Points to Ponder Before Tarnishing Memories

Tarnishing the memory of someone held dear by friends, family or others is not a step to take lightly, but it’s a risk some of us must take if we dare to share the truth of our differing personal perspective on that person. You may have heard the widespread encouragement “Be brave. Be bold. It’s your story, you have the right to tell it!” Telling by writing is good. And, it’s prudent to consider all aspects of that decision before sharing or publishing what you write.

Sometimes that truth is known, and nothing you write will be a surprise. In my family it’s no secret that my maternal grandmother had both favorites and those she scorned. I was one of the favorites. My cousins, siblings, and I and have discussed that divide. I acknowledge her ugly treatment of the scorned one and though I admit to fond feelings for her, I do not eulogize her for the affection she showed me.

All too often hurt and resentment remain secret. One person I know, I’ll call her Clarissa, was so subtly abused by a former spouse that nobody noticed. She was unaware herself until the marriage ended. Eventually she recognized the problems for what they were. She’s writing about it, but has no plans to show her stories to family members.

“Don’t you think your son would benefit from knowing?”

“No. He adores his father. He would not understand and it would not be helpful.”

That woman is wise, and as we talked, several points about disclosure arose. This is not a new topic in memoir circles, but you may not have thought of all these angles.

Disclosing negative reports of your experience messes with other people’s feelings and memories of the subject of your disclosure and also of you. They may not always welcome that intrusion. They may react in one or more of these predictable and widely discussed ways. They may

• Argue with you. Many will feel inclined to protect the person they hold dear and  you seem to smear.
• Get angry. They may be furious that you took potshots at a hero.
• Not believe you.
• Spread deeply hurtful stories about you.
• Avoid or disown you. You may no longer be welcome at the Thanksgiving dinner table.
• Consider you unfair. Especially if the subject of your disclosures is dead, that person will not be in a position to defend him or herself. If alive, ugly arguments can ensue.
• You may incite a family feud. 

Ponder the guidelines below as you consider whether to share even a single controversial story with a single person involved:

1. Am I writing from revenge? In a blog post, writing guru Jane Friedman cites advice from Marion Roach Smith’s highly recommended book, The Memoir Project: A Thoroughly Non-Standardized Text for Writing & Life:

Never write a story because you want to extract revenge or betray someone.

Read the rest of the post or Smith’s book to learn why. Linda Joy Myers, founder and president of The National Association of Memoir Writers, is another well-known apostle of this creed, emphasizing it often in blog posts, public teleseminars, her book, The Power of Memoir, and other arenas.

2. How will these people (this person) benefit from knowing what happened to me? The answer may be, they won’t. Especially if you write from revenge. But let’s expand on possibilities from Clarissa’s situation. Perhaps her son could learn something that would help him improve his marriage.

3. Are they likely to understand? If the son does adore his father, he’s more likely to defend his dad than look into his own behavior. Short of directly pointing out flaws in the way her son treats his wife, he’s unlikely to get the message. If she does point them out, anger and avoidance may kick in, further closing his mind.

4. Is my disclosure important to set family history straight? Connie faced major controversy when she decided to include ninety-year-old newspaper coverage of the trial of an uncle who was convicted of murdering his wife in a family history she wrote. “That’s ancient history. Why dig it up again now?” Connie did have a reason: to show current and future generations that they come from a tough line of survivors of many family tragedies who thrived despite it all. Most family members applauded her efforts.

5. Is sharing this story likely to be a satisfying experience? If you have well-founded hope of being heard and acknowledged with empathy and compassion, or of inciting positive change in some way, maybe so.  If you foresee significant risk of inciting negative reactions, you could find the situation boomeranged, and that you’ve made things worse. 

Always keep in mind that written words hold even more power than spoken ones. Once read, they can never be erased. If you do decide to disclose, do your best to show all relevant perspectives. This open-minded approach tends to be contagious.

Bottom line: Lacking a compelling reason to disclose despair, the greatest kindness you can extend to others may be to leave memories intact. Work through your feelings and get the feedback you need by journaling, talking to friends, sharing with trust writing groups, or seeking therapy, but beware of messing with family members’ minds.

