Memoirous

My last post was about glossolalia, not really a process, more like sitting with our heart in our hands and hoping something good can come from it. Writing is about so much more than ordered words. For example, and I asked permission to share this, one of my critique group members sent along for us to read a first draft of a piece that could be defined as flash. It was about a winter’s day, along a river, walking and coming upon a heron on the other side, silent and still. He and his wife walked every day for a week and saw the heron in the exact same spot. They began to wonder: What’s wrong with it? Is it dead?! Other passersby also commented and expressed worry. His piece read like a Reddit story, not sure what was going to happen next or what the point was. Like a lot of first draft writing. Eventually the bird did fly away to the relief of the walkers, riverbank-observers. I told my critique-mate it wasn’t about the bird. The world is terrible right now. I’m not in ev...

In the documentary (series) The Beatles: Get Back , directed and produced by Peter Jackson—which to be honest, I’ve not watched in its entirety (nearly 8 hours in total, quite a commitment) there was insight given into the band members creative process. The series covers the making of the Beatles’ 1970 album Let It Be and draws largely from unused footage and audio material captured while the Beatles were in the studio over the course of 21 days. So a LOT of boring stuff, you know, the part where one sits around and tries to come up with something. The part where we can easily feel blocked or like our left brain is letting us down. Often we just want it to “come”—like turning on a switch. It only comes by butt in chair. Indeed, there’s John Lennon sitting in a chair with a guitar singing nonsense words to a familiar tune that would become “Get Back”. Sometimes Paul would just sing the alphabet, focusing more on chords/arrangements, and then come up with the lyrics later. * My yo...

  Sendak told interviewer Jonathan Cott—and I quote from a recent book, Wild Things are Happening: The Art of Maurice Sendak , Obviously I have one theme . . . It’s not that I have such original ideas, just that I’m good at doing variations on the same idea over and over again . . . That’s all we need as artists—one power-driven fantasy or obsession, then to be clever enough to do variations

  Memoirous gets about 7,000 hits a month! I want to say thank you and encourage all my readers to BUY my books. If just one in 100 of you buy a book (or books), then I will . . . I was never good at math, but I like the sound of 1 in 100!  Freeze Frame  is available as an eBook for 2.99.  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. 365 Affirmations for the Writer , an eBook for 3.99. Writing is a journey. Every time we sit down to begin a piece or write the first chapter or the first line we are venturing into uncharted territory. 365 Affirmations for the Writer is about listening to those who have gone before us and letting them guide us with their insight, their own trials. By reading what others have said, we can survey the path before us, count th...

Now is your best chance to find my book, Flash Memoir: Writing Prompts to Get You Flashing, available for HALF OFF at @Smashwords as part of their Annual Summer Sale! Find my book and many more at https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/chicagojane   all month!  Flash Memoir: Writing Prompts to Get You Flashing We begin with a sudden memory, follow it to see where it leads. Yet so many of us tend to ignore these flashes. We think later yet later on we might have forgotten or lost the relevance of the moment, the urgency that led us there. I recommend a process I call write right now. In the amount of time it takes you to brush your teeth, you can jot down the memory and an outline which can be filled in later. The prompts in this book are designed to spur memories, to get you writing. I’ll also direct you to resources, authors to read and study, and places to submit. What reviewers are saying: StalkyReader 5.0 Stars While Jane Hertenstein’s book Flash Memoir is ostensibl...

You’ll likely see this plea for the month of December. My books are available for download through Amazon Kindle and Smashwords (click on either to go to those pages). Also through Amazon you can order paperbacks of most of my titles. Through month of December Smashword downloads are 25-50% off. Highlight of this post: Freeze Frame: How To Write Flash Memoir 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. What reviewers are saying: Mary Ellen Gambutti 5.0 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! Karen Douglass 5.0 stars Free to Write Short Just recommended this book to my memoir-writ...

As I mentioned in my last post, Peter Orner has a shtick. He’ll maybe start with a memory, an anecdote and then weave in family details that then leads to a wider context, perhaps a contemporary perspective. He’ll also tie in a book citation, a detail from something he once read—usually an author that has flown under the radar and deserves to be read or revisited. For example—every time I pass a rock, the kind left behind as glacial debris, moraine, of which there are many such random big rocks here in the Great Lakes region (I grew up in Ohio) I always remember 1) I live in a post-glacial region, we are formed by our environment, remnants left behind litter our past 2) my sister falling and chipping a tooth on our neighbor’s rock on Princewood Avenue in Kettering. I don’t know how old she was? Nine, ten, eleven but this incident followed her. Not only did the initial fall leave her with a jagged tooth (it was a permanent one, something that as a kid I always wondered about?? perma...

