Writing About Friends

Sooner or later most of us want to write stories about people who are or were special to us. These stories may be free-standing tributes, or you may include friends as characters in memoir stories. Some such stories work better than others. In fact, as much as I hate to say this, some can be downright boring, the exact opposite of what we intend. The boring stories are generally limited to an account of things you did together, which makes the story more about your experience than the friend.

While it’s perfectly fine to write about shared experiences, it takes more to define a relationship. Use these tips to write glowing tributes that will help readers love your friends as much as you do.

Give examples of what makes the person special to you.
If you say only that “Joan was a wonderful friend,” we have no idea what that means. Tell us what Joan did that set her apart, how she went above and beyond. Did she have a special sense of humor that always lifted your spirits? Was she one of those people who always shows up with chicken soup when someone is sick?

Season with feelings.
Embed reports of how you feel about this person, what emotions he or she evokes. Use specific actions or conversations to give context to these reports.

Add some action.
Yes, this is another way of saying, “Show, don’t tell.”

Include some quirks.
Make your friend real with quirks that set her apart. Does she laugh too loud? Compulsively rearrange a dishwasher after someone else loads it? Is his desk a disaster?

Dramatize with dialogue.
Dialogue is one area of writing where clichés and jargon are welcome, in moderation. Let the way your friend speaks add color to your portrait.

Seek input from others.
When you write about people dear to you, you become immersed in a holographic memory of events, experiences, and the reality of that person. You may not realize that you’ve left out key details like what the person looks like and similar things.

Make preliminary notes.
While it often works well to simply start writing, for a special tribute planning can help. Use a pen and paper to jot down a few thoughts as you pause to ponder

• What does this person mean to you?
• How does she make you feel?
• What does she do to make you feel this way?
• What is sets this person apart and makes him special, in general and to you in particular.
• What do you want the reader to understand about this person?

Crystalize your answers into terse statements. For example for “How does she make you feel?” you may write, “treasured, valued, understood.” When you draft your final story, include the thoughts you’ve uncovered this way to make your story glow with heart-warming energy.

Write now: write a short tribute to a special friend or someone who has been helpful and inspiring to you. Use the points above to flesh it out. Then send a copy to your friend.

Image credit: Stu Seeger. Cropped image shared under Creative Commons license.

Memoir as Training Wheels

Mary Gottschalk has proven her versatility as a writer by crafting a highly acclaimed  memoir, Sailing Down the Moonbeam, followed by a novel, A Fitting Place. Both volumes are gutsy stories, and in this guest post Mary explains how writing the memoir prepared her for the challenge of switching to fiction.

Memoir as Training Wheels

Writerly skills are for naught unless you have something you want to write about.

The story behind my memoir—a mid-life coming-of-age experience after I left a successful career to sail around the world at age 40—had steeped in my brain for two decades before I put pen to paper. Not once, in all those years, did the possibility of writing a novel ever occur to me.

But as the memoir evolved and my writing skills improved, I began to see that “the story” was much bigger than “my story.” Sailing across the Pacific Ocean struck me a metaphor for life: you can’t control your environment, the route is not well marked, and you often end up someplace other than where you set out to go. The core lesson of that voyage was that you learn the most when you step outside your comfort zone.

Suddenly I had a story with almost infinite variations. I itched to explore them. Voilà, my first novel about a woman who never leaves home, but is thrust out of her comfort zone when she is betrayed by those she trusts most. It is my first novel, but it will not be my last.

Learning the Writerly Craft

I often think of my memoir as the literary equivalent of training wheels.

With a memoir, the task is far more manageable than with a novel, where every element—story arc, characters, plot points, scenes, point of view—is in flux until “THE END.” With an infinite number of possible events and characters from which to choose, even an experienced writer can have trouble discerning whether a problem lies in the writing, in the story arc and structure, in the pace, in the mix of characters, or some combination of them all. For an inexperienced writer, sorting it out can seem all but impossible.

By contrast, the outer boundaries of my memoir were established long before the first word hit the page. I knew where the story began and ended, who the players were and what role they played. The plot points and scenes were constrained by reality. My job, as author was to connect the dots, not make them up.

Connecting the dots was certainly not enough to guarantee a good memoir. If you believe, as I do, that a well-written memoir should read like fiction, I needed to have much the same set of writerly skills as a novelist. As a neophyte, I was missing many of them when I started out. In retrospect, one of the great advantages of starting out with a memoir was that when things weren’t going right, there were fewer things to be fixed.

As a memoirist, I couldn’t change the trajectory of events, so I had to focus on doing a better job of building tension and establishing cause and effect within the existing storyline. I learned, by trial and error, to recognize which events moved the story forward. I discovered how it felt when my story began to unfold organically. I learned that ruthlessly cutting out events that serve no plot purpose could heighten the emotional truth of the story, with little damage to factual accuracy.

Similarly, I couldn’t create new scenes or new characters out of whole cloth. All I could do was focus on re-writing those that were flat, on learning how to make them come alive, on using them more effectively to carry the plot forward. My focus was on mastering the art of showing vs. telling, on finding the right balance between dialogue and narrative. I learned that what I didn’t say often had as much dramatic potential as what I did say.

Throughout the often painful process of repairing crippled parts of the story, it was easier to push forward, knowing that I had a clear idea of what I wanted the story to look like when it was complete. By the time I began my novel, I had developed solid skills in constructing a story arc, both for the book as a whole and for each chapter along the way. I knew how to use dialogue and develop my characters through judicious use of scenes. I still had a lot to learn, but completing the memoir gave me the confidence to attack one problem at a time, to avoid being overwhelmed by the enormity of the task.

The memoir served as my training wheels. Without it, there never could have been a novel.

Bio

Mary has made a career out of changing careers. After finishing graduate school, she spent nearly thirty years in the financial markets, first in New York, then in New Zealand and Australia, eventually returning to the U.S.

Along the way, she dropped out several times. In the mid-80's, at age 40, Mary and her husband Tom embarked on the three-year sailing voyage that is the subject of her memoir, Sailing Down the Moonbeam. When the voyage ended, she returned to her career in finance, but dropped out again to provide financial and strategic planning services to the nonprofit community. In her latest incarnation, she is a full time writer. Her first novel, A Fitting Place, was released May 1, 2014.

Find A Fitting Place on Amazon and iBooks.

Social Media Links

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http://www.linkedin.com/in/marygottschalk/
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From Journal to Memoir

“I have piles of old journals. Can I use those as my memoir?”

This question comes up in almost every class I teach. The short answer is “No. But you can use those journal entries as a resource.” Here’s why and how.

Take a look at the Tree of Life Writing image in the right sidebar. Notice that Journal Entries fall at the foot, below the ground, out of sight and light. Those journal entries feed into Story, that appears first as Essays and Stories. Those component stories and essays feed into the composite Memoir.

If you are using your journal to best advantage, you write with no boundaries. Your entries may ramble. They may not be coherent. You may omit detail or obsessively dwell on detail. You may write things that will send certain relationships up in flames if you don’t consign those pages to flames before anyone reads them. You may reveal things to those pages that would embarrass you or others, or betray their confidence.

