DANCING FORM

Today’s wise quote comes from Lisa Dale Norton’s great book SHIMMERING IMAGES: A Handy Little Guide to Writing Memoir. This particular quote applies nicely to structuring fiction as well as nonfiction. “When you get to the structure stage of composition, you have to be willing to allow the two sides of your brain to dance together, sometimes being led by the logical, I have a structure la di da side and sometimes being guided by the hey let’s let this stuff float around and show me the meaning side. That requires a leap of faith that unnerves many. And I know that. …

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Today’s Quote on Writing Memoir-I Then, I Now

Two quotes today, both from Thomas Larson’s wonderful book The Memoir and the Memoirist: Reading & Writing Personal Narrative: “It feels natural to see the remembered self as a character who has an independent life, chooses for himself, indulges free will. But memoirists avoid such self-casting. The memoir writer does not situate himself in a recreated world as though he were a literary character. What the memoirist does is connect the past self to–and within–the present writer as the means of getting at the truth of his identity.” “For such emotionally intense memoirs we need emotionally revealing memoirists, authors who …

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