Monthly Archives: October 2013

Childhood Abuse, Memoir, Writing to Heal

Overcoming Childhood Abuse and Healing the Spirit: An Interview with Memoir Author Marion Witte

31 Comments

Posted by Kathleen Pooler/@kathypooler with Marion Witte/@MarionWitte

“It is not the truth that will hurt you; it is the lies.”  Marion Elizabeth Witte

I am very pleased to feature Memoir Author Marion Witte in this interview about her memoir, Little Madhouse on the Prairie: A True-Life Story of Overcoming Abuse and Healing the Spirit. Marion and I met on Goodreads. My book reviews can be found on Goodreads and Amazon.

Welcome , Marion!

Marion Witte
Author Marion Witte

 

 

KP: Your memoir, “Little Madhouse on the Prairie,” begins by going back two generations in your family. Why?
MW: I had a desire to understand what it was that made my parents act and behave as they did. I intuitively knew that there must be a reason for how they parented.  I came to believe it was a learned behavior, so I wanted to go back and find its source. Both of my parents came from rather stoic cultural and genetic backgrounds – Scandinavian and German – and they were very closed-mouthed when it came to talking about family “issues.” I wasn’t going to find out what I needed to learn from them, so I needed to go back to the ancestral source. It seemed as if “not talking” was part of the problem, and I discovered that to be true.

 

KP: When did your mother begin the physical abuse?
MW: It began, to the best of my recollection, when I was about three years old. I have a theory that my mother may have suffered from post-partum depression after my sister was born. Both my brother’s and my world were turned upside down after my sister was born. To me, something changed in our lives. Maybe everything in her life – the three children, the farm workload, a husband who abandoned her every night to go to the bar in town – tipped the scales.

KP: Describe the circumstances that would prompt her anger.

 

MW:  It was pretty random and unpredictable. That was even more difficult than knowing you’d done something wrong. Or that it was precipitated by something other than my behavior. For a while I tried to control things by being as good as I could, or as quiet as I could. But when that didn’t work, I tried to absent myself from the physical situation.

 

KP:  Discuss the moment you realized your father was incapable of coming to your defense.
MW:  The first time I realized it was when I told him how my mother was treating me. My father was gone a lot, but when he was home I realized my mother did not punish us. I came to believe he was totally unaware of what was happening. I decided to share very carefully what was happening in my life. I was waiting for him to rise to the occasion and whisk me away. The opposite happened. He left. Then he came back and told me he was leaving my mother and we would never see him again. That was all traumatic for a little girl. That was when the abject loneliness began, because I knew I was alone in the world. I also believed he was leaving because I told him my “secrets.” I never spoke to him about it again until he was on his death bed.

 

KP:  Were any adult friends or family aware of the abuse?
MW: I don’t know. At the time I thought not because no one ever said anything. As an adult I believe the family that lived on the same farm was aware. My aunt, I think, knew something wasn’t right. I also think the teachers at my school had an idea something was not right.

 

KP: When did you finally say to yourself “enough is enough”?    

     
MW: I was sixteen and my mother and I had an argument. She went into the porch to get the wooden oak rod she used to beat me with and I snapped. I broke the rod into two pieces and threw my mother against the washing machine. The years of pent-up rage came out. I told her enough was enough and that next time I would kill her. My life could have taken a whole different path that day if I had made good on that promise.

 

KP: When your mother finally stopped abusing you, you seemed to start abusing yourself. What happened in high school?
MW: After that event there was something released in me that I’d been shoving down. It exploded in high school and I was angry and it was coming out in the most inappropriate ways. I turned into a juvenile delinquent. I started drinking and defying the teachers. The result of years of abuse started pouring out and I took my anger out at people in authority.

 

KP:  You were so successful in your early career. In what ways did your childhood abuse interfere with your enjoyment of that success?
MW: Because nothing I did it was ever good enough. It was never perfect. It was a constant struggle to accept and enjoy the success. Outwardly I appeared to be climbing the ladder. Inside I couldn’t climb it high enough or fast enough. No matter what accolades I earned, it didn’t satisfy me because I didn’t feel it inside. No external achievement could change how I felt inside.

Most people had no idea this is how I felt – because when you’re abused as a child you’re always pretending everything is okay.

 

KP: You write with compassion about your family, even though they wounded you. Is forgiveness part of the healing process?


MW: For me, it was an important final step.  I realized if I couldn’t forgive, there would always be tightness in my heart and in my spirit. Others disagree and say you don’t need to forgive your abuser. To me, forgiveness opened up my heart. You can heal emotionally and psychologically, but until you bring your heart into state of forgiveness, you can’t heal spiritually. It was the step that set me free.

 

KP:  What is your hope for “Little Madhouse on the Prairie”?
MW: I want to shed light on what happened to me so that others who encountered childhood mistreatment, or are now in those situations, know that they are not alone.  There is hope and help and you can recover. I want people to understand that what happened to them as children affects their adult behavior and the way they parent.  I call it “connecting the dots” between our childhood experiences and our adult behavior.

 ***

Thank you , Marion for sharing the painful lessons you learned so bravely about how abuse as a child affected you as an adult and for showing us your pathway to healing. Your story will provide hope to others who have suffered and need to know they are not alone.

Author’s Bio and Contact Information for Marion Witte:

Certified Public Accountant

Award Winning Author

President of Angel Heart Foundation

Book website – littlemadhouseontheprairie.com

Publishing website – wiseowlpublishing.com

Books available at amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com

Blog – marionwitte.com

Foundation website – angelheartfoundation.org

 

 

Marion Witte was raised on a farm on the North Dakota prairie, where she lived with her mother, father, older brother and younger sister until she was 18.

 

Conditions inside the Witte household were often as brutal as the outdoor winters.  Disobedience was severely punished and Marion in particular was the target of her mother’s wrath.  She was beaten for the slightest offense and locked in a terrifyingly dark cellar.  The violent dysfunction seemed contagious — Marion’s brother once slaughtered her beloved pet rabbits with a shotgun in a fit of anger.

 

In her compelling memoir, “Little Madhouse on the Prairie,” Witte vividly describes how abandonment, alcoholism, isolation and unhappiness plagued her family for generations, creating a perfect storm of child abuse.  We learn of her parents’ and grandparents’ grueling struggles as they scratched out livings on the harsh Midwestern plains, where lessons were taught by beatings and children were seen, never heard.

 

Witte’s great compassion and clear-eyed perspective elevates “Little Madhouse on the Prairie” beyond a story of violence.  By shedding light on the cultural roots of her own abuse, Witte sets the stage for a way out of the cycle of violence against all children.  “Little Madhouse on the Prairie” is an impassioned plea for action to extend human rights to the planet’s youngest citizens.  Her memoir also suggests ways one can heal from the wounds of abuse.  Left untreated, she writes, those wounds can lead to self-destruction, and turn an abused child into an abusive adult.

 

Witte finally escaped her misery by attending college, where she excelled academically and graduated in three years at the top of her class with a degree in business administration and accounting.  She passed the CPA exam while a junior, becoming one of the youngest CPAs in the country that year.

 

Yet even as her career soared she was haunted by the emotional damage she had suffered as a child and which followed her into adulthood.  In 1991, she began the long road to emotional recovery.  In 2007, Witte sold her successful business to provide the funding necessary to pursue her passion – empowering children.  She established the Angel Heart Foundation, whose vision is “All Children Deserve a Safe and Just World.”

 

Witte lives in Ventura, California, not far from her daughter, Angela.

 

 

 

How about you? Has writing about past abuses helped you to heal? How do you feel about reading about childhood abuse?

 

Marion has agreed to give away a copy of her memoir to a commenter whose name will be selected in a random drawing at the end of the week.

 

Marion and I would love to hear from you. Please leave your comments below~

 

Announcements: (Drum roll…) And the winners are:

Sharon Lippincott won Toni Piccinini’s memoir, The Goodbye Year: Wisdom and Culinary Therapy t Survive Your Child’s Senior Year of High School (and Reclaim the You of You)

Paige Strickland won Greta Beigel’s memoir, Kvetch, One Bitch of a Life: A Memoir of Music and Survival.

