Longtime friends Jane Brooks and Joyce Burd decided to combine their skills, Jane as a writer and Joyce as an arts administrator, to bring ballroom dancing to 5th grade classrooms in Philadelphia.
Just before Thanksgiving, New York Times columnist David Brooks asked readers in their 70s to send him their thoughts about their lives...the good, the bad, and what happened in between. Among the extracted life lessons that Brooks shares are the positives of dividing your life into chapters, the negatives of rumination and self-obsession, and the realization that you can't control other people. This article is fascinating for readers of every age -- providing insights about life and lessons learned that might resonate for you.
Writing a memoir sounds like an easy assignment; after all, it's all about you. But, this article, an NPR interview with author and memoir writing instructor, Marion Roach Smith, points out that aspiring memoirists often err on the side of including every memory on the page, rather than focusing on broader themes. Roach believes that writing a memoir that will keep a reader's interest calls for choosing one area of expertise rather than exploring a lifetime, which is the job of an autobiography. To get some more tips from the author of The Memoir Project, click here.
