When Memories Morph

I’m gobsmacked. I pulled up this picture of my kid sister in that ancient stroller/ walker. I planned to stick it in an email to a cousin to illustrate a story snippet about our  grandfather and my dad the day they poured a big square concrete pad in that back corner. I was three at the time, and I remember that while he smoothed concrete, Granddaddy smelled like whiskey and cigarettes, the point of my story to Cuz. That pad served two doors, the one you see, and one you don’t. The second should be around the corner to the left. That second door opened into the dining area. Or so I’ve always thought. Until today.

I strained toward my screen in bewilderment. Where is that door!?  I KNOW it was there! Holy cow! How can this be? I mentally scramble inside that small dining room on a day before my mother and grandmother knocked a wall down while the men were out hunting. Before the wall came down, Mother had her sewing machine in that room along the soon-to-vanish wall. Until this very minute, I would’ve sworn to you that the door was behind her left shoulder as I sat facing her on the floor to her right, making tangles in thread while trying to sew.

Okay. I get it. The door was never there. I edit it out of memory and the picture still looks right. My earliest memories are in that Albuquerque house where we lived until I was six. This is not the first mind-shattering discovery about memories of that yard. Previous pictures have shown my sandbox was not where I remembered it being, and a willow tree did not have two of its four trunks amputated. What gives?

I have no idea why I remembered these things wrong, but neuroscience is no help here. This just happened. No need to explain. These morphed memories are not just a factor of my young age when they formed. Like most everyone, I’ve learned through the years that my memory often differs from what others remember, and I’ve seen evidence to back those others up more than once. The question is how that affects my story. I ask myself these two questions:

Does it matter? In the case of this house, yes. It matters to me to stick with the evidence and note that my memory was different. Since I have no emotional attachment to the earlier memory, it’s an easy switch. If no evidence is at hand when my sister and I remember a room color differently, I might flip a coin or stick with my version. If details change the truth of the story, they matter.

When it does matter . . . If I discovered I was wrong about something I was emotionally invested in, something that did change the truth of a story, things would become more complex. Using a hypothetical example, let’s say that while Nora was settling her father’s estate, she was stunned to discover documents proving that her mother was his second wife. He’d been married for several years and divorced before he met Nora’s mother, and furthermore, Nora has half-siblings she never knew about.

That extreme example would set off a hurricane of memories and emotions ─ and maybe research ─ leaving a new story in its wake. In stories about her father, Nora may choose to honor her original memories of her dad as a staunch church member and strong advocate of family values, then reflect back on them in the light of what she’s learned and what it all means to her. Perhaps her story would focus on how things changed. But if she wrote stories exclusively within the period before learning this fact, she may choose to write from the perspective of what she believed to be true at the time.

So whether you remember wrong or learn something new, memories morph. When you discover discrepancies, it’s your choice whether to make that discovery part of your story or the focus of your story, or to honor the truth of the memory that shaped your life and made you who you are. It’s your story. Write from your heart and be true to your Story.

It’s All About STORY

I was stunned when conversation at my book club drifted into comments on memoir in general. I’d just mentioned that I’d been appalled at the proliferation of typos and other errors in a memoir I recently read that was, sure enough, self-published.  “I cringe when I read something like that because it casts all self-publishers in a bad light.” But even so, I’d been mesmerized by the story and seconded the recommendation of a previous reader.

I could never have anticipated the ensuing, spontaneous discussion. How I wish I’d had my phone’s recorder running. I did scribble a few notes, summarized below:

“I’m more forgiving about sloppy writing and errors in memoir … I’m more interested in hearing their story than how they tell it.”

“I can overlook a lot of structural stuff because the story is what counts.”

“Memoir is about real people, things that actually happened. Most of them are not professional writers and I don’t expect them to sound like one.”

“Flaws make memoir credible. If it’s too polished, I wonder how much truth got scrubbed out by editors.”

“You can’t critique a memoir because you haven’t walked in that person’s shoes. I’m just fascinated by other people’s stories.”

Wow! I recognized an opportunity to listen and learn rather than steering the discussion. I kept my astonished thoughts to myself to avoid biasing things.