But aside from all that, reading journal entries is usually boring or confusing  for anyone other than the author. In our journals we repeat things, perhaps to the point of obsession and stuckness. We report conclusions and assumptions. We nearly always confine journaling to “telling.”

So how do you convert that material?

Start with lists of key memories and arrange them on a timeline. Then pick one of those memories and find journal entries about that event or the general time period. Read those entries to refresh your memory about details. Use them to get back into the scene. You’ll probably need to sink back into the moment, because you probably didn’t record many sensory details, but recalling the emotions and actions you did record should help you recall the rest.

Write a story about that memory, adding details evoked by your journal entries. In the story you show the action. You describe the setting and other characters(remember, characters may include animals, inanimate objects, nature, place, or other aspects of yourself as well as other people). You use sensory details to get readers as fully involved with the situation as you were.

Your story includes action that ideally involves some uncertainty and tension or conflict. Dialogue is not an absolute requirement, but even if you are the only person around, you can include at least a bit. Have conversations with yourself.

Each sensory detail, each bit of dialogue and aspect of action activates an additional sensory area in readers’ brains and adds a layer of realism to your story, bringing it alive in readers’ minds.

One more layer of realism may come directly from your journal. That’s the element of reflection. Readers want to know more than what happened. They want to know what that meant to you, how it affected you. That’s where those journal entries come in.

On rare occasions you may want to directly quote journal entries. At times, quoting from your journal may add a touch more credibility to your reports of how you reacted at the time, and some snippets may be lyrical and compelling. Use these suggested guidelines to effectively incorporate journal material:

• Use them sparingly. Don’t let them be a crutch for “telling” rather than “showing.”
• Prune them to laser sharp  focus. Use ellipses (...) to show that you’ve omitted material before or after the quoted material, or even within.
• Create composite entries. Some people may have a problem with using journal entries that are not verbatim quotations. This is a matter of personal judgment. Many of us consider journal entries to be similar to dialogue. The intent of the message is more important than literal accuracy. So if you need to distill three or more entries into a single one to give the drift of your thoughts at that period of time, do so and avoid overwhelming readers with what may seem like tedious navel gazing.

So, yes, you can use your journals, but use them primarily as resource material rather than verbatim story elements.

Write now: scan through an old journal and find a juicy memory topic with several related entries. Immerse yourself in those entries to recall your sense of the times and your state of mind. Bring the setting into memory as clearly as you can and notice elements of the setting. What was going on? What were people thinking or doing. What did you notice about the situation? Then use this awareness to write a short story or scene based on that memory, incorporating the details you recall and personal insight you recorded.

Write Where the Juice Is

Beginning writers generally write stories like they write email, telling what happened, skimming the tips of the waves. For example, “We camped at Yosemite and saw Half Dome. It was spectacular, but the the place was mobbed. Somebody left food out and a bear knocked over their cooler during the night.”

If a friend sent me an email with that message, I’d assume she wrote it in a hurry, and make a mental note to ask about the intriguingly juicy bear story later.

That friend can be excused for the email. After all, she is on vacation, and I hope she’s immersed in the moment, soaking it all in, so she’ll return home renewed and refreshed. But if she goes on to write stories about that vacation, I hope she’ll wring the juice from that bear. I want to hear things like:

• Did they hear the bear and know it was there?
• If so, how scared were they? What did that feel like?
• If not, how did they find out about it? What was going on around the campground as word spread?
• How close did it come to their campsite?
• Were they in a tent or camper?
• What precautions did they take to minimize bear risk themselves?

Of course you don’t write these details in a vacuum. At a minimum, readers need to know details included in the email to give context to the bear details.

Another example of focus is illustrated by the eagle picture above. The email version of this story is “We spent the afternoon in Canon Beach and had a great time, as always. I got an amazing shot of an eagle.”

Snapping that picture of the eagle was the juice of my day. But if you saw only the enlarged inset of that eagle, you’d think Ah, yes. An eagle. Nice shot! and move on. The larger picture shows the eagle atop a tree in the distance.

But even the larger picture doesn’t tell you that I shot that picture in mid-June, 2012 atop the seaside bluff in Canon Beach, Oregon, and that I was delighted with the performance of the new camera I was using. You don’t know what a delightful day it was, or how far we walked, or how mesmerizing the entire afternoon was.

For me, that eagle is a metaphor for the afternoon. Writing about it in story form, I may include snippets of conversation and my own reflections to anchor it in context:

As we strolled along the top of the bluff, alternately gazing out to sea, and scanning vistas of the town, a moving speck caught my husband’s eye.

“Look! An eagle!”

“Where?”

“It just landed in that tree! See? Right on top.”

Before he finished that sentence, I was zooming out to the limit. Would this new camera hold steady at that zoom? I began slowly breathing out to relax and steady my shot. The eagle was in no hurry. I got four more shots, then took time to marvel at seeing this rare bird through the zoom of my camera display. I marveled at the white head, the regal bearing, the powerful swoop of its wings when it finally soared off. Magnificent! This treat caps the perfect day, I thought. It doesn’t get any better than this.

In our room that evening, I downloaded the day’s pictures. “Look at this shot!” I squealed with pleasure. “With all those pixels, I can zoom in with Photoshop and almost see the feathers.”

On its own, that picture is unremarkable. Without more detail, hearing that I saw it and took the picture is no less so. I need more scene to anchor the relevance of this anecdote within the larger trip report.

Write now: look through an old story and find a juicy detail you told about and glossed over, “e-mail style.” Write a short scene to flesh out that detail and add meat to the bones of that story.

Memoir: Process or Product?

With any form of expressive writing, from spontaneous journaling to polished, published memoir, the writing process produces 90% of the benefit, at least as far as the writer is concerned.

To be clear, this 90% figure is an intuitive assessment, but not a wild guess. I extensively studied the healing value of expressive writing and wrote about it in a series of blog posts, Writing for the Health of It. I also base it on a stream of student comments that stories they wrote for class shed new light on past events, changing their perspective.

This may be especially good news if privacy concerns deter you from writing. It’s okay to write for a readership of one. In fact, that may be your healthiest, most gratifying course of action. You’ll get  most of the value even  if nobody else ever sees a word of it.

In fact, if your story upsets others, the resulting controversy and turmoil may offset the proven benefits of writing. You are well-advised to use caution when you have doubts how your story will be received. Carefully weigh your risks and benefits, and don’t risk what you’re unwilling to lose.

Other reasons people avoid publishing are more pragmatic. When you put your life on public display, you want clean copy. You want it to make sense and be free of embarrassing typos and simple grammar errors, and you want it to look nice on the page. You want it to look professional, without sacrificing authenticity.

Moving from draft to polished publication is a daunting task. Not everyone wants to exert that degree of effort. Not everyone knows how or wants to learn. You can pay people to edit your story and make it look like a million dollars. That’s like investing in custom framing for a picture you painted – nice if you can afford it. With diligent promotion, you may recoup some of the cost of professional assistance, but it’s not prudent to spend more on publication than you can afford to write off.

Finishing the draft of a memoir pays huge dividends. Polishing it pays more. The more you ponder story elements, which to include and how they interrelate, the deeper your insight and sense of meaning become. The more you study the craft of writing and contemplate  fresh ways of describing people, places and experiences, the more open you become to the world around you.