Clara Bowman Jahn won Denis Ledoux’s The Memoir Start-up Package.

 

Congratulations to all the lucky winners!

Thank you  all for stopping by and commenting. Your presence “around my kitchen table ” is greatly appreciated.

 

Next Week: 

Monday, 11/4:     “A Milestone in a Memoir Writer’s Journey: Are We There Yet?”

Thursday, 11/7:  “The Face of Abuse: Should I Stay Or Should I Go? by Memoir Author Wanda S. Maxey

 

 

 

Memoir Writing Tips, Themes in Memoir

Memoir Writing Tips by Denis Ledoux: Conveying Theme Effectively

3 Comments

Posted by Kathleen Pooler/@kathypooler with Denis Ledoux/@denisledoux

 

“When we start to look for the undercurrent that connects all parts of our story, we begin to see the river running through it.” Mary Carroll Moore, author, artist,teacher from her book,How to Plan,Write and Develop a Book.

 

Please join me in welcoming memoir author, teacher and editor Denis Ledoux back for this fourth and final session of Memoir Writing Tips in preparation of The Memoir Network’s “November is Lifewriting Month.” This week’s topic is Conveying Theme Effectively.

 

Here are the previous sessions: Action, Describing Characters and  Establishing Your Setting.

 

It has been a pleasure to feature you in these four sessions, Denis.

 

Welcome back!

 

Denis Ledoux author profile
Denis Ledoux, Author, Teacher, Editor

 

Underlying all of your stories is its theme. The theme is really a message, the global way in which you understand your story – either in its entirety or in its parts. The theme conveys the essence of the you (or the them) that you want the reader, and history, to know and understand. The theme provides spirit to your piece, the breath of life that individualizes your life story.

 

1) The theme is dependent on your insights. Insights are glimpses of understanding. (“Oh, that’s why – or how – she did that!”) When insights accumulate, as you view your stories over time, and bring them into ever sharper focus, you begin to see larger, broader conclusions about your subject’s life – and even the meaning of life itself. The themes of your stories evolve from, and are synonymous with, these conclusions.

Self-serving excuses should not be confused with insight. For instance, we might write in our life stories that it was because of our parents’ style of raising children or of the strictures of our ethnic group or of the limitations imposed by our socio-economic class that we have not achieved certain goals. Of course, this “insight” fails to account for our failure as adults to create our own opportunities to overcome these very real shortcomings or to turn them into advantages in a creative way. This so-called “insight” then is really a self-serving excuse to avoid doing work on how we live our lives.

 

2) Discover the theme of your story as you proceed. It is all right to begin writing without a specific theme in mind. As you write, and re-write (rewriting is crucial in deepening your sense of the story’s meaning), be attentive to the theme which may gradually reveal itself to you. This process can be an intriguing one if you are open to it. Theme is revealed as you find yourself using certain words and phrases or expressing certain ideas over and over again. Discovering your theme in this way is not only important but it can catch your interest and make your life writing compelling. It will keep you coming back to your writing.

 

3) Let’s look at the shell of the plot to see how theme functions:

Your father was laid off; a difficult time followed for the family; your father received additional training and obtained a different job.

 

Your treatment of this plot will vary according to your theme. Let’s suppose the following is your theme: “events whose consequences we can’t understand happen gratuitously to us in our lives, but we can always make the best of things.” In the elaboration of this particular theme (message), you will find it natural to set your father’s being laid off not only with his reaction at the time but also with its consequences. Because of your positive theme, you will write about the new circumstances that developed for your father and about his psychological growth (character). To develop your theme, you will show how important it was for him to “roll with the punches,” to allow himself to experience being without the identity his job and his role as family provider had furnished, and ultimately to exercise choices that led to new, satisfying pursuits.

 

So much for one plot development. Now imagine that your theme (obviously based on different insights) had been: “life deals each of us gratuitous, unwarranted dirty tricks and my father was no exception.” In this story you would emphasize the role other people played in your father’s being laid off and how no one helped him. You would dwell on the negative elements–how the economic demands made on him by his children left him with few choices, how his insufficient education (due in turn to his parents, his ethnic group, etc.) limited his job options. You would probably undervalue the training that led to a different job and fail to acknowledge the psychological growth that he experienced as a result of training and his new job challenges.

 

Both of these plot developments would be based on the same facts, but the stories themselves would be very different because they are inspired by very different themes. As a writer, you must be aware that your theme (the message you seek to impart) affects the interpretation of every fact in your story.

By conscious use of theme, you can make a story into your own distinct and unique account.

 

Good luck with your writing.

 

***

Thank you Denis for giving us examples of how our insights can help us find themes and how our themes can affect the interpretation of every fact in our story.

This has been an informative and inspirational series on memoir writing. Thank you for sharing your expertise with us!

 

 

Author Bio: Every November, Denis offers November is Lifewriting Month. NILM provides writing prompts via e-mail, free tele-classes on memoir-writing techniques and many surprise memoir gifts. Denis is the author of the classic Turning Memories into Memoirs/A Handbook for Writing Lifestories. Most recently , he completed his mother’s memoir, We Were Not Spoiled, and his uncle’s, Business Boy to Business Man. Denis is currently working on a book about “writing with passion.” Jumpstart materials are also available for writers wishing to be memoir professionals in their communities.

 

How about you? What’s your experience in finding the themes in your stories?

 

Denis has generously offered to give away the Memoir Start-up Package at the end of the series to a commenter whose name will be selected in a random drawing.

 

startuppackagemedium
The Memoir Start-up package

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

 

 

Next Week:

Monday, 10/28/13: “Overcoming Childhood Abuse and Healing the Spirit: An Interview with Memoir Author Marion Witte” , author of Little Madhouse on the Prairie. Marion has graciously offered to give away a copy of her memoir to a commenter whose name will be selected in a random drawing.

Winners of  The GoodbyeYear, Kvetch: A Memoir of Music and Survival and The Memoir Start-up package will be announced on Monday, 10/28.

 

Surviving abuse, The Role of Music in Surviving Abuse

“Kvetch”: A Jewish Memoir of Music and Survival, African-Style by Greta Beigel

13 Comments

Posted by Kathleen Pooler/@kathypooler

 

 “To Thine Own Self Be True.” William Shakespeare

 

I am very pleased to feature Greta Beigel in this interview about “Kvetch: One Bitch of a Life: A Memoir of Music and Survival.” Greta and I met on Linkedin. My reviews can be found on Goodreads and Amazon.

 

Welcome, Greta!

la times photo greta
Memoir Author and Pianist Greta Beigel

 

           

KP: What made you decide to write your memoir?

 

 GB: A lonely prodigy growing up in South Africa, my only companions remained the characters created by British author Enid Blyton. At age 10, I declared that I, too, would write a book. Most of my life involved making sense of my aberrated upbringing–and the dysfunctional mores that governed Jewish life in Johannesburg.  Yet I kept no written record of events.  Rather, every image, bit of dialogue, cultural encounter and exchange remained imprinted on my brain/soul, always, it seemed, at-the-ready to be revealed. I had to tell my story. While writing offered little catharsis, within weeks of publication all went poof. No need for recall or any tell all. I was done.

 

 

KP: What are the main themes in your memoir- the main message(s) you to convey through your story?

 

GB: I take the lofty view that art is not created in a vacuum; rather we need to be rounded human beings before greatness can be achieved. In the essay “Clair de Lune,” I delve into what becomes a prodigy, examining the essentials for transformation from gifted child to mature artist, namely familial support,  good mentors/teachers– and money.  Along the way, I illustrate how those hideous tentacles of abuse can stifle and choke any life force. And in extreme, destroy love and sexuality. I’d like to believe that I conclude on a message of hope.

 

 

KP: I found your writing style to be concise and engaging. How did you find your writing voice?