Members of this group are voracious and discerning readers. Every Tuesday afternoon 12 – 20 women (men are welcome, but never attend) meet at the library. A high number have advanced degrees. Several are retired teachers or professors. A few of us also write. But most of all we read, widely and constantly. We each read whatever appeals to us and report back to the group, some in more detail than others. At least half the gals at any given meeting report on more than one book. Rarely does anyone pass.  A significant percentage of the reports include some form of the observation, “It didn’t work for me, but other people may like it.”

In general we collectively hold books to high standards, so, I have full respect and regard for their thoughts about memoir. I cannot imagine a better qualified focus group to address this issue, especially since it arose spontaneously. They don’t write, teach or promote memoir, so they have no reason to be anything but frank.

Perhaps today’s comments ring even more true, because in thinking back, I recall a couple of memoirs that got a thumbs down after comments like “It was too dry and didn’t have much to say.” Celebrity memoirs full of false humility that fails to mask self-promotion also get blasted. The story has to ring true.

Does this mean we should forget about editors and publish first drafts? Of course not! I take it to primarily mean that we should make sure our heart and soul stays in our story and that it retains our unique voice. We still need beta readers to find holes, inconsistencies, and parts that don’t make sense or ring true. And I don’t think these gals will mark you down for a tightly written manuscript with a compelling plot and story arc, strong tension and character development, rich scenes, and no typos. All those fiction devices work, but only if the story rings true.

The bottom line in their remarks is STORY. It’s all about the STORY. Those dry, flat memoirs that got ripped lacked STORY. Do what you need to do to make your story clear, focused and active, and don’t hide it under too much gloss and device. But take heart that if you do slip up a bit, or can’t afford thousands of dollars for a top-notch editor, or you’re just writing for family. Don’t despair. Write it true, write it real, and write from your passion and heart.

Write Away Election Stress, part 2

In my previous post I touched on Expressive Writing as a way of dealing with post-election stress. I need to expand on that. Writing for stress relief takes more than one form, and spontaneous writing in real time is best known as journaling.

I can attest from personal experience that journaling my heart out has been hugely helpful in coming to grips with anger, confusion, and other chaotic emotions. I highly recommend it, and if your topic is a tender one that could cause the chaos to spread of others near and dear to you happened to read it, write it into the fireplace, or the shredder, or delete the file.

As great and powerful as journaling is, I’m not aware of any studies showing that it has long-term health benefits. Nor is it reliably useful for calming currently chaotic emotion.

Expressive writing is especially powerful for resolving stressful memories after the fact. This research was pioneered by James Pennebaker and expanded upon in over 200 replications in situations ranging from prison populations to cancer patients and outplaced high tech industry personnel.

In Pennebaker’s original research, people were asked to write about “a trauma, emotional upheaval, or unsettling event that has been influencing your life, spinning obsessively in your mind, and maybe keeping you awake at night” for twenty minutes on each of four consecutive days.

Subsequent studies have found similar results by having people write for as little as five minutes. They have scaled the four days back to one or two. They’ve left it consecutive and spread it out. Research in other directions sheds even more light.

Almost without exception, results showed durable health benefits. In the case of the tech workers, the ones who wrote according to the experimental protocol found new jobs significantly sooner faster than the control group.

So in concert with what I posted last week, I urge you to journal about current fears and frustration. In a few months or more, if it’s still troubling you, switch to the Pennebaker Process. Meanwhile, if journaling current stuff triggers traumatic old memories, do the four day routine with them now.

In fact, most readers here are writing lifestories anyway. Part of the healing value of expressive writing is the way it turns endless rumination loops into coherent story with context and meaning. So take this process one step further and turn the results of those 20 minute sessions into a coherent, meaningful story worthy of passing along.

Write for the health of it!

Image credit: Prawny, posted on https://morguefile.com/creative/Prawny

Tell a Story, Change the World

Carmen Murasan changes hearts, and perhaps someday the world, by telling stories. She changed my heart as she spun stories about Romanian history, lacing them strongly with perspective and personal insight.

I met Carmen at the conclusion of a Vantage river boat tour of the Rhine and Danube that ended in Romania. She lives in Brasov and served as our local guide during the time we spent in Transylvania. Our local guide in Bucharest had painted a slightly cynical picture of Romania’s past and present, presumably also its future. She left me wondering why she’d chosen to return after living elsewhere for years.

