TellTale Souls Writing the Mother Memoir: How to Tap Memory and Write Your Story Capturing Character & Spirit has the power to move people and change awareness.

What’s the connection?  Lynn Cook Henriksen is immediate past-president of Women’s National Book Association-San Francisco Chapter; Linda Joy Myers is current co-president; I (Teresa LeYung-Ryan) am current Secretary of the Board. We and Joyce are also involved with San Francisco Writers Conference. I’m hoping to see SFWC, WNBA and California Writers Club (CWC) colleagues as we all cheer for Lynn!

Mother-Daughter connection: Lynn’s book TellTale Souls: Writing the Mother Memoir is about how to write your mother memoir; Linda Joy’s memoir is Don’t Call Me Mother and her how-to book is The Power of Memoir; my novel Love Made of Heart and my play Answer Me Now carry the theme closest to my heart: mother-daughter relationship.

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Well, Of course Lynn Cook Henriksen’s book launch was a lovely event.  Joyce Turley hosted the champagne and brownie gala.  Lynn was surrounded by adoring fans/friends.  We are all so proud of her!

TellTale Souls: Writing the Mother Memoir by Lynn Cook Henriksen

Guest of Honor author Lynn Cook Henriksen with Joyce Turley and Linda Joy Myers

celebrated author Lynn Cook Henriksen with daughter and sister at book launch

celebrated author Lynn Cook Henriksen (with champagne) cheered by friends at her book launch. In photo from left to right: Patricia Morin, Lynn Cook Henriksen, Linda Joy Myers, Teresa LeYung-Ryan, Lynn Scott. Who is the gentleman sitting in sunshine?

Lynn Scott (my dear friend) and Patricia Morin with her husband were there too… to celebrate Lynn Henriksen and her new book TellTale Souls Writing the Mother Memoir: How to Tap Memory and Write Your Story Capturing Character & Spirit.

Thank you, Linda Joy Myers, for zooming us cross the bridge, to cheer for our dear colleague Lynn Cook Henriksen, meet her daughter Samantha, run into my pal Lynn Scott (author of A Joyful Encounter: My Mother, My Alzheimer Clients, and Me) and playwright Patricia Morin, see Joyce Turley, eat her signature brownies, and giving me a chance to take photographs of the lovely event.

celebrated author of TellTale Souls: Writing the Mother Memoir Lynn Henriksen signs books for fans at book launch

Sincerely,

Coach Teresa

http://writingcoachteresa.com

Coach Teresa LeYung-Ryan encourages you to wear your many hats as a writer — work on the craft and your platform at the same time.  Take a look at the exercises in Build Your Writer’s Platform & Fanbase In 22 Days.  I can help you polish your manuscript (identify themes, universal archetypes, front-story & back-story) AND coach you on platform-building – click here.

A long long time ago (or fifteen years ago in the publishing industry in this country), a writer could get by with talent and perseverance once he/she gets that first break.

How are you doing?  Are you thinking What is this being a writer all about?

Remember that delightful song “Don’t Worry Be Happy” (written and performed by Bobby McFerrin)?  If we are lucky enough to have writing instruments and not having to worry about coercion or persecution from any source, then, let’s don our writers’ hats.

Writing is art-form / mode of expression / choice of work-form, and, its partner is reading.  I wear my multiple hats too; I am:

• writing the second edition of my workbook Build Your Writer’s Platform & Fanbase In 22 Days

• reading entries from the writing contest which I am sponsoring (“Immigrant Experience Writing Contest”)

• May 2, 2012 Best News!  Nayati is HOME!  http://www.mkis.edu.my/  has updates  

• April 29, 2012 (with heavy heart) writing emails, updating my website, blogging, posting on facebook—to broadcast call-for-help related to abduction of 12-year-old boy Nayati Shamelin Moodliar on April 27, 2012. Everyone, please go to Mont’Kiara International School’s website http://www.mkis.edu.my/ to get updates and their contact info, and, use your worldwide social media to help.  http://www.malaysiandigest.com/news/43429-international-school-student-abducted-this-morning.html   has YouTube video of Nayati Shamelin Moodliar’s parents’ plea to help find their son.  The horrifying truth is that it could take only a short time to transport a person out of a country. Please use your mighty circles on cyberspace–to circulate NAYATI MOODLIAR’s photo & URL http://www.mkis.edu.my/. Please use your mighty “facebook” voices & mouse clicks to help 12-year-old boy NAYATI MOODLIAR return safely to his parents.
  