I was talking recently to my friend, the MFA writer struggling to complete her thesis—a draft of a novel. She complimented me on my flash (which I haven’t done much of lately). Flash is about looking, seeing things through a writers eyes. When we wear our writer’s hat we understand that EVERYTHING is fodder for the pen. We just need to be looking, alert to what is going on around us. Or not. Lately I want to turn off that hyper sensitivity—especially when the news is bad, when there’s a mass shooting less than 3 miles from my house, when the suspect is at large, when my daughter texts me when I’m in bed to be sure and lock my door. I wanted to stay under the blankets and hibernate. I want to shut out the world and squeeze my life down into a comfort zone of cycling, the baby, reading books. It doesn’t really allow for epic stories, a narrative arc, for something to happen. Peter Orner has written two books of essays, Am I Alone Here and Still No Word From You , that are highly autobio...

 National English honor Society: https://www.nehs.us/writing/challenge.shtml Continuing with the success of last year’s Poetry Challenge in mind, the NEHS writing challenge for the 2020-2021 school year will be Flash Fiction in multiple, brief forms. Writers will be challenged to create narratives that make impacts on readers using very limited words or characters. While some view the form as a relatively new phenomenon, brief fiction dates from centuries ago in ancient tales including Aesop’s Fables. Many famous authors, including Hemingway, Vonnegut, Chopin, among others, have written flash fiction, albeit under a variety of names. In the UK June 6 is celebrated as National Flash Fiction Day. https://www.nationalflashfictionday.co.uk/ Start conjuring up now entries! There is still time for YOUTH to submit to this: https://fingerscommatoes.wordpress.com/nffd-youth/ NFFD Youth Competition About the 2021 NFFD Youth Competition: Submission period: 15 February to 15 April 2021 unpubli...

 learn how to write flash memoir and buy 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 o...

 learn to do what I do and buy  https://www.amazon.com/Freeze-Frame-Write-Flash-Memoir/dp/1974670597 a review at Amazon 5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Fantastic Resource!Reviewed in Australia on November 21, 2018 Verified Purchase I am a huge fan of flash fiction and lurking in my writing interests has been the desire to document my personal history - but it is a daunting process, coming that close to hurts and pains, without just documenting all the good stuff and making a one-sided biog. Jane Hertenstein has made this process soooo much easier by teaching the writer in me to touch into my history in small flashes. That single 'freedom' has made this book so valuable that I have read it twice in the 9 days I have owned a copy! And the second time around I found I was - for the first time - drawn to a style of poetry I feel I could tackle! So two victories in this book for me! (Can't wait to see what I get when I read it third time around!) I read a LOT of writing books as I ...

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Sue Maynes 5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Fantastic Resource! Reviewed in Australia on November 21, 2018 Verified Purchase I am a huge fan of flash fiction and lurking in my writing interests has been the desire to document my personal history - but it is a daunting process, coming that close to hurts and pains, without just documenting all the good stuff and making a one-sided biog. Jane Hertenstein has made this process soooo much easier by teaching the writer in me to touch into my history in small flashes. That single 'freedom' has made this book so valuable that I have read it twice in the 9 days I have owned a copy! And the second time around I found I was - for the first time - drawn to a style of poetry I feel I could tackle! So two victories in this book for me! (Can't wait to see what I get when I read it third time around!) I read a LOT of writing books as I learn and try the various styles and genres of writing - but of all the books I have read - this gave me...

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tons of writing prompts, a way to flash forward Amazon Apple Baker & Taylor Blio Baker-Taylor Axis360 Barnes & Noble Diesel Flipkart Gardners Extended Retail Gardners Library Inktera (formerly Page Foundry) Kobo Library Direct Odilo OverDrive Oyster Scribd Sony Tolino txtr Yuzu

Check out 365 Affirmations for the Writer , an eBook that will inspire you and keep you writing. *The link takes you to Amazon, but also available through Apple Baker & Taylor Blio Baker-Taylor Axis360 Barnes & Noble Diesel Flipkart Gardners Extended Retail Gardners Library Inktera (formerly Page Foundry) Kobo Library Direct Odilo OverDrive Oyster Scribd Sony Tolino txtr Yuzu

Check out 365 Affirmations for the Writer , an eBook that will inspire you and keep you writing. *The link takes you to Amazon, but also available through Apple Baker & Taylor Blio Baker-Taylor Axis360 Barnes & Noble Diesel Flipkart Gardners Extended Retail Gardners Library Inktera (formerly Page Foundry) Kobo Library Direct Odilo OverDrive Oyster Scribd Sony Tolino txtr Yuzu

Read the headlines: ever wonder what’s behind them. The newspaper is full of real stories that at some point might alter or connect with our own story. Think tsunami, school closing, threat of e. coli in lettuce. Maybe not right away, but in a year flotsam will hit our western shores, the price of a BLT will go up, and the nice lady down the street will lose her job at the elementary school. A lot of what occurs in our life might fall under the header of observation, without conclusion or closure. Walt Disney was right: It’s a small world after all. Ernest (the auto-correct keeps wanting to change it to earnest!) Hemingway had a background in journalism. In Our Time places small vignettes between longer stories such as “Big Two-Hearted River.” I’m not sure what he meant by doing this. Perhaps they were palate cleansers, you know like eating cheese or grapes between courses. As a foreign correspondent, he would eventually report on the Greco-Turkish populati...