Carmen was the perfect antidote. She’s passionate about life and passionate about Romania. She had our Orange Bus group howling like werewolves at every opportunity, baffling the Blue Bus group the first few times they heard us, and she punctuated her points with hugs and kisses for everyone at frequent intervals. She added brilliance and focus to the seductive beauty of Transylvania. How could we not listen to her stories and absorb her passion?

For example, consider the way she developed the story of Count Dracula, also known as Vlad, the Impaler. “It’s not fair to judge Vlad in light of twenty-first century values. You must understand conditions back then and the way he was brought up....” By the time she was finished, I got it. Not that she turned him into a saint, but I did understand his logic and the protective effect it had on Transylvania’s history.

During the course of the cruise from Bonn to Bucharest, we stopped in so many cities, towns and villages that they’ve begun to blur together, but especially as we cruised down the Danube from Vienna into former Eastern Bloc countries of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania, our local guides’ stories became intense. We heard tales of millennia of invasions and the violence of World War II. Accounts of more recent Balkan conflict horrified us. We heard personal accounts of genocide and ever-present anxiety over possible attempts to form a new Ottoman Empire.

My hair stood on end as our Croatian guide told of suddenly being sent alone to a children’s camp in Germany for what turned out to be six months while most of his extended family was shot in a mass execution of Croatians. Fortunately his parents survived. Every guide after Vienna told a personal story of life under Communist rule and later liberation. Each story left an imprint on my heart.

Not all stories were verbal. Buildings stood as silent testimony. Great progress has been made toward restoring the damage caused by bombing and decades of neglect, but most notably in Bucharest, far too many stand like rotting teeth in a brilliant smile, constant reminders of the past and work yet to be done. How starkly eastern Europe contrasts with western cities rebuilt by the Marshall Plan. Taken together, the two halves of Europe bear testimony to the ability of the United States to implement the Marshall Plan to rebuild our former enemies while thriving ourselves.

Story is the operating system our human brains use to make sense of life and the world we live in. We’re constantly creating and editing stories to incorporate new information and experience. I’ve encountered a river full of small stories that beg to be woven into a larger one. My former view of the world has burst open like the shell of a growing lobster. A new view will take time to become clearn and solid. This blog post is one small step in achieving that end.

I'm endlessly grateful that Carmen Murasan’s stories were the last ones I heard. Her optimism and joy for life form a pillar for anchoring and focusing others.

Carmen shares her stories with legions of visitors to Romania from around the world, and I feel certain she changes each of their hearts. Hopefully as we each share our take on her stories, and I share mine on others I’ve heard, the ripple effect will kick in, and the world will become a better place. Perhaps, just maybe, one day she’ll begin writing those stories and touch even more people.

How has hearing new stories from others changed your heart, life and stories? Write about it! 

Let Peace Begin With Me

Each time I pick up the paper, listen to the radio, or catch the news on the web or TV, it seems the world is besieged with violence, from my local community up to the global level. From hateful name-calling and accusations to death and bombing threats, it all breaks my heart.

As I pondered the dire mess and state of the world, I remembered this song that has lived in my heart for decades. I remembered the key message: LET IT BEGIN WITH ME! How can I play a larger part, I wondered. What else can I do or say? I can go to local Council meetings and speak, but what more?

Of course I know the answer. I can write! I can use the power of story in so many ways. For those who care to join me, let me list some ways:

Journal out fear and other ugly thoughts. Many years ago I began turning to writing to dig deeply into attitudes, beliefs and reactions to even small things. I ask myself questions, like “Is this true?” “How else can I look at this situation?” “What part might I have played in causing this situation?” “What might it look like to (fill in the blank with a person, possible action or other change)?” “What can I do to change this situation?” Write from a perspective of empathy and compassion, striving to build bridges across differences.

I don’t know who else this has affected, but I’m a happier, more confident person with a brighter outlook on life than I used to be, and that says something. At least my internal world is more calm and peaceful.

Write about times you faced conflict. Story is a powerful thing. It tends to snap the issues into focus. Whether you were the victim, hero, or stayed on the sidelines, write stories about your experience with conflict. These stories may involve personal relationships,  work situations, community affairs, or how you were affected by national and international events like wars.

Write the story for yourself first. Include your fears, your pain, your hopes and dreams for the situation. Include some of the elements from those journaling suggestions, but put this in story form rather than random rawness. Get it all down. Let it sit awhile. Then decide if it’s one you want to keep private or share with family, friends, or the world. You’ll benefit from writing it, and probably feel more peaceful, whatever level of sharing you choose.

