Your Story Matters
Why Preparing a TED Talk Makes You a Better Memoirist (Even If You Never Intend to Get on Stage)
A couple of months ago I did something that left me feeling somewhere between a wet noodle and a very burnt piece of toast.
Picture a TED talk, with a Zoom room as the stage, and a memoir writer in...
Five Tips for Writers to Manage Vulnerability
A couple of weeks ago I began requesting blurbs for The Only Way Through Is Out, my memoir about coming out later in life—which meant emailing authors I didn't know at all or I knew...
What Integrity Looks Like For a Memoir Writer
Last weekend, I had the great pleasure of seeing—and hearing!—Adele in concert during her Las Vegas residency.
I had some issues with Las Vegas itself, but that's a story for...
The Crucial First Step to Coming Out as a Writer
Everyone has a closet.
In her memoir The Family Outing, author Jessi Hempel writes: "The more I live in the world, the more I come to understand that everyone has a closet."
I agree.
...
Two Ways to Handle Rejection for Writers
In 1978, I was a high school senior and an exchange student living in Knutsford England, and I wrote a personal essay for my hometown paper about my study abroad experience.
My first byline!
But it...
Don't Be Afraid to Dream Big
My friend Byron is a Southern gentleman with a wicked sense of humor and an equally wicked sense of style.
Like he would wear a made-to-order seersucker tuxedo to a black tie wedding.
And...
What Memoir Writers Fear Most
Beck came to me last spring with a vague idea about the story he wanted to write.
Snippets of experiences from my childhood living as a girl and moments of parallel in adulthood, as I re-experience...
