Wow! In one day we have 13 subscribers and one joiner that I know of! And some interesting issues have come up:

First, several of you report that you have already tried to “catalog” your belongings, a task quickly abandoned. I sympathize, having also attempted to describe objects for my heirs—and I also quit. But this memoir year is different: Our things will be subjects, not objects, or perhaps doors to the countless rooms of our palatial pasts.

Second, please! Do not be intimidated by the sheer number of those doors. Nobody knows or cares how many you ignore. God help us and especially our readers if we try to explore them all. I just choose something that sounds like fun, an approach I discovered writing Great Lakes Nature—for a year I took four or five walks a week, each time choosing one thing to write about. In three editions, no one has ever complained that I didn’t include it all!

Finally, defining an end to a project gives me the will to complete it. I’ll do what I can in twelve months and I’m done. Hurrah!

Please note that I have three “categories” for my posts: 1) 2017 Memoir Mary’s, for my personal memoir entries; 2) Readers’ Stories, for YOUR stories that I have chosen to share and for which you have given me permission; and 3) Memoir Workshop, for memoir-writing issues such as the ones discussed in this post.

Keep those questions and ideas coming!