Write healing stories and letters. Sherrey Meyer has a lot to say on this topic. Her blog, Healing by Writing includes a page with “Letters to Mama.” These are letters Sherrey has written to her deceased mother as a path to personal healing from a painful girlhood and to allow her “childhood voice” to be heard. These letters are an important component of her memoir-in-progress.

Her letters will not be read by the person she wrote them to. We can also write healing letters, perhaps letters of explanation and/or apology, that can be read and make a difference.

Write happy endings. This is an odd suggestion in a life writing blog, because it sounds like creative fiction. But oddly enough, in my experience, writing stories like this has an uncanny way of making them happen. Sages through the ages have emphasized the value of visualization, and what better way to focus visualization than writing stories?

These are just a few of the channels we can use to write stories that can help peace “being with me” and ripple out into the larger world.

Write now: Write a piece of peace. So some journaling about unpeaceful thoughts you are having. Write a story about conflict. Please join me in using your memory and fingers to let peace begin with you.

What Is Truth?

Eight years ago as I pulled together the material that became The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing, I thought I knew the answer to that question: It's what really happened, or what you really think. It's basic honesty, plain and simple. Everybody knows that, right?

That's a good starting point, but based on what I’ve learned and discovered since then, that definition is incomplete and misleading. Some of my increased understanding is old news, things I knew that had not yet integrated into my life writing neuron cluster. Meanwhile, advances in the field of neuroscience continue to deepen understanding of how memory works. These discoveries have profound  relevance for life writers. Here's a list of a few insights worth sharing:

Memory is fallible. Contrary to what you probably heard in psychology class, self-help seminars, and various other places, your subconscious is not packed with every minute detail of every sensation that ever entered your brain. Recent evidence shows that incoming data is filtered, scrubbed, compacted and consolidated. Unless it significantly relates one way or another to something you already know, most new material is filtered out.

Another stumbling block is that our brains often mistake vivid mental images for fact, embedding them as memory. This phenomenon explains many “suppressed” memories that may be planted by certain forms of questioning. Are those “true” memories? Debate rages on.

Memory morphs. Research shows that each time you recall an event or thought, current circumstances and thought become enmeshed in the memory, which may become buried in debris over time.

Perception is personal. If you have not yet done so, read my essay, Mayhem at Camp Ryla for a first person account of sensational and documented differences in personal perception as a simulated crime was committed. Elizabeth Loftus and other researchers have repeatedly verified my ad hoc observations.

Truth is relative. As you take different points of view, you see truth in different lights. What was true without a doubt to you as a child may look quite different after fifty years of life experience. What seems true to a child is something entirely different to a parent. Experts often disagree on the truth of such fundamentals as the meaning of scripture.

Truth is situational. You may already have noticed how you select aspects of thought depending on who you are talking to. Conversation and writing are both shaped by our perceptions of the people we address. Time dictates filtering. Even if we had all the time in the world, shaping our message for best understanding is also important.

So, again, what is truth? Amazon is full of books on this topic. Here’s my current take. Today my best answer is that truth is found at the core of my being. It’s as ephemeral as an atom, lacking substance and location, but forming the essence of being. I recognize truth as a sensation of rightness or “inner knowingness” that washes over me as my beliefs, values, memories and experience converge in a single bright spot.

Truth does not trump fear, nor does speaking or writing it promise a smooth path. Speaking, writing and living in conformance with truth as you believe and understand it does lead to a sense of integrity and personal peace.

Story that springs from the well of truth within you shines the most brightly. You don’t need to blurt it out. You can veil it, scatter it, turn it upside down. But if it isn’t there, your story will ring hollow.

Writing, especially (but not only) journaling, may be the most powerful way to arrive at your truth. William Faulkner is credited with first saying,  “I never know what I think about something until I read what I’ve written about it.”  The longer you work on a story, the more you dig for detail, the more deeply you know the truth of that story, and the truth of yourself.

Write now: even if you’ve done this before, start fresh and write about a cornerstone memory, ideally one with volatile emotional content. As you write, as yourself the question, “Is this  really true?” Keep writing until the answer to that question is “YES!” Then write the true story.

Story Around the World

Today it is my privilege to feature an interview with  Tanya Preminger, a resident of Israel, who created and manages Life-Memo.com, a website jam-packed with slices of life from the four corners of the earth.

