Finding My Great-Aunt Michalina's Immigration Records

A few weeks ago I received an email from Jim Onyschuk, the President of the Toronto Ukrainian Genealogy Group, announcing the January meeting along with a notice of new Canada Passenger Records from 1881 – 1922 now available online at Family Search (http://familysearch.org/search/collection/1823240 ). 

Always on the look out for my great-aunt Michalina’s records, I hit the link and searched her name as usual, to no avail. I then searched just her last name (proper spelling) and found about 10 hits with different spellings, including one that I knew immediately was her: Michatine Heukan. Her name had been transcribed incorrectly with a scratch on the page changing the ‘l’ to a ‘t’ and the last letter appearing blurry as an ‘e’ not an ‘a’. The last name was mangled due to a peculiar formation of the letter before the ‘k’ which I think was intended to be ‘c’ and the addition of an ‘e’ before the ‘u’.

Michalina Huckan c.1910

Michalina was 17 when she arrived in Saint John, New Brunswick on April 4, 1910 on the SS Lake Michigan. She was listed as single, having $24 and heading to Winnipeg, Manitoba to her brother on her CPR ticket. Her previous occupation as well as her intended occupation was ‘servant’. 

John Huckan c.1910

Now that I had that information, I searched for her again on www.ancestry.com to find any additional details. I had some difficulty finding her as her name was shown on Ancestry as Michatina Henskan. The only new information was a photo of the ship and the fact that it had departed from Antwerp, Belgium. Finding her on Ancestry allowed me to link this record to her on my family tree. I was also able to correct her name so that future researchers can find her more easily.

When I compared Michalina’s arrival dates with other family members, I made an another interesting discovery. I had previously searched all the boat records for the ship my grandmother ( her sister) arrived on (SS Samland June 4, 1911) , her brother John (SS Montreal April 6, 1908), his wife Frances (SS Corinthian October 30, 1910) and brother Nikolai who made several trips back and forth but it never occurred to me to check my grandfather’s ship: SS Lake Michigan April 4, 1910. She was sent over with her brother-in-law, John Zarecki, my grandfather.

This makes some sense. Michalina’s father was sending John and (later) his wife to Canada. John was literate and spoke several languages. On the other hand, he was being send to Canada because he was mentally unstable (diagnosed manic/depressive later). This makes me think that Michalina’s fiancé was with her on the ship, as well as other people from her village. I may be able to determine her fiancé's name after all. A needle in the haystack but perhaps. 

Michalina’s fiancé – name unknown
from Repuzhintsy c.1910

                                                       
Another find on the Family Search list of Huckans was her brother Nikolai  Hucan showing when he arrived in Quebec City May 1910 on the Prinz Adalbert and on Ancestry (Nicola Hucan) I found he returned to the U.K. on November 5, 1921 on the SS Minedosa. I had previously found an arrival record for 1913 proving he made several trips to Canada to work before returning to his wife and family in Repuzhintsy.

Nikolai Huckan c.1910

Writing a memoir: Intersecting memory and story

I found this piece made some very helpful points. Please have a look.

Writing a memoir: Intersecting memory and story

Smashwords: Mark Coker's 2013 Book Publishing Industry Predictions

This comprehensive piece predicts a sunny future for ebook authors in 2013.

Smashwords: Mark Coker's 2013 Book Publishing Industry Predictions - Indie Ebook Authors Take Charge

Publication in Nasha Doroha Anthology 2012

I am excited to announce publication of two pieces of my writing in the 2012 Nasha Doroha Anthology, a special edition of the quarterly journal of the Ukrainian Catholic Women's League of Canada.

As a tribute to 1,300,000 Ukrainian immigrants to Canada during the past 120 years, the editor, Oksana Bashuk Hepburn, has assembled a collection of over 50 stories and poems, both in English and Ukrainian, in a double edition of their journal under the headings: Departing, Settling, Remembering, Contributing, Returning and Going Forward.

The story about my father appeared on this blog in an earlier version by the same title, 'Thoughts on my Father' and the poem 'Knowing You', about my paternal Baba, was previously published in "Grandmothers' Necklace" in 2010.

