We all have a story to tell. Our lives are filled with meaning – and we long to make sense of it. Sometimes this is the incentive we need to sit down and actually start telling that story. I want to write my memoir. I want my children and grandchildren

Writing memoir hurts so good! I read that somewhere and often open my talks with it. Writing memoir hurts so good! This might be a great book title. It captures why so many of us want to get our stories down, whether it’s for ourselves, our families, or the world.

While visiting here in California over the holidays I’ve taken note of many vignette moments. These are the occasions I’ve stumbled upon fleeting glimpses of daily life as we know it. Fodder for our life stories. Here are a few travel observations I’ve made over the past couple of weeks.

To Blog Or Not To Blog

I’m reading a book on blogging. It’s by Robert W. Bly and it’s called Blog Schmog. His thesis is that blogging as a marketing tool works mainly for the few who sell blogging services. For the rest of us, blogging is little more than

We were visiting with a friend yesterday – someone we hadn’t seen in years. When he asked what I was doing, I mentioned our new book, Writing Your Legacy. “Can I show you something?” He quickly handed me a hardcover bound book titled, My Father. It was beautifully inset with

There are many ways to write your life story. If you were to check out any number of books on the subject, you would find that the majority will show you how to write chronologically. When and where were you born? Where did you live and go to school? What

Every year my publisher (Writer’s Digest) hosts its annual Writer’s Conference at the Roosevelt Hotel in mid-town New York City. It’s an old dowager kind of place built in 1924 and resembles those grandiose CP Hotels that once dotted the Canadian landscape. Guy Lombardo played Auld Lang Syne there every

Today our new book Writing Your Legacy: The Step-by-Step Guide to Crafting Your Life Story is being officially released in bookshops across North America. The European release date is July 30th. Many people already have their copies, thanks to Amazon. It seems so much easier to have things brought to

Many of us have hair-raising stories that have never been told. Veterans find it hard to articulate the intensity of war they experienced. Former addicts worry that their redemptive words might sound too preachy. Survivors of family violence do not want to embarrass anyone. Their life stories remain silenced.

My life