Seven Secrets about Writing

Ian Mathie, my Scottish/African writing buddy, recently tagged me on Facebook to share seven secrets about writing. I accept this challenge as great sport, and following Janet Givens’ example in her response to Ian, I’m  posting my reply here as the path to Facebook.

Secret #1: Writing is fun!
That is, it’s fun if you write about happy memories and ideas and send your inner critic to her room. Write with color. Write outside your usual boundaries. Write with attitude and guts. More guidelines here.

Secret #2: Writing can be painful.
Dark memories can be searing to write about when they cause you to relive past pain. You may wonder why anyone subjects themselves to this torture. They do it because …

Secret #3: Writing can be healing.
The simple process of dumping that cauldron of trauma onto the page lets you see things in new light and from new perspectives. Memory fragments coalesce into coherent story. Making sense of chaos settles your mind and paves the way for healing your heart. More about this here and here.

Secret #4: Writing builds bonds
in so many ways. Sharing stories around campfires built strong tribal bonds in ancient times. Today our campfire may be blogs and Facebook or email, but the well-written tale still builds bonds of friendship and support. Sharing your lifestory with friends and family builds bonds between generations. Participating in a writing group or class builds bonds of understanding and empathy among members. The more you share, the easier it gets and the more you want to continue.

Secret #5: Writing great imagery adds color and spice to your world.
"His voice is low and soft, a piece of silk you might keep in a drawer and pull out only on rare occasions, just to feel it between your fingers. She reaches into space, and a cool bird-boned hand takes hers."

When I read that rich imagery in Anthony Doerr’s novel All the Light We Cannot See, I quivered with delight. Doerr inspires me to stretch even further to find new ways to express what I experience and imagine. My experience of my world becomes a bit larger. My creativity is enhanced by his, and will hopefully inspire others in turn.

Secret #6: Writing is 90% editing.
It doesn’t have to be. Spontaneous outpourings serve a purpose, but even text messages might be more effective with another few seconds of thought. Witness the fun on DamnYouAutoCorrect.com. Writing like Anthony Doerr’s cited above takes years of practice and perceptual growth as well as hundreds of hours of editing. I find the time I spend editing and imagining new ways of expressing my thoughts a source of deep pleasure. 

Secret #7: Writing doesn’t always involve moving your fingers.
I practice writing much of the time. I search for metaphors for sunset. I look for imagery to describe the dinner table daffodil. I consider what I really want to say in a blog post while I’m raking leaves. Some of my best writing comes to me while I’m in the shower or driving down the road.

Write now: Take up this challenge yourself and jot down seven of your own discoveries or secrets about writing. Post one or more in a comment.

Merging Life with Fiction

Today we have another international visitor, and a topic with an unusual twist. Mary Hamer explains how writing a historical novel, Kipling & Trix, gave her the opportunity to creatively showcase some personal experience in a setting that may be a more effective than memoir. Read on to learn how this is relevant for memoir writers.

It’s a challenge, writing memoir, to make all the other characters interesting, not just darling moi. One that’s especially hard when we’re writing about experience that’s been difficult or painful. How to give a rounded account, how to keep a balance? Avoid presenting ourselves as the sad victim or proud hero? As readers we all know what a turn-off that can be. And yet we want, we need to write into those painful experiences we’ve had to overcome. They’ve helped to make us who we are.

And they’re powerful: young film-makers in LA used to be told to think of the worst thing that had ever happened to them: and then find a metaphor for it, make a film about that. I’ve got a tip rather like that for memoirists. An exercise you might find helpful. It comes out of my experience of writing Kipling & Trix, my novel about the writer, Rudyard Kipling and his sister, Trix. When I realised that I too had been through an early experience that marked them, I felt I had what it took to tell their story.

Let me explain.

When these two were small—he was just coming up to six and she was three—their parents left them with strangers and went back to India. They meant it all for the best: India’s climate and fevers were dangerous for European children. All the British sent theirs back, if they possibly could. What was unusual in the case of Ruddy and Trix, though, was the treatment they got from the foster-mother their parents left them with.