Whether you do it to contain costs with group editing or for the fun of it, joining a lifestory writing group or class provides further benefits as you bond with others and enhance writing skills through the power of story and collaboration.

Everything to the point of uploading your file to a printer is part of the process. When you choose to share your story with others, whether it takes the form of a rough stone or a polished gem, the process still holds most of the value for you. You may eventually reap huge  royalties, but whatever the financial rewards, you have created a historical document that others will treasure. That’s a mighty sweet cake. Inspiring others piles on icing – your gift to the world.

What is your aspiration? Process or product? How do you view this reward balance?

Write now: pull out your Story Idea List, select a topic and write that story!

How (and Why) to Review a Book

“The best way to derive the maximum benefit from reading a book is to write a review!”

I continually urge students in all classes I teach to review books they read, explaining that doing so will turn their reading into a self-directed writing workshop.

Like many people, I always equated writing book reviews with those detested book reports we all had to write during our school years. Not so! Since rising to a challenge a few years ago to begin writing reviews, I have taken great pleasure in posting more than 70 reviews on Amazon.

Reviewing books has given me a new level of appreciation for the craft of writing. I read memoir and fiction first for pleasure, engrossed in the action and passions of the story, then double back to analyze. I’m usually more analytical when reading non-fiction, informational material. If I’m reading a print book, I use sticky flags to mark interesting passages for later consideration. I highlight passages in eBooks. When I finish reading, I go back and look at flagged or highlighted elements along with factors such as

• what made it work (or not)
• story structure
• how the characters are developed
• how backstory is woven in
• how dialogue flows
• how the author uses description and words
• which passages lit my lamp
• who I recommend the book to

I make notes on the elements listed above and use these as the basis for writing a review. In the review, I cite what I especially appreciated about the book, what worked well for me, and if I wasn’t thrilled with it, I mention why not. I have occasionally noted that popular, prolific authors have made obvious factual errors, a form of arrogance that rubs me the wrong way. 

This process has not only enhanced my reading pleasure, my (re)writing has improved tremendously as a result, and I don’t know how else I would have gained as much insight into structural options.

Most people agree that reading and taking notes has value, but they are reluctant to take that next step of formalizing a review. These three reasons may answer that question for you:

• It’s great writing exercise, giving you practice in organizing your thoughts
• It builds community among readers, especially on Goodreads.com
• It’s a great way of showing your appreciation to an author for taking the time and making the effort to entertain, enlighten or educate you. Book reviews are powerful promotional tools for authors and the one tool authors can’t create for themselves.

If you are only going to post one place, Amazon gets the most exposure. It’s simple to use, though a friend recently admitted she had not figured out the process. In case you are also flummoxed, here’s the drill:

You can only post if you have an Amazon account, and you must order at least one item before your account is authorized for reviews. This is to protect the world against unscrupulous people who might open 195 accounts under various names to skew ratings with ******  or * reviews.

After logging on to your account, find the book page, and scroll almost down to the bottom, past any existing reviews, to find the Write a customer review button.

• Click that button.
• Click the appropriate number of stars at the top
• Enter a title for your review (anything other than the book title)
• Paste the review you’ve carefully edited in Word (or whatever) into the review window.
• Click “Preview your review” below that window.
• Read once more as a final proof.
• Click Edit to return to the previous window or Publish review to finalize it.

You can post the same review other places. Barnes & Noble welcomes reviews, and authors love to have reviews posted on Goodreads. You need to have accounts for both Barnes & Noble and Goodreads in order to post there. Watch for “post a review” clues and follow them on either site.

Write now: find a book you’ve recently read, or finish a new one. Use the guidelines above to make some notes, then write a review. Post it on Amazon, then open an account if you don’t already have one and post it on Goodreads. Repeat fifty times and watch your writing take wings. 

Guest Post – Cheering for Life

I’ve been following Susan Payne’s Blog The Water Witch’s Daughter (written under the pseudonym SuziCate) for at least a couple of years and each time I read it, I’m enchanted with the combination of breathtaking photos and heartwarming insights, touching stories and snippets of life.

Susan recently published her first book, Stepping into the Wilderness, an anthology of sixty encouraging posts from her blog. Each contains five thought provoking questions to promote inner growth through reflection or journal writing. In addition, each piece contains five writing exercises for enriching the writing experience. Each contains five thought provoking questions to promote inner growth through reflection or journal writing. In addition, each piece contains five writing exercises for enriching the writing experience, and in this post she shares a touching story with prompts for you to write about parallel experiences.

“Is my letter crooked?” I adjusted the large “N” stretching across her sweater and pinned it in place.

“How about my hair? My bangs ok? My pony tail too high?”

“You’re perfect. Now, get out there and get us going!” She was beautiful, popular, and my best friend.

Her skirt flung to and fro as she swung her hips to the beat. Green and gold pompoms danced through the air as all the girls followed her lead in waving their arms above their heads. The bleachers smelled of sweat and mixed perfumes as we clapped, yelled, and stomped. She jumped from the human pyramid, long, muscular legs spread, back arched as her arms almost touched midway, and landed on her feet. She ran across the gym clapping and cheering, “Go green. Go gold!” She encouraged the football players. She encouraged us to get into the team spirit. By the end of the pep rally I was so caught up in school pride goose bumps tickled my skin and sent a chill over me.

Her damp bangs formed a ridge around her dark eyes. Her ponytail hung limp, but she bounced. She asked, “How was the new routine?”

“You performed flawlessly!” And that she did. Oh, how I wished I was wearing the short swirly skirt and toting pompoms. She tossed the pompoms to me…”Hold ‘em for a minute. Will ya’?”

“Sure.” She had no idea how I loved the times I helped carry her stuff. I thrust my arms skyward mocking her earlier movements. Problem was I jerked back and forth. I didn’t have her grace. Honestly, I didn’t have a rhythmic bone in my body. I tripped over my own feet, and my voice was definitely not the sing-song type.

Still, somehow she talked me into going to cheerleader practice camp. I flopped. She encouraged me to keep trying, telling me I’d eventually get it. I didn’t get it. I dropped out before tryouts. Though we walked our days together, she was swamped with cheerleading duties, and I was busy with my own fortes of being literary magazine editor and newspaper reporter. Still, we supported one another with our gifts. I helped her write her school papers, and she helped me develop confidence.

About fifteen years later, I told her on the phone it was going to be ok. I told her she could beat the cancer. I encouraged her to do the chemo, the radiation, go to Mexico, swim the Atlantic, to do whatever she needed to live.

She suffered, but her faith and courage proved to be as strong as her grace. I called her every week and traveled four hours to visit when I could. On the last visit, she was so weak she could barely eat or speak. “Don’t pray for me anymore. I think God is tired of hearing my name and wants you to pray for someone else. I need you to do something else for me. Will you?”

“I’ll do anything you want,” I said as I squinted my eyes to hold back the tears.

“I need you to tell my story, to encourage others to keep faith no matter what. And I want you to write my obituary.”

“There’s no need for an obituary. You’re going to be fine.” I knew I was lying but I just couldn’t bring myself to have this conversation.

