It never ceases to amaze me that I continue to come across story-related resources that I didn’t know about before. The discoveries multiply exponentially as one site or blog leads to another. As a blogger about the world of storytelling, I am confident that I will never run out of … Continue reading
Category Archives: Storytelling and Journaling, Memoir, Lifewriting
You Were Put on This Planet to Live an Extraordinary Life
I came across the utterly charming and uplifting site Tera’s Wish, subtitled “a free informational resource about Creativity.” The Tera’s Wish web site, the site says, “is about exploring the energy within each of us that fulfills and makes us most happy.” There are a heck of lot tools on … Continue reading
A Feast of Memoirs
The August issue of O magazine offers “O’s Memoir Feast,” eight “riveting true stories” introduced with these words: Tell me a story. Tell me your story. … Okay, talk to me, tell me who you really are. This is what we feel when we sit down to read a memoir. … Continue reading
Journaling: What Hath Twitter Wrought?
With the exception of a period in junior high, I’ve never really kept a journal (I think I may have anticipated the Internet because I wrote my journal back then as though it would be read by the public.) But beginning in early March 1993 when we first got on … Continue reading
An Online Place for Lifestory Writers to Discuss Their Craft
My new friend Sharon Lippincott of The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing has joined with Jerry Waxler to start a Yahoo-based discussion group for those interested in lifestory writing. Although my interest in that area is embryonic at best, I’ve joined the group and am impressed with the warm and generous spirit its founders and members convey.
You can join here, and in the extended portion of this entry, I have also borrowed (stolen) QUITE liberally from Sharon’s site to further explain the group. Here’s the first part of Sharon’s invitation:
Calling All Life Writers
There is good news for anyone who would like to hang out with other people who write life stories, memoir, journals, personal essays, or other forms of recording their lives in writing. Whatever your reason for writing about your life, the newly formed Life Writers Forum is a great place to ask questions, share thoughts, post short stories or excerpts from longer works, and generally shoot the breeze about writing.
Story Prompts about Parents and Siblings
In a recent newsletter, Terrence Gargiulio offered some great “trigger questions” for eliciting stories about parents and siblings: What stories do you know about your parents’ childhood? What things did you do with your parents? Do you have any memories of shopping for food or clothing with your parents? Were … Continue reading
Were You There?
What a concept … I actually found a cool new resource through the Google ads here on A Storied Career. It’s Were You There? which is in beta. I’d consider this another convergence between social media.
Here’s what the founder, Jonathan Hull, says about the site:
Our mission is simple: to create a comprehensive and easy-to-use archive where the memories that shape our lives – and history – can not only be preserved but shared, creating a conversation about the moments in life that mattered.
The concept grew out of my own passion for storytelling both as a former TIME magazine bureau chief in Jerusalem and Chicago and a bestselling novelist. Over the years I’ve received many letters from readers who were moved to share some of the unforgettable moments in their own lives, hopeful that someone might listen. Because what are stories without an audience? At heart, we are all storytellers, telling and retelling our stories to give structure and meaning to our lives. The more letters I read, the more I realized that we all have stories that deserve to be told and remembered. But when I looked online for a place where these memories might come together in a meaningful way, whether from years ago or something that happened last week, I couldn’t find one.
So I created WereYouThere.
Hull invites “select a category and follow your memory back.” He says that if you can’t can’t find what you’re looking for (for example, I didn’t see the Kent State shootings or the Challenger or Columbia tragedies), “simply add a new topic yourself.”
Hull notes that you can also join a Community or start your own.
Hull’s examples of things you can do at WereYouThere:
- Share stories, photos and videos of growing up in your hometown, your old hangouts, high school or college.
- Remember the March from Selma, Woodstock or what it was like to live through Katrina.
- Reunite with others who served in your combat unit at Omaha Beach, Chosin Reservoir, Da Nang or Takrit.
- Relive the sites and sounds of the Summer of Love, your favorite travel spot or the Whisky a Go Go when The Doors took stage.
- Share a passion for ‘56 Chevys, Elvis or Coltrane.
- Recall the everyday scenes of a time gone by, from the fads and fashion to the cars, the music and the dreams that defined your generation.
People really are starting to share stories in this venue.
Extended entry lists other categories on Were You There?
Bike Stories
As an avid cyclist, I was delighted to learn of the site crazyguyonabike.com that enables touring cyclists to journal about their bike tours. These folks are much more ambitious than my partner and I have been so far; we biked in about 12 states last summer but traveled between them … Continue reading
National Day Diary Project
Update: Above are the books that have come out of Joni Cole’s Day Diary project. I submitted an entry on March 27, 2007, my birthday, and Joni was kind enough to send me a birthday greeting. The book from the 2007 project is The Watercooler Diaries (my submission wasn’t chosen), … Continue reading
Story-Related Gifts
I’m not sure if gifts that prompt storytelling have always been available, or if I have just noticed them more since I’ve been interested in storytelling. This year, for example, I’ve seen an “ingenious journal” that “jumpstarts the storyteller in everyone, sold by Norm Thompson and probably many others. “More … Continue reading