Yesterday, we talked about adding figurative language to writing. Today, I want you to suspend that process for a while. Today, we are going to begin writing a paragraph or two about November, and I want you to suspend your search for metaphors and similes for a while. In fact, I want you to suspend…
Category: Jacki Kellum Memoir
Harvest Your Past Memoir Challenge Day 3 – Using Similes and Metaphors to Empower Your Writing
A few days ago, I launched a free memoir writing challenge. I began by referring to Cynthia Rylant’s picture book In November. If you have not read that post yet, please do. In that post, I showed how Rylant had captured the essence of November in precious few words, and I asked the participants of…
Harvest Your Past Memoir Challenge – Write More to Write Better – Write to Heal Yourself
Before I tell you about today’s Memoir Writing Exercise, I want to share a true story with you. Today, I am a fairly prolific writer, but a few years ago, I couldn’t force myself to write. After my spirit had suffered several blows, I had become creatively mute. Depression had set in, and it seemed…
November is National Memoir Writing Month – Harvest Your Past Day 1 – Describe November
I write memoir for several reasons — least of which is to create a book of memoir. I write memoir to prime my writing pump. I write memoir to allow my writer’s voice to rise to the surface. I write memoir to connect with the author within myself. A few years ago, I coined the…
Church in My Garden – A Jacki Kellum Garden Journal Post for Autumn
The grasses are arching above the places where the perennials had bloomed only weeks ago. The Purple Fountain grass is darker than most of my garden now, which is still a lush, verdant green. Like icing on its cake, feathery festoons topple from the tips of each spire of the ornamental grass. Some of the…
How to Create a Garden Journal – More about the Nature Writer Dorothy Wordsworth’s Nature Writing
If you are wondering how to create a garden journal, the most obvious answer is: Write. As usual, however, obvious answers are hardly ever true answers. Many times, they are insults thrust toward what a true answer might be, and while I often tell journalists and writers to do just that — just write! Nature…
Memories of Going to the Fair
I grew up in the Bootheel of Southeast Missouri, which is about 120 miles up the Mississippi River from Memphis, Tennessee. The highlight of my autumns was that of going to the Midsouth Fair in Memphis. My mother lived to be 97, and every time I saw her, I heard her repeat: “Brush your teeth…
Squirrels at Harvest Time
Many people view harvest time as the weeks during which Starbucks serves Pumpkin Spice Latte, or as the time when the craft stores line their shelves with fake pumpkins, orange garlands, and scarecrows that are not scary at all. The funny thing about craft stores, however, is that if you move a couple of rows…
The Duvals of Kentucky from Virginia
Published in 1938 HIS book was written to meet the need of a permanent record of the history of the descendants of four brothers of the old Virginia family of Col. Samuel DuVal of “Mt. Comfort,” Henrico County, Va. On this plantation of five hundred acres was built the Chestnut Hill and Highland Park additions…
The Claiborne Family Tree from England to Virginia to Southeast Missouri
Rowland Cleburne [Cliburn] Born about 1364 He married Katherine de Lancaster Born 1415 II. John Cleburne Born about 1445 – 1487 He married Elizabeth Curwen| Born 1445 – 1489 III. Thomas De Cleburne Born about 1471 – 1573 He married Joan Sanford Born 1447 IV. Sir Robert John Cleburne Born about 1471 – 1553 He married Emmotte KirkbrideAnn Layton Born 1465 – 1535 V. Edmund Cleburne Born about 1502…