One of the most challenging aspects of life story writing is bringing characters to life. Taking a real-life person, getting inside them and truly knowing them. One of a life writer’s responsibilities is to reveal the gap between the mask a person wears and their secret self. But how can a life writer cut through […]
Writing a memoir helps you find your voice, tell your story, and reach out to others. You start thinking about your memories, moments that make you feel young again, wondering: what is the legacy I’m leaving behind? But how to get started? I speak to many people who want to write their memoir, but they […]
There is an urgent need to introduce life story recording into aged care facilities as part of the patient-centred care of our seniors and people living with dementia. Life story recording includes writing memoirs and life stories, photos books and audio and video recording. Repeated research studies reveal that recording a person’s life story […]
As we approach Australia Day 2019, I’m putting the final touches on the major assignment for the online Family History Writing course I’m doing at the University of Tasmania. We have to write a short narrative focused on one of our ancestors, a place they lived or an event in their life. The narrative must […]
The new year is the perfect time to reflect on everything that happened in our life during 2018. The special moments, ups and downs, challenges, victories and learnings. It is also a time to commit to implementing important changes in our life—changing jobs, retiring, starting a new course or business, taking up exercise, giving up […]
As Christmas approaches are you struggling to find the perfect gift for your parents or grandparents? Do your Dad and Grandfather have enough socks and undies to last a lifetime and is your Mum’s bookcase and that of your Grannie bursting at the seams with recipe books they never read? Have you thought of giving […]
A question participants in my memoir writing workshops often ask me is: ‘Where should I start my story? At my birth? An important milestone? A momentous occasion? If you are writing a life story you may think you have to start with your birth and progress chronologically to the present. But you don’t have to […]
October 7-13 is Mental Health Week, an annual, national event that aims to improve community awareness and interest in mental health and wellbeing. Events honouring the week culminate on World Mental Health Day (10 October). Mental Health Week puts the spotlight on the mental health of older Australians and ways we can enhance their […]
When writing memoirs for my clients I’m sometimes amazed at the clarity of their memories. Last week, I interviewed an 85-year-old grandfather who recalled precise details of the furniture, colour scheme, sounds and smells of his childhood home in Broken Hill. He even remembered the titles of the ‘78’ records his father played on the […]
In my memoir writing workshops participants often say they struggle with writing in a way that evokes emotion. They worry their writing is flat and uninteresting. One way you can make your writing more compelling is to create vivid scenes full of sensory details. These scenes fuel a reader’s imagination and draw them into the […]