Here is a link to the publication: Nasha Doroha An Anthology 2013

Copies of Nasha Doroha Anthology may be obtained for $10.00 each from:

Elizabeth Zahayko
387 Betts Ave.,
Yorkton, SK
S3N 1N3
(306) 783-6282
eazahayko@sasktel.net

Copyright © 2012, Ruth Zaryski Jackson

The Heart and Craft of Life Writing: End of the Line for Lulu

Read this article by Sharon Lippincott and take heed anyone thinking of publishing with Lulu.

The Heart and Craft of Life Writing: End of the Line for Lulu

‘Immersion Memoir’ and Returning to My Childhood Home Part 1

As I was reading a recent essay by Suzanne Farrell Smith called “The Inner Identity of Immersion Memoir”, I began thinking about my own trip back to my childhood home on Charles Street in Toronto a few years ago.

My old house was being leased after being occupied by a print shop for the past 25 years. I called up a realtor friend and asked her to show me through the house. Armed with a camera and notebook , I went in search  of childhood memories, hoping the experience would trigger more than I’d been able to access to date. Although only the first floor and the basement were available to us,  I tapped into the architecture in my mind and compared it to what remained that day.

Here are some of my notes from November 18, 2008.

I sucked in my breath as I entered my childhood home on Charles Street. Fifty-eight years since we moved. The main floor and basement were up for lease and a real estate agent friend arranged access for me. The first floor was stripped to the brick wall and studs. The original room divisions were obliterated. My stomach lurched.

I struggled to recognize the house of my childhood. The bones were still there, a few familiar markers. Outside I had climbed the metal stairs and heard a clanging sound instead of the thud of the former wooden steps. The hidey hole was still there under the front porch with its winding cement steps to the basement door. To my left in front of the basement window a cement pad replaced the metal doors of the chute to the coal bin below. The old front door had been replaced with a barred metal commercial entrance. Gone was the old carved glass windowed door with the bell to turn beneath. The transom above also looked different with a decorative metal flower in lieu of bars and the old curtained transom window opening inward probably considered a security risk.


In my mind’s eye the house I grew up in for the first 9 years was huge. The rooms seemed so spacious because of the very high ceilings. The living room faced the street with a large picture window. When I was nearly 4, I remember looking out into a white snowy night waiting for my mother to return with my baby brother. It was February 1945. Jim has just turned 62. Amazing that I can remember that night. There was a fireplace and mantel but it was never used. We had a radio, one of those big ones that stood on the floor. I used to lie in front with my head in the speakers to listen to a children’s program from Buffalo. I think it was called “Through the Garden Gate”. When I was 8, I even won a contest they held. I drew a picture of “The Garden Gate”. My prize was 2 tickets to the movie “The Wizard of Oz”. In the living room a stained glass window of a robin was behind the chesterfield. I used to love looking at it. Years later I saw someone removed it and probably put it in an antique shop. How sad to have it removed from its context. In the corner of the living room stood a big wooden box, low with a lid that opened up like a trunk. I think my Dad made it. I loved having my doll’s tea parties on it. The rest of the room is a blur, a carpet I think, a chair I recall my father reading his paper in. The painting on the wall of the Bow River; Sadie and I used to sit in front of it and make up stories cuddled under a blanket. One day the plaster ceiling came crashing down on my that wooden box. Luckily there were no tea parties in progress at the time.
(from earlier freewriting about my house)

I walk through the glass door from the now tiny front hall and see a brick wall straight ahead with some horizontal planks covering the old fireplace – now a chimney for the high-efficiency gas furnace. My bearings are lost. There are no room dividers and a big pile of debris fills the room. Remnants of one wall between the former kitchen and my parent’s former bedroom (really the dining room) tell me where the walls once were. The staircase is now walled and the once spacious hall is gone given over to the open room. The glass paneled French doors are gone to the living room and between the living room and dining room. We search around and find remnants of old plaster, high carved baseboards and window trim. The very high ceiling appears to be original and bears an old stamped pattern. But my favourite stained glass window with the robin on it is missing, as is the stained glass in the top of the rounded large picture window. I recall sitting on the back of the chesterfield looking at that robin in the stained glass before flipping myself backwards down to the cushions.