This woman introduced terror into their lives. When she threatened them, vulnerable as they were, with Hell and the eternal flames in which they would be punished, how could they not be overwhelmed? They’d never heard of Hell, or heaven, for that matter. I’m sure the woman believed, like their parents, that she was acting in the children’s best interests, though she can’t have had much of an instinct for childcare or much understanding of her own desire for power and control.

We have testimony concerning the damage this caused. At the age of seventy, writing his own memoir, Something of Myself, Rudyard Kipling was bitter about the fear and confusion planted in him at that time. His sister, Trix, never recognised her own confusion. Worse, she lived it and acted it out. You don’t have to be a therapist to make a connection between the impact of those early experiences on a developing three-year-old brain and the string of later breakdowns that Trix suffered.

As a child, I too had shared a similar experience, though it was decades before I understood how it had affected me. Then, at a time when I’d been working on a book about trauma, so knew enough to take them seriously, I had a flashback. Until then the memory of my Irish mother teaching me about Hell when I was small had always been quite neutral. Without warning, the emotion which had been missing from that memory returned and I found myself dizzy with shock, disoriented, lost. I was back in the body and mind of my five-year-old self.

From that moment, I knew the power of such teaching to undermine. Imagine then how I sat up, reading Kipling’s angry memory of being subjected to the same experience! I’d been studying his life, wanting to write about him but not sure whether I could find anything new to say. There are several excellent biographies. I certainly hadn’t fancied adding to them—all those footnotes! Now I had a new and original angle. One that made sense of Kipling’s lifelong battle with depression and his compulsion to write, to imagine his way out of pain. I decided to write his life in the form of fiction so I could position readers to enter his inner world and understand him from the inside.

I found his sister’s experience just as compelling. Trying to repair ourselves by writing seems to be instinctive. Like her brother, Trix wanted to write. She did succeed in publishing two novels with a number of stories and poems. But over time she lost confidence in her own voice. As a woman writer it was all too easy for me to identify with Trix. Inventing scenes of exhilaration and passages of writer’s block came readily! But I do believe that the story I’ve told about Trix in my novel, tracing her long struggle, is more powerful, more just to the trouble she caused and above all more interesting than any doleful account of my own fight to keep writing.

So where’s the tip for you memoirists out there? Look around. See whether there’s someone else’s story that resonates with your bad stuff. Try telling their story, instead of your own. You could make it an exercise: just a scene, a passage of dialogue. Make it really embodied, concrete, not just inside heads. You may discover fresh perspectives. Better still, you might decide that their story is something you could tell really well, using what you know from your own experience. Why not run with that?

Mary Hamer was born in Birmingham, UK. She has published four books of non-fiction, having spent years teaching in the university. She is married, with grownup children and seven grandchildren. Kipling and Trix is her first novel, and it received the Virgina Prize for Fiction in 2012. Mary’s website: http://mary-hamer.com/

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.

Above All, Cause No Harm

“You can’t write the truth of someone without mentioning their warts and wrinkles as well as their angelic smile. And how can  you write about the warts and wrinkles without causing them distress?”

This question comes up in one form or another in every memoir and lifestory class I teach. Everyone hopes for stone tablet truth to guide them, but alas, there are no hard and fast rules. But take hope and use these tips to guide your decisions:

1) Write privately first.

It’s therapeutic to get angry feelings on the page, out in the open where you can see them. Sometimes simply writing the reasons for your rage focuses it, and the reasons may look ridiculous or blown out of proportion. Perhaps that’s enough and you can burn, shred or delete the words and all will be well.

If it isn’t well, think care-fully before sharing your thoughts lest you cause greater damage to self or others, or paint yourself into an unforeseen corner or difficult situation. I speak here of rage, but other emotions can be equally volatile. You can’t always know how others will hear or understand.

2) Go to the balcony.

The idea in this concept borrowed from negotiation texts is to rise above the situation and consider the points of view of all concerned in any conflict, misunderstanding, or emotional events. There is always another side to any story. Simply making the effort to look at other points of view may change the way you see things. 

