The Best Writing Class in the World

Looking at the pile of library books I have ready to return tomorrow, I realize that the absolute best writing class I’ve ever taken has consisted of trips to the library. I love reading memoirs and autobiographies. I’m a sucker for the details of other people’s lives. I read for fun and to learn, but I also keep my writer’s hat on when I read. I pay attention to the way the content is structured, and I always keep an eye out for elegant wording.

I also read a wide variety of fiction. Sue Grafton is a favorite for her wry humor, her occasional eloquent descriptions and the general adventure of her novels. Rosamund Pilcher’s ability to pen lyrical prose is sublime, and some (but not all) of Anais Nin’s work gives me goose bumps.

When I find authors I admire, I study their style and the way they express ideas or describe scenes. I notice the selection of words, the pacing, the phrasing, the rhythm. Good writing is like a melody, and it sticks in my mind. I won’t copy specific phrases, but they do have an influence on how I write. I have copies of a few early stories I wrote a quarter of a century ago. Once in awhile I let other people read them, and they never believe I wrote that stuff. Most of the difference is due to reading and developing awareness of words.

Classes and exercises from books are good. I’ve learned a lot from both. Maybe you’d expect to hear that from a writing coach, but you may not expect to hear that reading widely to study examples of excellent word use is the most powerful learning tool you can find.

Of course I encourage people to buy books written by authors I know, and especially those written by yours truly, but I also encourage people to visit their library often and fill their arms full of the treasures you find there. If my husband and I had purchased every book we’ve ever read some or all of, most of the walls in our house would be lined with bookshelves, and the cost of all those books is staggering to consider.

Check your library’s catalog for books on creative writing in general and writing memoir or autobiography in particular. If you don’t find many, ask them to buy a few titles. Click over to my profile and send me an e-mail if you want suggestions. Most libraries are quickly responsive to reasonable requests for new acquisitions. You don’t even have to physically go to the library to find this out. Nearly every library has an online catalog now, so if you are reading this blog, you can Google your own, click on the catalog and search away.

Write on, and also read on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal

I Am My Mother's Daughter

Have you ever wished you could trade parents with a friend? Have you uttered some version of “You won’t believe what my mother did now!”? Maybe all your life you’ve wished that you could live in Mr. Roger’s neighborhood and be loved, “just the way you are.”

Nearly everyone has felt that way about their parents at one time or another, if not their whole lives. But precious few people write about that in their lifestories. Most of us feel that writing about parental shortcomings is disrespectful, unloving or unappreciative, and even if we wish we could change them, we do love them, and don’t want to portray them to the world in a negative light.

After all, we all make mistakes as parents, we could all do better, but we do the best we know how at any given time, and hope our children turn out well. It’s only later that we see what we could have changed, if we’d only known what and how sooner, and we cringe to think what our own children could write about us!

I recently finished reading I AM MY MOTHER’S DAUGHTER: Making Peace With Mom Before It’s Too Late, by Iris Krasnow, a book I found on the New Books shelf at our local library. This book, written on many levels, speaks directly to the concerns above. On one level it’s a memoir of Iris’s own experience of making peace with her mother in the last many months of her mother’s life. Her own story is a thread that weaves together vignettes of eighteen other women’s adventures in coming to terms with their own mothers. These women all felt varying degrees of isolation from and disappointment in their mothers.

The stories are compelling in their own right and Iris does a masterful job of creating a rich tapestry of Mother/Daughter involvement with all the passion that entails and her  own insightful observations. My fascination is somewhat different. I’m fascinated with the way the insights are expressed in the stories — the way the darker side of the relationships is shared with both truth and compassion. Each story speaks of the way one woman came to grips with the fact that her own mother was a fallible human being. Each learned to love her mother anyway, and to recognize that her mother was the way she was partly because of her relationship with her own mother, and so on up the family tree.

I recommend this book to anyone, but especially to lifestory writers. Beyond pointing to ways of mending relationships, it demonstrates ways of writing about darker moments and dysfunction without sounding like a whiney victim. Although the book is written by a daughter for daughters, I have a strong hunch that similar dynamics work between fathers and sons, and across gender lines, and the writing examples will work for anyone.

Write on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal

Further Thoughts on Photos

Old Blue, the Heretic posted a comment to the last message, Getting Focused. He is partial to the close-up photo. I especially appreciated his comment, and tend to agree with it, but there is more to the matter, and the long version of my reply deserves its own post.

