Getting Started

Once again, welcome to Lives in Letters!  As we get started in our class (and/or you get started at home), we will look particularly at life writing.

Many writers or workers in creative fields have likened their endeavors to hunting.  Jack London famously maintained, "You can't wait for inspiration.  You have to go after it with a club." 

In the case of life writing, I find fishing an appropriate metaphor.  It takes time.  Says author Jane Yolen, "Butt in chair. There is no other single thing that will help you more to become a writer."  The stories, like fish, are already swimming in the oceans of our memories.  The key is finding ways to drag them out.  Sometimes they seem to jump right out of clear waters and into our nets.  Other times we must wrest them from the murky deep fighting all the way.  Still other times, the reflection of our own world above water obscures our view of what lies beneath.

These thirty-five posts, to be published every day at 1:30 PM EST (if I set it right!), are designed to improve your "catch."  I can't wait for you to taste the results!