Did you miss our LiveCast? I know how incredibly difficult it can be to sign in at the right time so I have the recording available below. In it, I discuss how to use Stunt Writing as a tool for political engagement, the idea of setting up a local Stunt Writing group, and "organic" vs "futuristic" goals for 2017. Enjoy! P.S. I am working on higher resolution for next time! Sorry for the "underwater" feel. … [Read more...]
Join Me for the Stunt Writing Livecast on YouTube!
Join me this weekend and let me help you get started with your writing resolutions for 2017 using the Stunt Writing method! Sunday Dec. 4 from 5 pm PST to 5:30 pm PST I will be livecasting on my YouTube taking questions in real time. To join me, you can go to out channel www.youtube.com/memoirclass and scroll down for "livecasts" and click "set a reminder", as seen below. Or click this link at 5 pm PST and join us live and bring your questions! Need to push yourself in 2017? Try Stunt Writing from MemoirClass.com! A stunt is a feat of daring, an act with a beginning and end, focused … [Read more...]
Writing Prompt: What are Your Life Gifts?
There are certain things that are woven into the fabric of your life that become part of who you are, but because they seem so inevitable it is hard to think of them as a gift. One of my friends experienced a rift in her life - when she was a child her mother decided to leave her husband in the US - and she took her daughter and resettled in Portugal. Leaving San Diego, California behind as an 8 year old, and starting her life again in Lisbon with her mother was a strange process. Not knowing the language or customs, not having any friends or people to go to for comfort radically changed … [Read more...]
Stunt Writing Featured on the Secret Library Podcast
I am so excited to share my appearance on the Secret Library Podcast, in conversation with the always amazing Caroline Donahue! She created the Secret Library Podcast (available here on iTunes) because, "Most people believe that books are created in cabins all alone, where authors pound away on some manner of keyboard. Then they hand this masterpiece off to a publisher and it feels very much like it goes down a tube and comes out the other side as a book. By speaking to authors and other book lovers, I'm diving into the mystery that is the book world today." We spent an hour chatting about … [Read more...]
Writing Prompt: Writing Your Recipe for Resistance
Sometimes it feels like the world is bent on telling you who you "must" be. As a prompt, write your own recipe for resistance. What do you suggest for shaking it up? Today is a day to look for cracks to move through. Change form. Pick a new exit. Try a new greeting, and a new way of saying goodbye. If it feels like a yes, say yes. If it feels like a no, then no way. Stop coming up with a reason. Today you don't have to explain yourself. Move towards people who you can sit in silence with. Share things you have made with people, but don't ask for feedback. Feel free to change your mind, … [Read more...]
Writing & Describing the Depth of Feeling
I received an email today from my mother, in the postal (snail) mail. It was a printed copy of an email I sent to my dad in 2002, which although it came in time for Father's Day I was too sad to open it with my father's passing. In the last few weeks I have come up with a lot of creative ways to describe how I feel such as, "covered in molasses" for my sticky inability at times to leave the house or that I am wearing "vaseline glasses" to describe that under water feeling where you feel a little bit separate from the world. I've told people that I am raw. Raw like someone took that 70s Lava … [Read more...]
Metamorphosis a Writing Prompt
When you Google the word "change" and ask for images, you get pictures of butterflies. These miraculous creatures undergo a metamorphosis that boggles the mind, from a caterpillar to pupa to butterfly. Change implies that we are many things at once and there are not clear boundaries. Being in flux means that we hold different viewpoints, and some that are in conflict. We are not whole because we can not be contained. Our edges seep between being a man/woman, natural/synthetic, right/left, living and dying...the list goes on. Anyone who thinks they are one thing are in for a big surprise, … [Read more...]
Rest in Peace John Peter Beaver – Beloved Father, Husband and Friend
Memorializing the Life of John Peter Beaver My father's obituary can be found here at the Smith Corcoran funeral home website. Thank you to everyone who took time to cook for us, support us, call, send letters and email, fly cross-country, Skype and in general make us feel encircled by the love my father inspired in the world. My words of remembrance delivered at his funeral, Friday June 10, at St. Francis De Sales Catholic Church are below: We are here today to celebrate the life of my beloved father, John Beaver. I am and always will be a daddy's girl. He taught me how to swim and … [Read more...]
Memoir: Untangling Life’s Longings
I've just finished Stephen Levine's book, A Year to Live. It is about how to live this year as though it was your last. Morbid? Not really. Doesn't everyone occasionally want to skip to the end? Even if just for a quick, curious glimpse? In the book he makes a few statements that are truly about memoir. He writes, "We untangle the present by unraveling the knots of the past. Remembering the etymological root of "nostalgia" is a "reminiscent pain," we do not hold on to the past but relieve it of its burden." Nostalgia contains the knowledge that we can not go back and relive a moment we … [Read more...]
Embracing the Crazy Wisdom in Your Writing Practice
Overnight the buds popped on the trees and the jacarandas are exploding with brilliant lavender blooms. Spring fever is here and - oh - there's a fat robin red-breast...welcome to working with a Spring fever. The phrase that keeps coming to mind for me is "Crazy Wisdom" (coined by the founder of Shambhala Buddhism, Chögyam Trungpa) which refers, according to Steven Goodman, "to someone who seems to be intoxicated with an un-bounded, luminous, loving energy." It aligns with the concept of the sacred fool, or as personified by the famous picture of Albert Einstein sticking out his tongue - the … [Read more...]
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