3) Write from compassion rather than revenge.

Nobody wants to read whining stories, and those simply point fingers and write from a victim’s point of view are likely to be set aside rather soon. You may not understand why a person committed an evil or hurtful act, but whether it’s an “external” event such as failure to repay a loan, or an “internal” one like betrayal of trust, physical or emotional abuse, or other forms of pain, simply state what happened and how it affected you. Skip the name calling and judging. That will not gain you sympathy or credibility with readers, nor will it improve your state of mind and mental health. Give them the benefit of the doubt if you can and express empathy.

4) Get guidance from others.

Ask a trusted friend or writing group if your story is too judgmental or likely to cause pain to someone you care about – or worse yet, provoke legal complications. Ultimately it has to be your decision, but these advisers can help you tone things down or make decisions about certain story elements you may do well to omit.

5) Ask permission.

Many memoir writers mention somewhere in their books that they showed their draft to parents or others who might be offended or hurt by the material. They encountered surprisingly few objections. Requests for changes were often about things the author never would have expected.

However, few realize that their consent is no guarantee that no feelings will be hurt. For a variety of reasons, people may agree to allow you to publish something that actually is hurtful. To minimize this possibility, go back up the list to the point about compassion. Hopefully if your relationship is healthy enough that you were able to ask, you have come to the point of understanding and forgiveness, and expressing that that will surely blunt the pain for the offenders as well as gaining you points with readers.

6) Change names and details.

People who know you will probably know who you are writing about, but far fewer than if you use real names.

7) Write fiction.

You may have heard the adage, “All stories are true, some stories happened.” Some truth is best and most safely expressed in fiction.

Write now: write a personal essay on your feelings about showing other people’s warts and wrinkles in published stories. You may have someone specific in mind, or you may write more generally about people you once knew who are unlikely to ever read your story, but if they learned about it could be embarrassed.

Photo credit: Quinn Dombrowsky

A Picture Requires a Thousand Words

You know the old saying, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” That may be true if you already know what the picture is about. Otherwise a picture is a prompt for you to write a story, if only a fleeting one, in your mind.

Consider the picture above. Two things are obvious: A woman wearing a fancy white dress and gloves is holding a lacy white parasol. Anything beyond that is pure conjecture. Right now I invite you to join an experiment. Skip down to the comment section and spend a minute or two writing a mini-story about what you see in this picture. Write your own before you check to see what others have written. Check back later to keep track.

I guarantee that no two readers will write the same story. With a dozen responses, three or four may be similar, but even those will differ in detail. I’ve used this exercise with various pictures countless times in classes, workshops, and writing groups, and I never cease to be amazed at the variety of stories that pour out, especially when the pictures are more complex.

Nobody is surprised when different stories emerge from the same picture. You almost expect that, and after you hear the additional stories, you can see them too. But do you realize that the same thing happens with stories? Each reader reads a slightly different story, colored by personal experience. If it matters to you that readers clearly understand your point of view, it’s important to explain details with the most vivid description you can muster.

Including action and emotion in those descriptions builds strong connections with readers. Although my understanding of them is foggy, our brains have mirror neurons that cause us to have a sense of following along and doing or feeling what we observe others do or feel.

Observe feelings? Even when we don’t articulate feelings verbally, they tend to leak out the edges with subliminal hints others pick up. Become a sleuth and develop a writing vocabulary to describe how bodies and faces betray emotions and use these in your writing to elicit empathy from readers. These descriptions are especially valuable in portraying emotion in others when you are writing lifestory or memoir, because when you write in first person, you can’t report what’s going on in someone else’s mind – you can only write what you observe or they tell you.

Paint your word picture with vivid, finely tuned details and description, then pair it with a graphic. The combination of story plus graphic will double the value of each.

Write now: write a story in a comment about the woman in the picture. Include details of what she’s thinking, how she’s feeling, what she's about to do, and anything else you can think of. Then find a picture of some event or place from your past and write a story about that, including more details from your memory. Don’t skimp on feelings, reflections and action. Whether or not it activates mirror neurons, that’s what draws readers in.