There will be “good” and “bad” days, but in reality, all days are simply days of grace. The BEST writers confide to us that 9 out of 10 days they feel they have written poorly. We just keeping adding to the soup, whether we think it’s good, poor, or brilliant.
Be prepared to hit delete – more than you like. Be prepared to hate what you’ve written – more than you wish. Be prepared to love what comes out of this adventure!
Learn to trust the soup, as Steven Pressfield, calls the art of writing. It’s the PROCESS – what I call the adventure – that creates your final product. It’s just going to be what it is. And you need not make any apologies! You are writing from your heart and just being real. Don’t be afraid you might offend someone. You probably will.
Write to heal. Write to move forward. It’s your right to be real, to be well, to be whole.
“Everybody is a story. When I was a child, people sat around kitchen tables and told their stories. We don’t do that so much anymore. Sitting around the table telling stories is not just a way of passing time. It is the way the wisdom gets passed along. The stuff that helps us to live a life worth remembering.” ~ Remen
The following stories, essays, and journal entries are samples of the ingredients in my own soup pot. I’ve included them here, as a result of a couple years’ worth of collecting, to demonstrate that memoir-writing is done one little piece at a time. Think in terms of 500-1000 words for each story.
Let’s stir your Pot by reading some sample stories from Team Family Online readers!