What’s your earliest memory, sunshine?

It turns out that when you retread your memories over and over again, they become less “your memory” and more “the memory of your memory.” After 9/11, some researchers went out and recorded people’s memories of the event, three thousand people’s worth.  Eleven months later, they asked the same questions, and thirty-five months later.  The memories were […]

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Family Stories (Where did they go?)

Finally reading Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, which, if you don’t know it, is a writer-book that starts off by advising writers to dig into their pasts. For some reason it struck me this morning that, although both sides of my parents’ families gossip and definitely have a few legendary stories, neither side really

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How to Make a Story a Classic*

  *Research in progress.   Lately I’ve been having–or, rather, subjecting other people to–conversations about how to make stories that are better than well-crafted.  I’m at this weird point where I acknowledge that becoming better at my craft is going to be a lifelong project…but there’s something more out there to writing than just craft.

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