How to Write About a Change of Perspective

The meme you see above has prompted millions of laughs, but can you imagine a more life-changing moment than a priest, monk or nun hearing this revelation after decades of devotion?

Misperceptions like this do happen, and they can shape lives. This meme came to mind recently when a woman told me how she spent her child and early adulthood terrified of burning in hell. She knew in the core of her being that ministers thundered messages of hellfire and brimstone “all the time.”

Eventually she discovered that her particular church believed that yes, the wicked did perish in “The lake of fire,” but they did not burn forever. The perishing was mercifully quick and permanent. The wicked were punished only by being deprived  of the multitude of blessings the righteous are due to receive. She did hear about a lake of fire. That was true. But the burning forever part must have leaked in from outside, according to her informant. “I assure you, that was never part of our teaching.”

By the time she heard this, she had moved away from that church. But learning this still angered her: I didn’t have to spend all those years so scared!

Now she’s wondering how to write about this: “I really did believe that. That is how I heard it. If I was wrong, and I only have that one person’s explanation to go on, I still totally believed it. But now things have changed. And I’d definitely never go back to that church. How do I tell this story?”

“That was your truth back then, and nothing has changed that,” I said. “Not even finding out you were, or might have been, wrong.” My advice to her was simple and four-pronged.

1) Write about what life was like back then. Explain what you heard and how that affected you.

2) Write about the whiplash you experienced when you heard the other point of view. Who told  you? How did you know to believe it? How did that affect you? How did you and do you feel about all this? What has changed?

3) Write with compassion. True, you may feel angry and betrayed. Own that and write it. Then consider the angles. Did any one purposely deceive you? Did you ever ask for help or tell anyone you were scared?

4) Sum it all up. By the time you’ve written through steps one, two and three, you will probably be feeling some closure, if you weren’t already there. Stories demand it, whether they’re still at the stage of self-talk or written down. Readers crave it.

Conflict or tension, especially the internal sort, is the meat of this and any story. Jump into the middle of the mud with both feet and let it all rip. Be brave. Write it real. Polish it to flow smoothly, but leave those emotions in place. They are the lifeblood of your tale. They add the juice and the glue that bonds reader to story and helps them gain their own insight from your message.

Write Where the Juice Is

When I read this advice recently in Vanessa Talbot’s ebook, 101 Ways to Live Extraordinarily, I thought of one of my great-great-grandmothers. Family legend has it that she opened the first brothel in the Yukon. The topic certainly does give us plenty of food for talk.

Is it true? Did she? We don’t actually know. I’ve given it great thought. That she did go there early on with her new husband and son is established fact. Before she married that husband, she divorced the coal miner she married before emigrating from Scotland to Illinois in 1871. For twenty years this spunky woman had run boarding houses for single miners in order to provide food, clothing and shelter for her two children. Her first husband was an abusive bum who spent his money on whiskey.

So she knew how to provide lodging for others. Demand for room and board was high in the Klondike. It makes sense that she would ply the trade she knew to bring in immediate cash while her men were slogging around in the mud in search of the fortune they never found.

Another trade was in high demand up there. It’s established fact that swarms of women went there to engage in “the world’s oldest profession.” They needed a base of operations. What would make more sense than a pragmatic forty-something matron making mattresses available to this trade? Perhaps this experience was one of the factors leading to her conversion to the newly emerging Mormon faith a few years later when she settled in Seattle.

Again, do I know that her running a brothel is fact? No. Do I plan to check it out? Records from the Klondike could show that she did run at least a boarding house. But the lack of records would not prove that she didn’t. So, no. I do not plan to check it out. I cherish this legend and have no wish to shoot it down. This story has been in the family for generations, perhaps shaming some and delighting others. I’m not going to be the one to kill it. Let future generations cherish it along with us. Soon I will pass it on to the older grandchildren.

For our purposes today as we write our own lifestories, you could choose to purposely do something audacious (scandalous may be a bit over the top) specifically for the purpose of writing about it. That’s what Elizabeth Gilbert did for her memoir Eat Love Pray. Thirty years ago I took up skiing for a single season specifically for the purpose of speaking and writing about it. So far I’ve done neither. It’s time to get that experience on the page.

