Telling Tales: A Memoir Guidebook

This guidebook is not about grammar or about the importance of correct English. It is about your memories, how to bring them forward in all their pregnant splendor, and how to successfully capture them as written stories. Written well, your life and your experiences, will entrance your readers with even the humblest of recollections. These individual stories, well told, become your personal memoir, a written legacy. Alex Haley once said, "Whenever an old person dies, a small library burns." Early in my teaching I realized that I was a coach, a guide, a kind of "midwife" to my client's stories. They are the authors, and with my guidance, they celebrated the discoveries, adventures, courage, unexpected insights, love and humor of their Lives. I, the cheerleader, was the one who kept them on track, safe, and enthused. I wrote this book in response to my students repeated requests to "come home with me," to keep them writing. Stories are about process. What did I do and why? What happened next? How did it change me? What did I learn from the whole experience? And how did other experiences in the following years change my earlier perspective? Many of us recognize that at least some of the experiences of our lives are important and are worthy of recording. However, these "important" stories only begin to touch upon the wealth of stories we contain, or the richness that we are as human beings. So many of us aren't aware of the treasures we have to share - and ask, "Why would anyone be interested in what I have to say?" But think about your favorite books, or movies, or musical lyrics. Do they talk about people who have struggled and overcome challenges? That is why we love them - they speak to us - and we relate to them. How we have negotiated the humble day-to-day problems of life reveal a lot about our spirit, sense of humor, and our ingenuity. Problem-solving techniques, attitudes about politics, religion, education, marriage, sex, child-rearing, work, community, money, art, all of this, told out of the experiences that formed them, will be of profound interest to future generations. Your experiences - how you have lived - describe your collection of tools and how you used them for specific types of problem solving. The stories, your tools, will be your legacy for your grandchildren and great-great grandchildren. Sacred Scriptures are almost always stories about journeys through trials. They include humor, tragedy, discovery, paradox, birth, death, and a continuum of gathering consciousness about people living their lives in community with others. These stories are full of lessons that give their keepers useful techniques for living day to day lives, as well as for reframing their lives after times of devastation or discovery. These stories strengthen the tribes (families) that keep them.

• | Author: Nancy Fazendin Tsuchiya
• | Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• | Publication Date: Nov 04, 2016
• | Number of Pages: 138 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Paperback
• | ISBN-10: 1537793977
• | ISBN-13: 9781537793979