A wonderful resource for all writers

The Heart and Craft of Writing Compelling Description needs a new name. It should be called “Every Writer’s Bible.” It needs to be read and reread. It needs to be carried around with you. It needs to get worn and tattered with underlines and margin notes because you keep referring to it so often.

Author Sharon M. Lippincott likes the word savor – a perfect word for this book. It’s one to be savored throughout all your writing endeavors no matter in which genre you write: nonfiction, life story, memoir, fiction. You’ll find what you’re looking for to help you write better descriptions in this book.

This wonderful resource is an anthology of Sharon Lippincott’s posts from her blog, The Heart and Craft of Life Writing. She says,

“I find the topic of writing description endlessly fascinating and will continue to explore and post about it as long as my fingers keep moving. Meanwhile, use the tips in this anthology to practice writing and stretching your imagination. Your writing will build stronger connections with readers and lift them aloft on the wings of vivid, effective description."

Other reviewers have quoted their favorite passages from this book. Here is mine from the section on looking closely:

“…if you look across an expanse of meadow, you primarily see an even green field. But drop to your knees with a magnifying glass, and look closely. You'll see blades of grass growing in different directions and an infinite variety of shades of green. Some grass is glossy and other types are a bit rough and ‘fuzzy.’ You may see clover, a few dandelions, some oxalis, or plantains. You may see buzzing bees, gnats, ants or ladybugs. Smell the scent of loam, or the cow pies nearby. Feel the sunshine on your shoulders and the coolness of the damp earth. Up close, that meadow is a busy, fascinating place, full of life, sensations and fascinating reminders to write…with scintillating description.”

Isn’t that a great word – scintillating? But I’ll bet Sharon will tell you to avoid using it when writing description. She’ll ask you to write down the details to show what you see, as she does in the paragraph above, instead of using telling descriptive words like scintillating, sparkling, amazing, awesome. In this book, she shows you how. And I predict you’ll have lots of fun learning.

I’m writing a novel now. The Heart and Craft of Writing Compelling Description will stay by my side until I’m finished.

About the author:

Sharon Lippincott is hooked on all forms of life writing, especially memoir and journaling. She’s a dedicated lifelong learner and loves sharing discoveries with others. She teaches classes and workshops on basic memoir and lifestory writing as well as specific skills like writing vivid description in the Pittsburgh area and online. Her book, The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing has helped thousands create written legacies of their lives and her award-winning blog, The Heart and Craft of Life Writing, which began in 2007, has been read by hundreds of thousands of visitors. She serves on the Advisory Board of the National Association of Memoir Writers and mentors lifestory writing groups in Allegheny County libraries and around the country. 

Email: ritergal@gmail.com 

Facebook: Sharon Melton Lippincott 

Google +: Sharon Lippincott 

Goodreads: Sharon Lippincott 

LinkedIn: Sharon Lippincott 

Twitter: @ritergal 

Blog: The Heart and Craft of Life Writing

Writing Life Stories

We were out to dinner with our friends Patti and Pat the other night and Patti shared with me that she’s taking a writing class at her church. I’ve never known that Patti had an interest in writing, so I was fascinated to know that this is a class in lifestory writing – a topic that’s been very much on my mind lately. I also discussed it with a friend who works at the Jewish Home for the Aging in Los Angeles, suggesting they offer a class for the folks who live there. As people age, we mustn’t lose their stories. We must find a way to record and save their stories for future generations. I would love to teach the class should the Jewish Home decide to offer it.

Writing life stories has become all the rage. We’re in the so-called Memoir Revolution with volumes written about how to write your life story or memoir and how to produce it into a book. One in particular is Sharon M. Lippincott’s The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing: How to Transform Memoires into Meaningful Stories.

I’ve been journaling for years, and I wrote and had a memoir published, Leaving the Hall Light On: A Mother’s Memoir of Living with Her Son’s Bipolar Disorder and Surviving His Suicide (Dream of Things, 2012). But, I’m thankful to say, a long time before I even started to tell my story, my husband Bob began his over thirty-year journey to write down our family history. I thought I’d share what motivated him to spend so much time on this project and how he managed to get the information that went into it.

Madeline and Bob at the California Science Museum

It all started because he loved hearing my uncle telling stories about his family’s escape to Russia from Lithuania during World War I. Pretty soon Bob began writing these stories down with pen on paper. Later on he taped Uncle Dave and my mother who had encyclopedic memories about their life in Eastern Europe and their eventual immigration to the United States with their mother and other four siblings.