Tanya recently contacted me about the possibility of trading web-links. When I visited her site, I was profoundly moved. Wanting to forge a stronger bond with her work, I invited her to tell you more about her site.

I have spent hours reading selected stories there. Each is profoundly touching. Although some are light-hearted, many are heart-breaking, filled with darkness, despair and fear that most in more privileged parts of the world prefer to avoid dwelling on, lest we feel guilty, helpless or depressed. You can’t read these stories and remain unchanged, even if all you can do is send compassionate thoughts and prayers.

The Life-Memo site is powerful testimony to a belief shared by many that Story is the key to helping people across political and cultural boundaries realize that “what happens to one, happens to all.” As growing numbers become attuned to a united beat within the heart of shared Story, the craziness must end!

I urge you to spend time on Life-Memo.com. Read the stories listed below and keep exploring on your own. Leave comments. Contribute stories yourself. Your heart will be bigger and stronger for doing so.

And now, Tanya’s story:

What led you to start Life-Memo.com?

I was always fascinated by people's life stories. What led them to where they are, what led them to be what they are, how they were as children, what life has brought their way. Peoples' paths are different, but we all share the same feelings, troubles and hopes.

The last trigger was when my both grandmothers reached 80 and wrote their memories, and I discovered their inspiring survival stories which I wasn't aware of all my life. Their stories were the first stories in life-memo.

How long have you had the site up, and how has it grown and evolved over time?

I stared planning Life-Memo in 2007, but the site was up only in 2009.
I did the design, the user interface, and the architecture. I even collected and wrote the first 10 stories myself. The site slowly developed naturally. Today there are 351 public and private stories from 27 countries.

What are your hopes and dreams for Life-Memo?

I hope the site will grow and have more stories from different countries. I hope that the stories will be meaningful and will enrich and open the minds of its readers and bring them closer. And, of course, eventually – world peace?

How many countries are represented by Life-Memo writers?

So far, 27 countries. Two biggest major contributors are the US and Pakistan. The US has 133 stories, I guess because it’s the largest speaking English country. Pakistan – I suspect that some 6th grade school teacher in Pakistan discovered the site and gave his students an assignment to write a story in Life-Memo. So the site has 177 stories by 13 years old Pakistani kids.

Tell us about a couple of amazing stories people have submitted.

There are many courageous and inspiring stories, a few which are so horrible I can't decide if they are true or made up.

• Amazing medical recovery and survival / USA:
  http://www.life-memo.com/read/Ana-Orozco/United-States/117

• Family history- glimpse of old times in America / USA:
  http://www.life-memo.com/read/Bob-Elliott/United-States/39

• Coming of age in Iraq / Iraq
  http://www.life-memo.com/read/Hassan-Selman/Iraq/71

• Why I hate alcohol / Australia
  http://www.life-memo.com/read/Leanne-Bakker/Australia/41

• A survivor of abuse, fighter against clinical depression / USA
  http://www.life-memo.com/read/Jade-May/United-States/349

• Dysfunctional family / Ireland
  http://www.life-memo.com/read/jennie-leigh/Ireland/120
• Don't open the door to strangers / Tunisia
  http://www.life-memo.com/read/kahri-ferid/Tunisia/25
• Losing your mum / UK
  http://www.life-memo.com/read/Michael-Morgan/United-Kingdom/30
• Personal account of the Ugandan massacre / Tanzania
  http://www.life-memo.com/read/Arif-Meghji/Tanzania/285
• Jewish holocaust /Austria
  http://www.life-memo.com/read/Nathan-Preminger/Austria/12

How can readers get involved?

Users can read stories, or write their own. They are invited to enjoy stories and share them in Facebook or Google Plus posts. It's all completely free at http://life-memo.com. Thank you Tanya, from the bottom of my heart, for your vision and efforts on Life-Memo.

Tanya Preminger is a writer, a web developer and an internet entrepreneur. She was born in Moscow and lived in New York City. She currently lives with her partner and six-year-old son in Israel, where she works in internet marketing.

Write now: think of some aspect of your life that would interest people around the world. You might want to share some of your fears, hopes for the future, or simple childhood memories. Maybe you have stories to inspire dreams and hopes of freedom. No preaching – just heartfelt experience and reflection, please. Write the story and post it on Life-Memo!

