Memory Writing

From drawing a map of a remembered neighborhood to signing a form releasing yourself to take risks in your work, Roorbach offers innovative techniques that will trigger ideas for all writers. Writing Life Stories is a classic text that appears on countless creative nonfiction and composition syllabi the world over. This updated 10th anniversary edition gives you the same friendly instruction and stimulating exercises along with updated information on current memoir writing trends, ethics, internet research, and even marketing ideas.

It’s the end of the world, and Hertell Daggett has decided to save it. Well not save it so much, as just, remember it. The earth’s magnetic poles have reversed and civilization has just had its clock reset to the great cosmic flashing 12:00am from almost a million years ago, and humanity, and everybody in it, is pretty much forgetting everything it learned since the last time.

They say it’s always beautiful in Bethlam, Nevada. No place you’d rather live. The people are friendly, if a little nosy, and there’s no crime to speak of. Life is pretty perfect. But postal worker Hank Davies has started to suspect something is off in this idyllic little town. And he’s certain of that when he realizes the letters he’s been delivering are just blank pages. Hank isn’t the only one who’s noticed the oddities in Bethlam. One such person knocks on his window in the middle of the night, urging him to investigate his bedroom wall.

With the death of her aunt, the narrator is left to sift through an apartment full of faded photographs, old postcards, letters, diaries, and heaps of souvenirs: a withered repository of a century of life in Russia. Carefully reassembled with calm, steady hands, these shards tell the story of how a seemingly ordinary Jewish family somehow managed to survive the myriad persecutions and repressions of the last century. In dialogue with writers like Roland Barthes, W. G. Sebald, Susan Sontag, and Osip Mandelstam, In Memory of Memory is imbued with rare intellectual curiosity and a poetic voice.

Amy Tan has touched millions of people with haunting and sympathetic novels of cultural complexity and profound empathy. With the same spirit and humor that characterize her acclaimed novels, she now shares her insight into her own life and how she escaped the curses of her past to make a future of her own. She takes us on a journey from her childhood of tragedy and comedy to the present day and her arrival as one of the world's best-loved novelists.

You’ve always wanted to write your life story—but something keeps getting in the way. Maybe the memories feel too painful. Maybe the words don’t come. Maybe you’re afraid of what you’ll uncover—or what you won’t be able to let go. You've thought about trying EMDR therapy—but you can't find a therapist, you feel intimidated or skeptical, or you simply can't afford to pay for sessions right now.

The Truth is not always stable. It seems to move around a lot. It also has many angles. And there are many directions from which to come upon Truth. That is to say that Truth has no defined coordinates. Truth can be discovered but not made to stay still. It is a bit like living vapor that must be breathed in, do its work, then exhaled back into the ether of existence.