 

GB: By profession I remain a journalist. And by training–I was a reporter and editor for many years at the Los Angeles Times— prune content to its essentials. This proved invaluable when scripting about sexual molestation as I strove to keep the account taut. I put the memoir aside for months at a time, and on every re-read stripped the extraneous. In the early days my memoir resembled a doorstopper that included every stürm und drung of my life. Now slim, apparently it rates a breezy read.

 

 

 

KP: You weave in childhood abuse, your Jewish culture, Apartheid, an overbearing mother and your music into a narrative of transformation and healing. What was it like for you to resurrect all those painful memories?

 

GB: Sadly, I lived and breathed those memories throughout my life. It was just all there, waiting to be shared.  With instant recall, I sorted through the incidents and horrors and humor–also the Jewish rituals and celebrations–and chose which episodes to bring into focus. Perhaps my life story is resting comfortably in the Cloud. And if my narrative exhibits a type of transformation, I’m thrilled.

 

 

KP: Music—playing the piano as a child prodigy—is a key part (no pun intended!) of your story. What role do you feel music had in your healing?

 

GB: My music, my very being, existed merely to enhance my mother’s life. Yet my love of great art and artists endures forever.  At age 23 I gave up playing the piano, morphing instead into the world of music journalism. I always thrill at the sight of a keyboard –be it in a concert hall, or art gallery even a knick-knack store. And I sometimes capture those old feelings sitting on a bench in a piano store, imagining the orchestral downbeat about to begin. I’ve been blessed with many artistic gifts and this has spawned a rich, oftentimes international, cultural life. I often declare that as long as there’s Bach, Mozart, Beethoven’s Ninth (Symphony)–and good coffee– the world is glorious.

 

KP: How did you find the title of your book?

 

GB: Early on, I forwarded a music critic friend a copy of the first two chapters. He responded: God Greta you’re such a kvetch. (Nowadays, I rarely let others view my work). A kvetch is defined in Webster’s as a complainer. While I’m assured my story exhibits far more optimism than begets a mere kvetch, I enjoy the title. Sitting in a friend’s office in Los Angeles I once said, what a bitch of a life it’s been. A subtitle emerged. Originally I called the book, “A Jew from Joh’burg.” However, after publishing a short story about my Dad called “A Jew from Riga,” a change was in order.

 

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

 

GB: There are many ways to get a story down. Some write chronologically; others weave in and out of past and present. Still others construct vignettes or write poetry.  If having trouble, it helps to browse the shelves for memoirs, be it life stories by chefs, inventors, techno giants, musicians, sports greats or smalls, whatever. Suddenly something could resonate and voila, you know your voice. As a child I devoured biographies and still peruse libraries for tomes on musicians, artists, historians, world leaders. Recently I picked up “Bad Boy,” a terrific memoir by artist Eric Fischl. Scattered throughout the pages, fellow artists/ friends offer tidbits about his life. Nice touch. A few years ago, wanting to narrate a story about a cat who thinks she’s Jewish–really my alter ego– I could not design an appropriate format. Residing at that time in New Zealand, I came across a famed author who had written books for children employing poetry as her medium. I subsequently set all chapters of “Mewsings: My Life as a Jewish Cat” in rhyme. I’d found my muse.

 ***

Thank you, Greta for sharing your inspirational story and music with us. You show us how writing and music became your pathway to healing and transformation.

 

 

 

Kvetch_bookcover_72dpi
Kvetch: One Bitch of a Life–A Memoir Of Music and Survival
In “Kvetch: One Bitch of a Life,” concert pianist-turned-journalist Greta Beigel looks back, sometimes in horror, often with humor at (dysfunctional) Jewish family life lived under the umbrella of apartheid in South Africa, circa the ’50s and ’60s. While her memoir chronicles Orthodox Jewry’s responses to events during that shameful era, it also explores the rituals, customs–and delicious foods associated with a rich cultural heritage. For Greta, however, danger remains omnipresent. A child piano prodigy then teen concert performer Greta lives at the mercy of a superambitious matriarch, desperate for entree into Jewish Society. With violence never far, Greta faces a choice: Stay in Africa and surely die–or flee to California and create anew. She chooses life. The story moves to Los Angeles, where the author metamorphoses into a music journalist, soon reporting for the Los Angeles Times, interviewing music giants such as Van Cliburn, Esa-Pekka Salonen among others.  But always in the background, a dark familial figure hovers….
www.amazon.com/dp/B005GFI5MO 

AUTHOR BIO:Greta Beigel, a child prodigy pianist-turned arts journalist was raised in an Orthodox Jewish household in Johannesburg, South Africa, at the height of apartheid. Greta’s mother, struggling and stigmatized by divorce, lived vicariously through her talented daughter, all in an effort to gain acceptance from her unforgiving Jewish brethren. Surviving many years of torment Greta went on to win an overseas scholarship from the University of South Africa. You can hear part of her award-winning recital on an Amazon MP3 featuring works by Bach and Glazunov. Thanks to that prize, Greta was able to escape Africa and familial violence, and migrate to California where she reunited with much-maligned father Richard who had left the family in South Africa when she was 10.  In Los Angeles, Greta studied with pedagogue Aube Tzerko, then went on to become a classical music writer, working on staff at the Los Angeles Times, where she also was an arts editor. She has contributed to the New York Times. To her surprise, Greta has authored three Jewish-themed books: First, “Mewsings: My Life as a Jewish Cat,” featuring the beloved cat Ketzel’s take on modern Judaism–also an MP3, with Greta narrating and music by pianist Michael Hoppe; “A Jew from Riga,” a short story capturing her visit to Latvia to learn more about her father’s mysterious past, and the memoir, “Kvetch: One Bitch of a Life.”

 

LINKS TO GRETA’S BOOKS:

 

 

Mewsings: My Life as a Jewish Cat Amazon: www.amazon.com/dp/B00486U5YS

 

audio cd: http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/mewsings-my-life-as-jewish/id410642795.

A Jew from Riga:

www.amazon.com/dp/B004YKSXUQ.

 

Kvetch: One Bitch of a Life–A Memoir of Music & Survival.  www.amazon.com/dp/B005GFI5MO

 

 

SOCIAL MEDIA SITES:

 

www.facebook.com/GRETABEIGEL

www.linkedin.com/pub/greta–beigel/9/6a2/945

 www.facebook.com/GretaBeigelMewsingsNarrator

 

Recordings:

 

Greta’s recording that won her a chance to study overseas can be heard on Scholarship Recital. Here’s a link to her performance of Glazunov’s Theme & Variations on YouTube, and to purchase:

 

 

Here are sample tracks on Amazon to purchase:

www.amazon.com/scholarship-recital-piano/dp/B005J2H58E

 

 

How about you? What role has music played in your life and in your writing?

 

Greta has graciously offered to give away a free eBook version of her memoir to a commenter whose name will be selected in a random drawing. In addition, four MP3 singles  of the piece you liked by Glazunov as depicted on YouTube and sold via Amazon. A single track, running 16 minutes,will be sent to the recipient as a gift via Amazon.

 

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

 

 

Friday, 10/25/13:  ” Memoir Writing Tips by Denis Ledoux: Conveying Theme Effectively”, fourth and least session.

 

 

Letting Go, memoir-writing

Memoir’s Sticky Place: WOW! Women on Writing Blog Tour and Giveaway of The Goodbye Year by Toni Piccinini

23 Comments

 Posted by Kathleen Pooler/@kathypooler with Toni Piccinini/@Bellatonicooks

 

I am pleased to participate in WOW-Women on Writing Blog Tour for Toni Piccinini’s new memoir, The Goodbye Year. My book reviews can be found on Amazon and Goodreads.

Toni will share her thoughts on “Memoir’s Sticky Place”  in this guest post. 

