Author name: margaretsouth

In praise of January and new beginnings, workshops this month focus on best opening lines in books. Note the recurring theme; there may be trouble ahead! Here are just a few of my favorites:

First, a definition: The memoir is a particular genre which is enjoying tremendous popularity these days, with readers as well as writers, as so many of us are looking back and asking what it all meant

So you’ve decided to write your memoir. Congratulations! Remember, a memoir is not the same thing as an autobiography. You are not going to start on the day you were born and keep going from there

You see, the psychology of persuasive behavior has been around for centuries, we’ve just never had a technology for it. So we really can’t cast blame on the big tech industries for the divide in our country.

I nodded yes. In the next few months, my life went from black and white to color. How Mrs. Going taught me is a mystery. What I remember are amazement and delight. Everything talked to me! Some signs told you where to go!

Teachers shoo their students into classrooms. The hallway empties, except for a few usual suspects. A gorgeous young man and his two infatuated followers linger, deep in conversation.

She opened the rear door, threw down the ladder and climbed out of the plane into a ridiculously cold minus fourteen degrees. She looked at her surroundings. A beautiful DC-3 sat in one corner of the ramp.

Aah. Rachel had another meltdown. I picked up the lime-colored pieces and clicked them together. “See—when you put these pieces together they have the same shape as California. And this black dot stands for Los Angeles.

After I messed things up for myself by abandoning a perfectly good husband and thereby walking away from a primo apartment on the Upper West Side, and oh-by-the-way losing…