I’m over at my blogging friend, Liz’s blog https://lizgauffreau.com today. Liz is a poet and author of multiple books. She graciously hosts Day 3 of the launch tour for my new book, The Winding Road. She includes her fantastic critique and analytical review of my book. Please head over to join me for the tour. I talk about the types of memoirs today.
I am very pleased to host Day 3 of blogging friend Miriam Hurdle’s book launch tour for her cancer memoir: The Winding Road: A Journey of Survival.
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Thank you for hosting my launch tour today, Liz! I’m thrilled to be here to share my new book with your friends.
During this launch tour, I want to talk about memoir writing. Here is my topic for today.
Types of Memoirs
Many writers categorized the types of memoirs from a literacy point of view. I like the following ways to distinguish the types of memoirs from the memoirist’s perspective and their types of experiences. The following types of memoirs are self-explanatory. So, I include one example for each.
The Autobiographical Memoir
The Story of My Life by Helen Keller Most everyone is familiar with the story of Helen Keller. In this book, Keller talks about her life directly. Even the most cynical…
I’m over at Sally’s Smorgasbord Magazine. She featured my poem inspired by nature to celebrate Earth Day. Please head over to her lovely blog to browse around many features.
Since this series began in January 2018 there have been over 1000 Posts from Your Archives where bloggers have taken the opportunity to share posts to a new audience… mine.
The topics have ranged from travel, childhood, recipes, history, family and the most recent series was #PotLuck where I shared a random selection of different topics. This series is along the same lines… but is a ‘Lucky Dip’
In this series I will be sharing posts from the half of 2022
It is an opportunity to showcase your writing skill to my readers and also to share on my social media. Which combined is around the 50,000 mark. If you are an author your books will be mentioned too, along with their buy links and your other social media contacts. You can find out how to participate at the end of the post.
This week for Lens-Artists Challenge, Tina invited us to explore the theme of Inspiration. I could name many aspects around are my inspiration. I finally decided on three for this post.
Gardening is my hobby and my joy. My life is enriched by the inspiration from gardening. There are several basic things for a healthy garden. 1) Good soil. I started a butterfly garden and vegetable garden this year. Several sections have heavy clay soil. I dug at least one foot, soaked the soil and drained, mixed in several inches of organic soil. Use the correct amount of fertilizer periodically. 2) Watering. Test the daily watering to ensure the soil is moist, not just wet on the surface. 3) Proper planting space. The full-grown milkweed will be several feet in diameter in the butterfly garden, whereas the Zinnias are several feet tall but several inches wide. 4) Trimming the withered limbs according to different plants by season or regularly.
Learning from gardening, I need to continuously cleanse, nourish, and make changes to my mind, my heart, and my action to be a healthy person.
Traveling gave me the opportunity to see the wonderful nature near and far. We were at awe with the vast Denali wildness in Alaska, over 10,000 hydrothermal features such as geysers, hot springs, mud pots, travertine terraces, and fumaroles in Yellowstone, and four active volcanos in Hawaii, to name just a few.
Nature comes in all shapes and forms, all kinds of temperature, and different colors as reflected in our human life.
The maternal instinct in the animal kingdom was my inspiration and touches my heart at the deep spot. Humpback whales migrate farther than any other mammal on earth. They can travel around 3,000 miles between their breeding and feeding grounds regularly. During the migration with the newborn, the female Humpback would lift the calf above the water for it to breathe. The female and the calf are caressing each other constantly for affection.
A nest in my front porch was a cradle for four births of baby Mourning doves. The dove eggs are smaller than chicken eggs. I observed the female doves lay two eggs at a time. It takes about 35 days after hatching for the baby doves to fly. Last year, one baby was ready to fly and left the nest. The female dove left for a while but came back in the evening to stay with the second baby, kept him warm until he was ready to fly. The bigger baby also came to keep the little brother company. Then they flew away together.
Even though I was not able to be a stay-home mom when my daughter was a baby, I’m now a big fan of stay-home moms for them to treasure and enjoy those precious moments.
The prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “in other words.”
Last Saturday, January 27, 2018, I attended a Women’s Retreat. It was a day of reflection on our personal life in 2017. We spent the first hour leisurely charting the major events, the spiritual journey, and our insights. The following hour was sharing our charts and thoughts. The next hour was meeting in groups of three to pray for each other. We also had individual time to be alone doing the reading, meditating and writing.
The retreat was from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. held in a private home with plenty of space for small groups and individual time. The pace of the schedule was just right. I came away feeling very refreshed and peaceful, ready to face my new journey of 2018.
One precious thing I valued deeply was spending a whole hour with just three people sharing. We were not chitchatting superficial things. We shared our deep concerns and prayed with each other. It was a unique experience that I didn’t have before. It is so often when we meet, we talk about the busy events. If we don’t share our concerns, even when we talk for hours, we still go away feeling unconnected.
After the retreat, one lady and I decided to meet once a month not chitchatting but to share and listen. In other words, we want to be caring friends to each other.
This is my response to Cee’s Share Your World – November 13, 2107
Do you ever sit on a park bench for more than ten minutes?
We do that often, especially in Laguna Lake. My husband and I love to walk around Laguna Lake which is 0.77 miles around. We walk around the lake twice, then find a shaded bench and sit down. The lake is a home to many kinds of ducks, Egyptian Geese, turtle and many sea creatures. The irrigation system keeps the water of the lake flowing while there is stillness on a calm day. In the summer, the ducks enjoy their lazy nap by tugging their heads under the wings. We relax and watch people doing their leisure fishing, riding their horses, their bikes, jogging, walking their dogs, or walking their babies in strollers.
The Showers of Blessings 