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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 | |