Here’s the link to the event’s Facebook page.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Huffington Post has launched a new project called “The Moment I Knew,” a user-submitted video series in which readers tell the stories of life-changing moments they have experienced. Each section of HuffPost has chosen a different theme — whether it was the moment you knew you were in love, the moment you knew your marriage was over, the moment you knew you loved college, or the moment you knew you were broke. You can also tell about any other life-defining moment you’d like to share.

You can create your video using YouTube or Vimeo and send the link/URL of the video to themomentiknew@huffingtonpost.com. If you create your video using your laptop or mobile phone and have a video file, attach the file in an email to themomentiknew@huffingtonpost.com. Your video submission is subject to HuffPost’s User Terms. Make sure to include your full name with your video submission. Each video should be 30-60 seconds long, and should feature only you, speaking right into the camera telling your story. You are asked to start your story with the words “The moment I knew…”

Hashtag for the project is #momentiknew.

You can check out and subscribe to “The Moment I Knew” YouTube Channel.

Email questions to themomentiknew@huffingtonpost.com.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

See a photo of Roben-Marie, her bio, and Part 1 of this Q&A.

Q&A with Roben-Marie Smith, Question 2:

Q: What has been your favorite or most meaningful story-related project or initiative and why?

A: “Points of Two” was a year-long weekly project that I did with fellow artist Kira Harding. We approached each week based on a different theme, prompt, or art supply.

Kira and I are very different in age, geography, lifestyle, and stage of life, which made for a diverse juxtaposition in our viewpoints. This diversity was illustrated from the very beginning with our first prompt — “where I live,” which featured sand and beaches for me and fresh snow for Kira.

This project pushed me into new territory as we took turns choosing the weekly prompt. Kira often chose things that were outside of my comfort zone. She pushed me to use more words, to become more vulnerable and to share more openly. The response was overwhelmingly positive as my readers identified with my emotions.

The week that garnered the greatest response was “how to be a miserable artist.” Our project resulted in a treasured thick art journal that was featured in both Art Journaling and Somerset Digital Studio magazines.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Continuing my rollout of finds that will eventually land on my inside pages (even as I place on inside pages the finds I listed last July).

Today’s list belongs to the category Links about Journaling, Memoir-Writing, and Personal Storytelling

• Beyond the Trees: Brainchild of two Cincinnati women with stories of their own to tell who support the idea that each life event or transition calls out to be remembered and documented before it is forgotten.

• Every Life Has a Story: Roben-Marie Smith’s site about mixed-media art, handmade journals, and scrapbooking, offering video tutorials, step by step how-to’s, give-aways and workshops.
• Life Biography: Users are provided questions and an online template for writing an autobiography. Fee-based
• LifeStoryTriggers.com: Site of Hella Buchheim, whose company, Personal Histories, gives voice to people who had a story to tell. Personal Histories works with people who want to write their own stories.

• Live On: Web application helps users share important moments, while keeping those memories alive and safe for future generations to enjoy tomorrow. Offers interesting promise “to keep everything you upload to LiveOn forever, and we’ll do everything in our power to keep that promise!” Most features are free.
• Oxford Center for Life Writing: Home of life-writing at Oxford University and beyond; founded to bring together a rich variety of approaches to the writing and study of life-stories and encourage those who write biography, memoir, and those who undertake research on life-narratives.
• Save Every Step: Enables users to save and share personal family stories on a timeline. Basic service free; fees for additional storage space.
• The Social Voice Project: Uses audiography to capture, preserve, share, and celebrate expressions of the social condition.
• Story Preservation Initiative: The initiative’s mission is to create and make available to the general public a diverse collection of oral histories of people who have exhibited a talent, passion, commitment, or way of living that has served to enrich the human experience. The sole function of the collection is to serve as an educational, historical, and cultural resource.