  HELP find 12-year-old Nayati Shamelin Moodliar

  KIDNAPPED on 27 April 2012 on his way to school.
  NAYATI MOODLIAR
  from Mont’Kiara, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
  12 years old, 1.5 m height, dark brown hair and eyes,
  mixed origin of Indian and Caucasian. http://www.mkis.edu.my/ Thank you!

• reading Mary Jo McConahay’s riveting memoir Maya Roads: One Woman’s Journey Among the People of the Rainforest

• writing to writers who attended my sessions or received coaching from me at 2012 San Francisco Writers Conference to let them know that I’m here to help them polish their manuscripts and build their writers’ platforms and fanbases.

• reading clients’ manuscripts and helping them identify their themes, universal archetypes, front-story and back-story. 

• writing coaching notes for platform-building clients.

Sincerely,

Coach Teresa

Coach Teresa LeYung-Ryan here to encourage you to wear your many hats as a writer — work on the craft and your platform at the same time.  Pursue more and more resources . . . by visiting my website and this blog on a regular basis.  If you are not in the vicinity of the events I blog about . . . please look at the names of the people who are referenced in my posts, go to their websites by clicking on the links I provide or your keying their names in a search engine.  The people  I blog about will lead you to their colleagues, and so on.  More ways to build your platform?  See the exercises in Build Your Writer’s Platform & Fanbase In 22 Days.  I can help you polish your manuscript (identify themes, universal archetypes, front-story & back-story) AND coach you on platform-building – click here.

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Jodi O’Donnell-Ames, founder of Hope Loves Company, says:

“Hope Loves Company is the result of raising three children who have learned about ALS (or Lou Gehrig’s Disease) as young children. This video . . . created in love and hope–in memory of my late husband and hero, Kevin Gerard O’Donnell–who taught me everything about love and whose smile and courage are forever in my heart. Please share and help spread Hope Loves Company, thank you!”

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Carole Bumpus, author of A Cup of Redemption, says:

“Like the braiding of three strands of buttery brioche, three women’s lives become inextricably intertwined while sharing recipes and childhood stories over casual cups of coffee. No one realizes that these conversations—about love and loss, war and tragedy—will lead to a cross-the-world journey in search of answer to mysteries surrounding a long buried past.”

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Carol Dussere’s blog: Turning East – Stories of living, working, and traveling in Asia.  Carol Dussere was a professor of English at Xiamen University in Fujian, China in 1984-86 and at Dongguk University in Seoul, Korea from 1989 to 2006. The interviews and photos were collected as a result of her life abroad.

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Carla Danziger, author of Hidden Falls, says:

“I’d known about the Norwegian Resistance to the Nazi occupation ever since I was a kid, but very little about the situation of Norwegian Jews at that time.  I researched both to understand my older characters.  As I wrote Hidden Falls, I brought in “current events” such as the controversial trial in Israel of John Demjanjuk, an alleged concentration camp guard; the brilliant expose of Nazi Eric Priebke by ABC T.V. journalist Sam Donaldson, and also the hopeful Oslo Accords facilitated by Norway between the Israelis and Palestinians. After the tragic assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in November 1995, I decided my story had to be set in August 1995, when both the peace process and Mr. Rabin were alive and seemingly well. . . Tusen Takk.”

Sincerely,

Teresa LeYung-Ryan

As editor/story consultant, Teresa LeYung-Ryan identifies themes, universal archetypes, front-story and back-story for her clients.

As author of Build Your Writer’s Platform & Fanbase In 22 Days: Attract Agents, Editors, Publishers, Readers, and Media Attention NOW, she says: “Make your name synonymous with the issues you write about.”

Teresa has built her own platform happily; her novel Love Made of Heart is used in college composition classes. She says her novel and her play Answer Me Now carry the theme closest to her heart: mother-daughter relationship.

http://writingcoachteresa.com for Coach Teresa’s Blog and other resources.

“Reach out, not stress out, to materialize your dearest dreams.”

Coach Teresa LeYung-Ryan here . . . this is what happened from my point of view. Tell me and my colleagues your point of view by submitting comments to this blog post.  How? Click on the blue title bar of this post, scroll down to get the boxes, fill in boxes and click on “submit comment” button.