Goodbye Year Cover
The Goodbye Year Book Cover

 

 

BOOK SUMMARY & DETAILS:

 

The Goodbye Year is an inspirational, honest, and hilarious tale of Toni’s approach to the end of an era in the Piccinini household. For many mothers, a child’s senior year brings about a serious look back on the past eighteen. Every event—from Halloween to Mother’s Day—becomes The Last Time. Toni Piccinini knows exactly what that’s like, and in The Goodbye Year, she offers the loving support every soon-to-be Empty Nester needs. Think of Toni as your bossy-but-loving Italian auntie, with modern sensibilities and a packed pantry. With the wisdom she’s acquired from saying goodbye three times to her own children, she reassuringly holds your hand while encouraging you through the insanity of the college application process, the rejections and the acceptances, and the teary dorm drop-offs. Even better, she reminds every mother that the best is yet to come—freedom, creativity, flexibility, and the Me Years. Paperback:  264 Pages Publisher:  Seal Press (September 10, 2013) ISBN-10:  1580054862

Twitter hashtag: #TGYPiccinini

 

The Goodbye Year is available as a print and e- book at Amazon.

 

Welcome, Toni!

Author-Photo-Toni-Piccinini
Memoir Author Toni Piccinini
 Memoir’s Sticky Place

The Goodbye Year traveled for seven years before it knew what it wanted to be. It had to “find itself” like a 1970s college graduate hitchhiking from coast to coast. I’m grateful that I was allowed to tag along on the journey. What surprised me was whom we picked up along the way. My mother showed up.

 

Miles and years had separated us. By the time I found myself in the murky end of the reflecting pool of my motherhood (during the fall of my daughter’s senior year of high school) it was thirteen years too late to talk to her about it. Decades ago when I prepared to leave for college, like most teenagers, I thought only of myself. And the self I was forming was the exact opposite of her. At age seventeen, I thought all we had in common was DNA and geography. It had never occurred to me, until I was knee deep in the quicksand of my memories, that we, my mom and I, might have shared the same conflicting emotions that were overwhelming me—joy for my child’s forward movement, but sadness brought about from my longing for a past that would never come again.

 

Last year at this time of golden, melancholy October afternoons, I was stuck in the messy middle of the narrative of my story. I didn’t think I was up to the task. I had cashed my modest advance check and squirrelled it away in a safety deposit box just in case I needed to give it back. Clearly, I was giving the Universe a mixed message and the results were stagnation. My inner critics—my constant companions—harangued me, scared me, and instructed me to delete that paragraph. I had no right to tell that story, no right to air my feelings. All the while my developmental editor was imploring me to “flesh it out” which meant reveal more of my past, reveal more of me. I didn’t know if I could be brave enough to expose myself on the page. I was used to the masks I was wearing, Polite Lady, Charming Hostess, Loving Mother, Supportive Wife. I wasn’t even sure what was underneath. Who would show up if I came naked to the page?

As writers, are we ready to read what comes from our deepest authentic space? And then, are we willing to let that out into the world?

 

More important, the collateral effects of me telling my story would reveal more of my loved ones. I know that was not something they were interested in. That spot for the memoir writer is a sticky one. How do we tell our story and spare the characters with whom we have shared a life? We can’t.

 

Memories of my mother and our relationship rained down on me and filled the creative well. It was as if she was giving me loving permission to get to know myself. To love myself as she loved me now.  She came to me in a dream one early morning after a night of endless chatter from a trio of ego characters (disguised as helpers) who wouldn’t allow me to sleep. She was dressed in a business suit. I don’t recall her ever having a suit like that.

 

“Mom, everyone thinks you’re dead,” I told her as I watched her stride to her office dispatching answers and giving orders. The blurry busy workers exuded respect.

 

“No, I’m finally doing what I was meant to do. And I love it. Now, you do what you’re meant to do.”

 

I woke from that dream and dug in. Did a few waves of  “Oh, dear God, what have I done?” wash over me as I signed off on the copy edit? Heck Yes! But with them came the quiet peace of knowing that what I had written was my truth.

I had amazing guides helping me find out what that truth was. Last year, when I was in the midst of the messy middle of my memoir, I found a class that gave it a name: The Muddy Middle. As it turns out, I wasn’t the only memoir writer suffering through this sticky middle place.

(Linda Joy Myers http://memoriesandmemoirs.com and Brooke Warner http://warnercoaching.com teach, coach, and help writers every day. Check them out!)

For memoir writers being brave and exposed on the page is a gift we give to ourselves and to our readers.

You’ll know you’re free from the sticky place when you invite all your critics in, offer them a cool drink, and inform them that you don’t have time for them today. You have work to do!

 

Questions for memoir writers:

Who holds you back from telling the truth?

Inner critics? Real live folks?

 

Here’s an excerpt from the January chapter of The Goodbye Year.

 

To Do: Give Name and Face to Your Bullies
:

This is a fun exercise that has many names but ultimately rewards you with clarity and empowering detachment. Some coaches call them saboteurs. Psychologists refer to the voice as the superego. These recriminating voices all share only one goal: to keep you stuck in the exact place you are. I like to call them bullies, because if you know a bully, he is nothing more than a coward. Change is threatening to these bullies. When you hear the negative voice, stop and try to imagine what he or she looks like. I found that during my Goodbye Year, I had two constant companions, who slunk around my ankles like Ursula’s Flotsam and Jetsam in The Little Mermaid. They were great bullies, because they were smart, which appealed to my vanity. And they were elastic. Sometimes they’d play Good Demon/Bad Demon. They were sarcastic and witty as they put me down and planted seeds of doubt about every aspect of my motherhood.

The great value of the exercise is that once we flesh out our bullies, they become something that exists outside our true selves. For a while, they’ll stick around like annoying mosquitoes, but what will be different will be that when they start up, you will recognize them—Oh, you two again!—as the tedious nothings that they are. And one day soon, they’ll just buzz off.

 

AUTHOR BIO & CONTACT INFORMATION:

 

Toni’s writing career started when she  stapled her first “book” together and launched it at a reading attended by her brother, Scotty, and her Boxer, Lonesome. The title-less story was a mash-up of Hansel and Gretel, The Six Swans, and a Box Car Children adventure, with the protagonists (sister, brother, and dog) risking everything in their quest for a magical lump of coal that would save the town. It was an immediate success.

During the fifty years between her first and second book, The Goodbye Year: Wisdom and Culinary Therapy to Survive Your Child’s Senior Year of High School (and Reclaim the YOU of You) she has, in no order of importance or chronology

·      opened a “Top 100” San Francisco restaurant

·      published scientific articles on the efficacies of antibiotics

·       sang the National Anthem at high school football games

·       published essays, recipes, and cookbook reviews

·       sent three children off to college

 

Toni lives in Marin County California, which is a long way from her Western Pennsylvania hometown, Heilwood. She is busy on her next book, which may revisit the power found in a magical lump of coal.

 

Toni’s Website: http://tonipiccinini.com/home.html

The Goodbye Year’s Website: http://tonipiccinini.com/goodbyeyear.html

Toni’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/Bellatonicook

***

Thank you Toni for giving us the “recipe “for launching our child into the next phase of his or her life and for sharing  the story behind the story of how you bravely forged ahead –past your inner critic–to share your truth. Exposing deeply personal experiences of ourselves and the people who matter in our stories is one of  the greatest challenges in memory writing. You inspire us all with your persistence and courage.

How about you? What has your experience with launching your child into the next phase of his or her life?  As Toni asks above,what holds you back from telling your truth–inner critic? real people?

A free copy of The Goodbye Years will be given away to a lucky commenter whose name will be selected in a  random drawing.

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

 

 

 

ANNOUNCEMENT:  Congratulations to book winners: Barbara McDowell Whitt won Jerry Waxler’s Memoir Revolution and Marian Beaman won Karen Leahy’s The Summer of Yes. Enjoy!

 

This Week:

 

10/23/13:  “Kvetch: A Jewish Memoir of Music and Survival, African-Style by Greta Beigel”

 

10/25/13: Memoir Writing Tips by Denis Ledoux: Conveying Theme Effectively” , final in a series.

memoir-writing, Uncategorized

Memoir Writing Tips by Denis Ledoux: Establish Your Setting

14 Comments

Posted by Kathleen Pooler/@kathypooler with Denis Ledoux/@DenisLedoux

 

“Rule one: Write about settings you’re familiar with.”  Jeffery Deaver

 

This is the third session in a series of Memoir Writing Tips by  Memoir Author and  Teacher Denis Ledoux in preparation for “The Memoir Network’s “November is Lifewriting Month .” Today’s topic is Establishing Your Setting.  Here are :Session One on Action and Session Two on Character Description.

