Superior Scribbler Award

Who doesn’t love to get an award? I know I do. I was honored and delighted to receive the Superior Scribble Award from Karen Walker, author of Following the Whispers. I was totally blown away a few days later, before I had accepted it from Karen, to receive it once again from Kim Pearson, author of From the Compost. 

I appreciate this award all the more for the fact it is so unexpected. I hadn’t ever heard of it. It’s especially rewarding to receive spontaneous recognition. And I love that awards like this foster a sense of community and connection in the blogsophere.

One of the requirements of accepting the award is that you pass it along to pay tribute to five other noteworthy bloggers. Since I received the award twice, I shall issue a double helping of tribute (in no particular order). This makes the process a little easier, but I know of so many fine blogs, and the choice was still agonizing.

Drum roll, please ... and the winners are ...

Pat, At Pat’s Place
Joy Hedlund, On the Path
Linda Austin, Cherry Blossom Memories
Hill Country Hippy, Seasonality
Shaddy, Paper Cut Screams
Jerry Waxler, Memory Writers Network
Ybonesy and Quoinmonkey, redRavine
Terrisa Meeks, Just Write
Linda Hoye, My Own Velvet Room
Gullible, Gullible’s Travels

Congratulations to each of these fine bloggers. I love all your blogs.

Here are the rules for Passing on the Superior Scribbler Award:

1. Each Superior Scribbler must in turn pass The Award on to 5 most-deserving Bloggy Friends.
2. Each Superior Scribbler must link to the author and the name of the blog from whom he/she has received the Award.
3. Each Superior Scribbler must display the Award on his/her blog, and link to this post, (http://scholastic-scribe.blogspot.com/2008/10/200-this-blings-for-you.html) which explains the Award.
4. Each Blogger who wins The Superior Scribbler Award must visit this post and add his/her name to the Mr. Linky List. That way, we’ll be able to keep up-to-date on everyone who receives This Prestigious Honor!
5. Each Superior Scribbler must post these rules on his/her blog.

Thank you, thank you, Karen and Kim, for bestowing this honor in recognition of the efforts I make as I follow my passion.

Write now: a story about an award you won, even if it was something as humble as placing third in the fourth grade spelling bee. Or, write about one you hoped to win and didn’t.

Don't Wait Until It's Too Late

Don’t wait until it’s too late. Write now!

Every time the phone rings, my heart goes into my mouth. Is this the call? The one nobody wants to make or receive?

A dear friend will make the call. Her daughter lies at death’s door, feeling the gauzy wisps of that final veil. It’s a matter of hours or days. Two years ago she was diagnosed with glioblastoma, the same malignant brain tumor that took Teddy Kennedy’s life yesterday. 

Jen leaves behind two little girls, who just turned five and seven. Last spring, as she began having trouble finding words to express herself, she determined to write letters to each of her girls, letting them know how much she loved them, the beautiful things she remembered, the joy they have brought to her life, and her hopes for theirs. She wanted to leave them a legacy of her own thoughts and some of her memories of growing up. 

It was too late. She was unable to even begin this project, not even with a video camera instead of her laptop. 

Jen is young. She and my daughter were high school classmates. Nobody under the age of forty expects the road to be that short, and if people in those prime years think at all of writing about their lives, it’s generally in the sense of “I wish my grandparents would (have).” 

Those grandparents, if they are still living, may be intending to do that. As soon as they get around to it. Any day now. Many have died with that intention unrealized.

Today that hesitancy, that reluctance, seems especially poignant. Today as I wait for that phone call, my throat is constricted with urgency. I want to holler from the rooftops:

Pick up those pens. Don’t worry about grammar, spelling, syntax, or any of those things you learned in school. Just WRITE. Write now! It doesn’t have to be long or polished, but tell people a little about yourself, and above all, tell them you love them! Give them the gift of yourself and your memories. Before it’s too late!

To help you get started, I included a gift at the top of the page: a Round Tuit. Use it in good health. 

Write now: pick up a pen and paper. If all you can find is the back of junk mail, so be it. Start writing. Leave a few words behind, whatever comes to your mind. Don’t wait until it’s too late.

Update: The call came shortly after I posted this. By the way, if you need a Round Tuit, I stamped out the one in the picture myself, and it's my gift to you, copy-right free with no strings attached. Click on the image to get the full-size version, right-click to save, and pass it around. Everybody needs one.

Dialogue: The Writer's Swiss Army Knife

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Photo from Victorinox

The more I study the topic of writing dialogue, the more convinced I’ve become that dialogue is the writer’s Swiss Army Knife. You don’t have to know what all the other tools on the knife are for if all you want to do is whittle the tip of a willow pole for roasting a marshmallow. But it’s handy to know about the tweezers when someone gets a splinter, and the little scissors are a godsend for snipping off loose threads and hangnails. Screwdrivers come in handy every now and then, and so it goes. Swiss Army knives prune, snip, and open all sorts of things, and so does dialogue.