“Promise me you’ll write it.” Her fingers pulled at mine.

“I promise.” I squeezed her fingers for confirmation.

A few days later I awoke about five a.m. to a cool wind sweeping across my soul. I knew before I got the call. I wrote the obituary and delivered the eulogy. As she requested, I encouraged all in attendance to keep the faith.

I never learned to dance, nor did I develop a singing voice. Still, I am a cheerleader. A cheerleader of life, that is. Through reflection of these many years I am learning my friend’s story, though it seems she knew mine all along.

As a genealogy enthusiast I write memoir. As a person who feels emotion deeply, I wrote poetry. As a hiker and canoeist, I write prose about my connection with nature. As a creative, I write fiction. From my soul, I write inspiring words to encourage others. I say this to you: Embrace this beautiful life of yours, and live your time here with passion and love.

Walking Along the Edge of the Woods:

How do you deal with loss? Do you close up and shut down? Do you face it head on? Do you rely on faith?

Have you ever been asked to something difficult but felt obligated to do it? How did you deal with it emotionally?

When have you felt your prayers or needs were not being heard? Did you remain encouraged things would get better?

Have you ever known with certainly in your soul something has occurred before receiving confirmation?

Do you have a best friend? Why is this person important in your life?

Stepping into the Wilderness:

Write a death scene. Have your character make a bizarre request of a loved one.

Write a memoir about how a non-achievement in your life became a gain in the long run.

Write a narrative about the best friends of your life. Tell us how they have changed or remained through the seasons of your life.

Write a dialogue between two people where one wishes to emulate the other.

Write a short story about someone keeping hope alive in a bleak situation. Use your setting to convey the bleakness of story’s situation.

The above questions and exercises are not in my book but are an example of those contained in my book.

Susan’s book, Stepping into the Wilderness, is available on Amazon in both Kindle and print, and you can visit her on the web at The Water Witch’s Daughter.

Back to Basics, Part 1

After whizzing past this blog’s seven year mark three weeks ago, I’ve realized how much ground we’ve covered. It’s time to review of some basics, and terminology is a great place to start.

I’m often asked to define and explain the  differences among six terms in common usage for describing written accounts of personal history. This overview should answer any questions.

Autobiography — a chronological account documenting events of your life from birth through the present. Given the amount of material that is generally covered, these works tend to emphasize basic facts with relatively little reflection and insight.

Memoir — a narrative account of a specific, bounded aspect of your life. You can write many memoirs to emphasize different facets. Typical examples of memoir content include military service, career experience, surviving a hurricane, illness or various sorts of abuse, or perhaps your experiences with quilting, cooking or a favorite sport. Formal memoir is an integrated story using fiction techniques such as an ongoing plot (story line, story arc), scenes, dialog and more. Like autobiography, memoirs are typically book length and divided into chapters. Unlike autobiography, they incorporate insights, emotions, and other elements to emphasize a message in the included material and bring it to life for readers.

Life Story (lifestory) — short, self-contained stories about specific events and experiences. These stories focus on things you did or things that happened to you. They may be combined into anthologies or “story albums” for sharing with others, and they may be incorporated as scenes in memoir or autobiography. Language and structure of life stories may be more or less formal and polished, depending on your levels of interest and skill. These stories are a great way to ease into life writing.

Personal Essay — stories about your beliefs, values and opinions. In their purest form, personal essays focus on thoughts and feelings, life stories on actions and experiences. In reality, the line between them blurs, and the most compelling stories have elements of both. Distinctions between them are meaningless.

Journaling — spontaneous accounts of anything that comes to mind: events, thoughts, hopes, fears, the weather, rants and more. Journal writing is helpful for sorting things out and making sense of life, and purely spontaneous journaling has documented health benefits. You can write journals like letters to the future, intended as a legacy, but may lose some health benefits in the process.

Freewriting — similar to journaling, but usually destined for the wastebasket or fireplace. During sessions of freewriting, you write spontaneously, without thought of form, spelling, or other elements of shared writing. It’s useful for getting ideas onto paper where you can see them and further refine them for sharing with others or just making sense of them for yourself.

Based on levels of complexity, freewriting and journaling are the simplest forms, intended only for personal review, not sharing with others. They serve well to gather your thoughts before writing more material for others to read. Life stories and personal essays are the next rung on the ladder, presenting your thoughts and ideas in and orderly, logical flow. Autobiography and memoir are the most involved, drawing on elements of both lifestories and memoir.

Please understand you need not make a choice. Each form is a tool, and you can use all of them. Many people begin with life stories, then integrate those into an anthology and/or autobiography. After writing the overview, they may drill down to explore certain areas more deeply in a series of memoirs. But if all you do is write a few simple stories, that is a noble accomplishment.

Write now: Ponder these various forms of writing and explore ways each may help you achieve your life writing project goals.

The Writer’s Path

Although 99% of my writing is stored electronically in several places, I have a  filing cabinet in my office, with drawers 24" deep. The back of of them is hard to access. That’s where my oldest stories are stored, the ones I wrote in 1979 on my old Smith Corona electric at the beginning of my journey along my Writer’s Path.

Every few years I pull those stories out and am reminded again how utterly pitiful they are. True, they were fiction. Sort of. I didn’t know about lifestory writing yet, and would not have been brave enough to write openly anyway. Although some content is touching, descriptions were flat as Kansas, dialogue stilted and contrived. They jumped around. And they were preachy. I had an agenda when I wrote those stories and it wasn’t hidden. They were a start.

Twenty-five years ago, I knew nothing of creative writing classes or writing groups, and never thought to look for books on how to write. I was shooting from the finger tips, buoyed by A’s on research papers.

I fared a bit better when I became contributing editor for a local women’s magazine, getting favorable remarks on my stories from casual acquaintances. When my first book, Meetings: Do’s, Don’ts and Donuts, was published in 1997, I was horrified by the first round of editing. That red ink looked like blood in a war zone.  Humiliation rapidly morphed into hope and excitement at the prospect of learning to be a serious writer. That experience was a cram course in writing.

Since then I’ve taken writing courses. I’ve read stacks and piles of books on how to write, spent hundreds of hours reading websites and listening to webinars and podcasts. But even more, I’ve written and written, and I’ve edited hundreds of stories for students. I have written for at least those 10,000 hours presumably required for mastery, though I don’t claim any titles as such. I’m great at description, but I still have much to learn. My path continues to go up and down, rising overall.

Looking back at those early stories, even at early blog posts, I can see that yes, I have learned, slowly at first, then more rapidly as I climbed along that path. I have grown as a writer, and I hope I continue to do so as long as my fingers move. I still can’t crank out a masterpiece on the first try. I edit my own work, sometimes going back months later when it feels like a stranger wrote it. And I continue to rely on feedback from others for points of view I would never, ever think of.

New writers, take heart. While it’s true that some people are born with a gift for eloquence, even they have a learning curve – they just learn faster. Some people are born with an eye for painting, others with the right legs for running. We each have a gift. But even those without “the gift” can learn to produce respectable results.

With practice.
With guidance.
With collaboration.