 

Welcome back , Denis!

Denis Ledoux author profile
Denis Ledoux, Author, Teacher, Editor

 

Every story needs a believable setting. Setting will both put your characters in their context and make them seem real.

 

The setting is both where and when your story occurs. The where is the place in which the story occurs. It includes interiors and exteriors of buildings, the landscape, and the political demarcations (town, county, country, etc.). The when includes the calendar time as well as the history of the characters and of their community (family, group, nation, etc.). Setting, like character, is also best established with ample sense-oriented details.

 

Always place your story in a recognizable setting. That is, use descriptive writing to show us where your story occurs! Let us see the double Cape, with its faded red paint and two dormers directly above the downstairs windows. Give us a view of the living room inside, to the left of the front entrance, where you were sitting in one of the stuffed wing-backed chairs. Let us notice you passing your finger over the worn arm rest as you come to a frayed upholstery cord and thoughtlessly pull it. Point out the full-leafed maples and oaks (not just generic trees) outside the clear window next to your chair and hear the car that is crunching stones in the driveway. Let us taste the pastries–cobblers and brownies and molasses cookies–that you are being served on large oval china that belonged to the grandmother of your hostess.

 

Without the sort of tangible physical setting provided in the paragraph above, your story remains an ethereal piece–inhabited by phantoms in a conceptual space. You story needs to have a sense of place that is very real. Descriptive writing full of sensory details will do that.

 

Your character also inhabits intangible settings that are not physical. Writers must pay attention to these spiritual, historical, cultural, and economic settings in order to effectively convey full characters! What is your character’s cultural community: Yankee, Jewish, Lithuanian, African, or Chinese? Show us how the person interacts with this background. We need to know about the person’s economic status: is she the wife of an upper-income lawyer or a single woman who works as a secretary at a hardware store in a small town; is he the third son and sixth and last child of a mill worker and a store clerk or the only child of a heart surgeon father and corporate lawyer mother? Is your character the first person in her family to graduate from high school? The reader needs to know the education levels, religious affiliations, and spiritual affinities of the people you are writing about. Your characters will otherwise remain stick figures without any contexts–or, to use another image, fish out of water.

 

In short, as part of the setting, we need to know the entire context that surrounds your character. These include: physical, intellectual, spiritual, cultural, economic, educational, professional, occupational, personal and public. These aspects of your characters must be explored through descriptive writing.

 

The setting is a very important aspect of your lifestory. It can change your story from a parochial one that is of interest only to family and friends to a universal story that becomes the voice of a generation and of an shared experience.

 

Good luck writing!

 

***

Thank you Denis for showing us how descriptive writing about where and when our stories take place can help our stories become “the voice of a generation and of a shared experience.” Your specific examples are very useful.

Author Bio: Every November, Denis offers November is Lifewriting Month. NILM provides writing prompts via e-mail, free tele-classes on memoir-writing techniques and many surprise memoir gifts. Denis is the author of the classic Turning Memories into Memoirs/A Handbook for Writing Lifestories. Most recently , he completed his mother’s memoir, We Were Not Spoiled, and his uncle’s, Business Boy to Business Man. Denis is currently working on a book about “writing with passion.” Jumpstart materials are also available for writers wishing to be memoir professionals in their communities.

 

How about you? Do you have questions for Denis on how to incorporate setting into your writing?

 

Denis has generously offered to give away the Memoir Start-up Package at the end of the series to a commenter whose name will be selected in a random drawing.

 

startuppackagemedium
The Memoir Start-up package

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

 

 

Next Week:

 

Monday, 10/21/13:  “WOW! Women on Writing Book Tour  and Giveaway with Memoir Author Toni Piccinini on The Goodbye Years: “The Messy Middle””

 

Wednesday, 10/23/13: “Kvetch: A Jewish Memoir of Music and Survival, African Style by  Memoir Author Greta Beigel”

 

Friday, 10/25/13: Session Four of “Memoir Writing Tips by Memoir Author, Teacher and Editor Denis Ledoux: Conveying Theme Effectively.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Memoir Writing Tips

An Interview with Memoir Author Karen Leahy: The Summer of Yes

24 Comments

Posted by Kathleen Pooler /@kathypooler with Karen Leahy/@KCLeahy

 

 

“The convent became too tight a container for my life.  I believe that many women have the equivalent of the “convent” in their lives—conditions that limit and diminish them, such as bad marriages or stifling jobs, and from which they must free themselves to live fuller lives.  If my story gives them any sense of possibility that they too can change the course of their lives, can say Yes to their spirit’s cry for survival, I will be happy.”  The Summer of Yes, page 6, Karen Leahy

 

 

I am very happy to feature Memoir Author Karen Leahy in this interview to discuss her recently released memoir, The Summer of Yes: An Ex-Nun’s Story. Karen and I met at the International Women Writer’s Guild (IWWG)’s annual summer conference at Drew University in August, 2013. 

My reviews of her memoir can be found on Amazon and Goodreads.

 

Welcome, Karen!

 

writing photo
Memoir Author Karen Leahy

 

 

KP: The Summer of Yes is a story of self-discovery and transformation as you take us on your journey into then out of the convent. When did you decide to write a memoir about this experience? What is the main message you hope to convey?

 

KL: I had avoided talking or even thinking about my convent years for decades after leaving. About 10 years ago, I wrote a few paragraphs about the convent in a writing workshop, and the floodgates opened. After I wrote the book, I put it away for a few years, unable to decide whether to actually publish it because a memoir leaves you so exposed. I finally decided to make it public because I felt I had a good story as well as a message to others: listen “to your spirit’s cry for survival” and take action.

 

KP: When I read your memoir, I was struck by your ability to convey your struggles in such an honest way. What was it like for you to face these struggles as you wrote your memoir?

 

KL: that It was painful at times, and I wrote some sections through tears, but it was also freeing.  In the book, I tell of the “conspiracy of silence” that held sway in my family’s home and that followed me into the convent.  I couldn’t express my feelings during all those years, and I was doing it in writing. Now I feel like a stronger, more “real” person. I never expected this result from writing the memoir, but am delighted with it.

 

KP: Most memoir writers have to face the fact that their version of the story may not coincide with others’ version of the same story. Did you find this to be an issue and if so, how did you handle it?

 

KL: I recognized that this was inevitably so.  I say in the first chapter that my memory of events that happened decades ago is unreliable.  But it’s MY story, told as honestly as I was able to tell it.

 

KP: We all have stories within to share but not all stories turn into a memoir that appeals to others. I found your memoir to be inspirational and enlightening. How did you turn your life events into a story that engages readers?

 

KL:  I set out only to tell my story but found myself taking plenty of time to reflect on how it might help others. As I wrote, I began to see that the themes of surviving hardship and opening to a whole-hearted affirmation of life were part of the story, and I looked for words and images to convey these themes clearly.

 

KP: What made you decide to self-publish through Create Space?

 

KL: Well, being 71 was a big factor! I don’t have a lot of time to wait around for agents and publishers to choose my book, and then possibly several more years before it would come into print.  A friend who had published through CreateSpace encouraged me, and voila!

 

KP: How do you plan to market your book?

 

KL: For me, writing the book was much easier than marketing.  But I’m reading a lot of advice online, listening to what other writers have done and learning as I go.  I’ll have a table at the Boston Book Festival on October 19 (come say hello to me in “Indie Row”), and I arranged for the Independent Book Publishers Association to represent my book at the Frankfurt (Germany) Book Fair, October 9-13. I’ve had a number of readings/book-signings, including a table at the IWWG conference in August, and plan to arrange more at book stores in major cities in the Northeast.  I’m very grateful for opportunities such as this interview.

