Memoirous

  https://www.amazon.com/Flash-Memoir-Writing-Prompts-Flashing-ebook/dp/B0714K6B41/ a review at Amazon 5.0 out of 5 stars Don't Create Without It! Reviewed in the United States on November 21, 2017 While Jane Hertenstein’s book Flash Memoir is ostensibly geared toward writers, this book is a must-have for anyone who is creating art of any kind. Filled with amazing historical factoids (check out Hemingway’s lost valise or Wordsworth’s almost-permanent houseguest, Samuel Coleridge) as well as the writer’s personal examples of following her own advice, the main thrust of the book is to get the reader’s creativity flowing, and boy howdy, the author succeeds at that. Each little chapter or section describes something that can be used as a prompt for creativity, be it old postcards, newspaper headlines, websites filled with breathtaking photos, or basic, evocative stimuli such as certain smells or sudden memories. The author then gives an example of how this prompt can be used, frequent...

  “December” by James Schuyler Il va neiger dans quelques jours FRANCIS JAMMES The giant Norway spruce from Podunk, its lower branches bound, this morning was reared into place at Rockefeller Center. I thought I saw a cold blue dusty light sough in its boughs the way other years the wind thrashing at the giant ornaments recalled other years and Christmas trees more homey. Each December! I always think I hate “the over-commercialized event” and then bells ring, or tiny light bulbs wink above the entrance to Bonwit Teller or Katherine going on five wants to look at all the empty sample gift-wrapped boxes up Fifth Avenue in swank shops and how can I help falling in love? A calm secret exultation of the spirit that tastes like Sealtest eggnog, made from milk solids, Vanillin, artificial rum flavoring; a milky impulse to kiss and be friends It’s like what George and I were talking about, the East West Coast divide: Californians need to do a thing to enjoy it. A smile in the street may b...

  Kathleen 5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book! June 11, 2013 Format: Kindle Edition I have been interested in writing flash memoir, and this book is an excellent resource! This resource is well written, easy to follow, has concise and well-structured chapters, and lots of prompts to get a writer going. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in writing flash memoir, or learning more about it. Glenda Council Beall 4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent reference book September 12, 2014 Format: Kindle Edition This book is helpful for those of us who are new to flash fiction and flash memoir writing. It is a good reference book to read when we have questions. As a writing teacher, I will continue to use it with my students. Mary Ellen G. 5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent# June 18, 2016 Format: Kindle Edition I have read this book twice, and highlighted extensively. As a new memoir writer who works in slice of life and brief moments, I find her approach helpful. Highly recommend to all write...

  Many of us are looking to write memories—either in the form of literary memoir or simply to record family history. This how-to book looks at memoir in small, bite-size pieces, helping the writer to isolate or freeze-frame a moment and then distill it onto paper. Mel G. 5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent# I have read this book twice, and highlighted extensively. As a new memoir writer who works in slice of life and brief moments, I find her approach helpful. Highly recommend to all writers of memoir. Enjoyable read! Freeze Frame: How to Write Flash Memoir, available through CreateSpace and as an eBook available EVERYWHERE. Order it today.* *The link takes you to Amazon, but also available through other online retailers

Last weekend I ran out to the car when the kids pulled up to give them something and opened the back passenger door to say hi to the baby. He was in a bit of a daze then broke into a smile, more than a smile . . . It was a joy quake. Like a muscle strain, his whole body quivered, with excitement at my face. Now, if you lived inside my head—well, you’d move out. It isn’t always pretty with the self-deprecating self-talk. I’ve given up on makeup and expressing any sense of style because—why? No one seems to notice. For years I’ve been invisible. It’s why my job as a retail clerk where now part of my salary is commissions has been so terribly difficult. It’s not a problem for me to greet people. I love to welcome, but it takes a special person to move onto selling someone on something. Luckily, I’ve ended up with the grandmas. More on that later.   Anyway, to be seen by someone who so obviously loves me fills my heart and life. So when I went over to my daughter’s house for my...

My daughter informs me that the local library has charged her for the damage of two books. Both eaten by Jack. Granted he shouldn’t be unsupervised or given unlimited access to books other than the indestructible board ones, but—and I have been guilty of this myself—he is so quick. In like a minute he has sucked a page corner into his mouth. Spines are his favorite, he gnaws on them like corn on a cob. The covers take a little more time; he masticates them with his two little teeth and gums, eventually softening a hole. All this to say he loves books. He crawls to a bookshelf beside his crib and pulls out a load. From what I can observe it isn’t all about destruction. Books with animals and faces particularly appeal to him. We hold him in our lap and point things out and make the noises and engage him in story—before he squirms onto the floor. The other day I checked out Blueberries for Sal and he immediately buried his head into the center. I kept him on the floor and the book up ...