Take classes. Read, both how-to-write books and memoir or fiction. Join a writing group. Above all, keep writing. You’ll see results much sooner than I did, because it took me forever to find people to help me along the path. You don’t have to wait. Please join our growing community of life writers on the Life Writers Forum on YahooGroups. Sign up for the mailing list of the National Association of Memoir Writers and participate in the free monthly teleseminar roundtables. And keep writing! Climb that writer’s path, one story at a time.

Write now: write a story about your earliest memory if you’ve never written before. Pull out the oldest story you can find if you’ve been writing for awhile and look for ways to improve it. If you don’t see any, show it to a writing buddy and ask for feedback. If you still can’t find any, congratulations. You are ready for publication!

Ditch the Dummy Subjects

It was a dark and stormy night. That sentence surely takes the prize as the most clichéd and often cited example of bad writing. Do you know the reason? It lies in the first two words, “it was”. This construction and its variants are ubiquitous in our speech and much of our writing. For example,

It’s snowing hard as I write this post. There are several people sitting near me who look worried. It’ll be hard to get up the slippery driveway when I get home if this continues.

In sentences like the ones above, “it” and “there” are dummy pronouns because they refer to nothing specific, thus functioning as dummy subjects. Simply put, they are a form of passive voice, which generally weakens your sentence and slows the story.

The fix is simple. Reword your sentence to ditch the dummy subject. For example, here’s a possible revision of that initial dark and stormy night intro:

The heavy scent of rain filled my lungs, and my scalp tingled with anxiety as I peered through the window. Nearly constant lightning showed trees bowing like ballerinas before the gale. I imagined the gods bowling up above, and the stakes were high.

Moving on to the next example:

I look up from my keyboard and see snowflakes the size of nickels rapidly coating the ground. Worry etches the faces of people peering out the window at nearby tables. A woman at the next table looks my way. “Wow, I dread the trip home on these roads, and my uphill drive is going to be impossible if this keeps up,” I say. “How far do you have to go?”

These revisions switch from telling to showing. They add sensory detail to pull readers into the scene and create connection.

Don’t worry about simple dummy subjects as you write your initial draft. They are easy to spot and easy to toss, so think of them as  your friends, giving you a springboard for going on to greatness. Use your imagination to flesh out the thoughts and add life to those dummy subject.

As with much writing advice, there is an exception to this rule has an exception for dialogue. Real people use dummy subjects and other grammar shortcuts all the time in casual conversation. Sanitizing these elements out off written conversation will result in stiff, plastic-sounding characters, so let them keep the occasional “there are” or “It is.”

Write now: Read through a story you’ve written, keeping an eye open for dummy subjects, then edit them out. Then read a published story by an acclaimed writer and reverse this process. See how many sentences you can deconstruct, adding dummy subjects. Analyze the effect.

Challenge yourself to write at least twenty pages without using a single dummy subject, other than in dialogue. Then, if you feel their absence has ruined your writer’s voice, of course you can add a few back in, but you’ll do so with the power of purpose and awareness, not because you don’t know better.

What’s the Difference Between an Essay and a Story?

Basically, story and essay are labels defining two ends of a spectrum of focus ranging from thinking to acting. Both are components of Story, an umbrella category that essentially comprises the operating system of the human brain. We use Story to make sense of life and the world we live in. Story explains how things fit together. It explains what happened and helps us predict what might happen next. It defines our place in the cosmic order. Story provides identity on all levels from “child of …” to “best friends forever” to “writer” to “This Is MY Country …”

As common usage has evolved over the last few decades, the term essay, specifically personal essay, has come to refer to relatively short compositions expressing the writer’s beliefs, values, and opinions about events, experiences and meaningful topics. Writing an essay is generally an adventure in self-understanding, as these beliefs and opinions may change as they are clearly articulated and organized on the page.

Story, specifically life story, generally focuses more on experiences and events as such.

Traditionally essays were confined to strict reason. Stories on the other hand had plots, action, drama, dialogue, all the elements that keep a person’s heart pumping and eyes locked on the page.

These differences began to disappear in the 1980s as the new genre of creative nonfiction began to emerge. Creative non-fiction has paved the way for the essayist to include personal opinions and experience. Today personal essay is as likely as story to have dialogue, description and action, perhaps even plot, so differences blur and become a bit meaningless. But the terms still exist in the general vocabulary and still serve some purpose.

Circling back to the earlier concept of a continuous spectrum, I see essay as a useful term for describing writing that focuses primarily on values, attitudes, beliefs, stories about what and how we think. At the other end, those compositions we generally think of as stories tend to focus more on action and experience — what happened.

The spectrum illustrates the fact that essays need to include at least a little bit of action or experience to provide context for thoughts. Readers want to know what happened to lead you to your current beliefs. They want to know the “story” of that belief. Likewise, stories that don’t include a certain amount of reflection and interpretation seem shallow and leave readers wondering how you felt and thought about the situation.

In general, personal essays are well-suited for the overall purpose of Story in making sense of experiences and perceptions. The essay writing process helps arrange reflective fragments into insights and coherent story. Once this basic understanding is in place, it can be embellished and polished into a work of art by employing description, dialogue, plot, and other tools that add impact for readers.

Stories that connect with readers will have it all: action and reflection artfully blended with all the elements that add impact. They’ll sit somewhere along the center of that spectrum.

You could start at either end to write these stories. Perhaps a journal entry about a puzzling situation inspires a story. Perhaps writing the story of an exciting situation prompts you to begin digging deeper into your feelings about it. There is no formula for concocting these powerful stories, but there are lots of inspiring ideas.

You can easily find mountains of books with guidelines for writing stories, but I have found only three that focus on writing non-academic personal essays. Sheila Bender’s Writing and Publishing Personal Essays is a classic, now in its second edition. Sheila has graciously agreed to share some starter ideas for writing personal essays in the next three posts here. Stay tuned!

Write now: read back through a few stories or scenes from your memoir and notice how much content addresses your thoughts about events and experiences in the stories.

Mother Memoir

Lynn Henriksen, aka The Story Woman, is a woman with a mission. As she explains in a blog post on Telltale Souls.com, since her mother’s death over a decade ago, she has been collecting “Mother Memoir” stories. She publishes collections of these stories, and teaches people how to write them. Although I have not yet read it, her newly released how-to book, TellTale Souls Writing the Mother Memoir, is said to be a comprehensive guide to remembering and capturing the essence of your mother’s story – and probably your own in the process.

Memoirs about mothers abound. Since nobody came into this life without a mother, it’s hard to imagine writing a book-length memoir that didn’t mention the author’s mother at least in passing, but some dwell on the mother-child relationship in more depth than others. Flavorwire.com recently posted a list of “10 of the Best Memoirs About Mothers.” Many titles may be new to you, but chances are you’ve read (or at least heard of) The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls. The Flavorwire list barely scratches the surface. Carol O’Dell’s memoir, Mothering Mother, is a heart-rending read, and Linda Joy Myer's’ volume, Don’t Call Me Mother (soon to be re-released with additional chapters) is a fine example of writing about a darker type of maternal relationship.

While the volumes I just mentioned are book-length, even single-page memories and stories are a worthy tribute to the woman who brought you into the world and shaped your life. When I say tribute, I don’t necessarily mean accolade. Whether rosy or dark, your stories should reflect the truth of your mother as you knew her.

