Shimmering Images—Book
Listen to Lisa reading an excerpt from Shimmering Images: http://www.lisadalenorton.com/?cat=7
Read the first three chapters of the book: http://www.lisadalenorton.com/?p=50
Shimmering Images: A Handy Little Guide to Writing Memoir
Here it is! The book Lisa’s followers have been clamoring for.
In her workshops and classes, Lisa has been sharing for years her artful and direct way to write memoir. Now, her book has found its home and is in bookstores everywhere.
Or, order Shimmering Images here!
In Shimmering Images you learn a disarmingly simple way to put together a memoir.
The book is divided into three sections:
• Part I: The Ideas Behind the Process
• Part II: The Process
• Part III: The Tools to Craft the Process
There is no fat in this book. Chapters are short, and they lead you quickly to a finished story about your life.
In Shimmering Images, the writer has a loving guide pointing the way through the thicket of memoir writing.
Part I includes these chapters:
• Definitions: Memoir vs. Autobiography
• Claiming Your Voice
• Truth Vs. Fact
• Honesty
• Compassion 101: Becoming Generous
• Compassion 102: Transforming Experience
In Part II, you get the step-by-step process Lisa has been teaching for years that includes finding your Shimmering Images and weaving them together using an organic, inviting technique.
You don’t need advanced writing skills to follow Lisa’s direction. All you need is desire, a pen and some paper, and your memory.
Chapters include:
• Shimmering Images
• The Mountain Top
• Memory Maps
• Personal Archives
• The Larger World
• Structure
• Heart of the Story101: Finding the Hidden Meaning
• Heart of the Story 102: Unlocking One Word
In Part III you have a chance to fine-tune your story by looking more deeply at some tools of writing, but Lisa doesn’t go over board with technical terms or shoot over your head with talk about literature and analysis.
Chapters include:
• Narration & Reflection
• Who Are You?
• Where Are You Sitting?
• Making A Scene
• Words Like Paintings
• The Cliché Trap
- Shimmering Images teaches clearly and concisely the process for creating a story drawn from life material.
- Shimmering Images is the ultimate lifestyle tool, showing you how to reshape your life through storytelling.
The Santa Fe Writing Institute has received hundreds of e-mails expressing gratitude for the book, its loving tone, and its laser focus on the essence of how to write a memoir that has the power to change how you live your life in the future.
Testimonials:
“I have just finished reading Shimmering Images and only wish I had read it before writing my manuscript. I have about 350 pages exploring our family’s life raising our son….”
— S.L, New York
“I think you are the guru of nonfiction writing!”
—K. R., New Jersey
Library Journal found Shimmering Images “hard to put down.”
Here’s what they had to say their review:
“Norton (founding director, Santa Fe Writing Inst.; Hawk Flies Above ) offers a similarly speedy and approachable read. Only slightly over 100 pages, it gets right to the point about the process of crafting a memoir. Norton’s goal is to teach lay writers her own method of writing compassionate and arresting personal memoir. Her instruction focuses on the titular concept of “shimmering images”-memories of blazing detail, many only a moment or two in real time, which are embedded in the mind from childhood forward. Norton first outlines the steps for conjuring these images and capturing them on paper. She then follows with simple instruction for selecting, organizing, and unifying the images. Norton’s writing is friendly and refreshingly spare, with most chapters only a few pages long.”
Endorsements for Shimmering Images:
Honest, taut, funny, useful, stimulating, graceful, and all those other lovely words, but best of all this book will make you sit your skinny butt in the chair and actually start typing, which is the point. A terrific book of operating instructions for giving birth to stories.”
—Brian Doyle, editor, Portland Magazine
Shimmering Images is a marvelously uncomplicated little book. Read it through once for the gorgeous sentences, but on the second run, get to work! With Lisa Dale Norton’s kind guidance, you’ll have your life shimmering on paper in no time, a universe to give to friends or family or even the whole wide world.”
—Bill Roorbach, author of Writing Life Stories: How to Make Memories into Memoirs, Ideas into Essays, and Life into Literature
Shimmering Images is an encouraging, smart, and surprisingly funny guide, full of well-tested exercises and approaches. Lisa Dale Norton teaches memoir writers how to get beyond blame and self-pity, how to find the compassion that leads to new insights, how to be “bone honest” with themselves. She is a very wise coach who understands that the writing process is the way to truth, that truth is complex and deep. This “handy little guide” will transform the lives of those who need to understand their pasts in order to change their futures—that is to say, all of us. Trust me, she says: and we do, we do.”
—Meg Files, author of Meridian 144, Home Is the Hunter, and Write from Life, Director, Pima Writers’ Workshop
Shimmering Images is a practical, simple, and wonderfully concise guide for memoirists seeking to improve their craft as well as those who are just getting started.”