• Story Tree: Helps users preserve your precious family memories and share them with the ones they love.
• Timesketch: Provides unique and customized experiences to individuals and corporations through the venue of memoir writing and legacy development. Presumably fee-based, but no information given.
• True Stories Well Told: Personal historian Sarah White’s place for people who read and write about real life.
• Write My Memoirs 2.0: Free system that makes it easy for people to start recording their memoirs and stories about their families.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Visual Storytelling and Art Journaling image curations

As you probably know, Pinterest is the hottest social-media platform going, having grown phenomenally in the last few months. Users describe it as addictive. “Pinterest lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web,” the site states. “People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes.”

Though I usually like to try out new social-media platforms, I wasn’t sure about Pinterest because it focuses on images. I wasn’t sure how images would relate to applied storytelling or whether I wanted to use Pinterest for interests outside storytelling.

But as more and more people I knew started using it, I got sucked into the lure of hopping on the Pinterest bandwagon. I requested an invitation and waited for it impatiently.

I concluded that two topics I could “pin” that relate to storytelling are Visual Storytelling and Art Journaling. Sometime in the future I may create pinboards related to my crafts interests.

I have periodically presented roundups of visual storytelling on this blog. In my Pinterest curation, I am including almost anything that claims to be visual storytelling even I don’t personally agree with the storytelling value of the image. (And, of course, I know some story purists who do not believe any image can convey storytelling since storytelling requires actual telling and an audience.)

Visual storytelling is truly in the eye of the beholder. The story an image tells is formed in the mind of the person who views it, no matter what the artist intended. Thus the greatest value that visual images possess may be their ability to prompt our minds to create stories.

Early in my personal storytelling curation on Scoop.it, I included some pieces on art journaling (something I’d like to do someday). I found, however, that they did not lend themselves well to the Scoop.it format since they were so image-driven. They are a much better fit for Pinterest.

Whether or not you follow any of my other curations, I invite you to follow these two new image-rich topics:

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Project 365 Vets is a site I would normally list on one of my inside pages rather than featuring here, but because its mission is so worthy and may be time-limited (it’s not clear to me whether the project will continue for more than one year), I’m giving it the spotlight.

The site was found by two moms “who are on a mission to honor a Veteran a day, every day of the year.” The founders say:

We want to honor veterans through their stories told in their own words. Our goals are simple. We want to honor our heroes, raise awareness about the issues veterans face every day, and preserve veteran’s stories for future generations.

Project 365 Vets actively seeks veterans who would like to share their stories. Wednesdays have been set aside for Memorial Stories, so that those who would like to honor a fallen hero may also participate.

Those interested in participating in the project are encouraged contact the project founder Tina Shang.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Some interesting life-writing items I’ve come across recently reflect end-of-the-old-year/beginning-of-the-new-year themes.

Professional Personal Historian Dan Curtis (pictured) published a list of The Top Personal History Blogs of 2011, some of which I know well and will also be well-known to readers here. (Do read his post to learn his criteria for the list and which blogs he considers to be the best of the best). Here are his picks with his commentary:

• The Heart and Craft of Life Writing. Owner Sharon Lippincott describes herself as “…passionate about all forms of life writing, especially memoir and journaling.”

• Legacy Multimedia blog. Owner Stefani Twyford says that on her blog “you will read about my passion for personal history, filmmaking techniques, genealogy, and related topics. I will veer off onto other topics from time to time but always come back to the things that make my work and my life a joy.”

• Memoir Mentor. Owner Dawn Thurston says, “My blog is an attempt to participate in the larger community of people interested in life story writing of all kinds and perhaps help a few people persevere in writing their stories.”

• The Memoir Writer’s Blog. Owner Denis Ledoux describes his blog as “helping people write family and personal stories…”

• One Story at a Time. Owner Beth LaMie says, “I hope you find my stories of interest, especially if you want to write some of your own family stories.”

• True Stories Well Told. Owner Sarah White says, “Here’s where I share the thoughts I might bring up for class discussion. Here’s where I post the writings of my fearless, peerless, workshop participants. Here’s where I share stories from my own life, as well as my pet peeves, pointers, and personal observations. I hope to create the atmosphere you find in my classrooms.”

• Video Biography Central. Owner Jane Lehmann-Shafron describes her blog as a place for “Advice, essays, samples and inspiration for people interested in preserving their personal and family history through video biography, memorial video, life story and genealogy video.”