 

 

KP: Do you have any memoir writing tips to share?

 

KL: Number 1: START!  Start anywhere, and try to keep your inner critic quiet as you let the first draft flow. Carry a small notebook with you and jot down memories and ideas that you might want to develop later.  Don’t worry about structure at the beginning; you can play with that later.  And be listening all along for what it is you really want to say. Courage!

 ***

Thank you, Karen for sharing your publishing journey with us. I especially appreciate your advice about taking time to reflect upon your story’s meaning to yourself and others and to keep writing past your inner critic.

 

Author Bio and contact information:

Karen Leahy is happy to be alive and publishing her first book at age 72. She is a senior editor at Dunton Publishing, free­lance writer and editor and sometimes poet.

Since leaving the convent after 11 years as a Catholic nun and teacher of English and music, Karen has held positions as activist, speaker, vocalist, music teacher, assistant to prominent religious leaders and event planner.  Though she has co-written short biographies for seniors to leave as legacies for their children and grandchildren, The Summer of Yes is her first full-length book.

An Ohio native, she now lives close enough to New York City to enjoy its arts & culture, food and energy with her cultured, food-loving boyfriend and spirited friends.

Follow Karen on her website/blog, www.karenleahy.com, on Facebook at Karen Leahy, and on Twitter @KCLeahy.

And if you are in Boston for the Boston Book Festival on October 19, 2013, be sure to stop by Karen’s table. She’ll be in front of the John Hancock Tower in a new Festival section for self-published authors called “Indie Row”

Karen-Leahy-The-Summer-Of-Yes COVER
The Summer of Yes Book Cover

The Summer of Yes can be ordered from Amazon or from Karen’s website

 

How about you?  Have you been reluctant to write your story, then found strength as you kept writing?

 

Karen has graciously offered to give away one copy of her memoir to a lucky commenter whose name will be selected in a random drawing.

 

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

 

 

Friday, October 18: Denis Ledoux returns with the third session on Memoir Writing Tips: “Establish Your Setting.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Memoir Writing Tips, The Memoir Revolution

The Memoir Revolution: An Interview with Jerry Waxler

23 Comments

Posted by Kathleen Pooler/@kathypooler  with Jerry Waxler/@jerrywaxler 

 

 

I am very pleased to feature Memoir Author and Coach Jerry Waxler in this interview about his memoir, Memoir Revolution. In this book, Jerry traces the growth of memoir as a distinct genre worthy of literary recognition. Jerry’s passion for memoir is evident both in this book and in his blog, Memory Writer’s Network where he has offered in-depth analyses of over one hundred memoirs.  My reviews of Memoir Revolution can be found on Amazon and Goodreads.

 

Welcome, Jerry!

 

jerry-head-28
Memoir Author and Teacher Jerry Waxler

 

 

 

KP:  In Memoir Revolution , your premise seems to be that “sharing our stories draws us into a global community and breaks down barriers.” Could you explain what you mean by it?

 

JW: Reading memoirs allows me to see the world through other people’s eyes. Through the magic of reading, I’ve been in combat, political and religious persecution. I’ve experienced being a mother, father, abused child, foster child, caregiver. I’ve experienced the world through the minds of Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, yogis, Buddhists, and seekers. I’ve lived in Romania, Liberia, Russia, Belize, England, Iran, Japan, India, and so on. These intimate connections created by their stories reduces the distance between us, and makes me feel like we are all part of the same human community.

 

KP: Storytelling has been with us since ancient times.  Why is this a time of revolution?

 

 

JW: Stories have been important to me since I was old enough to listen to my mother reading me stories. Throughout my school years and throughout much of my adulthood, I read novels and went to movies, influenced by the fictional situations and characters. In the 21st century, I discovered memoirs. These apply the ancient craft of storytelling to help us understand ourselves and each other. Why now? That’s a great question. I devoted a whole chapter to answering it in my book Memoir Revolution. I don’t think I can do it justice in this space.

 

KP:  We’ve all heard that celebrity status is nearly required before your story will be noticed, let alone succeed. How does the memoir revolution change this dynamic?

 

JW: Traditional publishers need a staggering number of sales in order to pay for book designers, editors, marketers, warehouses and distributors. There’s always a chance that your or my memoir might catch on and sell 30,000 copies but if they don’t sell to the mass market the publisher loses money. Traditional publishers reduce the risk of such losses by leaning heavily toward famous people or people whose stories are provocative or notorious, for example having recently been in the news, or involving a major scandal.

However, we live in a remarkable time when there is a new option to publish it ourselves. Given this possibility, we can now imagine our book out there in the world. All we have to do is pour ourselves into the creative challenge of telling our story the best way we know how. Striving toward excellence is one of the most exhilarating things about the whole Memoir Revolution, causing millions of aspiring writers to learn techniques, understand story structure, and in general improve our understanding of how stories work. Then, once we’ve finally achieved this goal, we can use the internet and electronic distribution to find the niche of readers who happen to be interested in our story.

 

KP:  I’ve been told that in order for a memoir to be successful, it has to be bigger than you. How can we turn the everyday stories of our lives into stories that matter— ones that transform and transcend barriers?

 

JW:  “Bigger than you.” I never thought of it quite that way, but now that you mention it I love it. Our actual lives kind of meander from day to day, and include things like brushing your teeth and washing the dishes, running errands, and so on. Memoirs are portrayals of purified versions of ourselves, refined to focus on things like creative passion, emotional survival and the will to heal. So how do you find that deeper more profound story?

I find that searching for the story has been one of the most fascinating of my life. I wake every morning and run to my writing desk to try to put words around central themes. By attempting to give others a story worth reading, I also grow to have a deeper understanding of myself.

 

KP: I’ve been networking with memoir writers, interviewing them, and writing my own memoir, and one thing continues to amaze me. We’re all so willing to put our private lives out into the public. How do you explain that?

 

JW: Until I began to find my writing voice, I hated talking about myself. In fact, talking about myself felt dangerous. However, when I began to write, I looked at the silence that I had always assumed “protected” me in some way and realized that my shyness had isolated me. Privacy started to feel like a cloak of invisibility.

Writing the memoir has allowed me to let go of my secrets, and share my unique, authentic self. Even though I have not yet published it, I have shared it in critique groups and with beta readers, and listening to the way they react helps me see myself through their eyes. And by learning to open up in the pages of my memoir-in-progress I have become more willing to share anecdotes in writing and speaking than I ever thought possible. I’ve come a long way in my attitude about these issues of privacy, shame, and exposure. I credit the Memoir Revolution with this shift in my attitude about my relationship with the world.

 

KP: Any other messages from the Memoir Revolution you want to emphasize?

 

One of the reasons I wrote Memoir Revolution is to help people who are on the fence about whether or not to write a memoir. In addition to considering the benefits of this project, I encourage aspiring writers to avoid getting tangled in the reasons not to do it. I’ve heard all sorts of rules that make memoir writing seem very restrictive and confining. “A memoir shouldn’t be therapy. You shouldn’t do it for yourself.  It shouldn’t be an autobiography. It shouldn’t be about too long a period of your life. It might make someone angry.” All these shouldn’ts make me dizzy.

Instead of answering all the questions before you even start, I suggest you jump in, and go one step at a time. The first step is to research your story. As an investigator and journalist, pull the information, memories and scenes together onto paper. During the second step you become a storyteller. Finding the story can be one of the most invigorating and engaging creative challenges of your life, showing you how to apply the art of Story to your experience. Through this lens, you will understand the dramatic tensions and arc of your own life. When you research your story structure, you will also be reading lots of memoirs, offering you a better appreciation of the stories that other people are living.

Consider publishing your memoir to be a third, separate step. If you keep that aside, you don’t have to worry about hurting anyone. You can take your time to strive for the best structure and voice. And you can learn to share and see yourself through story. Worry about all the additional baggage of publishing when you are really, truly ready.

 

***

Thank you Jerry for sharing your thoughts on writing a memoir and for inspiring us to participate in the “Memoir Revolution.”