—Debra Ginsberg, author of Waiting, Raising Blaze, About My Sisters, and Blind Submission
Never has there been a more compassionate gift to those who write. Shimmering Images is a clear-eyed, authentic vision of the art of storytelling. Norton gathers the inspirational winds in her sails, and gently propels the writer toward a place of knowing–that place where one can, at last, trust in the creative self. Awesome. Simply awesome.”
—Doris Booth, Editor-in-Chief, Authorlink.com
Like a smart friend in whom you can confide, Lisa Dale Norton leads you not only through the issues of craft you’ll need in order to form your life stories into art, but–perhaps more importantly–through the emotional landscape such work requires. A thoughtful, helpful tool for anyone facing the challenge of memoir.”
—Samantha Dunn, author of Faith in Carlos Gomez
Shimmering Images is every memoir writer’s ideal guide. With eloquent simplicity borne of decades of teaching writing, Lisa Dale Norton has given us a map and a method that soars above all others.”
—Elizabeth Lyon, author of Nonfiction Book Proposals Anybody Can Write and A Writer’s Guide to Nonfiction
You can read this book in an hour — but the impact could well last a lifetime. It’s simple, smart and inspiring.”
—Jennie Nash, author of The Last Beach Bungalow
In Shimmering Images Lisa Dale Norton traces a clear stimulating path to writing a memoir. Norton starts with the ideas behind the process, how story transforms experience on the page. She then gives the step-by-step process that she has been teaching for decades—finding Shimmering Images (memory pictures) and weaving them into a whole. In the third part Norton looks at some of the tools to craft the process. In writing bighearted, compassionate stories, we contribute to changing the world. Norton’s book is bighearted and compassionate. It is a gift to the reader.”
—Susan Tiberghien, author of One Year to a Writing Life
This book shimmers with thought-provoking insights and truth, and Lisa Dale Norton’s elegantly spare formula is a valuable addition to the literature on the topic. Even though she specifically addresses only the memoir form, her system of memory retrieval and organization will be useful to any life writer.”
—Sharon Lippincott, author of The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing
Lisa Dale Norton’s practical and lively guide to writing memoir is like having your very own writing coach holding your hand and guiding you through your story with patience and humor. Her clear, good advice covers everything you’ll need to start writing: the difference between memoir and autobiography, claiming your own voice, finding the heart of your story, and finally crafting it into a piece of work to send out into the world.”
—Barbara Abercrombie, author of Courage and Craft and Writing out the Storm
Shimmering Images is how Lisa Norton describes those flashes of memory that haunt us on the brightest of days or in the darkest of tunnels when least expected. Indeed they are, fleeting moments in time we can not forget because we responded emotionally and our lives were forever changed. Moved to great heights of joy, we want to share our feelings with the world. Scarred by fear, anger or loss we want to dig deeper and recapture and share the hope and love that healed. Memoirists feel compelled to take this journey, and in her book Lisa Norton provides a map to show us where to begin, which way to turn, and most important, how to dig up and unlock the truths that were always there, waiting to be told. Anyone who has ever wanted to write memoir needs this precious little handbook to find out where and how to start, and better still, how to keep going in the right direction.”
—Penny Porter, author of Heartstrings and Tail-Tuggers and Adobe Secrets, Past-President and Membership Chair, Society of Southwestern Authors
Shimmering Images has what it takes to be an outstanding how-to book for aspiring writers. It is sound, fertile, imaginative; it guides the aspiring writer around the pitfalls and into the delights of turning memories into memoir. It inspires and grounds the writer with a combination of practical, easy-to-follow steps, a rationale for engaging in this challenging process in the first place and ways to sustain the effort for the long haul. I would recommend this book to teachers as well as to adults who are working
on this genre individually.”—Muriel Dance, Ph.D., Director, Center for Continuing Education; Antioch
University Seattle
In Shimmering Images, Lisa Dale Norton gently takes you by the hand and leads you through the process of getting down the story of your life. You learn how to access your “shimmering images” — the people, places, and events that are the source of your most powerful stories. You discover how to connect these images to the key turning points in your personal journey, and weave them into the rich tapestry that is your life. Practical and inspiring, Shimmering Images is a must have for anyone contemplating writing a memoir.”
—Carol Franco, co-author of The Legacy Guide: Capturing the Facts, Memories, and Meaning of Your Life
Shimmering Images is the quintessential book on memoir writing and should be required reading for anyone who is thinking about crafting a memoir.”
—Jennifer McCord, past president of Pacific Northwest Writers Association
Lisa Dale Norton’s little book is a big-hearted treasure. She gives writers specific guidance, her voice one of passionate encouragement. Norton’s message is that when getting going on a memoir, process means more than product—only through a disciplined and creative process can a writer experience the hard-won satisfaction that leads to a book. This spirited guide will be a deskside companion to memoirists old and new for years to come.”
—Thomas Larson, author of The Memoir and the Memoirist
