Posted by Kathleen Pooler/@kathypooler with Mary Gottschalk/@Marycgottschalk
“Age appears to be best in four things: old wood to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.” Francis Bacon
I am very pleased to feature Memoir Author Mary Gottschalk in this guest post on how memoir writing is similar to fine wine. Mary and I met in Sonia Marsh‘s Gutsy Indie Author Facebook Group. Mary explores the many life lessons she learned while writing her memoir and explains why it took 20 years to do so.
Like fine wine, memoirs need to age to perfection.
In her memoir, Sailing Down the Moonbeam, Mary uses her sailing adventures as a metaphor for telling her story. My reviews can be found on Amazon and Goodreads.
Welcome , Mary!
Fine Wine and Memoir Writing
I have often been asked why it took me 20 years to write Sailing Down the Moonbeam, a memoir of my journey when I abandoned my New York City career to cruise around the world in a sailboat. After all, I had a stack of journals with daily entries covering virtually every day of the nearly three years on board. How hard could it be?
Very hard, as it turns out. I did indeed write a “memoir” during the year after the voyage ended. That first effort, documenting places I went and things I saw, felt flat and without a point. In writing that first memoir, I didn’t yet appreciate why the sailing journey mattered.
What Happened — The Illusion of Control
At age 40, I had a big job in a big city, with all the markers of success … two cars, a country house, millions of frequent flier miles.
I didn’t feel successful. Most of the time, I lived in a constant state of anxiety, exhausted from the effort of trying to keep life from flying apart. I worried about everything … satisfying my clients … whether my staff got the client report completed on time … if I’d catch a taxi in time to get to my next meeting.
What happened on the sailing voyage was that I discovered—that gut level, pit-of-the-stomach sort of discovery—that control is illusion. I began to see sailing as a metaphor for life itself. You can’t control your environment. You can set a goal, but your progress towards that goal depends on the winds and the currents … and you often end up somewhere quite different from where you set out to go. In sailing as in life more generally, you may be able to control the next decision you make, but you can’t control the outcome of that decision.
It was a powerful insight. I decided that even if I couldn’t control my life, I could avoid being trapped by others’ expectations. At the very least, I would spend it doing something I was passionate about.
Why It Mattered — Stepping Outside Your Comfort Zone.
Moments of insight were not new in my life. Over the years in New York, I’d attended many workshops on personal development. Invariably, I came away from those confabs determined to do better. Stop being a control freak. Be more patient. Listen more carefully. Don’t make snap judgments. The list of ways I wanted to improve was nearly infinite.
None of those insights had any lasting impact, as I remained a prisoner of the unspoken assumption that I’d feel more successful—that I’d spend less time worrying—if I did a better job of meeting people’s expectations. Each time I returned to the real world, confronted by the same all-too-familiar expectations and challenges I’d had before the workshop, I fell right back into the same bad habits, born of trying to direct people and things that were not mine to control.
That insight at sea was different, as Mother Nature has no expectations. Since it didn’t matter where we were on any given day, there was no reason to worry if the weather delayed our arrival or our departure by a few days. I didn’t have to worry about the dinner menu since my options were limited to what was in the larder. And there was no point in worrying about violent storms, whales, or freak waves, as I couldn’t do anything about them until they were hard upon us.
Then too, I had three years to learn another way of doing things. Three years to grow accustomed to making decisions for myself, instead of responding automatically to the expectations of my mother or my boss or my neighbor. Three years to learn how much more I could accomplish—how much more content I felt—when I wasn’t worrying about what to do or when to do it. Three years in which to develop new habits to replace the ones I’d wanted to break in my New York City days.
When I returned to the corporate world—the point at which I wrote that first memoir—I was concerned that this nautical insight, like the earlier ones, would be decimated on the altar of the everyday.
In fact, this time it was different. I was no longer a prisoner of other peoples’ expectations. I had grown accustomed to a worry-free existence. I refused to take on projects that did not interest me. If I took on a challenging project, I was no longer afraid to admit the gaps in my knowledge or ask for help. I was no longer afraid to tell my boss that his deadline was unrealistic.
Conclusion
The answer to the “20 year” question is that the story I wanted to tell wasn’t over the day the voyage ended. The most important insight of all—the why it mattered—came only after I’d been back at work for enough years to see the results of that different mindset. Not only was I more successful, professionally and financially, than I’d been before the sailing journey, but now I also felt successful. I was making a difference. I was doing things I loved. It felt wonderful.
Today, as I read the flurry of memoirs that come to market, I wonder how many of the authors have tried to tell their story before they knew how it ended.
Like fine wine, memoir writing requires suitable aging, enough time for the events to ferment and the essence of the insights to come through.
Thank you Mary for sharing your insights about the memoir writing process and for showing us the importance of giving ourselves time and distance to allow our stories to “age to perfection” like fine wine.
***
Mary C Gottschalk Bio:
Mary has made a career out of changing careers. She spent nearly thirty years in the financial markets, working as an economist, a banker and a financial consultant to major corporations. She has worked in New York, New Zealand, Australia, Central America, Europe, and amazingly, Des Moines, Iowa.
Along the way, she dropped out several times. In the mid-1980’s, Mary embarked on the multi-year sailing voyage that is the subject of her memoir, Sailing Down the Moonbeam. Twice, she left the world of high finance to work with the nonprofit community, first in New York and later in Des Moines.
In her latest incarnation, she defines herself as a writer. She is working on her first novel, writes for The Iowan magazine, and lectures on the subject of personal risk-taking.
Mary is on several non-profit boards, including the Des Moines A.M. Rotary
Links to books and social media sites:
www.Sailingdownthemoonbeam.com
http://twitter.com/marycgottschalk
http://www.facebook.com/mary.gottschalk.9
http://www.facebook.com/MaryGottschalkWriter
http://www.linkedin.com/in/marygottschalk/
https://plus.google.com/u/0/105973496280247274228/posts
Links to Amazon: amzn.to/Iy5JTJ
How about you? How long did it take to find your story?
Mary has graciously agreed to give away a paperback copy of her memoir to a commenter whose name will be selected in a random drawing.
We’d love to hear from you. Please leave your comments below~
This Week: I’m over at Dawn Herring’s blog with an interview on ““My Authentic Refreshment”. I hope you’ll join us.
Next Week: Lifewriting Teacher and Author Sharon Lippincott will discuss “ From Blog to a Book”. She will give away a copy of her writing book, The Heart and Craft of Writing Compelling Descriptions to a random commenter.
