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I love the genre of memoir and find myself drawn to real stories of real people, even above the wonderful fiction that I so enjoy. As my friend Brenda Folsom always said, \u201cTruth is stranger than fiction.\u201d You can\u2019t make this stuff up!<\/p>\n
As an educator and student of human development and interpersonal relations, I am intrigued with the stories of others and the events that impacted their lives. Memoir is important on so many levels.<\/p>\n
I started writing LifeStory several years ago, when my husband and I joined a Senior education class in the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (Olli) in Galveston. The class of approximately 25 folks met twice a month to share 5 minute Life Stories. The participants ranged in age from 55 (Mack and I had just turned 55 and were finally able to be involved in this incredible program) through people in their 90s. Some were professional writers; most were people just wanting to tell their stories. Many were interested in writing down their experiences to pass along to grand children. Some of the stories were simple; others were masterpieces of the English language. All were riveting.<\/p>\n
Each person read aloud, then we all commented on the writing elements of the story. We were instructed to NOT comment on the content. It was an amazing time.<\/p>\n
While the Olli experience was the first time I knew that I was writing memoir, I guess I\u2019ve been writing it all of my life. Little snippets of adventures throughout the years have always been at the crux of my writing. Even a murder mystery that I wrote a couple of decades ago was based on my life (though, I can assure you, the murder part was far from true:))<\/p>\n
I always thought that writing memoir was for aging movie stars or retired presidents – not for a regular person like me. Then, I realized that my stories are just as important as those of any famous person. We can all learn from each other. Even the smallest events carry important lessons.<\/p>\n
On this site, I will share hints for writing, resources for further reading, and prompts for your own stories. There are many excellent books on the topic (and I own them all! Just ask Mack). So, I\u2019ll review those for you here as well.<\/p>\n
I hope that you will begin the journey of writing your LifeStory, if you haven\u2019t already. It is definitely a gift to your family – but even more importantly, it is a gift to yourself.<\/p>\n
Happy Writing!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I love the genre of memoir and find myself drawn to real stories of real people, even above the wonderful fiction that I so enjoy. As my friend Brenda Folsom always said, \u201cTruth is stranger than fiction.\u201d You can\u2019t make this stuff up! As an educator and student of human<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13,18],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/melaniewallace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/858"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/melaniewallace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/melaniewallace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/melaniewallace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/melaniewallace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=858"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/melaniewallace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/858\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1088,"href":"https:\/\/melaniewallace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/858\/revisions\/1088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/melaniewallace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/melaniewallace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/melaniewallace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}