• Women’s Memoirs. Owners Matilda Butler and Kendra Bonnet have put together a wealth of information that includes writing prompts, book reviews, and more. Women’s Memoirs is not strictly speaking a personal history site but there’s a lot of useful material here for anyone involved in personal histories.

Curtis also recently published The 50 Best Life Story Questions. It’s a terrific list because it certainly isn’t run of the mill. Here’s a small sampling:

• If you could do one thing over in your life, what would it be?
• What makes you happy?
• Looking back on your life, what do you regret?
• What do you believe to be true?
• What is the secret to a happy life?
• What do you believe happens to us after we die?
• Who’s had the greatest influence on your life and why?
• What are the qualities that you admire in your friends?
• What is the hardest thing you’ve ever had to do?
• How would you describe yourself?

Amber Lea Starfire has an New Year’s Day excellent post in which she describes the process she engages in annually in which she reflects on the past and looks forward to the future. In A New Year’s Writing Tradition, she describes creating a New Year’s Chart (pictured), kind of a mind map that captures:

• Things I want to do.
• Things I want to be.
• Things I want to learn.
• Things and people I want to see.
• Places I want to go.
• Adventures I want to have

Amber says developing the chart is a fun, creative activity, and I believe it.

Finally, when SMITH Magazine founder Larry Smith participated in his Q&A here back in September 2010, the magazine had just launched a new project, The Moment, “moving personal pieces about key instances — a moment of opportunity, serendipity, calamity, or chaos — that have had profound consequences on our lives.” Today is the release day for the book that resulted from the project, THE MOMENT: Wild, Poignant, Life-Changing Stories from 125 Writers and Artists Famous & Obscure. I’m probably looking forward to this book more than Smith’s six-word-memoir books because the contents will necessarily be much more storied when not restricted to six words.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

To my current theme of year-end review and new-year goals, I’m adapting some ideas from an article by Ernest R. Stair in the January 2012 issue of Toastmaster magazine (to read the full article, you’ll need to return to the link later in January — unless you’re a Toastmasters member).

Stair’s thesis is that you can’t get a real sense of achievements if you look at them through the perspectives of others. An example of a particular telling question that reveals the wrong way to look at achievements (and a question I can see myself asking) is: “How will my job title sound at a high-school reunion?”

Instead, Stair suggests a set of the “right” questions to ask. I’m adapting them here, not as questions, but as prompts to apply to the year we’ve nearly completed:

Thinking about the year just completed, give one or more storied examples of:

• Times you’ve learned from your mistakes.
• Times you’ve refused to quit.
• Times you’ve let someone else have all the glory
• Times you’ve taken criticism gracefully
• Times you’ve made someone’s day

Your responses to these prompts, says Stair, “succeed in highlighting the true you, as you rise to great heights turning ordinary moments of your everyday life into events of extraordinary significance.”

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

In his final offering of November’s National Lifewriting Month, Denis Ledoux offered the downloadable Scheduling for Success, a guide to keeping one’s writing projects on track.

Strictly speaking, the guide works for any writer, not just lifewriters.

Meanwhile, Annabel Candy is offering the free, downloadable e-booklet, Personal Writing Magic.

The 10-page publication offers personal writing tips, storytelling devices for memorable personal writing, a piece on personal writing and self-discovery, and seven personal-writing themes.

The personal-writing approach came about for Candy when she made an interesting discovery: “It turned out that people are much more interested in my personal story and experiences than they are in my qualifications …”

I can relate. Sometimes I feel self-indulgent when I occasionally write personal stories about my own life in this space — but those posts often generate more attention and comment than my usual fare.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Here’s one more followup on New York Times columnist David Brooks’s project to collect stories from folks older than 70, a series he’s calling “The Life Report” …

Brooks has synthesized the lessons offered by the life stories/essays he received:

• Divide your life into chapters.
• Beware rumination.
• You can’t control other people.
• Lean toward risk.
• Measure people by their growth rate, not by their talents.
• Be aware of the generational bias.
• Work within institutions or crafts, not outside them.
• People get better at the art of living.

You can read Brooks’s full elaboration on these lessons here.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.