To be continued...

Have you ever gone looking for your past in old buildings or landscapes?

Is this the year to write your parent’s memoir?

Here is a post by Jerry Waxler that poses the question about writing your parents' memoir? I wonder if this is a necessary step to writing our own?

Is this the year to write your parent’s memoir?

Copyright © 2012, Ruth Zaryski Jackson

Remembering How War Affected My Family

It was Remembrance Day on Friday in Canada and Veteran’s Day in the United States. I imagine many bloggers posted about their personal connections to soldiers and war heroes from battles world wide. My family lacks a strong military tradition and yet I choke up every November 11th when I hear “And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda”. That song more than any other conjures up the senselessness of war and its inevitability. A sense of loss haunts  me.

My father, Jakiem (Jack) Zaryski grew up in a war zone. Born in 1911 in Kasperivtsi, a small village in Western Ukraine, he remembered soldiers of all stripes marching back and forth through the village during his childhood in World War One. Families were forced to billet soldiers and were subjected to their abuses. His mother was shot in the hip by a trigger-happy German when she stooped to pick up a fallen door knob. Dad spent hours hiding in root-cellars when the shelling was heavy and playing war games with other children when the activity subsided. He began to smoke at age ten and later developed a stomach ulcer. You can be sure he was affected by this early trauma and his anxieties, in all likelihood, were passed down to his children.

During this time my paternal grandfather, Joseph Zaryski was conscripted by the Austro-Hungarian Army around 1914 and spent six years fighting on the Eastern Front then later working in Vienna during the subsequent civil uprisings in Ukraine. I know nothing  of his military record, only that he would have been the lowliest foot soldier and fodder for the enemy. How he managed to return unscathed is a mystery I will never unravel. My grandfather never shared his war stories with my father. They are lost forever.

Joseph Zaryski c. 1920

During World War Two, my father's youngest brother Ivan was conscripted when the Russians invaded from the east. He disappeared and all contact with him was lost in 1942. My father searched but never learned what happened to him. Recently I discovered he died in a German Prisoner of War Camp in East Prussia, the victim of Hitler's inhuman starvation policies. I need to read Timothy Snyder's book, BLOODLANDS for the gruesome details. So far I don't have the stomach for it.

During World War Two my father was in Canada, married with a child, me. He never wanted to go to war after what he had witnessed in his childhood. Instead he chose to go to work on the Alaska Highway being built by the United States as a defense to any attack from the east. Perhaps he felt he was doing his patriotic best. His absence during my early life left its mark on me.

On my mother’s side her youngest brother Leon and a brother-in-law enlisted during World War Two. I was born in 1941 so my only memory is of the two uncles staying with us at different times as they passed through Toronto en route to training camp or returning from overseas.  My only war time memories are of Yonge Street parades, rationing tickets for butter and meat and the fact that there weren’t many service aged men around the streets in my neighbourhood of downtown Toronto. That and the absence of my father when I was a toddler.

In my husband’s family many more men served their country. His father Ray Jackson was only 17 when he enlisted in World War One. A strong surge of patriotism and obligation swept the country and made young men feel the need to go to war to defeat ‘the Hun’. He served in France, was shot in the shoulder, and spent years recovering in a military hospital in England in the pre-penicillin age. His wounds never stopped bothering him and he never spoke of his experience.

My husband’s mother had two brothers who served at the same time during World War One. Her favourite, Bill Skilling, enlisted in the army and as a university graduate, was sent to Oxford for officer training. As a Second Lieutenant he was assigned to artillery (Canadian Expeditionary Force, British Expeditionary Force, Royal Field Artillery) as a Forward Observation Officer. In 1917 in France after the first phase of the Third Battle of Ypres (The Battle of Passchendaele),  Bill collapsed on the field  and was taken to hospital in England. He was sent home three years later depressed and with a badly damaged heart which eventually killed him prematurely. He never married because of his health.

