Last summer, I started writing a book about living with intention so that I didn’t die with regrets. My working title: Not Dead Yet. The writing was going well. I was exchanging pages regularly with another coach. I was starting to believe that maybe, just maybe, I might see this book to the end (unlike the last two or three I tried). Then in January, my husband was diagnosed with lymphoma. At first, we were told it was a non-aggressive type that he was more likely to die with than from. Just to be sure, a PET scan was scheduled during which his pelvis unexpectedly lit up. A sub ..read more

Considering joining me at this Mexico retreat… Living Deliberately: How to Craft a Life of Intention October 21-28, 2023, Chacala, Mexico Two summers ago, my husband and I had just moved into a new house—a time that should have been filled with celebration and new possibilities. Instead, I felt as close to clinical depression as I’d ever been. The house was great, as was my marriage, but the rest of my life felt… empty. I no longer felt challenged at work. I’d gotten lazy about friendships and felt a suffocating loneliness as a result. Everything I had acquired—my career, my marriage ..read more

I recently had the honor of being interviewed for a profile in ShoutOut Colorado. Here’s an excerpt, with a link to the full piece: Hi Shari, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business? I’ve always been self-employed, so my thinking around my career has not been what business am I going to start, but what am I going to focus on next. I began freelancing for magazines soon after college and my writing career gradually took me from writing and reporting articles using the distant third-person perspective, to writing essays, columns and books using the much more intimat ..read more

I read this story in the New York Times and it holds so many lessons for aspiring memoirists I wanted to share it here. When Brooks Barnes, a correspondent who covers Hollywood for The New York Times, pitched an essay late last year about what it was like to grow up in a carnival, he half hoped that his editor would say no. “I’ll be honest, it’s hard,” Mr. Barnes said of first-person writing. “I have to wrestle with it in an emotional way that I don’t have to with most news stories or features.” Mr. Barnes has written pieces for The Times about returning to his conserv ..read more

What to do if you followed your dream, only to realize it wasn’t what you wanted after all By Blair Braverman  (SC Note: This piece, originally published in Outside Magazine, contains some great writing advice for all writers but most especially memoirists, which is why I’m reprinting it here. I highlighted the most important piece of advice when writing your own story.) Six months ago I took the biggest leap of my life: I quit my dead-end job, ended things for good with my on-again-off-again boyfriend, and moved to an off-the-grid cabin in the woods of Montana, with a wood stove and ..read more

Three months ago, fearing my life had gotten too comfortable, I decided to stretch myself and do something that scared me, something for which I had no inherent talent. I signed up for singing lessons. It took every ounce of resolve I possessed to make it to the first lesson. When I arrived, I sat down on a high stool and tried to ignore the microphone on the music stand before me. The teacher, Joshua, asked me what goal I wanted to achieve. “I’ve made it,” I said. “I’m here.” He laughed. “No, really. It’s good for you to have a goal to strive for. Any ideas?” “I’ll come back a couple more tim ..read more

By Susan Orlean (This article originally appeared in Medium on November 5, 2021. I wanted to repost it here because Susan Orlean has been a tremendous teacher for me in my writing career. If you want to know how to craft compelling nonfiction, read her work!) It’s stating the obvious to say that details are everything, but I’ll go ahead and state it: Details really are everything. People read to get the big picture, but what they really savor is the detail that pops off the page, that lodges itself in their minds as they’re reading. It’s the difference between a story that’s jus ..read more

There was a time in my early forties when I once spent the better part of a day shopping for a soap dish and toothbrush holder that would perfectly match the brushed nickel faucets in my newly remodeled spa bathroom. Back then, I was extremely proud of my just-spicy-enough jambalaya and how well it paired with dry Gewurtztraminer. I loved, in no particular order, plug-in vanilla-scented room fresheners, colorful cookbooks with detailed instructions, and dimmer switches. Cooking and home decor—these things mattered to me, and I compulsively pursued both activities because they resulted in visib ..read more

Last weekend, I attended my first post-Covid party—a warm, summer night gathering held in a friend’s leafy yard. I arrived excited. There were people–lots of them! And all seemed to be smiling. The collective vibe: Covid is over! After grabbing a glass of rose, I launched into conversations with a swirl of different people. A chat about backyard bears with one person morphed into a conversation with another about teaching dance, which then evolved into chats about interior decorating, travel to Italy, and how to raise a baby parrot. I talked, too. At first. I’m good during the first few minute ..read more

I contemplated writing a memoir for four years before I started writing one in earnest. During those years, I took notes, wrote some scenes, created a list of memories, read other memoirs, played with structure. But I didn’t write consistently. Instead, I wrote when I felt like it, when I had time, when the mood struck. The mood didn’t strike very often. But four years after the memoir idea took hold, I was ready to begin. In January 2014, I cut back on my work and started writing five mornings a week from nine to at least noon—and often later. Within a year, I’d completed a first draft I was ..read more