You have a voice, use it. Never let anybody take your voice away from you. Nikki Giovanni I’ve been sick this past week with a cold (or whatever’s going around Lynchburg—I’m still sneezing a week later!). Not too many years ago, I would have kept right on going, and I would have gotten frantic […]
The voice is the creature of the body that produces it. Nancy Mairs In order to recover your voice, you have to return to your body. Indeed, writing is an embodied activity. After all, our voices are housed in our bodies. As Nancy Mairs puts it, “No body, no voice; no voice, no body. […]
Last December I spent a lovely hour with Linda Joy Myers at the National Association of Memoir Writers talking about the reflective voice in memoir. I’ve had so many requests for the audio recording of this talk that I thought I would post it here for easy access to all. You can play and/or […]
There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot […]
One of my favorite online literary journals is Full Grown People, founded and edited by Jennifer Niesslein. FGP publishes “essays that tackle those moments in life when you wonder, what’s next?” and, if you’re on their email list, like I am, delivers a new essay into in your inbox on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, which […]