Silver Sage: Yes, your legacy can live

“What was my great, great grandmother like? Did my great grandpa really like ranching?

What will coming generations think about you? With help at the Silver Sage, you can write a book, an autobiography or a memoir and touch family minds and hearts far into the future.

Mary Allyce Schenk is there to help you. She’s a published author and writer living right here in Bandera. Amazon gives her famous book, “Riders On the Storm,” a 4 star rating. It’s the story of an “Old West” trip from Bandera to Calgary, Canada in 2004 - a 1,979 ride on horseback from the Cowboy Capital of The World to the Calgary Stampede Headquarters.

Many potential writers ask Schenck about writing memoirs. They can definitely bring you alive for future generations. Because a memoir is a window into your mind. Memoirs are stories you tell that reveal how you approached life, how you overcame obstacles, what made you laugh, what you loved about life, what you hoped and wished for. Pictures, scrapbooks, letters or videos can’t do that.

You can write about a camping trip and what it meant to you. Or a summer vacation and how it made you feel. Or your work and why it was special or the people you love. Or what’s most important in life to you and why.

But whatever you want to write, Schenk’s classes help people overcome writer’s block and turn writing into a doable process. Schenk says every problem that people in her classes have “are the same problems every writer in the world goes through.”

“Each week we explore what writers do, how do they do it. The rule of thumb is that writers spend a great deal less time writing than they do organizing and planning. My goal with this group is talk about first, what is a memoir? How do you go about organizing one? What is an autobiography? If you want to write a family history, great. That’s a wonderful project and that can be done in a slightly different way. So each week we explore what writers do and how they do it.”

Those who attend Schenk’s classes have “benefitted immensely,” as Rene Miller puts it. They’ve helped her learn about the ins and outs of writing.

“How to put it in a way that’s meaningful these days, how people read these days, how they do it, how writers write, what is it they include or exclude or what are some of the things to do or not do.”

Miller says Schenk’s classes have helped her navigate through journals she’s kept for years about her life experiences. And ,she says, they have another benefit. They help people make new friends. Schenck’s classes are free and open to all. Check www. silversage.org for dates and times.