When the war broke out, my mother-in-law’s other brother Harold enlisted in the 5th Field Ambulance Corps as a stretcher bearer. After being seriously wounded at the Battle of the Somme in 1916 he was sent to England. When he recovered he transferred to the Royal Flying Corps but never flew a mission because the war ended just as his training finished. I don’t know how the war affected Uncle Harold. He never spoke of it to us. But when he returned to Canada, he broke up with his high-school sweetheart who'd stayed faithful, and never explained his actions.

How did war affect my family? I'm grateful we didn't lose anyone close, like so many families. But it's a loaded question. We know that some family members were traumatized by war. We do know that trauma can lead to personality changes and behaviors that seem normal, but can be traced to terrible events suffered particularly in childhood or at an impressionable period of life. Their trauma in turn affects their spouses, children and grandchildren. The ripple effect steadily moves through the generations. 

How has war affected your family?

For more on Bill and Harold Skilling, see my other blog: http://www.skillingfamilymemories.blogspot.com/

Your Memories, Your Book: To Tell the Truth

A useful article on truth telling in memoir from Personal Historian Wayne Groner:

Your Memories, Your Book: To Tell the Truth: The Plain Truth This article is a variation of my guest post on Sharon Lippincott’s blog, The Heart and Craft of Life Writing . A commo...

Copyright © 2011, Ruth Zaryski Jackson

My Interview in ArtScene

A few months ago I was asked by The PineRidge Arts Council to do an interview for the September-October issue of their publication ArtScene. I was excited to receive my copy today.


Since there is no online link and my BlackBerry photo is hard to read, I am publishing the interview here.

1. Tell us a little about your background and family.

I was born in Toronto, the eldest of four children of Ukrainian Canadian immigrants. After studying Anthropology at University of Toronto, then Counselling Psychology at University of Waterloo, I worked as a teacher, counsellor, and researcher. My last job was Historical Planner for the Ontario Ministry of Transportation’s Central Region where I documented heritage resources and made recommendations as part of the Environmental Assessment process. Some of this work was in Durham Region.

I am the mother of four grown children and grandmother of seven. I live with my husband on a farm near Mount Albert, just over the border in York Region.

2. What is your arts discipline and areas of interest?

I write memoir, poetry, creative nonfiction and blog at Memoir Writer’s World.
About four years ago, I started memoir writing through Ryerson University’s online course with instructor Allyson Latta. I’m now finishing my memoir “Missing Sadie, Missing Myself: Memories of a Childhood”.

It’s a coming of age story of a precocious daughter of Ukrainian immigrants uprooted from a downtown Toronto rooming house to follow her mother’s dream in 1950 of moving to the suburbs. Colourful characters, considered part of her extended family, were left behind. Against this background, she struggles with loss, longing, family secrets and conflicting values to find a place in her family and the world.

In 2008, my first short story “Room in My Heart” was published in "The Wisdom of Old Souls", an anthology about Grandmothers. In 2010, two poems about each of my grandmothers “Knowing You” and “Wash Day” were published in another anthology, "Grandmothers' Necklace", a fundraiser for the Stephen Lewis Foundation. My personal essay “The Power of a Family Secret” was published in 2010 on Allyson Latta’s website.

Besides writing and blogging, genealogy, learning to speak Ukrainian, and helping people with genealogical research, I am the family archivist and my present passion is picking up dropped threads in my family histories. I love to research some forgotten relative who died young or invented something and was never given credit. I’m rewriting history.

I am a member of the Writers’ Community of Durham Region, have attended the Ontario Writers’ Conference and belong to a dynamic and accomplished writing support group: Life Writers Ink along with Cheryl Andrews, Mary E. McIntyre and Anahita Printer Nepton.
My blog Memoir Writer’s World address: http://www.memoirwritersworld.blogspot.com/

3. How did you hear about PRAC and how long have you been a member?

I joined P.R.A.C. about two years ago when I heard about it from my writing buddy, Mary E. McIntyre who had been a member for many years. She introduced me to the Arts Scene newsletter where I learned about all the talented artists in Durham Region.

