Your Truth Can Inspire Others

Your truth can inspire!

Linda Joy Myers, Author and Founder of the National Assn of Memoir Writers,

shared a post today about vulnerability and truth in memoir. I don’t want to quote her suggestions in their entirety but you can read the entire post here.

There was one point that stood out for me.

When you’re dealing with the truth that you’re exposing, she suggests (her point #4) that you should

“make a list of the ways you feel your story will help others—think of ten messages you will deliver in your book.”

I think this suggestion is one of the strongest reasons to press onward with your truth.
It’s more than a rationalization.
When the truth in your memoir presents strong examples of surviving the events that you detail, others who are experiencing the same will find strength and good in your conclusions.

Furthermore, if your memoir style is strong, you’re avoiding the “woe is me” syndrome.  Your memoir will stand out for other reasons and your words will be taken seriously.

Keep at it!

your truth

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

your truth

Do a writer a favor. Like my Facebook page. 🙂

 

 

Writer Conference Recharge

When the going gets tough, it’s tempting to close and laptop and back away. Writing is a struggle for all of us, and yet, if we back away, we’re just pushing The End further down the line.

This morning I awakened at 4:45 in a terrifying nightmare sweat. It was the first time my memoir crossed the line, jumped from my manuscript to my dreams. I was glad to see the light of dawn fade the darkness.

I’m that close to The End.

It’s been a long slog that I wish I had shared somewhere, somehow. Living these past twenty months in a new location, I haven’t yet joined a regular writer community and it shows in my insecurities.

Reading aloud, especially, is a great way to pinpoint the strengths and weaknesses of your work. Reading aloud to yourself is OK, but not as effective as reading to an audience.

I (very recently) asked if I could read a couple chapters of my work to two very new friends for feedback—one male, one female, two diverse individuals—two different chapters, two different occasions. It reminded me that there’s no substitute for the value of community for honest feedback and support.

It also reminded me that I should look for the someone who needs my support. We all need help finding our way through the darkness.

I’m participating in two writer conferences in the coming months. These are an opportunity to learn and share that I look forward to every year.

I know many writers wonder how much they’ll get out of a conference for the time and money spent. If you’re wondering that, know that it’ll be worth it. I’ve never yet left a writer event that didn’t lift my spirits and send me home inspired and recharged.

writer conferenceSome West Coast events coming up:

The Pacific Northwest Writers Conference is coming up July 28-31, 2016 in Seattle. Note that if you can’t attend the conference, you can still take Masters Classes.  www.pnwa.org/

The Magic of Memoir conference is October 15 and 16, 2016 in Oakland CA.  A specialized event for memoir writers. I’m attending it for the first time and it looks promising.  http://magicofmemoir.com/

The Northwest Writers Weekend takes place Nov. 4-6, 2016 at an old-fashioned camp in the woods about a half-hour’s drive from the Southworth Ferry WA (take from Fauntleroy/Seattle). This weekend is unique in that it includes workshops on songwriting. Bring your instruments! Great sense of community here. http://www.nwwritersweekend.org/

writer conferenceFollow me on Facebook.

The Creative Process

I love mornings. I wake up early and press the start button on the coffee, then slide back into bed to see who has visited me overnight and I respond right then because I’m all about “in the moment”. I go to pour some coffee, slide back into bed yet again and open Scrivener.

It opens to the chapter that I was working on the night before, and if I’m lucky—like this morning—I re-read it and think: Heck. This isn’t bad. In fact, it’s damned good.

The chapter that plagued me as I sat on the deck at dusk with a quilt and a laptop—and a cat—Don’t forget the cat—is actually good.

How did I not see that last night? When I closed my laptop and picked up a book from my stack and flicked on my headlamp, I had sighed with disgust.

It’s the writer’s dilemma. The cycle of the creative process.

You like it. You hate it. You hate yourself. You say the heck with this (or worse). Then it’s OK. It’s good. No, it’s great.

