MEMOIR WRITING EXERCISES



PRESENTERS

Denise Roessle, Second-Chance Mother, , droessle@

Judy M. Miller, MA, CGE, What To Expect From Your Adopted Tween, , judy@

Linda Hoye, Two Hearts: An Adoptee’s Journey Through Grief to Gratitude, , linda.hoye@

RESOURCES

WRITING BOOKS:

Barrington, Judith: Writing the Memoir: From Truth to Art

Berg, Elizabeth: Escaping into the Open: The Art of Writing True

Goldberg, Natalie: Writing Down the Bones; Wild Mind; Long Quiet Highway

Katz, Kristina: The Writer’s Workout

King, Stephen: On Writing

Lamott, Anne: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

Lippincott, Sharon: The Heart and Craft of Life Writing

Myers, Linda Joy: Becoming Whole

The Power of Memoir: How to Write Your Healing Story

ADOPTION-RELATED MEMOIRS:

Bauer, Ann: The Sound of Hope: A True Story of an Adoptee's Quest

for her Origins

Crumpacker Bunny & Picariello, J.S.: Jessica Lost: A Story of Birth, Adoption & The

Meaning of Motherhood

Ellerby, Janet Mason: Following the Tambourine Man

Fessler, Ann: The Girls Who Went Away

Fishler, Jan: Searching for Jane, Finding Myself

Franklin, Lynn: May the Circle Be Unbroken

Hall, Meredith Without A Map

Hamner, Kasey: Whose Child: An Adoptee’s Healing Journey from Relinquishment through Reunion…and beyond

Lauck, Jennifer: Blackbird; Still Water; Show Me The Way; Found

McMahon, Patrick: Becoming Patrick

Richardson, Kim Michele: The Unbreakable Child

Schaefer, Carol: The Other Mother

Schein, Elyse & Bernstein, Paula: Identical Strangers: A Memoir of Twins Separated

and Reunited

Strauss, Jean: Beneath A Tall Tree

ORGANIZATIONS / WEBSITES:

National Association of Memoir Writers:

Story Circle Network:

Memories & Memoirs:

WRITING PROMPTS TO GET YOU STARTED

• What is it that you’re the most afraid of?

• What is it that you’re afraid to speak of aloud?

• What are those things you sugarcoat if you dare speak of them at all?

• What are the secrets?

• What is at the source of the shame?

• Who are you angry as hell at?

• Is parenting harder than you ever imagined?

• What are your expectations?

• Do you have buried or unfamiliar emotions?

• Have you prepared in advance of each of your child’s psychosocial stage to parent him or her through the next ones that will follow or those that are happening concurrently?

• Do you re-parent?

• Write about a difficult event in a letter to a trusted friend, someone you love and who loves you, whose kind face you can imagine as you tell it.

• Choose an event that one or more people might see differently than you and start with “This is how I see what happened….” Or on a topic that others see as taboo, begin with “It would be much too dangerous to write about….”

• Write a painful or traumatic scene with a different outcome, the way you wished it had turned out.

• Take a break from prose and write a poem about what happened.

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