I’m thinking this morning of when my husband and I returned from a couple of nights in Calistoga, a charming town in California’s Napa Valley. Yes, it has its share of upwardly mobile types who go there to visit the many wineries. But there also are others who need to be replenished by the pastoral setting and many opportunities to take walks in the surrounding hills. I need that uplift today. (more…)
For everybody except those hiding under a rock, it’s impossible to avoid AI these days. 
I’m grateful to Al Sirois, a fellow Regal House author, for sharing with us his writing journey. 
Since my late 20s, I’ve recorded my dreams every morning, curious about the wonderful dramas that unfold each night in the subterranean depths. During a trip we took a while back to Osoyoos, B.C., I got a better understanding of dreams and the role they play in our lives. 
I recall returning home a while back after spending time at a recently built rental home on the Oxnard, California, beach. It had a wonderful view overlooking the harbor and ocean. You might think I would miss the incredible views and location, as well as the house, brimming with technological toys. But I didn’t. It was a relief to return to our simple Richmond abode, built in the 1940s. 
As a young woman in the 50s growing up in Canada, I was intrigued by hockey and football. Baseball didn’t exist for me then. It hadn’t entered Canadian consciousness, and it would take some years before it did. But I didn’t feel deprived. Hockey and football had much to offer at that time, including handsome, vigorous guys. 
Being part of an on-line writing group for several years provided me with many benefits. But the positives also produced a few negatives.
I didn’t get to sleep till 1 AM this morning after reading a fascinating article about the assemblage artist Joseph Cornell. I’ve felt that in many ways, he’s my spiritual father. A-I describes his work as intricate “signature boxes, glass-fronted shadow boxes that serve as miniature, poetic theaters. Inside, he meticulously arranged collages and three-dimensional ‘found objects’—such as old maps, vintage photographs, watch parts, and marbles—to create dreamlike, nostalgic universes that celebrate memory, astronomy, and romantic cinema.” 
I’ve just finished rereading Henry James’ The Portrait of a Lady and have mixed feelings about the era and the characters. It’s difficult to read about Victorian morés from a 21st Century perspective. Not only do I need lenses that will give me a bi-cultural perspective, but I also feel squashed between a culture clash. Just after I finished with Portrait, I read a review of A. M. Homes’ book May We Be Forgiven in The New York Review of Books. One of her main characters says, 
In the SF Bay area, we’ve recently had unseasonably warm days, totally out of character for us at this time of year in San Francisco and the other nearby coastal regions. Most of us have been delighted to sit out in our yards at night and enjoy this new balmy climate. But then I read in the paper recently that the planet has been recording one of the hottest springs, reminding me that while I’m luxuriating in these above-average temperatures, the weather extremes are killing the planet. It’s a startling and disturbing statistic. 
I guess there is something comforting about the way today’s youth have become accustomed to their parents/guardians checking on them at all times via smart phones, etc. It may feel like being held in a kind of web (and here I’m not referring to the World Wide Web), a loving network. But it also suggests to me what it’s like to be trapped in a spider’s snare. The idea that none of us can have a moment when we aren’t being scrutinized in some way makes me shudder. What has happened to the notion of privacy and freedom? Am I old-fashioned to think they still are virtues?Method Writing: Stimulating Memory Is a Gateway
September 1, 2025
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Thanks to Suzanne Sherman for sharing this post on memoir writing:
There were many standout messages in a webinar I attended this week by bestselling author Janet Fitch, hosted by Memoir Nation (www.memoirnation.com/about-memoir-nation).
This is one of my favorites.
Fitch spoke about stimulating memory to recreate time and place. How to do that?
A clue: Stimulating memory stimulates something inside you as well. It is, as Fitch calls it, “a gateway to memory.”
In my memoir, which publishes in fall 2026, I needed to recreate time and place as far back as 1964, when I was four years old. Important events in the arc of my narrative occurred at that time. Fortunately, I have vivid glimpses of memory to draw from. Still, to build context I needed to write a fuller scene. I had to drop down and find sensory details to go beyond the facts I knew. Depending on facts alone would have resulted in a narrative telling about instead of a recreation of to take readers there with me.
That is where stimulating the gateway to memory comes in. The key to the gateway is sense impression.
To get sense impressions, you have to go “back there” and open to the information your senses have for you. This is particularly helpful if memory is absent for the time you’re writing about.
You may have heard of method acting. Method acting is an emotion-oriented technique in acting used instead of action-based acting. With method acting, an actor aspires to encourage sincere and emotionally expressive performances by fully inhabiting the role of the character.
Here, we have “method writing.” You need to fully inhabit the role of the character you’re writing about (yourself in an earlier time). If, for example, you’re writing a scene that takes place in a car on a hot day in an era before air-conditioning was common in cars, go take a ride in yours with the air-conditioning turned off to get a sense of being in that car you drove in. Roll down the window and get a feeling for that, get some language for it. This is a felt sense of the experience, or method writing.
In my memoir there is a scene in 1964 that takes place in a forest. There is a second scene in a forest in 1974, also important in the story. To recreate time and place for both, I went to a forest when I was writing the book—nearly 50 and 60 years later—to get details for the scenes and stimulate memory of the times I was writing about. Sure, I know what a forest is, but what does morning light do inside of one? What scents come up on a summer breeze? How does pine duff sound underfoot?
Go to the gateway to memory as often as you need by visiting a similar scene in current time. And remember: the key to get in is the senses.
About Suzanne
I’m dedicated to helping writers put their good words into the world.
– Suzanne Sherman
Writing Coach & Book Consultant
Memoir Workshops