Even those of us who are fortunate enough to have dialogue pour forth naturally can benefit from learning more about the functions it serves, and how it works. Some of these functions include

• Setting a mood
• Concisely conveying information
• Adding rhythm and color
• Developing character
• And more

Even if you include dialogue in your initial draft (most people don’t), you are likely to overlook hidden opportunities to put it to best use. Do you know the secret signals for sliding it in the perfect spots? I don’t think you’ll find that answer on the Internet. How do you make it clear who is speaking without including the name every time? Do you know when to use single quotes and when to use double? Should you write about the voices in your head, and the conversations they have? What about the accuracy of the words you put in the mouths of other people?

Ever since I announced this class and the preview call, questions on that last topic have been pouring in. Truth in Dialogue seems to be the number one concern of memoir writers. I will address that topic in the preview call, so be sure to click over to the NAMW site and register for the call before it begins at 6 pm eastern time, Wednesday, August 26. If you register, you’ll receive a link to download the recording, so you won’t miss the call even if you can’t dial in live.

I’ve also written a guest post on this topic which will appear the day of the call on Karen Walker’s Following the Whispers blog.

Please join me on the call, in the class, and over at Karen’s blog to learn more about adding dynamic dialogue to your stories.

Write now: write a story and include as much dialogue as you can recall. If you don't remember what people said, write whatever you think they would have said. Don't worry if you aren't 100% accurate. Just write it!

Layers of Life

The onion is often used as a metaphor for self-discovery. I first heard it used that way in 1979 during a conversation with a social worker. “Just as I think I finally know the essence of who I am, I discover another layer. It's like peeling another layer from on onion.”

I’ve often pondered this metaphor through the years, considering that at the center of the onion, there is nothing but . . . more onion. Is that all there is? I wonder. Just more onion? More “me”?

A small matroyshka doll sitting on a shelf in my office recently caught my eye. I bought a bag of them from a street vendor in St. Petersburg a few years ago, and haven’t paid much attention since. I picked the doll up and gently twisted her open, removing the smaller one, and another, and . . . five dolls in all, the center one about the size of a dried pinto bean.

Now that’s a better metaphor, I thought. Each doll is similar to the one it nests inside, but each also has a distinct personality. There is something new to discover as I continue to open the dolls.

Whether you think in terms of onion, matroyshka dolls, or some other metaphor, I encourage you to explore the colorfully complex layers of your life and memories.

There is no magic formula for this. The best way I have found is to ask myself questions as I write in my journal.

Typical questions are “What does this mean?” and “What else could it mean?” Or, “How do I feel about that?” Or, “What can I learn from this?” Keep asking this sort of question until you run out of answers. You’ll be amazed at the thoughts that spring to mind! The process works especially well when you follow the freewriting guidelines: keep your hand moving and never let your pen or pencil leave the page.

This intuitive exercise has at least two layers of benefits. First, you’ll make fascinating discoveries about how you think, and what you believe is True. Your thinking and understanding will become more clear, and you’ll also get juicy material for your stories.

Just one caveat: if your Inner Critic tries to intervene, send her to her room. Don't let her deter you from following this trail through to the end.

Write now: grab your journal, some scratch paper, or you keyboard and write about a memory, preferably a succulent one that still puzzles you. Use one or more of the questions above to explore the situation in depth, striving to uncover several layers of thought about the matter.

Connecting Dots

Generated by Stellarium 0.10.2

The urge to use stories to make sense of our lives and share them with others is hardwired into the human brain. Some of us write these stories, others tell them. Some of the stories are public, some are intensely private, told only to ourselves. Whatever their form or level of disclosure, we all have stories, and we begin telling them as language dawns.

In Child Development, Second Edition: A Practitioner's Guide, Douglas Davies states, “The stories of 2-year-olds...use narrative language to bring a personal sense of order and understanding to their experience.” He includes a transcripted story recorded by the parents of 28-month-old Emily. Her elaborate tale organized her understanding of a trip to the beach the following day.

My daughter was telling stories well before her second birthday. The first I remember was one she told me when she was 18 or 20 months old, as I was tucking her in: “Daddy go Dibby house. Play bridge.” She needed to explain why Daddy wasn't there for a night-night hug that night. That same daughter now shares her tiny girls'stories.

Using stories to make sense of the world and cosmos goes back to the dawn of civilization. All cultures have some story of origin, and stories of gods, reasons and seasons. We are reminded of these stories every time we look at the stars and see Orion, or the Dippers. The Greeks and Romans concocted elaborate myths around clusters of stars that they designated as constellations.

