I speak to lots of people each month about the many ways to write their life stories, and whenever they hear about the five-year journal and how it works, they get excited. They remind me of myself when I first learned about this wonderful way to record all the ordinary and extraordinary days of our…
Last Sunday, a group of sixteen Writing Your Lifers got a taste of what’s to come on the Writing the Waves cruise, which sets sail on Royal Caribbean’s Freedom of the Seas on May 12, 2013. We spent time touring the ship and enjoying a wonderful sit-down lunch. Unfortunately, we had to leave at 3:00…
Writing conversations flowed, attendees exchanged business cards and dreams, and tips on everything from point of view to editing to writing stories for Chicken Soup for the Soul swirled around the Florida Writers Association’s eleventh annual conference this weekend.
More than six hundred writers of all levels and genres gathered at the Lake Mary Marriott…
In last week’s post on Writing with Photographs, we talked about ways to look at photographs—how to systematically examine the photograph’s physical characteristics, inventory the image, listen for the story the picture has to tell and answer the basic who-what-where-when-why-how questions.
Now, let’s focus our attention on what to do with the information gleaned from…
The first edition of Eating an Elephant: Write Your Life One Bite at a Time did not contain an index. All subsequent editions have a thorough index.
If you own a first edition of Eating an Elephant and would like to print an accompanying index for easier reference, click here.
Imagine this...a cool, fall breeze in your face, a front row seat on a beautiful Florida lake, the company of others who love to write, time set aside to put words on paper and a delicious potluck lunch. Now doesn't that sound like a great time?
If so, join us for the Fall Writing Marathon,…
Photographs are wonderful things, especially nowadays, if we actually take them out of our cameras and do something with them. I think of that commercial where a kid cannon-balls off the diving board and is forever stuck in midair, pleading with his mother to free him. I have a few hostages like that in my…
I like birds. I don’t consider myself a birder, but I do enjoy watching our feathered friends—those that used to hang around the feeder at my old house and the ones that come to visit the lake where I live now. I often observe unusual bird situations like a couple of weeks ago when thirty…
Angela Orford, working on a writing assignment
"There are as many ways to write life stories as there are people to write them," said Patricia Charpentier to patrons of the Riverview Library on Saturday, September 22, 2012.
Following a short writing exercise, Patricia then proceeded to discuss methods used by some of the people she's worked…
One small step...
Last month, we lost an American hero, astronaut Neil Armstrong, commander of Apollo 11, the first man to set foot on the moon, the one who mouthed those iconic words, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
What do you remember or have been told about this memorable…