Soon he realized how many people in both our families had gray hair, reminding him that they wouldn’t be around much longer. So he decided that if he didn’t get them to tell him their stories soon they would eventually be lost. He also used Ancestry.com to gather data related to the families’ journeys to America, he hired a genealogist to help him get facts about his father’s family in Blackburn England, and he traveled to Lubeck Germany where he found meticulous birth and baptismal certifications for his mother’s parents.

Luckily some members of my family – my mother, my mother’s uncle and cousin, and my aunt on my father’s side – also wrote their stories down. Bob used these typed documents and a multitude of photos from both his and my families to flesh out the researched material. His father told a lot of stories about living in New England in the early 20^th Century.

Bob spent the first twenty years collecting data in between working full time as a program manager in the aerospace business. And then for the next ten years or so he stopped working on the history all together. By that time most of the older generation – his best resources – had died, and he had to find others in the family who could fill in some blanks. My one surviving aunt and my cousin did a lot of that work – although my cousin insisted that Bob edit out the material about his father’s and our family’s mental illness.  Bob’s cousin also helped him identify many family members depicted on a photo taken in 1928. But because it took so long to write and produce into two volumes – one for his family and one for mine – Bob was bitterly disappointed that both our brother’s died before they had a chance to read it. He feels he shouldn’t have sacrificed timeliness for accuracy. He is also disappointed that so many of the extended family members didn’t really care to read it at all.

Bob felt writing a family history was well worth it although in a sense he did it for himself. He needed to record the old people’s stories before they died. And he was successful in doing that. He became the family’s historian and is widely recognized for his accomplishment. He also believes he has left a legacy for those younger than us. Otherwise how will they know where they came from?

Although Bob stopped the histories just at the point of our marriage in May 1970, he wants to write a third volume to record the events since then. He also churns about what to do with all the family photographs – the hordes that came from my mother and uncles and his cousin. Fortunately our own family photos have been organized and digitized. The rest need to be as well. That is another daunting job that will help complete the legacy he will leave to our family’s younger generation. 

His advice to those who want to take on the job of writing a family history: “Start interviewing the elders in the family as soon as you can because they will start disappearing. They are your first-hand sources for your life story.”

My advice is to start writing your own life stories now. Take a class as my friend Patti is doing, grab Sharon’s book to get some great prompts and examples, or just sit down and write. Your children and their children will be glad you did.

(portions of this article were originally published at PsychAlive.

Sharon Melton Lippincott - My first guest

I’m so honored to have Sharon Melton Lippincott as my first guest. We met a few months ago when we both participated on a Google+ hangout, and we have found a mutual connection regarding memoir and lifestory writing ever since. Sharon wrote a wonderful review of my memoir, Leaving the Hall Light On for the Story Circle Book Reviews, which I’m sure helped catapult it to the Story Circle Editors’ book pick for November. Thank you so much, Sharon, for being here today. And that you chose to write about reading my book is a huge bonus!

A Writer’s Read on Leaving the Hall Light On

by Sharon Melton Lippincott

About five years ago I responded to a challenge and began posting reviews of books on Amazon and other sites, unaware that doing so would change the way I read and ultimately the way I write. Over sixty reviews later, I can honestly say that the enjoyment and value I get from reading has at least tripled.

This enhanced reading mode led me to notice many fascinating aspects of Madeline Sharples’ memoir, Leaving the Hall Light On. Let me share a few with you that may also enhance your reading of the book:

The first chapter reminds me of leaves swirling in a whirlwind before they come to rest, or puzzle pieces awaiting assembly. I was instantly swept into the nightmarish scene that forms the heart, the core, of this book. It appears that life previous to this scene spirals inward toward the horror that began on this day. Everything after spirals out beyond, but all of Madeline's subsequent life is anchored to this moment.

The shocking start instantly introduces Paul, the focus of the book, then she jumps directly into the book’s present. From there she circles back to the time of Paul’s birth, essentially laying out a map of the story, bit by bit. She summarizes her thoughts, explains the title, and summarizes the situation with a story. I was energized at the conclusion of the final poem, and eager to learn more.

This is a chapter of fragments, pieces of a puzzle laid out to show us the range of the story. The rest of the book fits them together. Emotion swirls as rapidly as events, mixing joy, guilt, rage and love with abandon. I experience the added richness the photo and poems lend to the pulsing narrative, bluntly introducing truths and paving the way for further discussion.

Moving through subsequent chapters I discover that this book has an unusual structure: each chapter has a theme that could stand on its own. Each chapter is a spoke, connecting the core of the story with the larger picture. I notice how she gradually develops Paul as a character, showing a bit of him here, a bit there; ultimately I feel as if I also knew him, achieving one of her primary purposes.

