Everyone Has a Story to Tell

Several years ago I wrote and self-published a guidebook to help ordinary people write their lifestories. I used this guidebook, WRITE FROM THE HEART, in the classes I taught in memoir writing through our city adult education program. For the last month I've used my morning writing time to revise that guidebook and am publishing it once again.

WRITE FROM THE HEART is not a book on how to write a bestselling memoir, it’s not intended for people who want to be the next Augusten Burroughs or David Sedaris. It’s for people like my mother, comfortable with words and writing, but unsure of where to begin, how to organize, and how far to go. My mother loved telling family stories and when she died, those stories went with her. This book is for people like her.

I have another plan for this book. For several years I’ve wanted to help seniors connect through the global village, which means putting them behind web-connected computers. My master plan begins here. I’m working on a plan to teach computer skills to seniors and then move them into writing their lifestories.

I’ll be talking a bit more about WRITE FROM THE HEART and my master plan to connect seniors to the world wide web next Monday on Black Authors Network (BAN) blogtalk radio, hosted by Ella Curry.

Your next thought if you know me is, but Carolyn is not black. True. I have no African heritage, but I have connections to the African-American community. Even if I didn’t, the message of WRITE FROM THE HEART is colorblind. There is no racial twist, no gender or sexuality preference, and no religious slant. It's all about storytelling and the self-discovery that happens when a person sits down to compose one's thoughts in writing.

If you’d like to stop by and listen in, here’s when and where to go:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Black-Author-Network
Show time: promptly at 7pm-9pm EST