Constellations are a perfect metaphor for stories, because they involve connecting dots to create structures of meaning and insight. Toddlers use dots of knowledge, connecting them to build a structure for understanding life and self and make it predictable. Early man connected dots of light to explain the gods and cosmic events, and to find their way around the earth. Twelve constellations are still studied by students of the Zodiac to predict and explain world and personal events and make decisions.

Modern people have not changed so much as we might think from ancient times or early life. We still tell stories, to ourselves and each other. We tell them socially, on cell phones, by e-mail and by Tweeting. We tell them to friends. We tell them to strangers. Both stories and understanding grow and develop in the telling.

But told stories are soon forgotten. What better way to make enduring sense of our own lives than to get our fingers around a pen or on a keyboard and make some dots of memory visible, then connect those dots and develop a durable story? That's what memoir is all about ̶ compiling chaotic, random memories into a coherent, organized story that deepens our understanding and awareness of life, heals mind, body and soul, and gives us much to be grateful for ̶ and creates a legacy of story for future generations.

Write now: explore some of the stories you have written and look for dots of shared content that can be connected to create themes and structure.

Input Requested

I could sit here and bang away on my keyboard til the cows come home, and someone is likely to want to read some of it. But I just experienced a blinding flash of the obvious: without readers, this blog has no purpose, so keeping you happy and interested by answering your questions and providing helpful information is at the core of my purpose. If I really want this blog to be helpful, I should get some input from you about questions you have. Here's your big chance to help shape the future of this blog, and to have all your questions answered (or at least acknowledged).

Please dear readers, whether you are reading this post while it's still fresh, or come across it months or years later, take a moment to post a comment with feedback on

• A question about any aspect of life writing, or an observation you have.
• Have you written something and would like to be interviewed for a blog post? Let me know, in a comment, or a private e-mail.
• Suggested links (your own or others).
• Suggestions for improving the layout.
• Anything else?

I thank you in advance for your input and look forward to a rich source of inspiration from your comments!

Write now: a comment based on the above guidelines.

Joining the Uncopyright Revolution

A year and a half ago, Leo Babauta, author the the ZenHabits blog, signed on as a soldier in a revolution — the uncopyright revolution. I came upon this concept only a couple of days ago in a post entitled Grab and Run: The Great Uncopyright Experiment on Mary Jaksch’s Goodlife Zen blog. If you have any interest in copyright matters, I urge you to read both Leo’s and Mary’s posts. They may change your life.

I’ve already discussed copyright on this blog twice this year. In March, I posted an article explaining the basics of copyright law and associated ethics. That post was prompted by the dismay a friend felt after discovering that whole posts from her blog had been pirated and reposted by a woman she had inspired to begin blogging, and whom she considered a friend.

Two weeks ago I wrote about the resulting fiasco after Amazon arbitrarily pulled George Orwell’s works out of all accessible Kindles that had purchased the work. At bottom, that mess resulted from violation of copyright law. Orwell has been dead for nearly sixty years, and his works are in the public domain nearly everywhere else in the world. Animal Farm was written in 1945 and Nineteen Eight-Four in 1949, shortly before his death. You can download the text of either book from the Internet, but not legally in this country.

I won’t go into those legalities other than to say they make me nuts! I think it’s insane that if 49 years after I die, someone picks up something I wrote, finds it inspiring, and wants to share it with the world, they can’t do it, because it's still protected by copyright. Even my kids are likely to be gone by then, maybe even my grandchildren, but my estate is still protected. Whoopee! Who are the winners here?

Furthermore, I have long believed that all inspiration comes from the same Source, and there is nothing exclusive about it. I’ve learned and benefited enormously from the works of others, incorporating their thoughts into my own and building on them. I’ve always believed that I “owe back to the pot” at least to the extent I've been fed from it; that the world will be a richer place if creative people cross-pollinate by freely sharing ideas, even to the extent of copying; and that if I become protective and proprietary about whatever small amount of wisdom I may have accrued, the creative part of my mind will soon be Saharan.

Please do not take this to mean that I advocate copying. The exercise involved in putting your own spin and personal touch on ideas you value helps cement them in your mind and keeps your brain healthy. I don’t even share links to things without adding a few words to explain why I find them valuable. But if you sincerely believe you don’t have any value to add, by all means, pass material along — with a link back, please.

So when I read Mary’s post and tracked back to find Leo’s, I thought Oh yes! That’s IT! I’ll do that too. Like them, I declare my blog Public Domain. As you'll see from the notice in the left sidebar, I've taken that step. You are welcome to copy, adapt, and build on articles found in this blog as you wish. That being done, I hope that if you do copy or adapt from it, you’ll link back and identify the source. Crediting source material publicly affirms your integrity and generates good karma. And I hope you’ll let me know so I can smile with grateful satisfaction, knowing yet more people are finding my work valuable and inspiring.

Write now: about your feelings around copyright and ownership of words and ideas. Do you feel proprietary about your work, or welcome others to share?