I notice that this structure calls for some material to be told two or three times, sometimes from alternate perspectives, sometimes seeming a bit repetitive. I pay close attention to the way she writes about her initial state of denial, virtually gutting her psyche and laying it out for our inspection. What courage, I think. She not only lived through this once, she lived through it again in the writing.

I admire the way she uses snippets of her husband’s journals to allow him to give his own perspective, which cleverly works around the memoirist’s dilemma of not being able to put words in someone else’s mouth. She also uses input from her son Ben to circumvent traditional limitations and enrich her story.

Rather than continue, I leave the rest of the book for you to explore, hopefully with more insight as you think about reviewing it. Perhaps you can tell that reading has acquired a third dimension, introducing depth and meaning I’d previously sensed only vaguely, if at all. You can read the review I ultimately wrote here.

Sharon bio:

"You make me think!" When she hears this line, Sharon Lippincott, author of The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing, knows she's been successful. Her insightful questions and observations have challenged people in many areas for decades. Today they are primarily aimed at students in her lifestory and creative writing classes along with readers of her blog, forum posts, book reviews, and other publications. Sharon serves on the Advisory Board of the National Association of Memoir Writers, cohosts the lively Life Writers Forum on YahooGroups, and advises the Allegheny County Library Association on their project to implement lifestory writing groups in county libraries. She frequently appears as a panelist on the Indie Authors webcast, and lives and writes in Monroeville, PA. Sharon maintains her own blog, The Heart and Craft of Life Writing.

Introducing my guests

For a change of pace I’m going to devote the next three weeks to the voices of other wonderful and experienced writers and publishers. I’ve asked eight people whom I’ve either met personally or online to tell you about their writing, publishing, and marketing experiences.

I feel so fortunate that they have agreed to be my guests here on Choices. I hope you will keep coming back for more and more. You’ll find the information interesting and very helpful to your writing lives.

Here’s my guest lineup in order of appearance:

Sharon Lippincott            November 26

Sharon is the author of The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing, knows she's been successful. Her insightful questions and observations have challenged people in many areas for decades. Today they are primarily aimed at students in her lifestory and creative writing classes along with readers of her blog, forum posts, book reviews, and other publications.

Kathleen Pooler            November 29

Kathy is a writer and a retired Family Nurse Practitioner who is working on a memoir about how the power of hope through her faith in God has helped her to transform, heal and transcend life’s obstacles and disappointments: divorce, single parenting, loving and letting go of an alcoholic son, cancer and heart failure to live a life of joy and contentment.

Mike O’Mary                      December 2

Mike is founding dreamer of Dream of Things (my publisher), and a writer of essays, fiction, drama, and sketch comedy. He says, “I started Dream of Things because I wanted to find ways for us to work together more often. I also hope to make a lot of new friends and to work with many of them. Dream of Things is a place where other “dreamers” can share their ideas and stories and have fun in the process.”

Deborah Kalan                 December 5

Deborah says, “It feels great to send my words out to the universe and hope that something I say, some group of words or stack of sentences might affect someone in a positive, reflective way. That’s when I know if I’m asked ‘what do you do’? I can casually and with great confidence say, ‘I’m a writer.’”

Cheryl Stahle                    December 7

Cheryl, author of Slices of Life: the Art and Craft of Memoir Writing, is a memoirist, writing coach, teacher and author. She has set as her life mission to help people tell their life stories using her years of experience as a writing coach combined with a slightly off-center perspective of the world.

Keith Alan Hamilton     December 10

Keith says, “I’m a publisher, editor, poet, writer and cell phone photographer.  I have a mind that fires on all cylinders; I think and think and think about everything, often to the point of mania, which leads to mental fatigue with extreme lows of prolonged depression.  I have thought of suicide so often, I’ve gotten used to it as a part of me being me.”  

Sonia Marsh             December 13

Sonia is a “Gutsy” woman who can pack her carry-on and move to another country in one day. She’s a motivational speaker who inspires her audiences to get out of their comfort zone and take a risk. She says everyone has a “My Gutsy Story”; some just need a little help to uncover theirs. Her story, told in her travel memoir Freeways to Flip-Flops: A Family’s Year of Gutsy Living on a Tropical Island, is about chucking it all and uprooting her family to reconnect on an island in Belize.

Doreen Cox               December 16

Doreen’s first book, Adventures in Mother-Sitting, is a memoir of her three years as a full-time caregiver. The experience as her mother’s caregiver offered the ultimate spiritual adventure, bringing to the author bittersweet lessons related to trust, faith, unconditional love and compassion.