Valerie Harms

What is the Real Story
in your memoir; fiction or nonfiction
5 Tips for uncovering it
Always start with a short meditation or quiet moment to improve your concentration
1 Write an anecdote from one period of the person’s life. If a memoir, choose yourself.
2 Describe in detail two memories from that time. Include all your senses — touch (fabric), hearing, smell, sight, and taste (food is SO resonant).
3 What was going on for the person at this time? What decisions was he or she facing? What transition? What path did he or she not take?
4 Then pull your thoughts together and write a scene about this time in present or past tense. Select a point of view and establish a tone. Use action verbs. Try to avoid “was” or “there” as they are weak words.
5 Use dialogue between people that has tension or humor in it.
Now you have a section, maybe a chapter, and can go on to the next.
 Read More 

This excerpt appears in my chapter on the Earth's Soul in current book...
Sex-ecology:
Annie Sprinkle (women’s erotica writer, porn star, educator, activist, filmmaker) and her wife, Elizabeth Stephens (artist and educator), seek to make the environmental movement a little more sexy, fun, and diverse. Switching the metaphor of “Earth as Mother” to “Earth as Lover,” their manifesto is in part: “We shamelessly hug trees, massage the earth with our feet, caress stones.” In public performances they have married trees, the moon, the sun, and the sky. (See loveartlab.org.)  Read More