From Memories to Memoirs: Unlocking Your Story with a Lifeline

The Power of Being Yourself

Be yourself; everyone else is already taken. This timeless piece of wisdom from author Oscar Wilde is a beacon for anyone embarking on the journey of self-reflection and storytelling. It’s a call to embrace your unique story and share it with the world.

Imagine transforming your life’s moments, both big and small, into a captivating essay or book that resonates with friends, family, and future generations. This is where the concept of a Lifeline comes into play. It’s a simple, yet profound tool to help you organize and reflect on the events that have shaped you.

The Lifeline Project: Your First Step

Creating a Lifeline is akin to sketching the outline of a grand painting, where each stroke represents a pivotal moment in your life. You don’t need elaborate tools to begin—just grab some posterboard, copy paper, or even a whiteboard, and you’re set. Consider using sticky notes and a blank wall for a dynamic and flexible approach. This exercise isn’t just for aspiring authors; it’s for anyone eager to delve into their personal or family history with a fresh perspective.

**Getting Started**

Reserve about an hour and start by brainstorming a list of 10 life events. This initial step will open the floodgates to your memory, allowing more moments to surface naturally. You’ll be amazed at how much you can remember during this exercise!

Turning Points and Special Events

Every life is a tapestry of moments that, together, form a unique narrative. Highlighting the turning points and special events in your Lifeline not only outlines your story but also helps you understand the impact of these moments. Consider:

  • – Physical locations that hold significance
  • – Historical events that intersect with your personal journey

Add bullet points or brief notes about stories that come to mind during this process. Include every sensory detail you can remember. These initial snippets can later blossom into full chapters or essays. Or maybe even a poem if you’re so inclined.

Unleashing Creativity and Capturing Memories

Placing your Lifeline where you can see it daily encourages ongoing reflection and creativity. Let your mind wander through your past before bedtime, and keep a journal nearby to jot down any memories or ideas that emerge. In fact, keep something to take notes with on you at all times during this process. Memories pop up at the strangest times and you don’t want to forget. This practice can unearth forgotten treasures and inspire new insights, potentially becoming key components of your story.

The Act of Starting

Louis L’Amour once said,

Start writing – no matter what – the water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.

Your Lifeline is that faucet.

Whether you prefer jotting down notes, using a voice recording app, or sharing memories with a friend, the key is to begin. This simple act of starting can unleash a flow of creativity and memories, paving the way for your storytelling journey. Give yourself a chance!

Sharing Your Story

Now that you’ve embarked on this journey of self-discovery and storytelling, consider sharing a piece of your Lifeline with others. Whether it’s through a personal essay, a blog post, or a conversation with a loved one, your story deserves to be heard. Remember, it’s not just about preserving memories; it’s about celebrating the unique path you’ve traveled and the wisdom gained along the way.

I’d love to hear about an event from your Lifeline or your goals for storytelling this year. Feel free to hit reply or share with a friend for that extra bit of motivation. Let’s turn those taps on and let our stories flow!

Happy Storytelling!

Karen

PS: Want a couple resources to help you create a Lifeline? Check out my handy memoir writing guide Tell Your Life Story: 10 Tips and Techniques to Write Your Memoir. Or visit the Etsy shop for an elegant Lifeline Journal Bundle ready for you to download and print out so you can begin your journey.

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Why Writing Your Story Matters

Beauty in Humble Things quote father and daughter in tent house

One of the most common objections I hear when folks are asked to share their story is  “I don’t have anything interesting to say, I’m just a nobody.” If you’ve known me long at all, you know that I often speak of the Beautiful Ordinary and its place of honor in our memories.

Most of us, if given the opportunity, would jump at the chance to sit down with a long-lost relative and listen to them relate their ordinary “Day in the Life” experiences. We’re curious about how they did life and we want to know if they handled trials and challenges in ways that might help us.

We are hardwired to crave stories, and there’s something powerful about the warmth of everyday experiences. It’s how we pass on our values, our culture, our life memories.

We want to know:

  • *How can we connect?
  • *What can we learn?
  • *What did you see and experience?

Author Eudora Welty captured this sense of anticipation surrounding storytelling:

Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. I suppose it’s an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole.

Here are 5 ways writing your story matters:

You can use each as a prompt to jump-start your journaling practice. Or try creating a bubble outline for your personal story. By the way, memoir writing can be short too, think one paragraph, one story.