“Cracker Pie” was last night’s chapter.  I went back to the farm to talk to Babci while I wrote it. Heard the rooster crowing when I rolled out from under the covers. I walked around the farmhouse in my mind. I smelled the smells in the kitchen. Smelled the sweat that wet her underarms as she dumped an armload of split oak into the woodbox. Felt the heat from the Glenwood warming my backside.

Here’s a sample.

“Meanwhile, after tending to her flocks and garden in the morning, Babci usually moved indoors for a little rest. She could count on me to pop into her kitchen unannounced about once a day—especially if I smelled cinnamon floating up the back stairs.

If I didn’t find her in the kitchen, she was probably feeding logs into the yawning mouth of her behemoth furnace in the dirt-floored cellar below.

I waited patiently in a pressed back chair at the kitchen table under the watchful eye of Jesus and the Apostles. (All good Catholics had a print of daVinci’s The Last Supper in their kitchen or dining room.)

Eventually Babci returned and eased her bottom into the chair beside me with a sigh.  She wiped a folded pad of handkerchief across her sweaty forehead.

The table was a massive, round, and oak with claw feet clutching the linoleum. Every Easter our entire family of aunts and uncles gathered around it for ham and kielbasa. Like most kids, we cousins sat off to the side at card tables, the boys in white shirts and the girls in pastel nylon party dresses. Me in a pastel party dress? Yeah. I’ve seen Uncle Joe’s slide collection. Proof positive that Mummy got me into one on special occasions.

Babci always had something good cooking or baking in her kitchen. The Polish standards, I wasn’t so fond of. I wasn’t into fleshy pierogis or pale goat cheese, but I sure did like the baking.

When I was lucky enough to be offered a slice of her homemade apple pie on a Blue Willow plate alongside a cup of Salada tea, or maybe a slice of raisin-studded babka, between bites I stared up at the men behind the table, wondering which one was Judas, that double-crossing jerk.

Judas would be all I knew about kisses for a very long time.”

Later today, I’m probably going to think this is crap. And now my coffee’s gone cold. Damn.

the creative processFollow me on Facebook.

Read more about morning, feelings, connection. And pie.

the creative process

 

 

The Writer’s Voice

While I was being chased by pugilistic geese and frightened by hoof-pounding Percherons back on our farm in 1955, I was almost totally unaware of the world that existed at the end of the road beyond our mailbox.

Sure, there were those Sunday afternoon drives to my grandmother’s cottage for our weekly shampoo in the lake after the well went dry—because the well always went dry around the 4th, necessitating an alternative to our sacred Saturday after supper bathtub ritual.

Along the way, I saw the signs (literally) that began to awaken the sense of inquiry that would forever motivate my life. “Clean Fill Wanted”. “Happy Hour”.

Likewise, those Friday mornings locked in the back seat of our Plymouth while my mother did her grocery shopping. “Weekend Special. Coca-Cola.” I wondered what Coca-Cola tasted like.

Sitting in the middle of my siblings’ fist jabs, I watched the other mothers entering and leaving with their kids until, at last, my mother returned. Pulling a box of Cheerios from the bag at my feet, I read “…or a reasonable facsimile”.

When I asked about the meaning of these, my mother said “I don’t know”.

She always said “I don’t know”, so before long I stopped asking, and it wasn’t until a few years later that I met the person who would answer my questions.

His name was Holden Caulfield.

He blew my freakin’ mind. Finally a voice I could identify with—although how a boy in California talking about a Pennsylvania prep school existence could have spoken so vividly to me, the barefoot kid in the hayloft, I’ll never know.

He had me on page one at the first mention of “cold as a witch’s teat”. Shocked my little Catholic body to its toes. I had certainly never met anyone like Holden. Until then, I had had to be my own bad influence.

He was no Nancy Drew in a roadster.

“Mummy, what’s a ‘roadster’?” I asked, holding my place in The Secret of the Old Clock with my finger and thumb.