4. What would you like to see added to the community to enhance the arts?

I love the artist studio tours. I’d like to see more events in the northern part of Durham Region, stronger support for community theatre, more funding for Arts groups and more free arts activities for children in the community such as year round Arts camps for kids. Do Durham libraries have an Authors Series as we do in East Gwillimbury? The annual Stellar Literary Festival in Oshawa showcases local and emerging authors. A festival similar to WordsAlive could bring in popular writers for workshops and readings.

Post Script: The inaugural McLaughlin Literary Festival will be taking place at the Parkwood Estate in Oshawa on Sunday September 18, 2011.

5 Things I Learned From Reading “Copernicus Avenue” by Andrew J. Borkowski

I grew up on the fringe of post World War Two Polish immigrant experience in Toronto. My family wasn’t Polish, they were Ukrainian. But my father grew up in Eastern Europe in Kasperivtsi, a village that was part of Malopolska, or ‘Little Poland’ between the two world wars. He was schooled in Polish and spoke it fluently. We had family friends who were Polish or ‘became Polish’ by marrying a Pole. 


So when my friend Mary E. McIntyre recommended the Giller Prize-nominated  book “Copernicus Avenue” to me, I read it with interest. Borkowski, in 16 linked short stories, gives us the urban Toronto Polish immigrant’s post-war experience along with the heartbreaking backstory of the Katyn and Baranica massacres. I learned five things reading the book.

1. 1. I learned or re-learned the power of landscape and memory when telling a story. Borkowski creates a fictitious street in the heart of the old Roncesvalles neighbourhood in Toronto’s west end. It could have been any Polish neighbourhood in any city, but for me it brought back memories of visiting friends in Parkdale and Roncesvalles as a child. In fact, the house on the cover looks exactly like the house some Polish friends lived in on Macdonnell Avenue, the eastern boundary of the Roncesvalles neighbourhood. On Saturdays my Dad would sometimes take us down to visit these friends and also to buy fresh Kielbasa and Paska or Kolach for the holidays. I can still remember the smell of the garlic sausage mixed with the aroma of sawdust scattered on the floor of the butcher shop. Borkowski evokes this neighbourhood through sensual details about bakeries, butcher shops, churches and statues, street life and the characters that inhabited the neighbourhood. I felt like I was back there with my Dad.
2. I learned that memoir can be fiction and fiction can be memoir. In other words, the writer can choose the stories to tell and how to tell them. Life-based stories can be presented as fiction when the writer feels he doesn’t remember enough to make it a memoir, but he can still base the stories on his life and memories. Which is better? Neither. It depends what the writer wishes to achieve and how well he remembers his life.
3. I learned that linked stories together can be like a memoir or a novel. Grouped together with the same characters and time and place, these stories form a coherent whole. Each story can stand on its own and might even be published individually, as in Borkowski’s case with his story ‘Twelve Versions of Lech’. An emerging writer can increase his chances of finding a book publisher by having already published some stories.
4. I learned or I was reminded that I never really understood  the Polish World War Two experience, though I'd met people who’d survived it. The problem was: no adult wanted to explain in detail to a curious child what had happened. Why was a Polish friend flying for the British Air Force? Shouldn’t he be in the Polish Air Force? Oh, wait a minute, Poland was invaded and disappeared from the map for  a while. This book reveals the hidden wounds and resulting behaviors of these immigrant characters, all of which seem terribly familiar to me. I learned about the horrors of Polish deportation to Siberia from Jane/Janina Boruszewski and I’m still learning subtle details of survival.
5. I learned how historical details (backstory) can be woven into the story in description, character, plot and dialogue, without weighing down the flow of the story. Now to figure out how to do that myself!

Backstory versus Front Story

A helpful article from the Plot Whisperer:

Plot Whisperer for Writers and Readers: Backstory versus Front Story: "Watch your delivery of backstory ~ the story of what, in the past, made the character who they are today (in story time).

Writers want ..."

Copyright © 2011, Ruth Zaryski Jackson

The Irresistibly Sweet Blog Award

A few months ago I received The Irresistibly Sweet Blog Award from my friend and writing colleague, Mary E. McIntyre. Due to a hectic schedule around that time, I failed to respond and fulfill the obligations of the award. These are: to thank the person, tell 7 things about myself and pass the award on to other new bloggers. So here goes.