My first thought was that if I took that picture today I would zoom in on the kids, because that’s where the real story seems to be. I've found that both my writing and my photography have benefited from editing hundreds of family photos spanning more than a century and realizing how poorly composed many of them were.

I took some of those pictures myself. Twenty years ago I snapped a gag photo of our son standing in front of a harbor near Tacoma with his hand held out to catch a rainbow. Only a few years later did I realize that I should have been thirty feet closer to George, filling the viewfinder with him catching the end of the rainbow. That day, I simply pointed and shot and got my mother, a good chunk of the restaurant where we’d eaten, and what looks like half of Puget Sound in the background. The “real picture” occupies around ten percent of the total area. Even with today’s best scanning and enlarging technology, I can’t make a decent print of George larger than 5” x 7”.

These days when I look for my best shot, I ask the same question I do when I begin to write, “Where's the real story here?” In the examples above, the real story seems to be the affection of the children, or my son catching a rainbow. But it isn’t always so. Sometimes the broader scene is the story. It depends on the purpose of your picture.

Write on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal

Getting Focused

One of the most common shortcomings of lifestories is lack of a clear focus. Each story you write has its own purpose or theme. That purpose helps define the boundaries of the story and how much detail to include. You could compare it to cropping photographs to focus the interest. For example, consider the following pictures.

The first picture shows a boy and girl sitting together in a swing. What’s the story here? The kids? The yard? The array of toys?


The second picture shows the same children on the swing set, but the clutter is gone. The children stand out clearly, while the yard and surroundings are still part of the picture.

The third picture is cropped to focus specifically on the children. The surroundings are almost irrelevant. They show only enough to give the picture context.

Which is the better picture? Aside from esthetics, it’s a matter of personal preference — and purpose. With a little help from a photo editing program, the same photo yielded all three results. The first pictures shows the kids in the yard where they spend time with all their toys. It’s a vignette of daily life. The second picture is “cleaned up.” It doesn’t show the details of daily life, but the yard and swing set are still part of the picture’s story. The third picture seems to focus entirely on the affectionate relationship between the two children, presumably brother and sister.

You can do similar things with your stories. I confess that none of the pictures exactly reflect the original. I added extra toys to the first (borrowed from the actual collection), and removed even the originals in the second. The third is simply enlarged and cropped from the original. In the same way, a little editing and pruning, or perhaps adding a few details, will give a variety of results from the same basic story material. If your purpose is to document daily life, you’ll include different sorts of details, and probably more of them, than you would if your purpose were sharing a humorous anecdote or reflecting on the meaning of your life. As you sort through the thoughts you wrote in your first draft, compare each thought to your purpose as you consider whether to keep it, scratch it out, or maybe add a few more details.

Take a look at some of your own stories. So you see ways to crop them or change the variety of detail to improve them?

Write on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal

The Muse Speaks

After I posted the last message about the Muse, I felt a tiny buzz in my head. It flitted around like a pesky mosquito, nibbling at the membrane of conscious thought. I gave up and went out to the sun porch where I sat gazing at the misty woods, vibrantly green after the recent rain. I let my mind run free, and it turned to the Muse. On impulse I spoke to her.

“Dear Muse, you are so helpful to me. I thank you and wonder, what is your name? Muses are supposed to have names.”

“I’m so thrilled that you care!” she trilled. “I thought you’d never ask. My name is Sarabelle.”

I couldn’t hide my chuckle. “Sarabelle. That’s a nice name. It reminds me of  Clarabelle Cow, Minnie Mouse’s friend.”

“That’s one reason I don’t tell people my name very often. But she was a sweet cow. I knew her well. Now keep thinking. What else does my name remind you of?”

“Hmm. Let me think. Sarabelle, Sarabelle… Ah! Yes! Cerebral!”

“Not bad! You catch on fast. Tell me more.”

“You live in my head, like part of my brain. You keep me focused. You light up ideas. You…”

“Bingo! I do all that and more.” We had quite a conversation, Sarabelle and I. She told me that although her name implies a thoughtful mode, she’s really quite playful. “I would have chosen Sarabella if it had been up to me,” she chirped. “That sounds more playful, and that’s what muses are about. Being playful. But when Mother Nature let me know that cerebral includes the whole brain, and not just the motor activity part, I understood. I do work with the whole brain, not just one part.”