But chances are you’ve already done something adventurous and colorful, showing a sassy attitude at least some of the time. Something brave and gutsy — the sort of story Sonia Marsh features on her Gutsy Living blog. Read some of those stories online, or do it the easy way and order My Gutsy Story, an anthology of top-rated posts. (I must add a disclaimer here that one of my stories is included, but I have no financial interest in the project.)

Going back to the original advice, the definition of scandalous varies from one generation to another, so what seems utterly outrageous today may seem rather tame tomorrow. Even so, disclosures today can affect relationships today, so exercise the usual discretion when it comes to confessions that could rock many boats.

Whether your story is scandalous or merely colorful, be sure to include reflections about your thoughts and feelings during and after the experience. Did you feel fear? Exhilaration? Guilt? Pride? Create vivid scenes with compelling description and strong, active verbs. Make the story as lively as the experience, and claim your spot in history as a colorful and memorable ancestor who stands out in the crowd. Be the one they talk about.

Write now: make a list of ten gutsy, audacious, perhaps even scandalous things you’ve done. Pick one and write the story! Then write another. Give your descendants something to talk about, and perhaps a standard to live up to.

Gutsy Writing–Help Needed

Most people might reflexively answer “Sure!” to the question, “Are you a gutsy person?” then be hard-pressed to come up with an example. Others would simply demur, “Not really. I’m more the quiet type.”

Sonia Marsh, author of the memoir Freeways to Flip-Flops: A Family’s Year of Gutsy Living on a Tropical Island, plans to change all that. Sonia has begun a campaign to help people find their inner gutsiness, and she’s doing that through story. She’s running a monthly writing contest, asking readers to submit their own gutsy stories. Each week she selects one entry to publish in her blog. At the end of each month, readers vote to select the winner of the  month.

I need your help!

Her contest is bearing fruit. My heart went pitter-patter at the thought of writing a gutsy story for this contest, but for the life of me, I could not think of a single one. I pondered for weeks before the cork popped from the bottle. As soon as I sat down to write, another came to mind – then another. I felt I’d reached a new level in a computer game that activated my “Gutsy Goggles.”

The story I submitted, “Grabbing Grannie’s Dishes,” is what I might call “micro-gutsiness.” You can read it here.  After you read it, I shamelessly ask that you vote for Sharon Lippincott as winner of the August contest. Scroll down a couple of screens to find the poll and click on the author of your choice (I hope that’s me!).

Getting in touch with gutsiness

By Sonia’s definition, a “Gutsy Story” centers on a decision you made that either changed you, changed the way you think about something, or made your life take a different direction.  These decisions may be huge  (like her family’s decision to move to Belize, then to move “home” again a year later) or tiny (like my decision to grab the dishes). Each one matters.

Getting in touch with my gutsiness is exciting and empowering. It’s not about public acclaim or crowing, it’s about remembering times I felt strong and able to “face the fear and do it anyway.” Some fears were bigger than others.

Not all gutsy stories have happy endings. Once I learned to “see” my own gutsiness, I saw plenty of times I made gutsy decisions that slammed me into a wall of one sort or another, but even those had hidden value: I learned from them, and often had new gutsy opportunities as a result.

A key to their power

At first it seemed this story would be easy. I wrote it a dozen years ago without realizing its gutsiness. It wasn’t hard to pare the fluff to reduce word count over 33%; that was a great exercise in finding the core story. What was more challenging was complying with the contest requirement that the story include a lesson learned. Without that lesson, the story was merely an amusing anecdote.

Therein lies the power of story – the lesson. It may spring from the author’s experience or some other source. The lesson is the key to the changes Sonia refers to. Finding that lesson in your own stories may take some digging, but it’s well worth the effort. In fact, it’s a gutsy thing to do. You may learn something in the process of finding the lesson, and writing about it may spark change in others.

Stories – gutsy stories – are seeds of change that can have far-reaching effects. Even quiet people have quietly gusty stories. So be brave. Write gutsy!

Write now: read Sonia’s contest guidelines, then begin writing a series of gutsy stories. Select your favorite and send it off to Sonia. Everyone is a winner in her contest, even if you don’t receive the most votes, because finishing a gutsy story is its own reward.