Keeping Memory Alive Through Writing Whatever your life, it is urging you to record it. --from Natalie Goldbergs Old Friend from Far Away: The Practice of Writing Memoir Writing about ones life helps keep the mind alive and vibrant. It
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Presentation Transcript
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Keeping Memory Alive Through Writing “Whatever your life, it is urging you to record it.”
--from Natalie Goldberg’s Old Friend from Far Away: The Practice of Writing Memoir
Writing about one’s life helps keep the mind alive and vibrant.
It helps one to process one’s life experiences and gain insight.
It gives one a sense that one’s life matters and gives one something one can share with family and friends.<br>
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Writing Memoir Not a chronological recount of your life
It focuses on specific moments of your life
It focuses on a specific aspect
First time you realized something
Somebody you influenced you
A time your learned a lesson
A painful experience, a happy experience
Questions that nag at you, that are murky and troubling.<br>
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Purposes of Memoir It is a way of making sense of your life and your experience
It is looking back with distance and wisdom
It can be a reconciliation and healing
We know the facts, but we are looking for the “emotional truths under the surface that drove our lives” (Natalie Goldberg)<br>
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E.M. Forster Paraphrased “How can I know what I think about something until I write about it?”
Writing is a quest for meaning
It is a journey toward realization<br>
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Importance of Memoir “Writing is an act of reaching across the abyss of isolation to share and reflect.”
--Natalie Goldberg --from Old Friend from Far Away: The Practice of Writing Memoir
Writing gives you a second chance to understand your life and events that shaped it.<br>
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Forms Memoir is not linear
Like our thoughts and memories, it jumps around
Memoir can be written as prose or poetry
It can be changed into fiction
It can be shared or not shared<br>
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Writing is Like Exercising You have to train the muscles
The more you write, the stronger and more flexible the writing muscles
The more you write, the more you will remember
You have to practice it regularly
Twenty minutes a day<br>