The fact is, stories without shadows and shape tend to be flat and uninteresting. Ann Lamott explains this in one of her books – I don’t remember which. Her novel Rosie is modeled on her family, with twists. She explained some of them. The mother in Rosie has one nostril larger than the other. She did this to give her more interest and character. Ann did similar things with behavioral and emotional quirks. Your mother may not have unbalanced nostrils, but she will have distinctive traits and quirks. Use these to add interest and color to your story. Don’t just tell how loving she was. Include a little conflict and tension, thus showing her as real and human.

And definitely include snippets of daily life. That which you took for granted back then has already changed dramatically and will continue to do so. Let future generations know what ordinary life was like “back then.”

Whether your mother sported a halo or horns, hopefully you’ll show her foibles with compassion and understanding, as Jonna Ivin does in Will Love For Crumbs and Linda Joy Myers does in Don’t Call Me Mother.

If you have accolades, what better time to record them than this Mother’s Day season? If your memories are more tender and sore, writing about them may help you shift your perspective and find the understanding and compassion that can sooth many of those raw memories. Whatever the case, your story or stories will make an important contribution to your legacy of personal and family history for future generations.

Write now: make a list of key memories involving you and your mother. Select one and write about it. Include details of the scene where it takes place. Include some dialogue and show what your mother looked like. Give a sense of her emotional state – and yours as you interacted in this scene.

Photo: Marjorie Melton. Happy Mother’s Day Mom, your memory lives on.

Alice’s Adventures With Self

Who would have guessed that Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland would be a source of inspiration to modern memoir writers? I can’t recall the last time I read this classic that I often enjoyed  as a girl. A couple of days ago I snagged a free ebook copy and dug in. I noticed many things freshly.

Nobody will be surprised to hear me confirm that Lewis Carroll is a master of metaphor and brilliantly creative. And of course the illustrations delight me even more now than when I was ten.

But those are not the parts I’m referring to. I was struck by the candor and complexity of Alice’s conversations with herself. I didn’t even try to count all the various facets of herself she brought into play via internal dialogues. Note that I said dialogs. It’s not unusual to hear recommendations to include internal monolog in memoir, that is, self-talk. But Carroll takes it one step further and has Alice talking to her selves.

This technique especially fascinated me, because it seems so true to life. I suspect we all do this, that a “core self” interacts with peripheral “others”, but we do it so automatically that it largely escapes our notice. I’m working on tuning in to see how many inner channels I can find. Then I’ll practice writing some “Conversations With My Selves.” I expect that will be both entertaining and enlightening. I’ll keep you posted.

My hunch is that as we start writing these conversations, we’ll become more aware of facets of self we never realized existed. We’ll become more complex and fascinating to ourselves, and including snippets of this dialogue in stories will add both authenticity and sparkle.

Why don’t you pull a copy of Alice off your shelf, out of the library or off the web? Free eBook editions are easy to find, and you’ll surely relish it again yourself. You may get a fresh inspiration while you’re at it.

Write now: write some internal dialogue between two facets of yourself that you are aware of. Since two personas are involved, punctuate it as regular dialogue rather than internal monologue.

My Ruby Slippers

Reading is one of the most effective ways to improve your writing, and the good news is that this can be a do-it-yourself project. But simply scanning words until you find out “who done it” isn’t going to get you very far.

I’ve posted several times about the value of keeping a log of wonderful phrases, dialogue and detail. Writing reviews has sharpened my ability to dig more deeply for structure and nuance. I strongly encourage you to post reviews on Amazon anytime you read a book that’s worth a bit more study.

Taking this one step further, author interviews are a great way to learn, both by doing the interviews and reading them. One of my current memoir favorites is Tracy Seeley’s book, My Ruby Slippers: The Road Back to Kansas. After reviewing the book, I was asked to interview Tracy for Story Circle Network. She predictably did a great job of answering. One question specifically addresses my current passion for writing description:

Sharon: You use such lovely descriptions, especially of emotions and feelings, for example, “The ghosts of my dozen childhood moves and my father’s leaving had laid their chilly hands on my heart.” Do you have any secrets you can share about how you access these succulent similes?

Tracy: Boy, I really don’t have any secret techniques. I wish I did. Similes usually just come to me, if I sit quietly and wait and pay attention to the mood and feeling I want to convey. I listen, and gradually it arrives. That sounds completely unhelpful, I know.

One thing that may help is that I really pay attention to the metaphorical power of individual words and then develop it. Which is what happened with your example.

Just to explain a bit further. It’s fair to say that I was haunted by the many times my family had moved and then by my father’s leaving. We use that word “haunted” all the time. So much so, that we don’t feel the full weight of it. So it really wouldn’t have had any power if I’d written, “I was haunted by my father’s leaving.” It’s become a cliché, and so it’s empty. But haunting led me to ghosts, which I thought would be too heavy-handed in the passage, so I just waited a bit, and the chilly hand just arose out of nowhere. Not a whole ghost, just a hand. Immediately I recognized the power of that image. The chill adds a physical sensation to something that’s not really physical, which brings that moment an added dimension. So when the ghosts of the past laid a “chilly hand on my heart,” the image conjures the right mood and conveys the emotional effect of my past, but it’s also indirect and suggestive—and that’s always more powerful than something explicit and obvious. So if I had a secret, it would be sit quietly and let the metaphors speak through the words. Then make sure the metaphor suits the situation in all of its connotations, its moods. And keep pushing until you arrive at something surprising and fresh.

Everything Tracy wrote is great. I hope you’ll click over and can read the rest of the interview here, and my review here.

Write now: read a memoir and write a review. Include your thoughts about the book and what it meant to you. Mention the structure and what you liked or would like to see handled differently. You can include a brief synopsis of the story, but what I find most helpful in a review are people’s reactions. Those help me find more meat as I read the first time.

Not Just for Tuesdays

I must not be a Tuesday person. Today is Sunday, but since I hadn’t read the book, it didn’t occur to me to wait yet another two days to read Tuesdays with Morrie.

When the book was first published nine years ago, I cynically thought it couldn’t possibly live up to all the hype, but was also deterred by the fact that my feelings about that name were on the cool side, and who wants to read about a dying old man? These less than admirable facts I neglected to confess. I’ve been asked dozens of times if I’ve read it and always mumbled something about it being on my list. It finally got pushed to the top of the list, and I think at just the right time. I’m certain I would not have appreciated it as much nine years ago.

The fact that I was not ready to read this book until now carries a lesson for lifestory and memoir writers. I always remind people that we should write for ourselves first, because there are no guarantees that family will ever be interested, and even if they are, your words may mean more to them later. That’s especially likely to be true of younger family members.

Back to Tuesdays. I’ve since learned that books getting rave reviews usually do live up to the hype, but even more than the message, the structure of this book means way more to me today than it would have back then. I’ve learned how to read — like a writer, that is. The first writerly thing I noticed was Albom’s superb use of words. A couple of years ago I began keeping a list of what Sheila Bender refers to as “Velcro Phrases,” so named because they stick in mind. I described this process in a previous post, “Hang onto Inspiration.” I made many new entries as I read today. Some similes I especially enjoyed include:

. . . he waved his arms like a conductor on amphetamines . . .

