Growth into literacy occurs most effectively with the engagement of the learner. The question is therefore: what motivates learners to sustain them through the struggle to attain literacy? In this aspect of literacy education, "lifewriting" can be a most powerful medium. Basic to all of the lifewriting programs described in the text, "Lifewriting: Self-Exploration and Life Review through Writing," and preliminary to much of the writing that lifewriting groups have accomplished, is the focus on talk--the many forms of dialogue, discussion, conferencing, lifestorying, and self-preservation within the lifewriting community or group. This talk generates social energy, serves each of the participants as an analytic tool, and provides a social consequence in a continuing series of gratifications. These gratifications will both sustain the process of life creation through writing and concomitantly provide the materials and motivation for reading and writing. This continuing engagement, the search for additional skills in literacy and individual concern for growth and refinement, are all fostered through lifewriting. Attention should be paid to some recent findings from several different programs (including a Canadian program in adult basic literacy, a literacy program for physically disabled adults, and a program for technical students learning to speak English), all based on the principle that beginning literacy is founded on the oral and written expression of personal values, perceptions, and experiences. (Forty-three references are attached.) (SG)