Posted by Kathleen Pooler/@kathypooler with Theo Nestor/@theopnestor

” A voice is a human gift; it should be cherished and used to utter fully human speech. Powerlessness and silence go together.”  Margaret Atwood          

It is my pleasure to feature memoir author Theo Pauline Nestor in this interview about her new writing resource book, Writing is My Drink: A Writer’s Story of Finding Her Voice (and a Guide to How You Can Too). My reviews can be found on Amazon and Goodreads.

Theo is best known for her memoir, How to Sleep Alone in a King-Size Bed: A Memoir of Starting Over, a 2008 Kirkus Reviews Top Pick for Reading Groups. But she first caught my attention with her provocative essay on the Huffington Post, 02/12/2013, “Why Writing Memoir Might Actually Make You Happier.” She discusses how “revealing and sharing her authentic self through writing and publishing a memoir has brought her into an increased connection to others.” It is a powerful piece and worth checking out if you haven’t already read it.

Welcome, Theo!

KP: What made you decide to write a memoir about finding your voice?  

TN: The book was born out of my blog Writing Is My Drink.  The impetus for creating the blog grew primarily from my teaching.  I teach a nine-month memoir writing class, and in teaching students the craft of writing memoir, the importance of relying on one’s own voice became starkly vivid to me.  It became very apparent to me that the most powerful memoirs were the ones in which the writer’s personality was palpable on the page—in everything from word choice, to syntax, to the types of stories being told and their themes.

KP:  In Writing Is My Drink, you share important tips for finding your voice: i.e.,  “A piece of writing can be well-crafted and even eloquent and still ring hollow.” (p.5) Can you say more about that?  

TN:  For me, the power of a piece of personal narrative lies in its authenticity.  I think often authentic sounding prose can be quite raw and urgent.  Conversely, a piece of technically proficient, highly stylized writing can be quite devoid of real wisdom and meaning.  

KP:  You speak very openly and honestly about your many years of struggle to find your own voice.  It seemed you simply refused to give up.  What drove you to keep persisting in your mission to find your voice?  

TN: I never saw giving up as a choice.  Sometimes when I was frustrated, friends would say, “Do you ever just feel like giving up on writing?”  And I would sort of blink and try to comprehend what they were saying.  Give up?  What would that even look like?  From the time I started starting seriously writing (when I was about 32), I became obsessed with improving as a writer, with finally reaching a point where my writing matched my vision of what it could be.  I was also possessed by the idea of publication.  I yearned for it.  My desire to write and to be heard was instinctual and unrelenting.    

KP:  You correlated the day you made a connection between your mother and the word “alcoholic” to the day you became a writer, because, as you say (p. 33) “ that’s the day I jumped off the cliff and was willing to say what I really thought even if it meant the loss of everything.” That’s a very powerful statement about allowing yourself to be vulnerable. What factors led to this epiphany?  

TN: Therapy led to the epiphany that my mother was an alcoholic but more importantly that force that was protecting me from that truth was also preventing me from accessing my truth about just about everything.  Once I could name this one thing I’d been working actively not to name, I could set out on the course of naming other experiences, and naming experiences is exactly what I had to be able to do in order to write.    

KP: What is the main message you want your readers to take away from Writing Is My Drink?    

TN: I want readers to know that their power as people and more specifically as writers lies in claiming what is very particularly their own, no matter if “their own” is uncool or not valued or even perceived by others. Your juice as a writer lies in your obsessions, your passions, your history, your gender, your hometown, your race, your identity, your favorite music, art, movies, and books. Do not try to adapt to what “real writers” are like; head fiercely towards your own quirky self.    

KP: Do you have any memoir writing tips you’d like to share with others?    

TN: I can offer four main pieces of advice for writers of memoir:

1) Push yourself to be vulnerable on the page,

2) Don’t shy away from underscoring the drama of your story,

3) Share your wisdom in your personal narrative, and

4) Highlight the universal aspects of your story.  I expand on these four ideas in this article on Huffington Post:    

KP: Do you have any final thoughts you’d like to share?    

TN: I will be teaching free memoir writing classes based on the exercises found in WRITING IS MY DRINK in Portland, Seattle, Santa Fe, and Corte Madeira, CA.  Details can be found here: https://theonestor.eventbrite.com/      

***

Thank you,Theo for sharing your honesty and sense of humor with us. I love the idea of embracing our uniqueness, i.e.“quirky self” as writers.    

Author’s Bio and contact information:

Writing is My Drink can be ordered from Amazon and Simon and Schuster

How about you? How have you found your writer’s voice? Has allowing yourself to be vulnerable helped you to find your voice?  

A copy of Writing is My Drink will be given to a commenter whose name will be selected in a random drawing of commenters.

We’d love to hear from you. Please leave your comments below~

Announcement: Congratulations, Sarah Herring! Your name was selected in a random drawing to receive Wanda Maxey’s memoir, Love and Abuse on 40 Acres.

 ***

This week:

Friday 11/15: WOW Women on Writing Book Tour and Book Giveaway with Sara Connell’s Memoir, Bringing In Finn.