Lisa Dale Norton’s Shimmering Images, provides an engaging alternative to the now standard and more elementary techniques of identifying and accessing suitable topics for memoir writing. For middle and high schoolers, as well as adults, Norton has devised a visual metaphor that appeals to the visual-spatial writer as much as the verbal-linguistic one.
Norton’s concept is to capture watershed moments from our lives in visual depictions - rivers of life that bend and twist with each life-changing event. This aerial life “view from the mountaintop” encourages writers to use perspective, compassion, and reflection when writing about personal, life-changing events. Norton also tackles the issue of truth vs. honesty when dealing with potentially touchy subjects or memories. She finishes with a section on craft that is especially applicable to memoir writers.
In the middle or high school, classroom, I like to give students options of using butcher paper, sheets of letter paper taped together, or lengths of blank adding machine tape to create their rivers of life. Be sure to keep plenty of markers and colored pencils handy, as students may want to illustrate their rivers or color-code their annotations. Whatever media they choose, students can easily fold and tuck this writing tool into their sock drawer or tape it into their writer’s notebook to revisit often. And they will.
For guidance in writing meaningful memoir, get Lisa Dale Norton’s Shimmering Images: A Handy Little Guide to Writing Memoir, published by St. Martin’s Griffin in 2008 at Amazon for around $10.
Reviewed by Barb Miller, TC '09