. . . the sagging cheeks gathered up like curtains.

ALS is like a lit candle: it melts your nerves and leaves your body a pile of wax.

I noticed that Albom uses a unique dialog convention. He puts Morrie’s words in quotation marks. His own remarks lack them. The reason isn’t entirely clear, but it appears that he mixes the drift of his remarks in with reflection and summaries of the conversation rather than using them as an integral part of an ordinary conversation. Whatever the case, it works well, and the average reader would probably not notice.

His structure also appeals to me. He uses the metaphor of a final class with a beloved professor as the basis of the book and uses the metaphor to compile the parts: background history, synopsis of characters, and class session summaries. In reality, I strongly suspect that at least in the beginning, the conversation each visit covered more than the topic of the day, and some topics may have spanned several visits. But who would want to read a transcript? The way Albom spotlights each of the thirteen themes with a session of its own highlights and clarifies each in turn.

His use of “intersession notes” prepares the reader for each visit with flashbacks and other relevant material without distracting from the discussion during the visit.

Albom has accomplished what I dream of doing. He has written a concise volume filled with timeless wisdom that slips straight through the eyes into the heart, and created a literary masterpiece in the process.

My final thought regarding this book is that he celebrates one teacher who touched his life in such an all-encompassing way. In a very real sense, books like this one are my teachers, both for the content and as an example of fine writing. I honor and celebrate my teachers by mentioning the books.

Write now: if you don’t already have a list of Velcro Phrases, use the instructions in “Hang onto Inspiration” to start one. When your list is set up, read a book and begin making entries. Add a section at the end for other notes about writing style and structure for each book you read.

To Tell the Truth

Guest Post by Wayne E. Groner

A common oath for courtroom witnesses is: “Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?” While witnesses may still raise their right hands, the use of a Bible in taking the oath has mostly gone out of favor in deference to a variety of non-Christian religious beliefs. The word God is deleted for Atheists and Muslims.

Rotary International encourages members to use its Four-Way Test in all personal and business matters: Is it the truth? Is it fair to all concerned? Will it build goodwill and better friendships? Will it be beneficial to all concerned?

Which brings me to memoirs; to what extent are writers of memoirs required to tell the truth? After all, a memoir is a collection of remembrances, not an exercise in journalism. The best memoirs tell good stories with conflicts, lessons learned, issues resolved or not, and changes that bring growth. Can a memoirist accurately and fairly remember all that stuff, especially the dialogue? And do readers really care?

Storytelling has its extremes. Local and regional liars’ clubs encourage the telling of tall tales for fun. Mary Karr, in The Liars' Club: A Memoir, tells of “a terrific family of liars and drunks” with tidbits and chunks of redeeming truths. Some critics claimed to be unable to tell whether, in some cases, Karr is retelling a fabrication or creating one. James Frey was embarrassed by the national media when it revealed much of his bestseller, A Million Little Pieces, was made up; Oprah Winfrey publicly rebuked him for lying after she initially praised him. A lot of movies are declared to be based on true stories. Based on are the operative words; many of the opening credits should include, “Some of the following is true.” Does memoir qualify as creative nonfiction, that ambiguous and relatively new term for using fiction writing techniques to tell true stories? Lee Gutkind posits creative nonfiction encourages personal viewpoint and conjecture.

Ben Yagoda and Dan DeLorenzo, writing for the Nieman Storyboard project at Harvard University, declared there are no simple answers for the complex questions surrounding truth in memoirs. That said, they tried to take on the problems of memoir inaccuracies by constructing a scoring system, a system they admit is half-facetious and half-serious. They rate inaccuracies according to their negative reflections on people, living or dead; corroboration of facts; questionable dialogue; clichés and flat writing; and self-deprecation. A passing score is 65 out of 100. They applied their scoring to nine memoirs from the year 397 to 2009. Ernest Hemingway’s A Movable Feast received a 69, James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces got 29, and Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue: An American Life got 69. Read the full scoring report and download a printable worksheet to evaluate your memoir. It is a subjective process, since we are all biased about our own work, but it could prove insightful.

What does all this mean for today’s writers of memoirs? If you want to be accepted and respected then you must be as accurate and truthful as possible. What does it mean for today’s readers of memoirs, who are the final judges because they approve or reject memoirs based on what they buy? As Yagoda and DeLorenzo said, “. . . an informed reader has to make the call.”

___________________

Wayne E. Groner is a personal historian and memoir writing coach who blogs at www.waynegroner.blogspot.com

How Will They Ever Know?

It took me a second to recognize the Skype ringtone. Knowing it must be Susan calling from New Zealand,  I ran to my computer. We talked for a few minutes about the people she met whose home was destroyed in the earthquake. It’s in the Red Zone and can’t be rebuilt. She mentions that everywhere they go, Kiwis swarm around and strike up conversations. “They are so friendly, so unlike your average American! I love it down here!”

The girls told me they baked chocolate chip biscuits (British word for cookies) with their babysitter last night. They told me about other new words, like riding in lifts (elevators), and pushing trolleys through the grocery store.

When we hung up I had goose bumps. My girls are literally on the other side of the world, and we had just had a real-time video chat. Fifty years ago a computer-based video chat was beyond imagining.

I had goose bumps. The girls take it for granted, much like I took telephones, radios, flush toilets and electric lights for granted, but my grandmothers didn’t. What could I do to let these little girls know what life was like before WiFi, iPhones, and Homeland Security?

How can I clue them in that there was a time when anyone could walk out onto the runway to see someone off on a flight? How do I tell them about lighting stoves with matches, and the pleasure of standing on a floor furnace with hot air ballooning out your skirt? How will they ever know about 45 rpm vinyl disks that held only one song? What about typewriters? Or making cakes from scratch?

You already know the answer: I can write stories! I can write stories with detail rich scenes, dialog and tension-laden plots. These kids are not going to read how-to manuals.

"“How do you make a story about getting on an airplane exciting?” you ask. Adventure is a matter of perspective. A question as simple as “What will happen if I make cake icing with regular sugar instead of powdered?” can create tension. Remember how you felt when you first sat down in front of a computer? Use your description skills to convey that awe. You certainly faced plenty of challenges getting it to do things!  I once read that many people feared electricity would gush into the room if they unscrewed the light bulb, and heaven only knew what would happen then! Wouldn’t you love to read a story written by someone who had faced that fear?

We live in a time of such change. I moved to Pittsburgh 26 years ago when the Monongahela River was lined with rusty abandoned steel mills. Today that real estate is covered with sparkling research and shopping centers. I never saw this area in the days when street lights were on all day if the mills ran at full capacity.

It’s entirely possible that ten years from now, half of all manufactured items will be made on 3D printers, completely revolutionizing industry and the world economy. Who will tell the story of what life is like now, and what it was like within our lifetimes? Does it matter? I think it does, and I believe it’s up to each of us to save our little piece of that history.

Write now: write a story about an amazing innovation in your life, like getting your own typewriter, or your first computer. Polish it up with description and a little dialogue – write your thoughts if no other people were involved. Send your story to somebody young, or somebody who will love the memories.