I just turned a corner with a recent birthday. 63. Not sure if I’m almost there, or still have a long way to go. But it feels like I’ve turned a corner. Perhaps it is the huge life-changes that have taken place in the past year. A year ago I was voting—and waiting for the election results. I was struggling to pull together a writing life and find my place in the religious community I’d been a part of since 1982. I was still coming down from a summer bike trip of over 2,400 miles, Chicago to Seaside, Oregon. I desperately wanted to know the future. Then . . . I got the call that a close friend had Covid and I was immediately thrown into testing, quarantine, observing my birthday inside the 4 walls of my room. Even my birthday ice cream was being held hostage in a refrigerator down the hall that I was not allowed to access until the results of my test were clear. The whole time I waited: to hear who would be our next president and if I was going to die, or maybe die if I had Covid. ...

I recently celebrated a birthday. Yes, I’m old, but I don’t feel it / think so. The weekend was spent in the world-famous town of Peck, Michigan, population around 500. The school is grades pre-K thru high school. The senior class is about 26 students. It is sugarbeet harvesting bow-hunting season. Meaning . . . The divided road out front of the house is heavily trafficked by convoys of trucks, open top, doubled up, stuffed with sugarbeets the color of maggots. Millions of them. I can hardly believe they are all coming from the fields around me. A zombie apocalypse of sugarbeets. They are trucked to Croswell the next town over, eight miles east, to a processing plant. The Michigan Sugar Company who owns Pioneer Sugar processes 4,000-6,000 tons per day and has been in Croswell since 1902. At the plant the beets are piled 20 feet high, 200 feet wide and more than 1,000 feet long. Many of the piles have larger fans that blow cold air into the piles to help the beets store outdoors f...

 Michigan update  My daughter’s backyard is enclosed by a tall wooden fence. Not sure why; they’re just renting. Prior owners had an above ground pool—we can tell by the dead grass ring. Anyway . . . I observe from the kitchen window while doing up breakfast dishes: highchair tray, messy bibs, Pyrex containers of past lunches taken to work—I see the squirrels busy, using the fence as a sort of race track. With their little legs they scamper along the tight-rope thin top to their favorite trees and hiding places, a kind of aerial causeway. And why do I notice this? I stop and wonder. Is it because my life has gotten smaller, more minute? Or, perhaps, because my mind is no longer clouded, crowded with worry, stress, occluded by the day’s news? I do worry about climate change, my grandson’s future, if there will be snow, health care—but the place in my soul where I harbored these things—migrant issue at the borders of Poland, the conflict in Ethiopia, the Sudan, Covid-19 ...

An update: I gave up some of the best weather ever in Oregon to move to Michigan were even Michiganders talk bad about their state. My co-workers keep sidewinking and telling me, wait for the snow. My boss cautioned me from riding in the street because Michigan drivers were terrible, then he cautioned me from riding on the sidewalk, to be aware of the walnuts, huge rotting IEDs decomposing beneath trees. Many a cyclist has wrecked from hitting the hard balls and spinning out. Then there are the deer, dying, lying in maggot heaps next to the road. Nothing has prepared me for the autumn leaves. The colors. The ticker-tape leaves. But Jack. He loves his wagon rides where he sits like a prince and watches the school buses go by, the garbage truck ga-chunk the containers into its jaws, or the doggies walked by their masters--both greet him when passing. He loves going to Orlando Park down the street and swinging in the swing, until his nose turns cherry red and his little hands get co...

The Game MSU vs U of M. I have absolutely no idea, except like most of the country, divided, one group hates the other. Inside jokes, innuendo, asides aside—battle lines drawn, Wolverines against Spartans. In East Lansing the traffic is atrocious, but by 12 noon everyone is in place. Sparty on the field, tossing his javelin. The game begins. Almost from the beginning things were heavy. Again, I have no skin in the game, just in and out of the announcer’s range, picking up on crescendo, denouement, a fumble, touchdown, score. It’s the tense facial interactions, sudden turns, and the suspension of my co-workers. Until finally they are circled around a TV the size of a patch on a quilt. Despite the opposing teams/opposing colors, I can see no difference. On the screen: Michigan vs Michigan. I keep my mouth shut. No one is moving. It has been hours since the phone rang. Time is slo-mo. Atheists offer up prayers, a minute to go. Pass interception. For the good guys. Michigan State winds d...

 The Leaves, leaving   Taking out the trash a tree backlit in the parking lot light glows like a soft ripe mango   Beneath the gray sodden sky across the street from my shop foliage blends into the brick wall   On a morning run there’s a tree shaped like a mushroom, exploding flames flickering upward   At a corner, a signpost maple taillight red, shouting staccato See me, see me, see me   Leafy confetti thrown into the wind a raucous circus of color gardens of cherry tomato red, chili orange   after a hard frost,                    gone