I took BART into The City and then MUNI #1 to meet co-presenter & colleague Mary E. Knippel.  At 6:00pm we were to deliver BE YOUR OWN EDITOR at the San Francisco Writers Conference at the Mark Hopkins Hotel at top of Nob Hill.

Authentic details for writers who want to get to the top of Nob Hill: If you off-board BART at Embarcadero station, come up to street level that is closest to Drumm Street. Walk northward on Drumm, then westward on Sacramento Street (a one-way street). At Sacramento St. (near Davis St.), you’d catch the MUNI #1 bus that travels westward on Sacramento Street. $2 fare (driver gives  y0u a transfer that’s good for 4 hours).

The ride is about 10 blocks or .7 mile (through Financial District and Chinatown, and up the hills).  If you’re concerned about not knowing how to push the bell or pull the cord to request your stop, ask the bus driver or fellow passengers to look out for you. Off-board at Mason; walk a block southward on Mason to get to California St. (California St. is parallel to Sacramento St.).  Wait for signals to cross the street.  There you are–at the International Mark Hopkins.

As soon as you step onto the bricked courtyard, courteous hotel employees will greet you.

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Linda Lee and Jane Glendinning among the first to arrive to help make SFWC THE writers conference

Story Consultant and Writers' Platform-Building Coach Teresa LeYung-Ryan happy to present at SFWC again

presenters Mary E Knippel & Linda Lee solve mystery over their luggage at Mark Hopkins

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I saw Laurie McLean, Barbara Santos & Richard Santos, Nina Amir, Neal Sofman, dear mentors Michael Larsen & Elizabeth Pomada, Stephanie Chandler and other colleagues.  Our session was to begin at 6:00pm.  Among the writers who attended our session “Be Your Own Editor” were memoirist Jing Li,  journalist and novelist Don Hudson and Margie Yee Webb (author of Cat Mulan’s Mindful Musings)!

Thank you, Patrick, for setting up the microphone–the room was long–without the microphone, the writers sitting in the back would have had difficulty hearing us.

Thank you to each writer in the room!  Here’s an offer to you if you were in our session on Feb. 16, 2012 –  I’ll be happy to read and give feedback to the first 2 pages (double spaced; pages numbered; manuscript title and your full name in the header) of your manuscript.  Email me: your full name; your project’s genre; list of your themes.  Then I’ll let you know when would be the best time to email me your first 2 pages. I’ll arrange my schedule so that I can focus on one writer a day.  My email address is at gmail.com  My User Name is:  WritingCoachTeresa

Session hand-out for Mary E. Knippel & Teresa LeYung-Ryan’s presentation BE YOUR OWN EDITOR

Mary E. Knippel & Teresa LeYung-Ryan
Being Your Own Editor
Ensure Your Manuscript 100% Ready For the Next Step
•    hire a book doctor/developmental editor OR
•     pitch to agents or acquisition editors OR
•     be  your own publisher

fiction / narrative nonfiction / prescriptive nonfiction (“how-to” books)

YOUR NAME: ______________________________ Your Project: ________________________________

Tool #1   Grounding Reader with the three Ws (Who? When? Where?)
Tool #2   Hooking Reader from first page to last with core theme and “What does Protagonist want?” (in prescriptive nonfiction “What does Reader need?”)
Tool #3     In Fiction & Narrative Nonfiction (both genres are forms of  “story-telling”) Who are your protagonist, antagonist, and other archetypes?
Tool #4    In Fiction & Narrative Nonfiction (front story / back story)
Tool #5    Foreshadows  Metaphors   Recurring Images
Tool #6    Authentic Details
Tool #7   Monologue   Dialogue   Vernacular
Tool #8   Misspelled words; misplaced modifiers; other frights

and 15 minutes for Questions & Answers

Thank you, dear mentors Michael Larsen & Elizabeth Pomada, for inviting Mary and me to deliver our signature presentation “Be Your Own Editor”!

Thank you, dear Birgit Soyka author of To Drink the Wild Air, for bringing your camera tripod!

Thank you, dear Margie Yee Webb, author of Cat Mulan’s Mindful Musings: Insight and Inspiration for a Wonderful Life, for introducing Mary and me, for taking photos, for having written the purr-fect gift book and letting me show in our session how every page of a prescriptive nonfiction book ought to contain inspiration, wisdom or a metaphor.