 

Author Bio and Contact Information:

Jerry Waxler shares his passion for life story writing on the blog Memory Writers Network which contains 100s of essays, interviews and book reviews. His three books, Memoir Revolution, Learn to Write a Memoir and Four Elements for Writers are available from www.jerrywaxler.com. He teaches nonfiction writing at Northampton Community College in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, is on the board of directors of the Philadelphia Writers Conference, and is an advisor to the National Association of Memoir writers. He has a B.A. in Physics and M.S. in Counseling Psychology.

 

Jerry can be reached on his website: Memory Writer’s Network

Facebook: Jerry Waxler

Google+ Jerry Waxler

Twitter @jerry waxler

 

 

Memoir_Revolution_Front_Cover_Thumbnail
The Memoir Revolution Book Cover

 

The Memoir Revolution can be ordered from Amazon

 

 

How about you? Have you considered joining the “Memoir Revolution”?

 

Jerry has offered to give away a copy of “The Memoir Revolution” to a commenter whose name will be selected in a random drawing.

 

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

 

 

 

Wednesday, 10/16:  An Interview with Memoir Author and Ex-Nun Karen Leahy: The Summer of Yes. Karen will give away a copy of her memoir to a commenter whose name will be selected in a random drawing.

Character description, Memoir Writing Tips

Memoir Writing Tips by Denis LeDoux: Describing Characters in a Memoir Can Be Easy Enough

18 Comments

Posted by Kathleen Pooler/@kathypooler with Denis LeDoux/@DenisLedoux

 

” I want to move with the character and describe the world in which they are living.” Gay Talese

 

This is a second session of memoir writing tips by Denis LeDoux in preparation for November is Life Writing Month (NILM). Today’s topic is describing characters.  Here is the first session on action.

 

Welcome back, Denis!

 

 

Denis Ledoux author profile
Denis Ledoux, Author, Teacher, Editor

The people in your story are your characters. It is your job to bring vivid literary characters to the attention of your readers. You must use descriptive writing to present believable characters. Without other people, our lives and memoirs risk becoming dull. Although ideas are pivotal for many individuals, relationships are even more commanding. We are intrigued with who other people are and how they function. “Who’s that? What are they doing? Where did they come from?” These are question we want answered. To write a strong story, capitalize on this interest.

 

In lifewriting, you create a strong, vivid sense of people by describing characters in sensual details. (The senses, of course, are: sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch.) The most effective descriptions of people make use of these.

 

Here are ways you can use sense details to describing characters more vividly:

 

Taste– Let the reader sample foods associated with your past or with the person you are writing about. Perhaps a food image or a metaphor will give a deeper sense of the person’s personality.

 

Many people mistakenly believe that characters in a story have to be well-known to be interesting. When they write their stories, they search their pasts for when they might have crossed paths with the famous. Consequently they write about when they were in the same elevator with some luminary back in 1968. This is not necessarily something that will make your story interesting. A representation of a vivid character is more likely to entice your reader. Describing characters well is about details not about fame.

 

Sight- What did the person you are writing about look like? Describing characters well requires you mention height, weight, color, shape, posture, mannerisms, contours of the face, prominent features. How did that person move, talk, walk, sit? Describe the person’s clothing, sense of style, hairstyles. In what ways ways did that person typically express emotion with body posture?

 

Sound- This includes voice modulation, timbre, and pitch as well as favorite expressions, accents, dialectical usage. Don’t forget throat clearing, foot scraping, or the knocking of a wedding ring against glass as a hand cleared frost from a windshield.

 

Smell-Your text should make references to perfumes, colognes, pipe tobacco, barn odors, the scent of a kitchen, the aroma of a bath, or the smell of a workshop. Smell is one of the most evocative senses in describing a character. A particular herb or soap or cleaning fluid can immediately return us to another time and place. Be sure to use that power in your descriptions.

 

Touch- Help the reader feel how rough your character’s skin was, or how smooth the clothing, how gentle the hands, or how furtive the caress.

 

Remember: describing characters well need not be that hard.

 

Good luck writing!

***

Thank you Denis for showing us all the ways to bring our characters alive on the page by using the five senses.

 

 

 

Author Bio: Every November, Denis offers November is Lifewriting Month. NILM provides writing prompts via e-mail, free tele-classes on memoir-writing techniques and many surprise memoir gifts. Denis is the author of the classic Turning Memories into Memoirs/A Handbook for Writing Lifestories. Most recently , he completed his mother’s memoir, We Were Not Spoiled, and his uncle’s, Business Boy to Business Man. Denis is currently working on a book about “writing with passion.” Jumpstart materials are also available for writers wishing to be memoir professionals in their communities.

 

How about you? What’s your experience in describing characters?

 

Denis has generously offered to give away the Memoir Start-up Package at the end of the series to a commenter whose name will be selected in a random drawing.

 

startuppackagemedium
The Memoir Start-up package

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

 

 

Next Week:

Monday, 10/14: “Interview with Jerry Waxler on “The Memoir Revolution.”

 

Wednesday, 10/16: “Interview with Memoir Author  and Ex-Nun, Karen Leahy: The Summer of Yes”

 

Friday, 10/18: “Memoir Writing Tips by Denis Ledoux: Establishing Your Setting”

 

 

Adoption memoir, Memoir Writing Tips

How I Got Ideas for My Memoir: Akin to the Truth: A Memoir of Adoption and Identity by Paige Strickland

15 Comments

Posted by Kathleen Pooler/@kathypooler with Paige Strickland/@plastrickland23

 

” All discomfort comes from suppressing your true identity.”  Byrant H. McGill

 

I’m very pleased to feature Memoir Author Paige Strickland in this guest post about finding the story that would become her memoir. Akin to the Truth: A Memoir of Adoption and Identity has recently been launched as an e-book through Amazon and The Apple iBookstore. 

Paige and I met online in Sonia Marsh‘s Gutsy Indie Publisher Facebook group. Paige had requested feedback on selecting a book cover and I participated in voting.

 

Welcome, Paige!

 

 

Paige-Strickland_2-226x300
Memoir Author Paige Strickland

 

 Searching for My Roots…

 

My memoir came about from many different directions, the primary being my mother’s thousands of slides packed away in a closet. One time I went to stay with her for a month, while she was recovering from surgery, and my kids and I set up the old projector and screen. We sorted the slide trays in chronological order, and began clicking away. I set up my digital camcorder and recorded nearly every photo, (minus the thumb-shots and blurs). It was fun to share the old stories about family, pets, vacations and holidays, and laugh together at bad 1970s fashion. During those evenings of reminiscing, the idea hit me to write down my thoughts.

 

A few years later, when my children were older, and I had free time all summer, I began to write. It started out as a family history for my kids to know who was who on the family tree, and how my adoptive and birth relatives tied together, but the more I wrote, the more I realized I had something more.

 

 

I had a child development account, a coming of age tale, a love story, and also a father-daughter relationship theme as my dad’s gregarious and often dominant personality emerged in the memoir, just as it did when he was living.

 

Once I had a timeline for my story, I began to fill in events. Working by day in education always beings back memories for me of when I was a student, so if I thought of ideas during the workday, I made post-it notes, lists on my phone and snapped quick photos as reminders. Then when I had free time to write, I could work from the memos I’d created. I rarely sat down and thought, “Uh…what do I do now?” since I usually had a backlog of nuggets to go back and work in and items to add as I plowed forward.

 

In some ways, ideas came for my story as I grew up listening to and absorbing the family lore my grandmothers would narrate and from looking through their old black and white photos in big albums with large, black pages. It wasn’t a biological history, but it was the one I had, and they were happy to share it all with me. More ideas came after my children began to ask questions. They’ve never known a time prior to my reunion with my sisters on my birth mother’s side, but they were with me to meet my birth father’s family and were old enough to know what was going on, but still not sure how everyone was “family”.

old album (1)
Old album by Paige Strickland

 

During my adoption search process, I kept a three-ring binder filled with photos and copies of documents I found while lurking through libraries and courthouses. I had every piece of correspondence, articles, lists and facts I’d accumulated plus addresses. While writing I referred back to the information I’d gathered to keep my story line accurate.