  1. Empathy and Connection: Your writing can connect you with others who have experienced similar events or share your background. This builds empathy and drives a sense of belonging. Your story might be the bridge that can build stronger relationships and communities.
  2. Self-Reflection: Writing your story allows you to reflect on your experiences, understand your journey, and gain insights. You might find yourself making new connections that may transform how you think about the events in your life.
  3. Inspiration: Sharing your story can inspire others to overcome obstacles and embrace their own journeys. Reading your story may help them in ways you can only dream of.
  4. Growth and Healing: Writing your story, even if just for your personal use, can be cathartic, helping you process challenges and the hard parts of life, finding healing and closure. If you choose to share your story it has the potential to do great good as others relate to your experiences.
  5. Legacy and Impact: You have the opportunity to share with the future your wisdom, lessons learned, experiences, and unique witness to your life and times. Writing your personal history lets you inspire others both now and in the future.

We each collect a lifetime of stories. Each person’s unique history deserves to be remembered and shared with others.

*Write down that funny story about your sibling
*Record your memories of growing up in a specific place/neighborhood
*Commit to paper those stories your friends and family always ask you to tell

Now, take a few easy steps to share yours. Drop me a line and tell me your reason for sharing your story, I’d love to hear from you.
Karen

PS: Jumpstart your story today with this handy little guide: Tell Your Life Story: 10 Tips and Techniques to Write Your Memoir

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Top 4 Classes to Help You Write Your Memoir

Occasionally I curate a few excellent resources that I’ve found helpful and highly recommend. If you’re serious about sharing your memoir or family history here’s my top pick of short classes that will give you the necessary tools, confidence, and encouragement to begin telling your unique story. Each of these can help you make amazing progress writing your memoir or family history.  Two of these classes are specifically about writing memoir. The others contain tools and ideas that will help you craft memorable stories, a key element in any writing.  

Best part – my class is on the easy-to-use Learndesk platform, I think you’ll like it! You can listen to the other three courses free with a one-month trial of Skillshare. Take mad notes, listen again, dream big, and take action. If you decide you’re loving the great value this teaching platform provides, you can join for a low annual fee that will pay itself back in value many times over. While you’re trying out the platform explore a few other topics from their extensive offering of over 27,000 premium classes and more than 2,000 free classes. (as of March 2019). (I may receive a small affiliate commission on the Skillshare classes)

For example, the technique of taking an event from your life and flipping it into a fiction story will give you an entirely new slant on the events. Excellent teacher Adam Janos will walk you through how it’s done with examples that are sure to get your own creative thoughts flowing.

Author Roxanne Gay will show you how to create short memoirs, also known as personal essays. These can stand alone or be part of a larger work but you’ll learn from a pro about what will resonate and how to write it.

Ready for the nuts and bolts of how to start writing your memoir? Best-selling memoirist Kathy Karr shares “the processes she relies on to write beautiful, visceral scenes.”

How about a jump start on your memoir writing? My class on Learndesk, Tips and Techniques to Quick Start a Memoir, will give you a fun, creatively practical project, and easy directions to help you begin.

  1. Autobiographical Fiction: Write a Short Story from Personal Experience, by writer/reporter Adam Janos

Adam will teach you to brainstorm ideas from your life, transform yourself into a character, and write details. You’ll learn about conflict and pacing with excellent examples. This class can help memoir writers think beyond their ideas for standard memoir and expand their storytelling skills. Click this link to try the class: https://skl.sh/3ss2WY8

2. Creative Writing: Crafting Personal Essays with Impact, by Roxanne Gay

Roxanne’s course is full of “practical guidance, actionable tactics, and example essays” She’ll lead you through the important step of “finding a specific purpose for telling your story”, then how to “connect your work to a larger theme”, and inspire you with how to use your “personal memories to write your story.” Click this link to take Roxanne’s class:  https://skl.sh/3rhQ9X2

3. Writing the Truth, How to Start Writing Your Memoir, Mary Karr

Through a series of memory-focused writing exercises, Mary guides you through a clear, actionable plan to help you write your memoir. She “shares her wisdom and perspective on life, writing as a craft….” Mary’s class will help you develop your personal writing voice and hone your storytelling skills to connect with readers. Don’t miss this class, click here to jump right in: https://skl.sh/3cniCq3

4. Tips and Techniques to Quick Start a Memoir, Karen Ray

Yup, this one is mine and I’ve seen these tips, tools, and techniques work wonders! You don’t have to be a “writer” to share your story in a meaningful way. This class will jump-start your memoir or family history project, helping you clarify the 5 W’s of your story, the WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE, and WHY. You’ll create a foundational framework to build your personal history project and have fun in the process. This can even stand alone as a mini-memoir. Click here to make fast progress with your memoir or family history:

https://www.learndesk.us/class/4630850123595776/tools-and-techniques-to-quick-start-a-memoir

Quick Start A Memoir

Start today — Celebrate your life and begin saving those important personal and family memories!