“I don’t know,” said Mummy.

Holden’s voice was clear—shocking, irreverent—yet comforting at the same time. He shared his innermost thoughts with me and I suddenly realized that I was no longer alone.

Today I know that it was the voice of Holden Caulfield that made the difference. A writer’s voice is his most powerful tool.

J. D. Salinger’s Holden Caulfield came into my room that day and threw his stupid deerstalker cap down on my bed. He looked me in the eye, and said “Goddammit, there’s more to life than being curled up in the fetal position every day after school. Get up and get out there!”

His voice spoke with such clarity that there was no doubt he was a real, walking, talking, true to life being.

Holden Caulfield saved my freakin’ life.

He really did.

“. . . I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff—I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all.”

I was so close to the edge of that damn cliff, I wanted to run right into his arms and never open my eyes again.

That’s what a writer’s voice is all about. If I can speak to someone—anyone—with a voice as clear as Holden Caulfield’s, I’ll finally be there, catching those who are running in the rye.

That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do, and if I ever finish editing this damn memoir, I’m going to drive right down to the Vashon Bookshop and buy a copy of The Catcher in the Rye to re-read in the glow of completion.

the writer's voiceliteracy Follow me on Facebook. Like me.

Hear the writer’s voice.

The Setting in Your Manuscript

When I was in fifth grade I read a book with a vivid salt-sprayed setting on the coast of Maine, a mysterious place a few hours drive from where we lived in inland Massachusetts.

The author’s words described it in great detail and I entered her world vicariously.

The marsh grass swept the tips of my fingers as I crossed from the field to the edge of the beach. I could smell the dampness of the spray. The grains of sand were warm on the bottom of my feet as I walked the shore, and I shivered when the icy water reached my toes.

In this story, the child protagonist lived in an idyllic summer setting near the sea. The house had weather-beaten shingles, the windows were always open and the sheer white curtains fluttered in the ocean breezes.

When the child looked down from her bedroom window, she saw her mother weeding a flower bed of zinnias and petunias.

You’re wondering how I would remember such a simple scene in a book so long ago.

Here’s the thing. I had never seen the ocean. I wanted to see that ocean. I wanted to walk on that beach, and I definitely wanted to grow a flower garden.

For most readers, “zinnias and petunias” would be enough. I, however, had no idea what those flowers looked like.

I sorely wanted to see these flowers in my mind’s eye, so I asked my mother.

“Mummy, what are ‘zinnias’? What are ‘petunias’?”

My mother said, “I don’t know.”

My mother always said “I don’t know.” It was always too much trouble for her to devote a minute to explaining something to me.

You might find this sad or disconcerting. Don’t.

Yes, the coldness, that was inherent in that negativity, did hurt me. It caused me to turn within myself. Why wasn’t I worth an answer? Why couldn’t I get a response to that which puzzled or bothered me? Why was I always left hanging in uncertainty?

On the up side of this was the fact that her attitude fostered creativity and resourcefulness in me. I had to find my own answers. I had to find my own way to do things. I had to keep plugging away.

Look what just happened. You just witnessed a flashback.

A description of Setting sidetracked into a scene from my memoir—the reason being that I’m deep in the editing process right now and I never know what is going to trigger a momentary shift in time.

I began this post with the intention of describing the importance of detailed settings, and lapsed into recalling a frustrating childhood moment.

Books should totally do that too.

The book set in Maine did a perfect job with the setting for most people, so I doubt that anyone—except me—would object to not having enough description to visualize zinnias and petunias. However, my puzzlement over the zinnias and petunias is the kind of opportunity for description that we writers need to identify in our pages.

The zinnias had layers of tiny petals, that began at the center of each bloom and expanded outward like the explosion of a fireworks display.

The petunias, trumpet shaped, and ruffled like the collar of my favorite blouse, were white with throats of purple and lavender.