Thank you, Mary, for nominating me for the award. I appreciate the honour and I appreciate you! I first met Mary in one of Allyson Latta’s online memoir writing courses in 2007 and from my first impression I knew Mary was intelligent, sensitive and friendly. She was also a sensational writer and able to give helpful feedback. We met in person in 2010 and shortly after formed our writing support group  Life Writers Ink, along with Cheryl Andrews and Anahita Printer Nepton.

Seven things About Myself

1. I worked on several archaeology digs in Ontario.
2. I travelled to Mexico by myself.
3. I worked for the British Museum of Natural History measuring Bronze Age Skulls.
4. I love chocolate.
5. I have 4 children and 7 grandchildren.
6. I love flowers.
7. I live on a farm.

And an 8th one might be: I hate writing about myself!

Pass It On

I would like to pass this award on to the following bloggers:

1. Gabriele Wills The Obsessed Writer
2. Kathleen Pooler Write On!
3. Dan Curtis
4. Lori Thatcher Memoir, Poetry, Short Story, Musings

and give special mention to the following veteran bloggers:

1. Kristin den Hartog and her daughter http://www.blogofgreengables.blogspot.com/
2. Elizabeth Young http://www.thegardengate.blogspot.com/
3. Linda Hoye http://lindahoye.com/

“Perhapsing” Cleopatra: Ideas for Speculating About My Grandmother’s Life

I have just finished reading “Cleopatra: A Life” by Stacy Schiff and her style has given me some ideas about writing about my grandmother’s life.

The content of their lives could not have differed more. Cleopatra,  born in 69 B.C., a queen at 18, ruler of Egypt for 22 years, lover of two of the most famous men in history, Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, she amassed wealth beyond imagination.

My grandmother, Marya Huckan Zarecka, an illiterate Ukrainian peasant woman born in 1880 in Repuzhintsy, a small village in Bukovina, daughter of a mayor, was married off to a poor and unstable husband and sent to homestead in the wilds of Canada. Both women were mothers, the only similarity. About both, little was passed down apart from stories and myth.

Using detailed research and a lot of speculation, Schiff tells a brilliant story about Cleopatra’s life. Her book could have been titled: “Perhapsing Cleopatra”. She provides a master lesson in imagining and detailing a life where few facts survived.

My grandmother lived a quiet life, out-shadowed by her disruptive husband. She kept a low profile to avoid his wrath and encouraged her children to do likewise. Not many stories about her were passed down, and if they were, consisted of vague remarks like “ oh, she was wonderful”, but with few meaty details.

I  realized after reading "Cleopatra A Life" that I did in fact possess enough information about my grandmother from photos, interviews with my mother and other siblings and cousins, and my grandfather’s hospital records to tell her story using the same techniques that Stacy Schiff used to bring Cleopatra to life. I went back to Schiff’s book and looked for phrases and words she used to recreate colourful, textured scenes and speculate about feelings and motives.

Besides the word perhaps, some other words and phrases used to fill out her story were: maybe, suppose, wonder, imagine, we don’t know if, what if, what she didn’t know, possibly, might have/could have/must have, perchance, suggests, no doubt she…, it seems as if…, she had no choice but to…, these might have been the possibilities, it is likely/unlikely, there is no reason to assume/we can safely assume, it would have been…, we have no proof that…,  and so on.

Just as Stacy Schiff reconstructed Cleopatra’s life, I can now tell my Baba’s story by using conjecture and guesses to assess shrewdly her probable and possible motives and hypothesize what she was thinking and feeling decades ago.

(For tips on speculating, see Lisa Knopp's Brevity craft essay: "Perhapsing": The Use of Speculation in Creative Nonfiction.)

Write your life—guest post by Marion Roach Smith

Here are some interesting tips on writing about your life from The Book Case on The Book Page Blog:

Write your life—guest post by Marion Roach Smith

Copyright © 2010, Ruth Zaryski Jackson

Authenticity: What’s Right For You?