It Takes a Village to Bring a Story to Life

I never read Hillary Clinton’s book, It Takes a Village, but the title stuck with me, and in recent months I’ve realized how relevant it is to writing, especially life writing.

Last week I shared a story with a writing group and received several ideas for ways to improve it. This morning as I prepared to revise the draft, I had a moment of brilliant clarity, realizing that:

I would never keep writing if I had to do it alone. Yes, the act of transferring words from mind to paper requires a certain degree of isolation, but without feedback from others and the hope of eventual readers, I would be soon lose interest.

I learn from the examples of others. My writing continues to evolve and develop as I read and critique stories written by others. Beyond that, my understanding of life and the human spirit grows and evolves as I read an endless variety of life stories and memoirs, especially in groups.

My best writing results from collaboration. My recent experience polishing The Heart and Craft of Writing Compelling Description dispelled any doubt about this. The keen eyes of numerous writing buddies kept me from embarrassing myself and inspired improvement in the material between those covers. And so it will be with the story I mentioned earlier.

My village makes things happen. Call it a village, call it a tribe. In our new age of indie publishing, writing villagers band together to trumpet the news of new arrivals they help deliver. Villagers write reviews. They host guest posts. They tweet.

Sharing stories build bonds. Whether it’s a long-term group like the Monroeville Library Life Writers, a class lasting a few weeks, or an online forum, people who share stories care about each other. Nothing bridges gaps of different backgrounds, ethnic and national origins, religion, gender and other culturally imposed boundaries faster than sharing stories. Stories move from heart to heart, evoking strong levels of compassion and caring.

Story knows no boundaries. Today stories travel around the globe with something approaching the speed of thought. Yesterday I read heart-grabbing stories written by people living in Iraq, Egypt, Romania,  and England and exchanged emails with writer friends in England, Israel and Australia. Someone in Japan ordered my book. I will never meet these people face-to-face, but we know each other as our hearts touch through shared stories.

I am part of a vibrant, thriving writing village. Many of my fellow villagers are working on book manuscripts. Those books will be stronger and more polished, and they will be read more widely because of the help and input of others in the village. Some write for the sheer joy and challenge of doing so, and to create a legacy of personal and family history for their families. In either case, the village is a safe place to hone skills, unravel personal mysteries, and find cheerleaders to keep our fingers flying.

This village can change the world. As stories build bonds, they feed a growing awareness that “what happens to one, happens to all.” They bring a sense of urgency and personal involvement to every corner of the globe. Just as pendulum clocks standing against a shared wall begin to tick in unison, so hearts bonded by story entrain and unite. Soon, I hope very soon, Story People of the global writing village will collectively cry out, ENOUGH ALREADY! And nightmares of oppression will finally end.

Write now: Let YOUR story be heard. Join a writing group, locally or online – or both (use the gadget in the sidebar to join the free Life Writers’ Forum). Email copies of stories to friends and family. Submit to anthologies or local papers. Start a writing group at your library, church, senior center or other community location. (Send me an email and ask for a free copy of my facilitator guide for starting these groups). However, wherever, let your story be heard!

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.

Fear Is a Story We Tell Ourselves

I knew that if I allowed fear to overtake me, my journey was doomed. Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told. I decided I was safe.
      —Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Coast Trail

The minute I read this stunning line I recognized Truth in every fiber of my being, not related to any specific personal fear, but about fear in general. In a flash I realized it’s not just huge fears, like plane crashes or being attacked on the trail by a hungry bear, that cause distress. We all have daily irritations we choose not to confront because we fear that speaking out will be worse than stuffing our anger. We mutely mutter on, largely unaware of the story underlying our choices – or even that we are making choices.

The opening quotation occurs at the beginning of her solo adventure along the Pacific Coast Trail. Cheryl had plenty to be afraid of: a woman hiking alone in the wilderness is at risk from both two and four-legged predators (she met both). She might get lost (she did). She might run out of food or water (that was close). She might sustain an injury (she did) or get sick. Perhaps her biggest risk of all was the total ignorance and lack of backpacking experience that she finally admitted to herself as she heaved her unmanageable pack onto her back for the first time.

Cheryl faced most of these risks and other staggering obstacles head-on at one time or another, and  her new story worked. It kept her walking all the way from Mojave, California to the Bridge of the Gods on the Columbia River.