Look for your petunias and zinnias. Paint them vividly with words and feelings.

publishing newsFollow me on Facebook.

setting

The Playlist of My Memoir

My memoir has a musical current running through it that begins with the energetic rhythms of the Charleston and ends with a sentimental Van Morrison tune.

Blog posts on this page frequently have their beginnings in my musical memories, and many of them are gathered during my aerobic dance class.

I’m used to writing with a playlist at home. Often I’m optimistic for the future, sometimes moody for the present—and contemplative of the past. I get up periodically to move across the floor, yoga dance style, so it’s only natural that I should find myself developing writing themes during grapevines and curls.

memoir

Today was one of those days. Our newest routine involved a combination of  The Charleston and The Jitterbug—the dance steps of my grandmother Mémère and my mother.

I had never actually tried either of these moves but as soon as my feet fell into the snazzy jazzy steps of the Charleston with my arms swinging back and forth, I was drawn back in time to a few days before Memorial Day in 1929. It was Thursday, May 23, five months before the Stock Market crash. Could life have been any more optimistic? The two who would become my grandparents were whooping it up in the rumble seat of their best friends’ Buick after a night out on the town.

Mémère personified the quintessential Roaring Twenties gal with her auburn boop-boop-bee-doo curls cut in a stylish bob. Her fashion was glitzy and glamorous, her Prohibition beverage of choice was brandy and she loved to dance and sing at every opportunity.

Mémère was also six months pregnant with my mother that night.

Her water broke with the impact of a pothole off Main. Her shrieks cut the cool night air as the warm amniotic fluid seeped onto the seat and soaked the hem of her dress.

“Gerrrrald! The baby! The baby’s coming!!”
My grandmother always tended to shriek when she was excited.

That night, the amniotic fluid and the brandy combined in a potent mix.

Mémère and Pépère hastened back to the triple-decker in the Buick. Pépère helped her down onto the running board and then carefully up the three flights of stairs to their walk-up apartment. He could hear my grandmother moaning on the bed as he shut the door and flew down the stairs to fetch the doctor two streets away.

Pépère and the doctor arrived barely in time to deliver my mother. The young doctor shook his head nervously. Mummy weighed a mere two pounds.

There weren’t a lot of options back then for a premature home birth. He washed and dried his instruments at the kitchen sink, placed them in the black leather bag and snapped it shut. As he unrolled his shirt sleeves and buttoned his cuffs, the doctor gave careful thought to the situation.

He returned to the bedroom, where Mummy lay at Mémère’s breast and Pépère sat nervously on a straight back chair. He asked Pépère to find a shoebox.

Dr. Favreau proceeded to swaddle Mummy with a diaper folded over multiple times, and then he nestled her in the shoebox like a robin chick found beneath an apple tree in April. His instructions were simple. “Keep her in the oven with the door open.”

It was a gas oven.

The doctor tapped his bowler onto his head while Pépère accompanied him to the door. “Best of luck to you,” said the doctor as they shook hands. He retraced his steps down the stairs to the street level, slower this time. The milkman looked up from the bottles he was setting in the delivery box on the porch.

Mummy thrived in the warmth of the gas oven on Moon Street. She’s never been sick a day in her life, with the exception of that gallstone operation back in ’74. She’ll be 87 when the lilacs bloom.

The story that blossomed on the notes of the Charleston had been in development for a while, but it took experiencing the dance itself, eighty-seven years after the event, to bring it to life.

I continued to stretch and move and dance, finally coming back to reality with Stevie Nicks’ Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around.

And Tom Petty…”I’m learning to fly, but I ain’t got wings
Coming down is the hardest thing

Well, the good ol’ days may not return
And the rocks might melt and the sea may burn.”

By the time we were positioned on our mats in plank, Van Morrison was echoing off the rafters.

Hamstring stretch, seated twist.

I pulled back to child’s pose for a few minutes, then rolled onto my side with my eyes shut.

