Life Story Links: February 20, 2024

“Perhaps what I know about beautiful endings is that the arc of a story is only what we choose to focus the lens on—in real life the narrative goes on and on and on. An ending looks beautiful because we choose that specific moment to end it.”
—Jami Nakamura Lin

Vintage poster with original artwork by Edward T. Grigware produced some time between 1941-1943 by the Work Projects Administration; image courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Digital Collection. The posters were designed to publicize exhibits, community activities, theatrical productions, and health and educational programs in seventeen states and the District of Columbia between 1936 to 1943.

Writing our lives: Process, support, and ideas

CAN YOU EXHAUST INEXHAUSTABLE MEMORY?
“In an epigraph of her own invention, [Annie Ernaux] says: ‘If I don’t write things down, they haven’t been carried to completion, they have only been lived.’” A thoughtful exploration of “writing toward the unachievable whole.”

LOOKING FOR A CRAFT BOOK?
I distilled years’ worth of reading to share what I consider to be the five essential books about life writing—find mini reviews, recommendations of which book is right for whom, and author credentials.

THE MESS IS THE STORY
“So many ‘transformation’ stories fail to connect because they skip from chaos to revelation with barely a pause to acknowledge the blood, sweat and tears involved in the in-between.” Here, ideas for untangling the mess of life to make some narrative sense of it.

THE CHOICES SHE MADE
“Had the story evolved over the years and become part of the narrative of his life, one he genuinely believed was true because he had told it so many times?” How does one choose a narrative strategy? One biographer takes us through her process.

CALL FOR PITCHES
The folks at Narratively have announced a new collaboration with Creative Nonfiction magazine, and to kick off their partnership, they are seeking pitches for (paid) contributions to a special series, “The Art of Narrative Storytelling.”

GET READY FOR A MONTH OF WRITING!
The writing prompts in this video from Family Tree magazine are not your average family history questions—rather, they’re ideas for creatively bringing your genealogy to narrative life:

TRUTH AND SELF-DISCOVERY
Patricia Pihl, a personal historian based in western New York, looks at two memoirs that base their themes on discovering a formative belief is untrue, and how this shaped the authors’ identities.

Let’s hear from the writers themselves

A JOYCEAN LEGACY
“In April 2014, a lawyer friend asked if I might consider ghostwriting a memoir for a client he described as a difficult man.” Several candidates had already been rejected. “The client’s reputation didn’t so much precede him as ride out like a pillaging army.”

THE AGES HE’S BEEN
“I am happy that I’ve survived mentally and physically. I can look back at the obstacles I had to deal with and confront during my life and appreciate that I overcame them.” Alfred J. Lakritz, author of the memoir Adieu, responds to the Oldster questionnaire.

A MEMOIR OF TRANSITION
When Lucy Sante “began to transition in her 60s, she saw a lifetime of experiences in a new light.” A look at how her new memoir, I Heard Her Call My Name, is both more elliptical and more honest than her first, The Factory of Facts, written as Luc Sante.