I was half way through my MA thesis, or so I thought, when my teacher asked: “Margaret, what is your plumbline?” I had no idea - a) what my plumbline was, or b) what a plumbline was. I knew I wanted to write about my torn relationship with my veteran father who’d died in 1976. … Continue reading Plumbline
Tag: memoir
Making a Scene
‘Keep the drama on the page.' So says Julia Cameron, author of The Artists Way. In other words, make your writing dramatic, not your life. (Well, we can but try.) In my memoir drafts I have a series of themes and anecdotes, but not so much the stuff of drama. By this I mean a … Continue reading Making a Scene
Showing Ten Good Stories
Memoirist Nick Flynn writes: “A memoir is not simply stringing together the five or ten good stories you’ve been telling about your wacky childhood for your whole life, … you need to ask yourself why you’ve been telling those particular stories, and not the millions of others you could tell.” That, says Flynn, is the … Continue reading Showing Ten Good Stories
Fathers Day
Elwood Writers are going to be on the radio again! This time it’s for Fathers Day 2017. My group, Jenny, Barry, Helen and myself will be shining a light onto many facets of fatherhood through a selection of our literary work, including pieces of poetry, fiction and memoir. Our stories will be broadcast on the Cover To Cover program, Vision Australia Radio on … Continue reading Fathers Day
Finding your Writing Voice
Miles Davis once said: “You have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.” For me this is true in writing. It has taken me a long time to write like myself. In other words, to find my voice. But once small glimmers of it appear, an exciting voyage begins. Writer Lee Kofman … Continue reading Finding your Writing Voice
Putting the ‘me’ in memoir
My memoir teacher once asked me why I didn’t write about myself. Put more of myself into the memoir. “You know,” she said. “Use the “I” word.” Who me? I thought. Put the ‘me’ in memoir? Is the Pope Catholic? Did Tom Ford turn Gucci around? I had been writing around the topic of my father, a World War II veteran, for a number of years...
WRITINGS AND MUSINGS OF MARGARET MCCAFFREY 