Book Review: Writing Your Legacy

“Writing is healing. You don’t need to set out to heal yourself; it happens naturally as you allow yourself to write your truth.” ( from Writing Your Legacy: The Step-by-Step Guide to Crafting Your Life Story)

I have often said that writing is my therapy.

I have experienced the healing power of writing firsthand, both when I used writing to help process my grief after my father’s death (Kentucky Family) and again when I used writing to process another type of grief after surviving a brain hemorrhage that left me with a very different life than what I had known before (His Timing: A Journey of Faith, Hope, and Healing).

I purchased Writing Your Legacy to help me prepare to lead a writing workshop at our local community college. My theme was “Choose the Write Path,” and I planned to guide attendees to explore three major themes of personal writing – writing about your memories, writing about your struggles, and writing about your community.

Writing Your Legacy offers a plethora of writing prompts and exercises, as well as guidance on everything from finding your “why” for writing to various means of sharing your writing with an audience.

I was able to share a few exercises from the book during my workshop, giving attendees the opportunity to put into practice some of the concepts in their own writing. The prompts were very accessible and gave us a “jumping off point” for further exploring memories and life experiences through writing.

One of my favorite portions of the book is the resources section at the end. It covers a variety of topics, including how to create a writing club, an extensive list of life experiences to inspire writing, and even a timeline of world events to help jog your memory when staring at that blank page (or screen) and trying to answer that age-old author question of “What should I write about next?”

All in all, I would highly recommend this book as a resource for beginning writers and anyone who is interested in diving deeper into the world of autobiography and memoir writing.

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