My book Making History: how to remember, record, interpret, and share the events of your life , published in 2007, is full of great stories – some of them mine, and many others from people who shared theirs while attending my memoir-writing workshops. Here is one of my own stories, illustrating that we should never underestimate the power of our heroes. Ever since I can remember I wanted to be a writer. I wrote plays, poems, stories, and even a newsletter for my family, which I subjected them to every Sunday night at the dinner table during the year that I was nine. My mother kept some of my early efforts, and it is to her credit she was able to see anything impressive in them. One of the first stories I wrote was a thrilling epistle called “The Cow.” It featured a cow who broke out of its pasture and ran amok through a quiet suburban neighborhood, mooing and bellowing in rage while it knocked over cars and trash cans. It even ate pet cats, birds and small dogs. The cow was eve...

Weeds dance rain or sun They don’t care that you hate them They dance anyway ~ Drawing and haiku by Kim Pearson ~ Writing Prompt: Think about "weeds" metaphorically in your own story. Do you have a character who delights in being loathed by others? Who feels power in being annoying? Or perhaps one who rises above petty gossip or misunderstandings and refuses to care what others think?

One way to define a generation is their use of language, especially the slang developed in their teens and twenties. Slang words and phrases often reflect the political changes or social preoccupations of the time. You probably have stories that are built around the use of these timely terms. I recently ghostwrote a memoir with many scenes set in the 1960s. One of the themes of this memoir was how secrets were preserved in the family by simply not talking about them, or even ignoring that they existed. I wrote that the children in the family had internalized their parents’ wishes to keep things secret by telling themselves “don’t go there.” It wasn’t until I was in the editing phase that one of my beta-readers said he was jarred by the “don’t go there” phrase because it didn’t seem to belong to the 1960s. And of course he was quite right. I unconsciously took a slang phrase that originated in the 1990s and applied it retroactively. This is one of the common pitfalls in writing memo...

If you cannot gasp When you see an eagle soar Work on your wonder ~ Drawing and haiku by Kim Pearson ~ Writing Prompt: Interrupt your protagonist's day with a chance encounter with an eagle that will leave her/him changed in some way. What happened? What did s/he have to do? How did s/he feel? What did s/he learn (about eagles, her/himself, or another person/group)? What might s/he do differently following this encounter?

A page from my "daily draw" journal I have been doing various daily practices for many years and they have been instrumental in my artistic and spiritual growth. For over 20 years I’ve begun my day with “morning pages” (from The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron) which is doing two to three pages of stream-of-consciousness writing in longhand each day. For almost 20 years I’ve also been writing one haiku every day, which means I have a lot of haiku by now. And for about five years I’ve been doing what I call my “daily draw” which means I draw or paint or sculpt an image from the day before, sometimes illustrating the haiku I just wrote, or something I saw on my daily walk, or something I remember from a conversation, or whatever appears from my hands. None of these writings or drawings has to be good, although sometimes they are excellent. But quality is not the issue, and despite the mounds of paper I now have filled with scribbles, poems, and drawings, neither is quantity...

Image by Mark Turnauckas , via Flickr What do you do when your mind goes blank? Don’t tell me yours never does, because if you do I won’t believe you. Here is one way I deal with that awful blank page or screen, when suddenly your mind is as empty as the screen. Be like a boy scout: Be Prepared. If you know this will happen to you (it happens to every writer), one thing that might help is to have a prepared list of things you are interested in. Make this list when your mind is not blank, but teeming with too many subjects that interest you. What is actually on the list doesn’t matter, as long as you have an interest, and preferably a passion, for the subject. Don’t elaborate, just write them down. Then save this list! Here’s a list I made a couple of years ago. Some of the subjects I’ve already written about, others I no longer have an interest in. But others are still fertile ground waiting for me to plow through them. If one of them interests you, I’m happy to share. Bee-k...

Photo by Roy Chan , via Flickr I have a problem with guilt, probably because I was raised by a workaholic father who was raised by a Puritanical mother. It is hard for me to do nothing. It is especially hard for me to write nothing. Because that’s who I am, see? I’m a writer, so if I’m not writing, then guilt spreads its snarly tentacles throughout my brain. The unfortunate part of this mindset is that guilt does not produce much. So when I talk to other writers, I advise them to not be like me. Here’s what I tell them: Take a day off and do no writing at all. Don’t even turn on your computer. Forget you are a writer. Pretend you are a plumber, or an accountant, or a scuba diver. Go for a walk. Call your brother and give him some advice. Go shopping and buy something you never thought you’d wear. Go swimming at the YMCA to exercise more of your body than just your fingers. Take a bubble bath. Sing folk songs at the top of your lungs. (You can sing in the bath if you want.) It...