We can follow her example and use the power of new stories to alter or transform the direction of our lives. For stories with extra punch, explore your fears on the page, even the little ones, and write your new stories as insights emerge.

Why write?

Renowned psychology professor James Pennebaker postulates that a key factor to making expressive writing such a powerfully healing tool is that as people write about a troubling event over a period of days, chaotic thoughts begin coalescing into structured, meaningful stories. Writers who also begin exploring alternate points of view derive the most potent benefits.

Taking this one step further, an obvious conclusion is that those who explore alternate points of view create a new story to explain the past and guide future perceptions and choices.

Cheryl told herself one small story to enable herself to begin moving along the trail. By the end of her journey, she had told herself a new story about her entire life and justify the subtitle of her memoir: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail. I urge you to pick up a copy of this best-selling book and use her experience as a guideline for a presumably less physically rigorous adventure in restorying your life.

Write now: about a recurring circumstance in your life, preferably something you’d like to change. As you write, pay close attention to thoughts that run through your mind, especially those that sound like messages. These connect you with your underlying “story.” Get that story on the page, then write a few alternative scenarios. Explore options you might consider impossible. You may be surprised at the new story options that pop out of nowhere onto your page. Leave a comment or send me an email about your success with this exercise.

Photo credit: Sharon Lippincott

Where’s the Story?

Over a million people visit the Getty Center and Villa in Los Angeles each year. I’m one of them. I’ve been to the Center a couple of times and last week I visited the Villa. Like other visitors, I’m blown away by the splendor of both places. The architecture is magnificent and objects and art are displayed with great care and respect.
Nevertheless, I have the sense there, as in other museums, that something is missing. As I circled the last roomful of antiquities in the Villa, I had a sudden flash of insight into what that missing element might be. My friend and I had just confessed that the prolonged standing and ambling on hard floors has become increasingly difficult over the years. Our backs were screaming for a break.
“It’s all blurring together at this point,” she said. I concurred. I also realized that it had been blurring together all along for me.
“These objects were never intended to be viewed this way,” I blurted. “They lack context in here. They are as dead as the mummy in the other room.” I glanced at a display of household utensils and my eyes fell on objects that looked like small sauté pans with ridges in the bottom.
“I find it mildly interesting that the Roman glitteratti used things like this to wash their hands at meals, but still …” I paused briefly as a thought took form. “There’s no story here!” I blurted.
Her eyes widened in sudden recognition of this obvious fact.
“These objects were never intended to be viewed this way. They were made for a purpose, and when we look at them one after another, apart from their context, they barely hint at the dramas they were involved in. I want to know who dipped her fingers into that bowl. I want to know what she was doing at the banquet, what she ate, who she talked to about what, what she wore, how many outfits she had to select from … I want to know about the servant or slave who brought that bowl to the guest and what his or her life was like. I want to know about the life of the people represented by those statues, and what others thought of the statues,” I added, pointing to the room we’d just left. 
Some of these objects fire up my imagination with hints of story, but it’s all based on modern accounts by historians making guesses little more educated than mine. Other objects hint at creative stories of design and implementation. I fill in a few blanks with imaging's of my own, but they raise more questions than they answer.
Perhaps we’re becoming jaded, my friend and I concurred. Perhaps we’ve lived too long in an era of full disclosure and developed an over-reliance on realistic depictions in any media.
As I left, I realized yet again that my mind had been craving story to add relevance to what I saw, to compare it to what I know and store it away. When the “real” story isn’t available, I speculate and fill in the blanks with fabricated context and story – or I move on and ignore the object.
I also realized that there’s nothing inherently wrong with this. Those objects did stimulate my imagination. I could weave some of those details into stories of my own making. But that’s not nearly as satisfying as knowing the “real” story, and that’s what I insist on in reading material. If a story has large holes, if it’s obviously leaving out key details and context, I’m unlikely to finish reading – unless the story is about a relative and I know enough context to fill in the blanks. That won’t be the case if too much time has passed.
Write now: pluck a couple of memory fragments of objects from your mental storeroom. Find pictures of them if you can, otherwise describe them clearly. Then do some freewriting about the stories those objects fit into. Tell how they were used, what purpose they served. Then go beyond that and work one into a scene showing them in use. Include your thoughts about them, even if you only mindlessly picked them up. These details will breathe life into your stories and help later generations understand life as we lived it. You’ll be creating a living museum of dead objects.