She reaffirmed the importance of working with her, respecting her powers, making use of her gifts, and being diligent to keep her exercised. “I get fat and lazy if people don’t keep me busy,” she whispered.

“I’m so glad we had this talk,” she said. “Tell the others about my name. Let them know what I’ve told you, and assure them that I’ll be there for them, whenever they are ready. Anytime y’all (she has a light southern accent) need help, whisper my name. It doesn’t need to be loud enough for anyone else to hear. I’m there, twenty-four-seven. Ask and the answer is yours.”

With that, she faded out in a flurry of tinkling chimes, sounding for all the world like Tinkerbelle. Perhaps they are cousins. I’ll have to ask.

Write on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal

Respecting the Muse

Two days ago I thought of a great blog topic while I was out walking. I’ll remember it, I told myself, making mental notes to help. That night as I lay in bed half asleep, another couple came to mind. Yesterday the same thing happened while I was out in the yard. Each time I promised I’d remember.

Here I sit, ready to write. Where are my ideas? I scratch my head. I yawn. I chuckle. That often loosens up stuck memories. I’ll get a cup of coffee, I think. But no, the coffee doesn’t help.

What happened? Where are my ideas?

How many times have I written, and told students, “Keep paper and pencil handy! When you have a story idea, write it down!”? I hang my head to hide the redness of my face. I’ve failed to take my own advice. I haven’t written my blog ideas down. They’re in there somewhere, lurking in the dark recesses. Maybe.

Or, maybe, because I failed to pay homage to my muse, she retracted the gifts. My muse, the one I share with lifestory writers everywhere, is a fickle muse, or maybe she just practices Tough Love. If I don’t accord her proper respect, with gratitude for her inspirations, she exacts a piece of memory to keep me in line.

Okay! I get it. My dear Muse and patient readers, I apologize. I’ll write things down! It isn’t age. This has always happened.

What will I write down? That idea about laughing. The one about walking in the rain, and about monumentally awesome summer evenings, and even the one about punctuating quotations… Oh! Hey! See? I apologized and promised to be respectful and she’s already back in service.

Now, I beg you, don’t subject yourself to the same stress of losing your story ideas that I’ve been suffering. Keep at least a scrap of paper and stub of a pencil handy, and write them down!

Write on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal

Lifestory Lemonade

A reader explained in a recent e-mail that she’d been writing in circles about a difficult memory from the past and suddenly things tumbled about in a most amazing way. She realized that in her wheel-spinning, she’d been focusing on all the things that were wrong — things she “didn’t have” that she’d wanted. Then she began to look at the other side of the equation. She considered ways the difficult situation had worked through her life to make her a stronger person and began to see all the things she did have. She realized that the experience had been crucial in forming her into the person she is, and she rather likes the person she is.

Her outlook on life has changed since making this discovery. The way she writes about her life has changed. She has found new joy and passion.

She hadn’t been aware that she was writing for self-discovery. Her original intent was to explain a situation in the hope of helping her children avoid some mistakes others in the family had made. She did not want history to repeat itself! Her struggles resulted in profound insight worth far more than any simple explanation of that past incident.

What happened for her was nothing new or profound. Readers may recognize it as a variation of reframing situations or using life’s lemons to make lemonade. The fact that it isn’t new doesn’t diminish the power. Perhaps you can use this idea yourself. Do you have an old situation that lurks unhappily in your own life? How about exploring that situation to see how it may have benefited you in the long run?

You can look more broadly. Maybe you grew up in an impoverished family and lacked the amenities of life. Have you ever considered ways that early training may have taught you self-sufficiency and given you strength that others may lack? Was that the source of your sense of humor, or compassion? What ways can you find to reframe your life and give it more joy and value?

How could this affect your writing? How can you incorporate these new views into old stories? One way is to write the story as you would have written it earlier and add an afterward explaining how you’ve reframed it. If you’ve already written about the situation, add an afterward now. Your own life will be richer and your readers will learn from your example.

Write on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal

Tell Us More!

Sometime ago my husband and I attended a slideshow at the library presented by a couple who had gone on a trek in the Nepal Himalayas. One slide showed a Buddhist monastery where they had an audience with the Lama of Nepal, who had just ended a thirty day fast. The account was terse. “He ended his fast. We had to wait a couple of hours before we met with him. After that we hiked on to….”

Everyone in the room was left hanging, and the first question was about that interview. “What was it like? What happened? Tell us more!”