As I listened to Kay Adams talk on NAMW’s Teleseminar a few weeks ago on Journey to the Self, I was reminded of this question a therapist once asked me. I puzzled over the question. The answer felt as elusive as a butterfly’s wing moving  to the next flower. Over the years I’ve become more comfortable with the question "What's right for you, Ruth?" though the answers are still sometimes hard to find.

Kay’s talk on authenticity linked this question to my current writing. At the heart of memoir writing is the self, telling the story of our lives as we remember it, as we experienced it, as we prioritized the events in our memories, and as we emotionally felt it. Our authentic self with our own unique needs and core values is the voice we tap into when we are searching for the inner voice, the real ‘me’ coming up from the unconscious. The story told by this authentic inner voice is the truth, our ‘emotional truth’ that is always guiding us through the scenes and memories. Authenticity has to do with our core values and living in alignment with what is right for us says Kay.

My wise therapist many years ago, was really asking me to drop down into the real me, to get in touch with the core values that were being quashed. He was asking me to come home to myself and ask what is stopping me from living my authentic self. When we feel down, something isn’t right with our core values. We feel stuck, insecure or angry. We need to ask ourselves what core value is not being respected here? In our memoir writing, the voice of our story makes more sense when it comes from our authentic self and our authentic core values.

But how do we figure out what our core values are? And how do they differ from those of our family? This is what confused me about the question: "What’s right for you, Ruth? I hadn’t articulated my true values and distinguished them from those of my family of origin or from my husband’s and his family of origin. Caught in this tangled web, I was floundering.

Since I started my memoir I have writtten about my parents’ core values, but not mine.  Before I go any further with my writing I need to do this exercise to see how my core values and my family's differ or mesh.

Utterances of an overcrowded mind: Dummies guide to publishing an ebook on Amazon Kin...

Here's an interesting post about Ebook publishing:

Utterances of an overcrowded mind: Dummies guide to publishing an ebook on Amazon Kin...: "In this blog post I'm going to try and demystify the ebook publishing process. I've been through it and lived to tell the tale. So here goes..."

Copyright © 2010, Ruth Zaryski Jackson

The Changing Book: pBook to eBook

Excellent summary of panel discussion last night about The Changing Book at Toronto Public Library. http://maryemcintyre.wordpress.com/2011/04/15/the-changing-book/ Copyright © 2010, Ruth Zaryski Jackson

What is My Voice?

Our ‘on-the–page’ voice must match our ‘real-life’ voice if we want our writing to have an authentic ring to it was the advice Charles Foran emphatically drove home to a WCDR breafast last week in Ajax. Winner of The 2011 Charles Taylor Prize for “Mordecai: The Life and Times”, his biography of Mordecai Richler, he illustrated his message with remarks and readings from his book of essays, "Join the Revolution, Comrades" and with stories and readings from his biography of Richler.

Since then, I have been thinking about my voice  and wondering just what it is? I have a soft voice that wouldn’t project when I was in the drama club at Northview Collegiate. I have a quietly intelligent voice. I have a thoughtful voice. I have an inquiring voice. I don’t speak without thinking. I’m not quick to draw attention or promote myself. On the page, I lean towards a more journalistic style, listing facts and documenting my points. Is it only an inviting engaging voice that entices the reader to go on? Do you have to be an Irish story-teller to captivate an audience?

A challenge Charles didn’t address was how to capture my child’s voice, maybe age 6 or 7 and then grow myself up to the concluding chapters of my memoir. How do I move my voice along as I change? I know I did change. My effervescent child’s voice was stifled in adolescence. I became shy and introverted. Then I gradually reasserted myself. Can change be shown by picking several points along my timeline to illustrate the differences? What do you think?

Any thoughts on voice?

There Are No Rules - Creating Memoir That’s Bigger Than Me, Me, Me

I came across this excellent article by Tracy Seeley on Jane Friedman's Writer's Digest Blog and am posting a link here:

There Are No Rules - Creating Memoir That’s Bigger Than Me, Me, Me

Copyright © 2010, Ruth Zaryski Jackson