 

A cousin on my birth mother’s side, who lives in my town, is also an aspiring writer.  (Well, OK she IS a writer!), and she and her husband held monthly writing group meetings for a number of years.  I began to go to her get-togethers to spend time getting to know her but also to share excerpts and receive feedback from group members. I found it very encouraging and it helped me to grow as a writer. (My cousin, one half sister and I grew up in the same era, only 15-20 minutes apart and writing!)

 

By the time I concluded my first draft, even before professional editing, I found that I had a book with a broad and marketable appeal to members of the adoption triangle, especially adoptees born during the “Baby-Scoop Era”, teachers, therapists, social workers, older teens and young adults.

 

My adoption story addresses many issues about trust, finding identity, grief and fear, as I relate stories about growing up adopted in an era when the concept was more taboo and less understood. The process of gathering ideas and compiling everything in memoir form was a huge, time-consuming task, but one I felt compelled to accomplish and enjoyed doing.

 ***

Thank you Paige for sharing your determined and persistent journey to memoir. You show the importance of research–photos, stories passed down, organizing documents from libraries and courthouses–in doing justice to our stories. And perhaps the most important, to start writing stories down and to keep writing. Persistence pays off.

Author Bio and Contact Information:

Paige Strickland has worked in education since 1983, and is an adoptee who searched for and successfully found her birth family.  She has written a memoir, Akin to the Truth: A Memoir of Adoption and Identity, released Fall of 2013.  It will be available at the Apple store plus Amazon. She is married with two daughters and a son-in-law.
Paige can be reached on:
Facebook at Paige L. Adams Strickland
Twitter @plastrickland23
Akin To The Truth design-Nellista
Akin to the Truth book cover, Nellista

 

Akin to the Truth is currently available in the  Kindle edition at Amazon and the Apple iBookStore. The print edition is due out in November.

 

How about you? How do you  go about finding your story?

 

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

 

 

 

Friday, 10/11 :” Memoir Writing Tips by Denis Ledoux: Describing Characters in Memoir Can Be Easy.”

 

Memoir Writing Tips

The Memoir Network’s Blog Carnival: What Memoir Writers Have in Common with Sculptors

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Posted by Kathleen Pooler/@kathypooler

Author’s Note: I am honored to be presenting this previous post as part of  Denis Ledoux’s The Memoir Network’s Blog Carnival in preparation for “November is Lifewriting  Month” (NILM):

 

“Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.” Michelangelo

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Photo Credit: Rock uploaded from istockphoto

As I look at my pile of stories waiting to be shaped into a memoir, I find myself pondering the task.

 

I’ve come to the conclusion that memoir writers are really like sculptors.

*  We start with an amorphous pile of vignettes like a sculptor starts with a slab of marble.

*   We spend endless hours looking at the pile before us and envisioning what its final shape will be.

*   We study our craft ahead of time so we know where to start, what tools to use and how to keep going.

*    We keep digging and carving into our pile until it begins to take shape.

 

A sculptor starts with a slab of marble and a vision. We start with a collection of stories, generated by various methods. Here are a few I have learned and used:

1.  Identifying turning points (Linda Joy Myers) listing key life events along a timeline.

2.  Mind mapping – a hand-sketched or software-generated diagram of ideas and events.

3.” Place I’ve Lived” exercise (Jerry Waxler) – compilation of “scene pops” from describing all the homes you have lived in.

4.  “The Tree of  Me” Exercise (Sharon Lippincott) a drawing of concentric circles rippling from the core of you, resembling the rings of a tree. Each ring represents a significant date and events. From this visual, threads and patterns can be  identified.  As you can see from mine, it can get convoluted and cluttered:

My "Tree of Me" drawing
My “Tree of Me” drawing

My “Tree of Me” drawing

5.   Patchwork Quilt- think of your story as a patchwork quilt with each square representing a scene in the story. You start out by collecting the squares until you are ready to sew them into a pattern.

There is debate in writing circles about approaches to story structure called Planner or Pantser. 

Do you work from an outline (planner) or do you “fly by the seat of your pants” (pantser)?

For the purposes of defining story structure, I am a planner.

When I  reached the point of readiness to pull my stories together into a first draft, I had a general sense of my story, I wanted to leave myself open to new discoveries as I sifted, sorted, rearranged the pieces and envisioned where my story would take me. I’d heard that one shouldn’t even worry about the beginning or end until the rewrite, the next step after the first draft.

Dave Hood, Author of Find Your Creative Muse blog describes narrative structure in creative nonfiction  as “the sequence of events and the way in which a writer tells the story,” citing a variety of  frameworks that can be used.

Linda Joy Myers points out that “a memoir is a story, created and constructed with skill and focus” and requires a “story structure and narrative arc that includes three acts of dramatic structure.” She goes on to reinforce the importance of identifying “your main meaning of your story, what the book is about in one sentence (pitch) and what will the reader gain from reading your story.” Show the transformation.

 Rachelle Gardner brings up the importance of writing “real-world stories with a plot, scenes with action and dialogue rather than chronicling a series of devastating emotional events. Make sure your book has a protagonist with a choice to face (a conflict), obstacles to overcome, a desired outcome and consequences (the stakes) if the goal is not reached.”

Memoirist Meghan Ward emphasizes the importance of having a strong story arc early on as you write.

Like a sculptor needs carving tools to shape a creation, I needed a plan to fit my story into, keeping the above goals in mind about story and theme:

Annie Lamott spread her papers in a trail on the floor and rearranged them until they made sense to her as described in her writing instruction book, Bird by Bird.

Stephen King described his office space as covered in post-it notes with ideas and phrases in his memoir, On Writing.

David Price advises that “you won’t see what the story is actually about until you’re at the end” in his book, The Pixar Touch and cites the following framework for storytelling:

“Once upon a time there was…Every day… One day…Because of that…Because of that…Until finally…”

Joseph Campbell believes we are all on a mythic journey, a “Hero’s Journey.” His framework recognizes a triggering event that propels the hero into action through” the dark night of the soul” where many obstacles must be overcome until resolution /transformation is achieved.  Enjoy this YouTube video.

Author and Writing Coach Mary Carroll Moore uses the W Storyboard Structure which provides the framework for  plotting out the story in the shape of a W, using three acts, starting with the triggering event going to the first turning point, building to a climax, second turning point then moving forward toward resolution/realization/transformation. She reviews it in more detail here.

Storyboarding is the method I had chosen to start sculpting my story. I began by writing vignette summaries on colored post-it notes and placing them on a trifold poster board for Acts One, Two and Three, incorporating key points from Mary Carroll’s W Storyboard Structure and Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey framework.

Mapping out my story on a storyboard using" W Story Structure" by Mary Carroll Moore
Mapping out my story on a storyboard using” W Story Structure” by Mary Carroll Moore

 

“In every block of marble I see a statue as plain as though it stood before me, shaped and perfect in attitude and action. I have only to hew away the rough walls that imprison the lovely apparition to reveal it to other eyes as mine sees it.”  Michelangelo

 

 

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Photo Credit: “Michelangelo’s Pieta” by Allie Caulfield uploaded from Flickr Creative Commons

Like the master sculptor, Michelangelo, we all need tools to “hew away the rough walls” that would imprison the “lovely apparition” of the story we need to tell.

 

How about you? Have you envisioned your masterpiece?

 

What methods have you used to discover your story? What methods appeal to you?

 

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

 

 

Announcement: Congratulations, Louise Mathewson! Your name was selected in a random drawing of commenters to receive Shirley Showalter’s memoir, Blush.

 

This Week:

Wednesday, October 9: ” How I Found My Memoir Searching for My Roots”, a guest post by Paige Strickland.

Friday, October 11: “Memoir Writing Tips by Denis Ledoux: Describing Characters in a Memoir Can be Easy Enough.”