More recently I listened to a man read an account of his experience liberating a Nazi concentration camp in World War II. The account was factual and brief. When he finished, the questions were along the lines of “How did you feel about this? What was your reaction? Tell us more!”

Maybe none of your stories will be as spectacular as a personal audience with a renowned Lama, or liberating a death camp, but you surely have some of your own that could leave people on the edge of their seats if you don’t fill them in.

What do people want to know? Let’s take a look at the basics.

• What happened? Fill in the blanks about details. The Lama story lacked any description of ceremony or conversation during the event.


• What was your reaction? In both stories cited above, we had our own reactions, and wanted to know if our experience squared with those of the story owners. People want to know how you reacted, especially in intense situations, but also in lesser ones.


• What were the long-term implications? In both cases people wondered how this had influenced the tellers’ lives afterward.

The Lama story and the Concentration Camp story were both told from the head. People sensed that hearts were involved, and they wanted to connect with the hearts of the tellers. Write your stories from your heart as well as your head to tell the whole story and fill the hearts of your readers.

Write on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal

Thoughts on Tributes

A dear friend of ours lies in the hospital in critical condition as I write this. I’ll spare you the details other than mentioning he’s in a coma as the result of complications following what should have been routine surgery. As the hours and days crawl by, we continue to hope, but thoughts of the other possibility keep nudging their way into awareness.

“This sounds like a journal entry. I thought this was a blog about Lifestory Writing,” I hear some of you thinking. You’re so right. That previous paragraph is a sort of journal entry. But it does tie in with lifestory writing. We’ve known this man and his family for a third of a century. Though we’ve always lived a considerable distance apart, we’ve visited each other, traveled together, and shared many fine adventures. However, I have never written any stories featuring this friend and his family.

Today I realize that whether now or later, those adventures will come to an end. When the time comes, as it must, what would be more comforting to his surviving family than a story or few about our times together, and what they meant to us? This is a double-win situation. They’ll have the stories, and we’ll also have them. Naturally I shall set about writing something right way, and hope I have years to edit it.

Taking this thought one step further, I realize that over my lifetime I’ve had dozens of friends and Very Special People touch my life in various ways, but I haven’t featured more than a couple in stories. I’m not anticipating that any of them will die soon. In fact, I wouldn’t even know where to find most of them today. But they deserve a tribute — a tribute that will be fun to share now with the ones I can still find, and a tribute their families may appreciate later.

Writing this tribute will be a pleasure for me, even if no one else ever reads it. I’ll remember our fine times together, and feel joy again in the memory of their presence.

What about you? Have you written stories about special people beyond the circle of your family? Have you written any tribute stories that you shared with families? If your best friend died tomorrow, would you have something on hand that you could read at a memorial service, or send to the family?

Write on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal

Writer's Block Busters

So now you are sitting at your desk, or the kitchen table, or in the bookstore coffee shop, you have a pad of paper and a couple of pens, and you know what story you want to write. You pick up that pen, and place it on the line at the top of the paper, but that’s as far as you get. Your fingers freeze. They simply won’t move. Just to make sure, you scribble a tiny spot at the bottom of the page, and verify that there is ink in the pen. You scratch your head, yawn, stretch, and try again. Still nothing. You get up and fetch a fresh cup of coffee. That’s it. Coffee, strong and black. That’s what fuels writers, right? That or whisky, ala Hemingway. Wrong. Neither coffee nor whiskey help at all. Coffee makes you feel more nervous about being stuck, whiskey makes you quit caring. The words are still stuck.

Suddenly doubt sets in. What was it that made you think you could write? Just why is it that writing these stories down seemed so all-fired important? I’m not a writer, you tell yourself. This is nuts! Then it dawns on you. This is the fabled writer’s block. You have the dread disease before you’ve even begun writing.

Writer’s block can occur at any point in a project from the very beginning to the last phases of editing. Fortunately the affliction is not fatal. Some suggestions for overcoming writers block follow. Think of the items on the list as if they are written on folded scraps of paper inside a jar, rather than a ladder to be climbed. There is no order to the list, so use whichever one seems right for your situation.

• Write a letter


• Use scrap paper


• Doodle


• Move around


• Turn on music


• Take a shower


• Write about your writer’s block


• Have a chat with your inner critic


• Go back to your resource material


• Write about what you would write if your words weren’t stuck


• Wrote about why it’s hard for you to write this story

What are your favorite writer’s block busters? All comments are welcome!

Write on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal