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Preface | |
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The Longest Paragraph | |
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Writing Exercises | |
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Savory Words: The First Bite of Your Story | |
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Don't Just State Your Story - Reveal Your Story | |
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Move Readers with Active Words | |
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Following a Sensory Trail | |
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Writing Exercises | |
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A Note on Genre | |
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For Your Reading Pleasure: "Candy Cigarettes," | |
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Writing on Key: A Few Notes about Theme | |
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False Starts | |
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Starting True | |
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The Colors We Choose | |
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Writing Exercises | |
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For Your Reading Pleasure: "Rob Me Again," | |
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Plotting Your Life | |
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Finding the Arc of Your Story | |
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Motivating Your Plot | |
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Thunderous Plots | |
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The Structure of Plot | |
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Crossing the Finish Line | |
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Turning Real Life into Art | |
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Writing Exercises | |
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For Your Reading Pleasure: "Scavengers," | |
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Between Innocence and Experience: Finding Your Voice(s) | |
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Using Multiple Voices | |
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Your Everyday Voice and Your Literary Voice | |
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Guiding Voices | |
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Writing Exercises | |
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For Your Reading Pleasure: "The Visit," | |
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Mock Moons and Metaphor: Crafting Memoir into Art | |
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Finding Your Metaphors | |
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The Metaphoric Memoir | |
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Metaphor: A Window onto the World | |
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Writing Exercise | |
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For Your Reading Pleasure: "Tetanus, You Understand?" | |
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Writing in Style | |
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Your Story, Your Style | |
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The Muscular Sentence | |
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More Than Just And | |
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Not To Be | |
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Dialogue in Memoir | |
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Past or Present Tense? | |
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These Boots Are Made for Writing | |
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Writing Exercise | |
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For Your Reading Pleasure: "The Man behind the Shower Curtain," | |
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Marketing Your Memoir | |
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Getting Started | |
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Publishing Outlets: Pros and Cons of Each | |
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How to Decide What's Best for Your Book | |
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Promoting Yourself as a Professional Speaker | |
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Web Opportunities for Your Memoir | |
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The Importance of All Our Voices | |
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Writing Exercises | |
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Confessional and (Finally) Proud of It | |
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Western Civilization in an Eggshell | |
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One Secret, One Word, at a Time | |
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Word by Word | |
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The Courage to Show This to Your Mother (Penance Optional) | |
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Truth and Memory in Memoir | |
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What Readers Understand about Memoirs | |
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What the Media Doesn't Understand about Confessional Stories | |
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A Hysterical [sic] History of Criticism | |
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Writing Exercises | |
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The Meandering River: An Overview of the Subgenres of Creative Nonfiction | |
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Biography | |
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Autobiography | |
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Immersion | |
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Memoir | |
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Personal Essay | |
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Meditative Essay | |
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Lyric Essay | |
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Toward the Sea | |
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Waters Ebb and Flow | |
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Three Confessional Essays | |
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"From Process to Product: Using Print-on-Demand to Publish," | |
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"Gazing: Writing from the Womb," | |
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"The Weight of a Word," | |
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For Your Reading Pleasure: Four Full-Length Essays | |
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"Independence Day, Manley Hot Springs, Alaska," | |
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"After the Dash," | |
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"The Beautiful City of Tirzah," | |
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"The Pat Boone Fan Club" | |
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Reading List of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction | |
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Works Cited | |
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Biographical Notes | |