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How to Write About Your “WHEN”

Remember when…?

Do your stories often start out, “When I was little…” or “When I traveled to X that summer…” or maybe “When we lived on the ranch…”? Master outdoor humor writer Patrick McManus wrote many books set during the WHEN of his growing up years with his best friend Crazy Eddie. If you haven’t sampled his stories try this one, The Grasshopper Trap.

Your WHEN, like the other memoir keys, will overlap with the other  aspects of your story. However, this one serves as the large, solid master key in jump starting your memoir. You get to decide when to focus your story. Spend time reflecting on the times that have stayed fresh in your memory, what stands out? When does your mind like to travel back to? If you’re not sure, talk it over with friends or family and try to narrow down your story to an impactful time frame. Often when we talk our story out with others or ask them what stories they hear us tell the most, we will find our WHEN. You may be surprised at the feedback  others give you about the stories and events they find most intriguing  in your life.  Remember, the decision is yours but don’t be afraid to explore a bit before you settle on your WHEN.

Memoirs can be narrowly focused on a short time period and be as short as a personal essay or book length. They can also cover an entire life…the choice is up to you. What stands out most to you as you think back over your life and times? Think about where the story lies, what grabs your heart, mind and soul?

Photos are great tool for narrowing down your WHEN. Go through your collection and set aside a few extra photos that illustrate this well for you. It’s good to have choices and your memories will be prompted by different images, see where they take you.

If you’re working on someone else’s story what memories tend to come up repeatedly when you’re talking with them? The answer to this question will help you focus your WHEN. Your chosen time might be dependent upon a memorable historical event or season. For example, the novel The Grapes of Wrath focuses on one family during the Great Depression. The Journals of Lewis and Clark cover one massive exploration event. The Diary of Anne Frank is constrained not only in its “when” but its location.

Look for the key moments and pay attention to what else was going on in the world at that time. This will often help shape the other sections of your memoir, especially the WHY.  Explore  the nature of your story’s WHEN, one story at a time. If you’re working with a grandparent or other elder, or perhaps even someone who’s no longer alive, this technique works well. Good questions to ask might be related to technological advancements like a lunar landing, world shaking events like wars and  natural disasters, or the rise or fall of a world leader. Just as we’re sharing stories of our experiences during this worldwide pandemic, others did the same thing during the 1918 flu epidemic. These are universal human experiences full of story.

If your WHEN covers childhood, mine the events of that time for relevant material, they are some of our favorite recollections. There are countless television shows, movies, and books written about childhood memories. Remember the much-loved Wonder Years television series? Or  The Waltons? These story lines did an amazing job of tying in larger societal events in the context of their impact on the characters. Memoirs work the same way. Your impressions and reactions to the events you witnessed at that specific point in time are unique to you but will resonate with others in the universal human language of emotion.

Perhaps your story will center around  coming-of-age or a season of loving a favorite pet.  The book Rascal, by Sterling North tells the delightful story of one young boy’s pet racoon. Fiction uses the same technique, think about the narrow time setting in To Kill a Mockingbird.

The stories we tell around the family dinner table or at holiday gatherings often start with the phrase “Remember when…?” Revisit these conversations in your mind and as you review your photographs, it will help you define the time setting of your story. Think both broad and narrow; your WHEN might involve personal or family life events that charted the course of your own days. Or historical events you witnessed may call you to share your perspective. You were there, you lived it, share your memories. Brainstorm what you felt, saw and heard. You get the idea, free write everything you can think of.

Remember your first love? That first car or job or when you first moved out on your own? Your wedding day or the birth of your children?  Take your pick, there’s a wealth of memories lying behind the door your WHEN key will unlock. Involve your senses as you take notes and prep for working on this part of your story. What did the flowers look and smell like? How about the food that was served? Maybe the smell of fresh tilled fields always takes you back to that childhood summer on the farm. Do you remember the first time you went to the fair; the smell of corndogs and cotton candy mixed with the livestock barns? Unforgettable! Remember…the smell of a summer rainstorm, walking a favorite dog and hugging his soft side, the taste of Grandma’s fresh chocolate chip cookies, the smell of your great uncle’s pipe tobacco, the stories heard while spending time with a loved grandparent.

Pay attention to what stands out as you write down or record your memories, note the emotions and thoughts that rise up repeatedly. This is most often where your story lies – its the WHEN key under the mat, the sign post for your memoir. Give the future a gift of memories, personal and world history from your perspective.

Spend some time choosing your WHEN, you’ll be glad you did. This key will unlock doors and the stories will come tumbling out.