Photo by Dru Kelly , via Flickr A spirited conversation occurred a few years ago between me, my daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter, when my grandson, age 2½, came running into the room, sporting a diaper full of poop. “PU!” exclaimed everyone. (Except my grandson, who was too young to care.) And that started us off on the question of where did the exclamation PU come from? It’s an interesting question, but it turns out that no one really knows. (Linguists actually spend their professional time arguing about this question.) First off, no one knows how it’s even spelled. Is it pew? or P.U.? And if it’s P.U., what do the P and U stand for? Or is it an abbreviation of a longer word? Oh, how useful is the magic Google! What did we do before the Internet and we had to simply wonder about these fascinating questions? Unfortunately the internet wasn’t that helpful on this one. We found out that some linguists think PU is a shortened term for puteo, Latin for “to stink or sme...

Image by Taymaz Valley , via Flickr When ghostwriting a memoir, I ask my clients a lot of questions. One of my favorite questions is about their mothers. I ask them: Do you know what your mom as a little girl wanted to be when she grew up? Do you know if she achieved her dreams? Mothers are so basic, so necessary to life, that we often take them for granted and see them only in relation to ourselves. But they too have individual lives with their own dreams and aspirations. The replies I get sometimes sadden me, sometimes gladden me. And them. To get them talking, I share details about my own mother’s aspirations to illustrate. My mom wanted to be a fashion designer. She grew up during the Depression, in a small mountain town, population around 300. All the ladies in town made their own clothes, and those clothes were made for utility and hard wear, not style. Little girls literally wore flour sacks to school, and one of those little girls was my mom. When she got to be a teenager...

Image by M4D Group , via Flickr When I ghostwrite memoirs, I often ask my clients to tell me the movies they loved when they were young teenagers, say between the ages of 12 and 15. Young adolescents are very impressionable, and it’s at this time in our lives when we start paying attention to the world outside our family, and making decisions about what is good and bad, and how we fit into that world. Our decision-making ability is in its infancy so we often draw the wrong conclusions, or conclusions that are too black and white, but the movies we’re exposed to during this time often color our personality, beliefs, and even deeds for our entire lives. So when we remember those movies from our early teens, the results are always illuminating and help me to “get” my client’s personality so I can write as them. This works when you do this for yourself, too, in order to explore who you are. It’s an easy form of self-analysis. When I did this for myself I googled which movies were pop...

Photo by Tambako The Jaguar , via Flickr Here’s a writing suggestion that you may find difficult, or you may find fun: don’t be polite. In fact, you don’t even need to be kind. Write what is not politically correct. Write what you really think, but never had the courage to say. You don’t have to read it aloud if you don’t want to. You don’t have to keep it. And you can always edit later. Courtesy and tact are important virtues, but if you invite them to have free reign while you are writing, they can paralyze you. So in your first draft, swear, tell a dirty story, write down the words to the first racist chant you heard. Write what you really thought about your brother’s first girlfriend, or the time your mother forgot to wear her underpants, or where you were when you got your first period. Write a story about your Uncle Henry’s alcoholism, or the year your cousin Jennifer spent in prison, or about how your father cheated on his income taxes. Write about how you are secretly jea...

Photo by Dead Cat , via Flickr I have lived many lives in addition to my own. I have heard the best stories, been influenced by the best wisdom, learned life-giving lessons, laughed at the best jokes, had the most fascinating experiences. This is because I have been a ghost for nearly twenty years, and have ghostwritten, rewritten, or developmentally edited over seventy books. (This doesn’t count the books I’ve written for me.) I tell my clients their life stories and the lessons they’ve learned are vitally important, that what they feel, think, say, and do matters. To them, their families, their communities, to history itself. I am now taking my own advice by writing a new book, tentatively titled My Life As a Ghost, which shares what I’ve learned from all these lives that are not my own. I can’t share the actual stories because they don’t belong to me, but what I’ve learned does. A ghost has to learn to think like someone else, even others radically different than her. Like...

Photo credit: Dani Greer I’m sometimes asked why I would hire an editor for my work, since I am an editor myself. Isn’t this a waste of money and time?  The answer is simple: No, it is not a waste of money or time.  I’m too close to the book to see the mistakes or recognize the places it could be better. Although I will always perform a self-edit before I send it off to another editor, I know from experience that I’ll miss things. Here is what I expect from my editor’s Manuscript Critique. First, I must recognize that it is an editor’s job to point out what does not work and where the problems are in a manuscript. They hunt for the bad stuff, so naturally they can sound negative and discouraging even though they might be positive, kind-hearted people. (I certainly try to be.) The trick for the editor is to point out the good stuff too, and the trick for the writer is to hold on to their vision for the book in the face of the realization that it’s not yet perf...

I’ve been a ghostwriter for 17 years now. It’s been a wild wonderful ride filled with the most amazing stories. I was privileged to hear them first and help get them out into the world. I’ve blogged before about the joys of ghostwriting and how much it has given me. I’ve been fairly successful. I’ve been involved – mostly as a ghostwriter, sometimes as a content editor – in nearly 50 books in those 17 years. In 2015 alone, I ghostwrote and finished three books (the last one just last month). But there are some downsides to ghostwriting. The biggest one is that I’ve been so busy writing other people’s stories that I’ve neglected my own. This doesn’t mean that I haven’t written my own books – I have. Over ten of them, in fact – fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. Nearly all of them published before 2010. But for the last five years or so, as my ghostwriting business has grown, my own work has languished in drawers or my laptop file folders. I had and have plenty of great id...