I made believe the drops sliding down my cheek were sweat.

 

memoirFollow me on Facebook.

Sign up at left to receive these Blog posts via email.

 

Publishing News, continued.

Publishing News is continuing to be somewhat grim.

After the Booktrope fiasco, it appears that a lot of us have been talking about being more proactive about our futures, and checking around for similar writing on the wall.

A. C. Fuller posted a link to the publishing nightmare that writer Claire Cook (author of Must Love Dogs, which became the film starring Diane Lane and John Cusack) experienced and lived to tell about.

Writers, you have to read this!

In spite of the chain reaction of disasters, one aspect that Claire Cook notes in her story is identical to what I mentioned last night.

I said: “But not to worry… if you’re a writer, you know that you can’t stop writing just because of turmoil in the market. Likewise, the readers aren’t going anywhere either.”

She said: “I never once questioned that I would continue writing. And I never once questioned that my readers would want to read my next book, no matter how it was published.”

Isn’t this so true? Writing is such a calling that we can’t just quit—even when it gets bad.

No one says it better than Claire Cook herself, so here you go. Her story appears on the website of Jane Friedman, linked below.

https://janefriedman.com/i-left-my-agent/

Onward and Upward!

publishing news

Follow me on Facebook.

Subscribe to my Blog at left. Receive it via email.

 

 

After Booktrope

After the collapse of  Booktrope last week, what do we know about the future of alternative publishing methods?

If you’re a writer who has been exploring how and where to submit your manuscript, you know that the publishing business has been changing at warp speed in recent years.

Traditional publishing? Self-publishing? Book packagers? Team publishers? Specialty publishers?

Booktrope in Seattle WA described itself as “Team Publishing”.

As a new resident of the Seattle area, I met a number of satisfied Booktrope authors last year at the Pacific Northwest Writers Conference, and I fully intended to get more information about the Booktrope process at this year’s PNWA conference.

The announcement from Booktrope at 3 PM Pacific time last Friday came as a great shock to  the writer community, the authors and their 11 creative team employees.

From Publishers Weekly:

“Booktrope, a book publishing startup software platform that gave authors easy access to teams of editors, designers, marketers and other support staff, will close down at the end of May. According to a report on Geekwire, Booktrope is shutting operations despite raising more than a $1 million in investment in 2015.”

Booktrope authors are now scrambling to recover and place their books elsewhere.  Very discouraging and definitely not easy.

In my mind, and I’m sure most everyone else’s, this raises the question:

What is the writer’s future in any kind of publishing? Where do we go?

Everyone knows that traditional publishing has tightened its belt. Good luck getting in without some serious luck or connections. There are a lot of great writers out there. Forget about old-fashioned “over the transom” submissions.

On the opposite end, we have massive opportunities in self-publishing and it’s easier than ever. Self-publishing no longer has the negative connotation of the “vanity” presses—although there are still vanity presses to beware of.

But… that means that there’s now a glut of books in the marketplace. Especially on Amazon. Competition is fierce. Quality isn’t always the best.

In between those two methods, we had Booktrope and we still have other alternative book packagers whose creative teams assist writers so that— hopefully—they don’t take their book to market too soon and look like idiots.

On my end, now that I’m seeing the light at the end of the editing tunnel on my own manuscript, I’ll be doing some research and also pursuing the traditional pitch sessions this summer. Getting an agent is certainly as difficult as getting a publisher.

But not to worry… if you’re a writer, you know that you can’t stop writing just because of turmoil in the market. Likewise, the readers aren’t going anywhere either.

………………………….

If you’d like to hear more about the Booktrope situation and how it all went down, I recommend that writers listen to A. C. Fuller’s podcast Writer 2.0 for his interview with Tess Thompson, an early Booktrope author who was with them from the beginning. A. C. Fuller’s The Anonymous Source was also a Booktrope title.

Even if you know nothing of this situation, it’ll give you a perspective on a worst case scenario.

