Writing Memoir—Creative Lying is a Source of Pride!
An Interview with Lawana L. Perry, M.Ed. Southern memoir writer and educator Lawana L. Perry, M.Ed. offers tremendous insight into the writer’s mind. I asked eight questions about her experience as a writer and found her answers surprisingly open and honest. However, her most refreshing answers focus on her detachment from traditional “see spot run” advice. Ms. Perry points out some of her specific processes and secrets to writing. She has found her voice. She has found a way to connect with her audience in a way that expresses not only her voice but also the cadence, timbre, and meter of her characters. Ms. Perry’s favorite writer is Eudora Welty, whom she credits with learning about
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I write for myself first. An artist always performs for herself first. For me, in order to write, it cannot be on the side. Writing is a responsibility; therefore, it is life itself. My biggest frustration with people today is that they live unconsciously with little or no attention span. There is so much external stimuli. Many people have not developed the skills to calm themselves and read. Many would rather watch the film or television version of a story—so much is missed because they won’t spend the time.
What is the key to writing memoir? The key for me is to remove all of the normal boundaries: Self-criticism and self-doubt have no place while I am writing. I take the critic out of the room because there are no limits or boundaries when I write. I let the story spin out without anything to block its birth.
What stops you when you write? Nothing stops me. If there is a story in me, it has a right to live. I honor these stories. I learned many years ago as a student of Dr. Tom Absher to treat the finished product as a life unto itself. Therefore, completed works are kept in beautiful individual binders—Each story deserves a beautiful place to
The Inspired vs The Real Writer by Sarah Allen’s main purpose was to try and change the way people view writers. They are seen as these all knowing articulating gods, when really, they are people too. They struggle just like everyone else, and any work worth reading had some stress and effort behind it. Allen stresses that just because someone is a writer, doesn’t mean they have always been good at it, or even liked it for that matter. All writers have experienced writer’s block.
In his essay, “Should Everybody Write?”, Dennis Baron focuses on the expansion of information due to the advancement of technology and the vast amount of unchecked writing available on the internet. Baron also goes into depth about the origins of writing and the impact it has had on readers, authors, and researchers. After he presents the origins and progression of writing, Baron answers the question of, should everybody write? In early era’s, according to Baron, “… in the 17th century England, a period known for the flowering of English letters, where even kings and queens composed poetry and the brand-new Royal Society promoted science writing, literacy in London remained a mere 10% for men, a shocking 1% for women” (845).
In the story I read “How to Write a Memoir,” William Zinsser gave very important advice. In the article William Zinsser only give three advice. The three advice William Zinsser gives us are “be yourself,” “speak freely,” and “think small.” William Zinsser gave good advice about “be yourself.” In the story I read “Knucklehead” my author “Jon Scienszka” follows that advice.
Summary In the analysis, “Write For Your Life,” Anna Quindlen’s thesis is that in the movie “Freedom Writers,” and in our everyday life, physical writing is a necessary form of therapy and release. Quindlen describes the movie and then points out specific lines that express the situation of the children. She continues by explaining how physical writing is important to our wellbeing but how it has disappeared from our lives.
In “The Inspired Writer vs. The Real Writer,” Sarah Allen
Have you ever been through an experience that impacted you so much it left you speechless and verbose at the same time? Have you been through an experience so memorable that you exaggerate the experience when you try to recall it? If your answer to the following questions are a definite yes, then you have a lot in common with author Eudora Welty. Welty has been through a lot of significant events in her childhood that she still recognizes to this day. In a passage from her autobiography “One Writer’s Beginnings,” Eudora Welty uses descriptive and figurative language such as pathos, to convey the intensity and value of her experiences as a young girl.
Her use of imagery paints a picture for the readers which ultimately helps to make learning the writing process easier. For example, when she says “the critics would be sitting on my shoulders, commenting like cartoon characters”, this creates a humorous and memorable image of shoulder sized critics (Lamott 469). This step in the process is unusual from what other authors say, yet it’s interesting which engages the reader. Lamott also uses similes and metaphors throughout the essay to explain what it is like for most struggling writers. She states “we all often feel like we are pulling teeth” when it comes to constructing and composing a piece of work (Lamott 468).
Virginia Woolf is quite an eccentric writer; language is definitely one of her strong suits and that can be seen in her memoir Moments of Being. She uses sentence structure and vocabulary to create the feelings that she wishes the reader to have, adding depth and character to her writings. In an excerpt from her memoir, she writes about a lesson taught by her father. Beginning the story with a background, Woolf describes her life in Cornwall, England as a young girl.
I find that I usually have more success when writing about something that I truly enjoy and struggle when talking about something I do not really care about. Both my parents were minimal to no help with writing
I know that writers struggle at first and once they start there is no stopping them. I wait for that to happen to me, but I find myself stuck. I didn’t how to start writing because I kept over thinking that whatever I had thought already was wrong. Thesis: For me, the best author that provided me with the most valuable information was Anne Lamott’s “Getting Started” because she gave me ways of how I can begin to write when I have zero ideas as to what to write, how and where to write it.
As a college student, Emily Vallowe wrote a literacy narrative with a play on words title: “Write or Wrong Identity.” In this work, she told the story of how she believed her confidence as a writer developed; however, she was becoming dubious as to her distinctiveness as an author. Although I have never been a self-proclaimed wordsmith as Ms. Vallowe obviously had been for years, I related to her journey. Not only did she grow up in Northern Virginia like I did, she never considered herself an inept writer—a possibility that I could not fathom about myself. Then, at some point, we both began to question our own ability and to question who we really were.
“autobiographers cannot lie because anything they say, however mendacious (dishonest), is the truth about themselves, whether they know it or not”. (Wills). Such description demonstrates how memoirists accurately capture the people and experiences they write about, and how specific details contribute to the overall sense of truth and
She gave us an example of her own experience, in which she gets the informations that she needed to have, and ended up writing a really bad first draft. She gave us the confidence that we should never be afraid of having a first draft because nobody is going to look at our work yet. But after the second and third draft, you will be having the best informations that you can ever write, put the most appropriate words and giving informations in a clearest way. 2. What do you think about what Lamott says?
This shows us that we don’t have proof of the credibility of some of these memoirs. We could read a memoir, and be manipulated by the danger of a single story. Articles, newspapers, and books may be exaggerated and far from the truth. Many people will just read an piece of literature or hear of news and assume it’s true without second guessing it, especially if it is from the media. When referring to
And, although I was excited about writing and my work, I began to admit to myself that I was not doing any of the things that I enjoyed. That was when I realized that writing was becoming my prison. Consequently, I decided to bring more balance to my life. In other words, I identified five essential things that I needed to do daily as a freelance writer that had nothing to do with writing. 1.