I teach various kinds of writing classes – how to write memoir, how to use historical detail in your writing, how to journal without self-judgment, and how to ghostwrite. I always start off any class with a five-step writing process, which works with any subject and any kind of project, from blog posts to books, memoir to self-help. I call it the Five Easy Pieces Process, partially because I love that movie. If Jack Nicholson were a writer, maybe he would follow these rules. Here are the bare essentials: Step One: Write everything you know, or think you know; everything you feel, or think you feel; everything you've done, or wish you'd done (or wish you hadn't done), everything you imagine, everything that pops into your head —in short, write everything. Basically this means: do not censor as you write. Editing comes later. Step Two: Read what you wrote, and look for the recurring themes or threads. I promise they are there. Look until you find them. Step Thre...

This time of year is when many cultures celebrate holidays such as Halloween, Dia de los Muertos, or Samhain. The last harvest has been gathered. The days grow dark and the nights grow long. It is the earth’s time to rest in darkness. This is a time of trust: we believe that the light will come again. We trust that death is part of life, just another turn of the wheel. This is the time to remember the past by telling, reading, or writing the stories of our ancestors. I usually throw a party for family and friends around this time. The party has four main features, all of which honor the dark, the past, and the dead. The first thing we do is go on a mushroom walk. We ramble through a wooded place and keep our eyes on the ground. At first we see few, if any, mushrooms, because they are shy creatures. Then suddenly we’ll spot them, showing up in an amazing variety of shapes and colors, growing under fallen leaves and on rotten logs, bringing color and life to death. When we see t...

I finished my new novel, The Masks on Grandmother’s Wall , months ago. I had it edited. The editor suggested I expand some parts. So I did. The novel is now complete, and I am very happy with it. But now comes the icky part. I have to write a synopsis for the book proposal. I’m okay with writing the promotion plans, my bio, competitive analysis, all that stuff. But for some reason I just detest writing synopses, at least of my own work. So for nearly six months I have been putting this chore off. And The Masks on Grandmother’s Wall is still patiently waiting … So finally I made myself write a synopsis. But because of my issues around writing synopses, I don’t know whether it’s a good synopsis, or a bad one, or just mediocre. Therefore I am sharing it on this blog, to see if someone will give me their opinion. So here it is, the synopsis of The Masks on Grandmother’s Wall . What do you think? Would you want to read this book? Please comment. (But be gentle.)  ...

In 2011, the Oscar for writing was given to David Seidler for The King’s Speech . He was 73, and it was his first Oscar and first nomination. In his acceptance speech he said his father had told him he’d be a late bloomer. The audience laughed, since obviously his father was right. David Seidler also said he hoped that his record as the oldest person to win this particular award was broken quickly and often. I’m with him. Some might say I’m a late bloomer too, because I didn’t start my writing career in earnest (that is, quit my ‘day job’ and went full time) until I was nearly 50. My writing flowers may have begun to bloom in the autumn of my life, but I had plenty of other flowers blooming in the springtime too. Who says we have to plant the same flowers all our lives? Like tulips in the spring, sunflowers in the summer, dahlias in the fall, and poinsettias in the winter, we can bloom in every season of our lives. As David Seidler and other late bloomers like him sh...

It’s a writer’s truism: the most important paragraph is the first one. It opens the door to the reader, inviting him or her to come into the place you have prepared for them. Your opening must convince them that this place is somewhere they want to visit, and perhaps stay for a long time. I have two rules for writing openings, which I (almost) always try to live up to. Here they are: The first rule is to provide a few sensory details in the first paragraph, so the reader feels as though they are “there.”  What does the character or setting look like? Colors, shapes, designs? What sounds are there? Loud voices, whistles, screams, bells? What smells? Strong like gasoline? Sweet like lilacs? Wet wool drying on a radiator? What tactile sensations? Soft wind on skin? The rough scrape of a poorly shaved chin?  The second rule is that the first scene should either encapsulate or foreshadow the theme of the entire chapter or book. Here’s an example from a book I work...

Recently I wrote an Amazon review of a new novel, Dream of Darkness by John Yeoman*, book two in a mystery series set in the late 1500s. I’m a sucker for both mysteries and historical novels, so it’s not surprising that I enjoyed this book, especially since Yeoman is an outstanding writer. But this book is a lot more than a mystery or even a novel. John Yeoman ** is not only an outstanding writer, he is an outstanding teacher. Dream of Darkness proves it. Dream of Darkness is a fictorial. If like me you are not familiar with this term, here’s the description from its Amazon page: “an intriguing crime mystery – and also a step-by-step guide to writing your own novel. It’s one of the world’s first ‘fictorials’, an historical crime novel packed with clever but unobtrusive tips that show you precisely how it was written.” Before I began to read, I admit I was dubious. Sounded confusing. As I shuffled through the pages of the first chapter, it also looked confusing. There...