Thank you, Camille Thompson, columnist at SanRamonPatch.com, for your gracious help, making our session an enjoyable one.

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authors & story consultants Mary E. Knippel & Teresa LeYung-Ryan use classics to draw examples for BE YOUR OWN EDITOR at SFWC--photo by author Margie Yee Webb

authors & story consultants Mary E. Knippel & Teresa LeYung-Ryan give 8 tools at BE YOUR OWN EDITOR packed house session SFWC–photo by author Margie Yee Webb

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authors & story consultants Mary E Knippel & Teresa LeYung-Ryan attract writers at BE YOUR OWN EDITOR packed house session SFWC-photo by author Margie Yee Webb

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testimonials from Mary E Knippel & Teresa LeYung-Ryan's BE YOUR OWN EDITOR session

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Coach Teresa LeYung-Ryan says: "Wearing your 2 hats as a writer---to polish your manuscript and to build your platform---can be as fun as riding a San Francisco cable car."

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Across the street at the Fairmont Hotel –  LEARNING & the BRAIN Conference–Connecting Educators to Neuroscientists and Researchers

Vehicular traffic was blocked off in the area because President Obama was to speak at the Masonic Auditorium that evening!

Coach Teresa here took the cable car to go home and pack for Day II of San Francisco Writers Conference.  Please see next post.

Sincerely

Coach Teresa LeYung-Ryan

“Reach out, not stress out, to materialize your dearest dreams!”

http://writingcoachteresa.com
author of Build Your Writer’s Platform & Fanbase In 22 Days: Attract Agents, Editors, Publishers, Readers, and Media Attention NOW

As editor/story consultant, Coach Teresa helps her clients polish their manuscripts by identifying themes and archetypes.

Her novel Love Made of Heart is used in college composition classes. Thank you, Teachers & Students!

Coach Teresa here . . . to encourage you to ask your protagonist “Who are you?”  and show up (with your writing instruments) so that she/he can answer your question over time.

Over time–You create the magical bond between you and your characters.

Whether the story is being presented as fiction or nonfiction . . .  Ask yourself:  “What incident shook my world (or someone I care about‘s world) and I must tell the story.”

With memoirs, the author and Protagonist are YOU. You ask yourself: “What happened to me?”  “How do I tell my story to hook Reader?” My answer is this: “You as Protagonist–stay in story-world. Move about in your story as though you do not know the ending. ‘Grow’ with yourself in story-world. No interjecting commentary from the author that would take us out of story-world. Let us see your story unfold as it happened. After all, you experienced the story in real life; to give us editorial comments as the “experienced one” will usually give the effect that an actor is stepping in front of the camera to interrupt (while the story is being played out in Reader’s mind’s eyes).

With novels, you created the protagonist.  Perhaps he/she was modeled after yourself; even if that weren’t the case, you the author get under his/her skin. Because you are writing fiction, you have the luxury of changing the sequence of events and the specifics of the events. Novel authors also must not interrupt the story with editorial comments that aren’t apropos for the plot point.

“What incident shook my world (or someone I care about‘s world) and I must tell the story.” In my novel Love Made of Heart, something happened to Protagonist Ruby Lin’s mother.  When Ruby finds out what has shaken her mother’s world, her own world also get jolted.

I’m reading Mary Jo McConahay’s memoir Maya Roads: One Woman’s Journey Among the People of the Rainforest and being hooked by her prologue.  The author was fascinated by an exhibit in the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. So fascinated that she went back to the museum the next day to look at the representations of the indigenous Lacandón people, descendants of the ancient Maya.  “I must go there,” she told her sister.

I’m on page 7 of Mary Jo’s book–she has just met Moises Morales, an archaeoastronomer (one who studies ancient beliefs about the sky). I’m intrigued.

Coach Teresa Says To Ask My Protagonist: “Who Are You?”

Happy writing! Happy reading and researching! Happy rewriting!

If you need a story-consultant/editor, please review my webpage by clicking on this link.

Sincerely,

Coach Teresa LeYung-Ryan

“Reach out, not stress out, when pursuing your dearest dreams!”

http://writingcoachteresa.com
author of Build Your Writer’s Platform & Fanbase In 22 Days