Stuck!

Sooner or later it happens to nearly everyone. This time it happened to me. I’ve been away, clear across the country away, at a family reunion to belatedly celebrate my father’s 90th birthday. But I’ve been back nearly a week.

Today I have to write a blog post. I’ve been telling myself. Today for sure, I will write a blog post. … I have to get that blog post written before the library group meeting. …  It’s late now. I meant to get something written. First thing in the morning, no matter what!

I stood at the sink, paying unusual attention to shining the sink. What will I write about? Many topics raced through my mind. I could write about description. I want to write about that. I’ll be teaching a class on description and dialogue again soon. What picture will I use?

I could write about that lightning storm that just struck. Storms are metaphors. I could write about metaphors. …  I could write about that book that’s been sitting on the living room table for weeks. …   I could build on that comment somebody out west made about how most people think their life is so plain and ordinary that nobody would care, so nobody writes about ordinary things and fifty years later nobody knows what was ordinary fifty years earlier.

The list of topic ideas seemed endless. I could and probably will eventually write about all those things. I might write about the spiral of guilt. I might write about the need to find that center of love and write from there rather than guilt.

So many options. And still I kept thinking, I’ll write that blog post as soon as I get back from taking that picture to be rematted … As soon as I fold the laundry … As soon as I get the leaves blown out of the front yard before it rains.

Eventually my Inner Critic kicked into high gear. “You are letting your readers down. … You get in there and write right now or else! … blah, blah, blah!” My reaction: “Try and make me!” Of course that didn’t help either.

I’ve gotten a whale of a lot done this week. It just hasn’t been writing. There is still an endless list of non-writing things to do, but my fingers finally found the keyboard again. Sometimes we just need a break. Sometimes it’s okay to feel stuck. I’ve been making that list of things to write about, so now that the tow truck came and pulled me out of the sand, I have a map to keep my wheels on the road.

Write now: write a story about being stuck. Have you been physically stuck in snow and ice? On sand? In mud? Did your car battery die when you needed to be somewhere? Were you unable to solve a math problem once upon a time? Fail to finish your crossword? Or maybe you’ve been unable to think of anything to write about. Write about that!

Image credit: Preston Rhea

Writing Lesson from Michelangelo

When asked how he went about carving such magnificent statues, Michelangelo is said to have explained that he simply looked at the block of marble, saw the statue within, and chipped away everything that wasn't part of it. 

That parable has a lesson for life writers. Most of us have been accustomed to thinking of the task of writing a story as one of creating something from nothing, or transforming intangible memories into a tangible record. We struggle to find the pieces, to find a way of connecting them … writing is hard work, often intimidating and easy to put off. 

There is another way to look at it: Life itself is a story, and Story is the operating system our brains use. When you sit down to write a story, that story is already complete, whole and perfect. Your task as the writer is to look at the vast chunk of story encasing the one you propose to tell and chip away everything that isn't part of your perfect story. 

The first step in this process is to write an initial draft. This isn't the time to agonize over individual words or thoughts — just dump all those memories onto the page. Spare no detail. Your aim is to overwrite. This draft amounts to making the first cuts that knock large chunks off the block of marble. Your next step is to edit that draft, removing the extra pieces that slow the story down. Chip away all the extra words and material that doesn't fully support the story theme and flow. 

Once you have the form of the story right, turn to your imagination and thesaurus to polish the words and descriptions. Give the story sparkle by swapping finely honed synonyms for duplicate words appearing in the same paragraph or close proximity. Add zest to descriptions and zing to dialogue. On the latter, I do caution you not to add so much zing that your grandmother comes across as Joan Rivers. You must remain true to your characters, and retain an air of veracity.

These polishing steps definitely reflect your artistry, but  realizing that the story was always there, waiting to be revealed in all its glory may well defuse most of the stress of writing so it can become the joyful, liberating experience you always dreamed it would be. 

Write now: think of a story you've been meaning to write and chip it out of the mass of Story surrounding it.

Photo by Stanislav Traykov, CC-BY-SA-3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Playing with the Process

Yesterday was my dad's 90th birthday. One day last week the following conversation took place between my husband and me:

“Rats! I forgot to shop for a card for my father!”

“Why don't you make him something like Gil made my mother?” Gil is a friend of my mother-in-law's who lives in her retirement community. For her recent 98th birthday, he snagged some historical highlights of her birth year from the web, added a few sappy sentiments at the end, and wowed everyone. It was sweet, but … if I were going to do something like that, it would be a bit more, well, elegant. And definitely not sappy.

“I don't want to. It would take forever. … But … let me look at Gil's thing again.” He dug it out.

Hmm, I thought. How long could it take to pull a few facts off the web. A little bit more formatting, maybe a couple of graphics. Surely I could think of a suitable conclusion.

I cranked up Google to explore 1920. Most events pertained to war, the aftermath of war, or what would later be recognized as preludes to war. But did you know that's the year it became illegal to mail babies via the USPS? Prohibition began that year – for alcohol in this country and contraceptives in France.

I started playing with layout. A little graphic maybe? Yeck! Boring hardly began to describe it.

Let me see what I can do with PowerPoint, I thought. A few slides, a few graphics. How long could that take?

I knew. I truly knew. But I realized I'd been bitten by this bug and  the only way out was through.

Let's just say I didn't sleep much that night, and most planned tasks sat undone the next day. By the middle of the day after that, I had created a PowerPoint slideshow with animated loads and transitions for text and graphics. I'd snagged audio of a 19w0 top hit parade song. The final slide was an animated version of the image you see above, accompanied by a version of  Happy Birthday, sung way better than our family could ever do. I'd converted the file to a Flash video with the free iSpring plug-in. All was done.

“Good grief, if I'd realized how much time you'd sink into this project, I never would have suggested it!”

“I knew. It's always that way. That's why I didn't want to do it, but I'm glad I did. It was fun.”

It was fun. And it's typical of most projects I do, even more intentional ones. A project may seem too big, too vast. But I've learned through time that if I just nibble on a corner, I'll find my way.

I cranked out a handout recently for the next series of my Writing for the Health of It class. I had no idea how to do it. So I began writing a few basic ideas. Those led to more. Soon I had a sense of direction. In a surprisingly short period of time, it all flowed together. A formatting tweak here, another there. Print it out for an edit.

The key is to get lost in the process. Let it lead the way. If I try to force it to go the way I want, I always get discouraged. If I let the energy of the project lead the way, the path is a lot smoother.

These are some of the principles I've always known and used on some level, as far back as high school when I worked on the props committee for drama club plays. I was delighted to find that Mark David Gerson summarizes them most eloquently on the front page of his website, starting with Rule #1:

Rule #1: There are no rules: How can there be when creativity is all about breaking new ground and breaking old rules?

Thanks Mark David. This list is wind beneath our wings and a great reason to ask Santa to put a copy of your book in our stockings — paired with a copy of mine!

Write now: think of a story you want to write and play with it. Using Mark David's list as guidance, let it tell you how it wants to be written.  

P.S. I know you'll wonder. I can't show you the finished product, because I created it for strictly personal purposes and posting it publicly would violate copyright all over the place.