The Easter Bunny Discovered

For better or worse, holidays are gold mines of memory material deserving a place in your life story. They are uniquely personal, with no two years quite the same, and universal, with  family, community and national traditions. Some people look forward to them, others dread them. Still others ignore them.

Easter is a good example. When I was young, it meant a new dress for church, dying and hiding eggs, and eating lots of candy. Since we didn’t live within easy reach of any relatives, we seldom spent it with extended family. It was primarily a Sunday morning event marked by sermons filled with impassioned reminders of suffering and transcendence.

Best of all, even now, it signals the time when the world is waking from winter’s slumber. Weather is warming, spring flowers blooming, and trees becoming green. It’s a season of hope, joy and rebirth, whatever one’s spiritual tradition.

Any of these aspects makes good story content. One of the first stories I wrote after discovering the joys of lifestory writing is The Easter Bunny Discovered. That Easter was a watershed moment in my young life, and the story offered a chance to add deft background strokes about my life in general at that point.

I’ll admit that I did not recognize the full import of that story when I wrote it. At that point I simply thought of it as a fun memory. Soon after writing it, I discovered the free member sites available on ThirdAge.com and posted eight of my favorite stories there. ThirdAge long since discontinued that service, but the stories live on in a new home on my own site. You can read my Easter Bunny story and others there. I hope they’ll inspire you to story your own holiday memories and significant discoveries for posterity, then share them with others.

Write now: write a holiday story of your own. Write a series of holiday stories, perhaps one for each holiday you observe.

Stories, Stories, Everywhere

One passage near the end of Stephanie Pearl-McFee’s memoir, Yarn Harlot: The Secret Life of a Knitter, struck me as a poignant reminder that stories are in the very air we breathe. In this scene Stephanie and a friend are dividing up the yarn stash of a friend whose rheumatoid arthritis has made it impossible to continue knitting. Story itself  becomes an essential element:

… Lene tells us the story of each yarn as we take it, and slowly, we start to feel better. For the moment we are soothed, lost in the tale each yarn has to tell us.

We pay attention to Lene’s wishes. That blue mohair, the one the color of baby eyes, it was supposed to be a shawl for Lene’s friend Michelle. I take that one. I lay it in the bin and make a mental note: Shawl for Michelle. Ken gets the discounted Aran-weight tweed. Lene had planned an intricately cabled pullover for herself with that yarn. I watch Ken; he’s making the same note-to-self, recording carefully what Lene’s intentions were. The chocolate milk alpaca (a scarf for Lene’s mother, Bea) goes into my bin … .

Stephanie doesn’t mention writing these stories at the time, but telling them soothed Lene, and hearing them soothed the friends. Writing about it in the memoir surely soothed Stephanie again and surely most readers are moved by the touching account. She returns to the subject several pages later when she reports that she did, in fact, knit many items Lene had been unable to complete, and that each time she knit a gift from yarn she received from Lene, the gift tag said, “From Lene.”

This section was a tender counterpoint to most of the book, which was rollickingly funny and laced with evocative sensory imagery. I have dubbed Stephanie Pearl-McFee the “Erma Bombeck of the Knitting World,” and even though I am only a very occasional knitter, I look forward to reading her newly released book, All Wound Up: The Yarn Harlot Writes for a Spin

In a previous post I told about a friend’s tea pot collection and the advice I gave her on how to write the stories they held. Not long ago I saw her again and asked if she’d done any writing.

“Yes. I work on it every now and then, and it’s great fun. I make an extra copy of each and stick it in the pot to keep them together. That way whoever gets the pot next – not soon, I hope! – will know its story, adding value to the pots. I’ve taken pictures of each to put in the computer files. It makes quite an album. Stop by sometime and I’ll show it to you.”

Whether you need a writing prompt for practicing description skills or want to record the stories of your treasured possessions, you too can be soothed with memories as you write the stories of your stuff, and your family will appreciate having them later. You may find it useful to have those details at hand if you later write a more comprehensive memoir.

Write now: Look around the room where you sit. Find some object that’s meaningful to you and jot down a paragraph or few of memories about it. When and how did you get it? What has it meant to you? How have you used it? What memories does it hold? You might want to take a picture to put with the story and make it part of your legacy of family history.

Image credit: Katherine