Search for her Father.
The stories we tell
The Shadow Man: A Daughter’s Search for her Father is the story of a woman who has based her life on the testimony of unreliable witnesses. Her entire sense of self is disrupted when she realizes that many of the stories she has lived by are not true. While this is not the type of text I would normally choose to read for fun, I do believe it holds value as a teaching tool. In addition to telling the story of Mary Gordon’s search for her father, this text also sets an example of how all humans construct stories about who they are. Continue reading “The Stories We Tell | An analysis of Mary Gordon’s “The Shadow Man: A Daughter’s Search for her Father””
Read with me: Spring 2015 reading list
This semester, I am taking a graduate-level course in women’s life writing in an attempt to generate blog post ideas. I’ve found that I write more when I’m taking classes, so my plan is to just continually take classes for the rest of my life whether I need any more degrees or not. It’s lucky I recently landed a full-time civil servant position at a state university where one of the benefits is free tuition!
It’s also too bad you can’t eat tuition, but that’s another blog post entirely.
Since I’ll probably end up discussing some of the books we’re reading for class this semester, I thought I’d share my reading list with you in case you would like to read along: Continue reading “Read with me: Spring 2015 reading list”
Write on the World 