Denis Ledoux's Blog, page 55

Marriage in New France: Barthélémi and Marthe Wed

This is an excerpt from my unpublished book, Here to Stay, which is the story of my patrilineal and matrilineal seventeenth-century ancestors. For more excerpts, click here.

September 22, 1665

As was the custom in the colony, the wedding was set for a date soon after the contract signing. These were exceptional times. Winter was just three months away, and if Barthélémi and Marthe were to survive the long, cold months at the new farm in Chateau-Richer, there was much to be done. Until she...

Grammar Like You Never Knowed

We thought you might enjoy brushing up on your grammar.

This list has been making its way around the internet and we thought it was enough of a new twist on grammar that it would make your high school English teacher’s hair stand on end.

Verbs has to agree with their subjects. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with. And don’t start a sentence with a conjunction. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive. Avoid clichés like the plague. (They’re old hat.) Always avoid annoying allite...

Memoir: Mindful Use and Misuse of Words in a Memoir

Words as memoir-writing tools

As writers, how can we not be mindful always that words are our tools! Words communicate meaning—our meaning—to readers. So often however, we use words (and the phrases they are embedded in) without understanding the full weight they carry—their connotations for ourselves and for others. Many words are loaded with multiple connotation.

Now most writers have a somewhat clear enough sense of denotative [dictionary definition] and connotative [emotional : house vs....

Eight Reasons to Share the Inner You

Eight Reasons to Share the Inner You

Our lives are composed not only of facts and dates but also of dreams, expectations–realized or denied—and hopes. You are not alone in having lived an inner life. Others too have experienced much of what you felt and dreamed for yourself and are likely to identify with some, or even much, of what you say. You are more likely to attract praise rather than scorn for sharing your inner life.

You’ll derive several benefits when you share the inner you.

1) I...

A Top Memoir Editor Gets the Job Done

Have you wondered why even writers of the highest caliber need a top memoir editor?

Is memoir editing really important?

Following are reasons even the Hemingways, the Kerouacs, and the Woolfs need editors. As you (and they) write day after day, over the months and years it takes to complete a manuscript, some of the pitfalls we all become prey to include any three of the following:

becoming attached to your prose. Often, we are enamored of particular scenes and go from tolerating their ext...

Three Tips For Creating an Effective Writing Schedule

It’s time to commit to creating an effective writing schedule.

You’ve already taken several steps in lifewriting. You have begun to write your stories and memories. perhaps the summer got in the way of your perseverance or perhaps it was something else—an illness, a temporary job, travel. Now you need to recommit to memoir writing by creating an effective writing schedule for yourself.

Rather than think in the general terms of “I’ll write as much as I can” (who are we kidding here!), base...

Word Redundancies

Word Redundancies Practitioners in every endeavor or field have tools that are specific to accomplishing their work.

These people use tools with discrimination and, one hopes, effectiveness. A carpenter uses a ball peen hammer and a claw hammer and a club hammer. Each is different and each has a different use. While a carpenter might on occasion, perhaps to save the time to fetch a tool for a very small task, use one of those hammers in an inappropriate way, he will be embarrassed doing so...

Our First Evening Coping with Cancer

Martha Blowen, my partner in life and in work, died on August 18, 2008,  from metastasized breast cancer. The following is from collated excerpts of journals we both kept at the time.  (Before she passed away, she gave me permission to share her entries.)

The memoir is called My Eye Fell Into the Soup, after a dream in which one of her eyes fell into a cauldron. She later interpreted this to mean she was not paying attention to her health. (This is written about elsewhere.) As with most peo...

Don’t Give Your Memoir Gold Away

People want their stories told.

People everywhere have an urge to make their stories public—in any format that will satisfy the impulse. Because in human development, speech comes first and writing later, the impulse to make a story public is almost certainly to be initially to speak and only subsequently to write it. Talking over a cup of tea may be just as satisfying a release for the tension inherent in needing to tell a story as shaping a memorable written lifestory—or poem or novel. B...

Get Your Memoir Going Again

You want to get your memoir going again, but you feel stuck.

Get your memoir going again today. Writing a memoir is a long-term project. Like all long-term projects, it has its ups and downs. The ups are easy to deal with but the downs are a bit more challenging.

1. Set a schedule for writing.

Many people work better when they commit to a schedule. Try this to get your memoir going again: Write down specific days on which you will work and specify your start and stop hours. Modify this as...