Writing Your Life Workshop Final Reception: June 19, 2012

      Writing Your Life workshop participants read from their memoirs at a final reception held Tuesday, June 19 at the Village at Mariner's Point Senior Living Community. 

Lorette reads from The Wish Rock

   

     Lorette reads from her inspirational story about a Wish Rock where she and her grandchildren would often go and make their wishes come true! 

Barbara reads from her memoir The Way It Was

     Barbara reads parts of the first chapter of her memoir called The Way It Was: Five To Fourteen. She describes what life was like growing up during the Great Depression and during the War years: "Bath time is on Saturday night, when a large galvanized tub is brought into the kitchen and filled with hot water heated in kettles on the cast iron kitchen stove. We have no hot running water. The kitchen is made warm by the heat of the stove. There is no doorway to the kitchen from the living room so the bath is done without much privacy. Soap is at a premium. My mother will save the small pieces of soap from our bath water to put into a soap shaker to use to wash laundry and sometimes dishes, at another time."

Tim reads from his memoir: Crises: Blessing or Curses

     Tim reads from his memoir entitled Crises: Blessing or Curses. He describes what it was like to be in the Air force during the Vietnam era: " I had joined the New Jersey Air National Guard, volunteering to be part of the Air Force Pilot program, which I subsequently washed out of due to color blindness. The Air Guard Brass allowed me the option to remain in their branch of service, which I, readily, agreed to accept fully aware of the option.  The perils of the draft had led to the injuries and death of at least three of my friends."  

     Another workshop participant, Ann published a beautiful memoir using the online tool Blurb. Her memoir is called My Life's Journey. Her memoir describes her life as a child and teenager and her great love for going to school. She grew up and became a teacher and she later describes how she met her husband John, who was a teacher at the same school.                                                                                                                                                   

Example of a published book from Blurb

     Here are two photographs of a published memoir using the online tool Blurb. The book comes with a nice glossy dust jacket with the author's choice of photo on the cover. The book can be interspersed with both text and photographs. Blurb will publish books that are 20 pages or more in length. The author can choose what type of paper he or she prefers. 

     This example uses glossy photograph paper.

The inside pages of a book published using Blurb

    

  Anyone can create a book using Blurb. You can go to the website www.blurb.com and set up an account. There are tutorials available on the site so you can learn how the program works and then set up your book! 

The Writing Your Life workshop participants were thrilled with the finished books they received and they all look forward to continuing their writing and participating in more memoir writing and publishing workshops. As Barbara explained: "This class got me started on writing my memoir, and I'm so happy that I participated!" 

A special thank-you goes out to the Connecticut Humanities Council, whose support made this workshop series possible. The  Hagaman Library is looking forward to offering a year long memoir writing and publishing  project to the East Haven Community this coming fall, 2012.