Thanks to A. C. Fuller and Tess Thompson for a “fair and balanced” presentation of the situation, and best of luck to all who are now seeking a place for their books, as well as team positions with other publishers.

booktrope

 

 

 

 

 

 

Follow me on Facebook.

booktrope

National Teacher Day

May 3 is National Teacher Day.

In Kindergarten, we were asked what we wanted to be when we grew up. Girls were given the choice of mother, nun, nurse, or teacher—not necessarily in that order. We had to say our choice aloud. I knew that mother—from what I had witnessed thus far—was not a very good occupation. I knew too little of nuns, and I was definitely not nurse material. I didn’t have much empathy. That left “teacher”, which I spouted mechanically when it was my turn.

I was a lost soul, wandering whichever way I was pointed and I was pointed to teaching.

Teaching Art became my life’s career—especially with Youth at Risk and children in low income areas. Even though it was a role that came to me accidentally, I loved it, and I learned a lot from my students. I hope they learned half as much from me.

If you’re fortunate, teaching is not something you learned, but something you were born with.

One of my principals made that observation after her annual teacher assessment visit in my classroom. She told me that I was a “born” teacher— a comment that took me by surprise. It affected me tremendously and after that event, I made even more effort to be sure that every day, every hour, in the classroom was a worthy one.

Every year when I see the National Teacher Day advertising, I can’t help but think of my favorite teachers and how they earned my respect and admiration.

My first Great Teacher was Sister Florentine, my 8th grade teacher. She was the first person in my life to give me a hug. I can still feel the rough brown wool of her habit wrapped around my shoulders and the pressure of her wooden cross on my chest as she drew me close.

My second Great Teacher was Adele Davis, my 9th grade English teacher. She read my essays aloud to the class. If we had a two page assignment, I usually wrote four. I loved to write and I didn’t know when to stop. Our class was the period before lunch, so as she read my work, all eyes were on the minute hand of the clock as it inched forward to noon. I knew better than to think anyone might be listening. I didn’t have anyone to sit with at lunch so it wasn’t a big deal for me.

I sat at the back of the class, next to student X, a guy who made derogatory remarks about my body. Listening to Mrs. Davis distracted me from my self-consciousness and the daily pain of having to sit next to him.

Writing comedy was what I enjoyed most. I listened intently, noticing which lines she liked, which sentences made her shake with laughter. Her reading glasses quivered, making their way down to the tip of her nose where she pushed them back up again.

Those minutes before the lunch buzzer sounded were some of the best times of my life. She placed value on what I had to share.

Both of those teachers died quite a long time ago. As an adult, I tried to find them multiple times, but it was before the Internet, not an easy task. Now, of course, I’ve seen their obituaries. They both lived long lives.

Maybe, if you had a great teacher in your life, on May 3, you might reach out to them with a few words of thanks from the past.

BestTeachers

The Metaphor of Me

Today I listened to an interview in which it was suggested that we look inward for the metaphor of who we are and what we do in the world… what’s going on in our life.

My metaphor popped up instantly.

metaphor of meI am a conch shell.

A conch shell may be empty

but it once was a full, living, breathing creature.

It has been deep in the sea and

it has drifted in the shallows.

Its inner surface has become smooth and shiny and beautiful

from its body reaching out

over and over again

in order to move through the sea.

It has churned in the surf,

Become faded,

Scratched and cracked,

but it still has value, and now, a new role.

Although its core has been removed

(the food, the conch)

it has begun a new life.

Even when it’s damaged,

with its tip broken off,

it can be sounded like a horn.

Now it’s the voice of a musical instrument,

or a reminder to look up and listen for the message.

As an empty shell,

it can be held to someone’s ear

where the sound gets reflected back.

It still has something to contribute.

The shell will never be completely empty

as long as it can reflect back

someone else’s beauty,

or

a reminder

of where it once was,

and what it took to get here.

 

What’s your metaphor?