Writing Life Stories
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List Price: $14.99 $10.19 $ 4.80 ( 32% ) Story Press Bill Roorbach
Binding: PaperbackDewey Decimal Number: 808EAN: 9781884910470ISBN: 1884910475Label: Story PressManufacturer: Story PressNumber Of Items: 1Number Of Pages: 224Publication Date: 2000-09-30Publisher: Story PressStudio: Story Press
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Editorial Reviews: Summers with Juliet ) seems able to inspire even the most recalcitrant writers to uncover memories and ideas they didn't know they had and turn them into something the rest of us would want to read. An early exercise in Writing Life Stories involves making a map of the earliest neighborhood you can remember: "Where did the weird people live?" Roorbach asks. "Where were the off-limits places?" And then, "Tell us a story from your map." Many of the book's subsequent assignments are equally enticing. Roorbach elaborates on the many elements involved in writing creative nonfiction, including memory, scene setting, ideation, character development, and research. He eschews introductions and conclusions (scaffolding, he says, is for building purposes only) and, "at least in a first draft," embraces truth-telling. "Those places where you catch yourself changing the facts," he warns, "should be alarms, grand signals, signposts saying here's the place to examine most closely for meaning."
Though his writing may be casual, Roorbach is a great believer in precision. "Every person you mention," he says, "should get a quick, sharp, devastatingly exact sketch" (for examples, he refers to the minor characters in books by Paul Theroux, Joan Didion, and John McPhee). Ambiguity, he says, is anathema: "Do what it takes to properly name a tree, a piece of hardware, a street, a town, a school, a neighbor." And finally, be wary of polishing--"you can spend days adjusting sentences in a first paragraph that ought to be cut altogether"--but make sure every paragraph in your memoir or essay is as good as, has as much "urgency" as, the first one. "How much can you get into a sentence?" he asks. "How much can you get into every sentence?" --Jane Steinberg
Spotlight customer reviews: Customer Rating: Summary: Accessible and DemandingComment: Roorbach guides you step-by-step with exercises and examples that help you write about your life. He also explains what makes good writing different from not-so-good writing. In other words, he holds you to high standards and helps you meet them. Your eventual readers should be grateful!Customer Rating: Summary: "Do it Yourself" MemoirComment: Brief Summary: Bill Roorbach understands that memoir writing is not as simple as putting everything you can remember about your life on paper. Memories are no different than any other source - the characters and the plot must be interesting. To that end, he combines instruction and advice with a series of exercises to produce "the bones" of a good memoir. Starting at the beginning, he covers: finding a good place to write, mapping your memories, scene making and exposition, the ethics of writing about real people, method writing and voice, metaphor and adumbration, and texture. You might not do every exercise in this book - there are 94 in all - but most seem worthwhile. Roorback encourages his students to think of the exercise work as "good, clean rocks for an eventual stone wall." Several of the exercises use a process which Roorbach calls "cracking open," which might involve finding a sentence or phrase from something you previously wrote that condenses or skims over a possible scene, and building a scene of at least two pages. (As a writer, I like thinking of myself as a cracker and polisher of stones and a builder of walls.) Other great exercises include: looking at as many books as you can to make a list of your ten favorite first sentences, making a map of the earliest neighborhood you can remember, and making a list of the subjects upon which you are an expert. The final chapter gives some good, practical advice about how to locate appropriate editors and agents, with a final cautionary suggestion: "The only helpful ambition is to write something good, something that will satisfy readers unknown to you in both predictable and unpredictable ways. If your ambition is about the work, the dream of publication won't eat at you and make a fool out of you."
Customer Rating: Summary: Not about writing a biographyComment: This book has lots of exercises for those just beginning to edge near the writing-ledge and will help you dig into your own story. However, this book is only for those wanting to write an auto-biography and those just beginning to venture forth in their writing. If you buy this expecting help on writing someone else's life story you won't find what you're looking for. If you're not a beginning writer and you purchase this, it's likely that you'll be the proud owner of a book full of exercises you've long outgrown.Customer Rating: Summary: Good book.... little political agenda (unlike some of the other memoir-writing books out there!)Comment: Good book. Instructs with small easy-to-follow "chunks". Writer has a good sense of humor--evident in his writing. Writing isn't overly academic or political (unlike some of the other "memoir-writing" books out there).
Customer Rating: Summary: valuable suggestions and - insightsComment: This book is full of insights into the writing process.
