An experienced journalist, personal historian, and past vice president of the Association of Personal Historians, Paula Stallings Yost believes passionately in the power of story. In 1999, she jettisoned a public relations/journalism career and life in the suburbs to found LifeSketches.a biography service in the piney woods of East Texas helping others preserve the real stories of people from all walks of life. Paula also served as a co-editor and contributing author for the SCN anthology, What Wildness is This: Women Write About the Southwest, and has recently retired as co-editor of Story Circle Book Reviews. You'll find Paula's website here. For more information, an interview published in the Story Circle Journal, as well as more details about her latest book, My Words Are Gonna Linger, can be found on the StoryCircleBookReviews website.
A Note from Paula:
My love for the written word arrived in my life more or less simultaneously with puberty. I was late with a sixth grade history assignment when I dove headfirst into the literary world. Rather than laboring over yet another boring theme, I wrote a short play to describe the discovery of America. Not only did I earn an A+, my class later enacted the play for the entire school. After tasting such sweet success, I was hooked and soon was entering, even occasionally winning, young adult writing contests.
Influenced by parents who had lived through the Great Depression, I lacked the courage to follow my writer's heart and eventually chose a career (public relations) wherein I would be assured a regular paycheck. I managed to keep my creative dreams alive over the years through journaling and freelance writing. Once my children were raised and fiscal responsibilities lessened, I accepted a job as a reporter and lifestyles editor for a small newspaper in East Texas. Somewhere between producing the daily crime reports and endless accountings of local social events, I discovered my love of and knack for writing feature articles about ordinary people accomplishing extraordinary things within the community. This newfound confidence led to my career as a personal historian.
My company now has produced more than 300 oral histories, Web bios, and/or personal history books. This includes interviews with 141 veterans of World War II, Korea, Vietnam and the Gulf War, whose stories of faith and courage were transcribed and edited for posting on a central website and provided to the Library of Congress. Other favorite projects include serving as co-editor and contributing author for SCN's 2007 anthology, What Wildness is This, and the Association of Personal Historians' anthology, My Words Are Gonna Linger, to be released in January 2009. The work closest to my heart, however, would be the intimate memoirs and personal histories I have written privately for clients whose stories otherwise would not have been told. Each of them in the telling has taught me many valuable life lessons.
Although my work so far has been limited to nonfiction, I love to read good fiction and study various authors' creative writing techniques. I believe many of those same styles contribute to the writing of outstanding narrative nonfiction, particularly in the genre of memoir or biography. Nothing brings a character to life like good dialogue, nor reveals the vividness of an era like images drawn with words (details). When asked what I believe contributes most to success as a writer, however, my answer is a bit more mundane. The secret is a BITCH—Butt In The Chair Hours. Writers without deadlines or page count goals, even self-set, tend to procrastinate. I know I do.
If you are interested in working in the memoir/biography genre and care enough to spend the time and put forth the effort good writing takes, I would be happy to work with you. I work via e-mail and the Internet as a rule, but will include one telephone consultation during a six-week mentorship. In addition to your commitment to a goal and focus on a particular piece of writing, I would expect you to be fairly proficient with email technology and the Word program, which will be utilized in our communications.
If it's truly your passion, writing should be fun and uplifting despite all the hard work involved. It is a delightful experience, and I very much enjoy helping others find their way to accomplishing their creative goals.
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