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Creative Journaling Tips for Your Remarkable Life

Relationships are top of mind right now, emphasized even due to the social distancing we’re experiencing in the pandemic. This is foreign ground for most of us but will become one for the history books. In the scarcity of human contact we long to connect and are finding creative ways to do it. The silver lining may be an increase in family connectedness and deeper friendships. This is one of the good things to come out of this season of pausing, reflection and in some cases deep loss.

So relationships and how they’ve impacted our lives is the theme for this journaling exercise. Think of it as a creative tool to use in developing your memoir, short or long. It all starts with a few words on a page or spoken into a recorder.

Let’s give it a shot! Review the many relationships in your life; most of us are sons and daughters, parents, friends, spouses, employees, aunts or uncles. Think of the connections you’ve had with others over the years, both personal and professional.

Don’t get stuck, just pick two or three that stand out in your memory.

You can always try this technique with others later.

How have these relationships impacted, molded, changed and directed  the course of your life over the years?

Pick one relationship from childhood, one from youth and one from adulthood. Your choice of how close the relationship was; don’t force it or get stuck with expectations, go with what rises to the top of your thoughts. They don’t even have to all be human.

Many people count a dog or horse among their best friends.

It’s perfectly ok to write about these dear friends too.

Now, for each one I want you to try two approaches:

1—How has this relationship affected your life? Did it inspire you, coach in in a positive way, maybe it deflected you down another path? You can go as deep as you like here. Sometimes even fleeting relationships impact us deeply and change the course of our lives. Other times it may be the long faithfulness of a dear family member or friend.

2—How would your life have been different if you hadn’t known that person? Don’t edit, just write down your thoughts and speculate, follow the rabbit trails, this is just for your own use. A well-known example of this, and one that’s been used in many book and movie plots, is the storyline behind It’s a Wonderful Life when George Bailey’s angel gives him the opportunity to see what life in Bedford Falls would have been like without him. As Clarence says, “You’ve been given a gift.”

Bonus Tip:

Another tool to use is to take a sheet of paper for each person you want to write about. Now do a mind map or a bubble outline. Write their name in the middle of the page and then, using a timer set for about three minutes, write down everything you can think of that’s associated with this person. Don’t second guess yourself, get it all down. Write each item or phrase on the page radiating out from the central person.  When the timer dings, stop. You can always add more later but these are the top of mind and semi-conscious ideas that come out when you brainstorm like this.

When you’ve finished this exercise you may realize some interesting side notes or even have a great light bulb moment (epiphany for you fellow word nerds). Jot these reflections down too. You now have the makings of a fine chapter or two for your memoir. In fact, you may have even discovered the theme of your lifestory. See where it goes.

All the best to you in your memory journey!

Karen

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Quick Start a Memoir

So—it’s summer, it’s hot and… it’s the perfect time to take action — do something different and good for your soul! A little bit of life history will reap dividends in mental and emotional health as well as pay what you’ve learned forward to the future.

I found this quote from Peter Drucker a few days ago. He’s a business management consultant but his words are applicable to many things in life.

 “There is the risk you cannot afford to take,

and there is the risk you cannot afford not to take”

What about finally saving the stories of someone you love? Or your own? I’ve made it easy for you by creating a Quick Start a Memoir class. And—you can even take it for free using this link that will take you to the class on Skillshare and a free 2 month membership:

https://skl.sh/2YUDbkf

Here’s the class description:

Do you have a parent, grandparent or other relative who has been telling great family stories for decades, but is overwhelmed by the thought of writing them down? Maybe you have been longing to tell your own story. It’s time! Creating a life legacy memoir is a meaningful way to celebrate life. You don’t have to be a “writer” to share your story in a meaningful way. This class will give you a quick start to clarify the 5 W’s of your story, the WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE and WHY. You’ll create a fun, actionable mind map project that will inspire you to start, give you the framework you need and keep you on track. Start today– let’s begin saving those important family memories and connecting the generations with your story.

Five fabulous reasons why it’s important to share your story:

* Celebrate your life and share your experiences with others

* Preserve important family stories and memories

* Put names and stories with family photos

* Share your wisdom and the life lessons you’ve learned

* Bear witness to the history you’ve lived

The wise Dr. Seuss has this to say:

“Sometimes you will never know the value

of a moment until it becomes a memory”

Have lots of  ideas and memories  but don’t know how to start? Try the class for an instant boost. Or give me a call/fire off an email for a free consult. I’d be delighted to point you in the right direction and give you a couple resources.

Karen

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Contact Me

Please contact me for more information or to to schedule a free consultation. I look forward to visiting with you.






    Karen Ray Photo

    Karen Ray

    Address: 331 Bristol Avenue, Las Cruces, NM, 88001

    Phone: 575-323-1048


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