Connecting Dots to Find Story

My cousins and I play an ongoing game of Connect the Dots as we try to piece together a fuller picture of our forebears’ lives. What we are learning opens choices about how to shape stories we leave behind.

The most intriguing set of dots right now involves my great-grandmother, Matilda Evelyn Grammer, who married Robert Pinckney Roberts, son of Governor Oran Roberts of Texas when she was not quite 16 and he was 37. When she was widowed at 26, she was responsible for two nearly-grown step-children and four of her own, ranging from one to ten years old. Two years later, she married Paul Arthur Preuit, the (great)grandfather my cousins and I share. We know quite a bit about the Preuit part of her life, but her life with Roberts Roberts is largely a blank. We’re working on that.

Last year a cousin wanted to know if I could tell her anything about the possibility her mother (my aunt) lived for a short time with my father’s family – before my parents were married. That opened a  new package of dots about both our families and the enduring friendship between these aunts. 

Why does this matter? Why do we play Connect the Dots?

Our brains are wired to crave story, drilling down to details and closure. What is closure? Understanding WHY things happened and WHAT they mean. To some extent, we look to the past to explain how things are now, and imagine how they might be as we move forward. We explore examples of ancestors to make sense of ourselves and how we can handle the curves life may throw.

As my cousins and I continue to dig, we’ll find more information about where people lived and maybe glimpses of what they did, but for the most part, we’ll have to make up story to connect those dots. We’ll know, for example, that in 1888, Texas women did not have air-conditioned houses and we’ll speculate about what life must have been like as they toiled in gardens and doing laundry in the blazing Texas summers in long sleeves and long skirts. We’ll have to wonder if mid-wives helped deliver Grandmother Tilly’s children, or perhaps a doctor drove up in his buggy just in time.

We’ll conclude that we come from a line of tough women who knew how to survive. We’ll never know how Grandmother Tilly felt about the ups and downs of her life. What were her regrets? Did she wonder what life would have been like “if only”?

Implications for Life Writers

We can document our lives on two levels, detail and meaning. Details give the dots. Our descendants will know what happened when, in general terms. That leaves them to wonder and connect dots themselves, the best they can.

We can do them a favor and connect the dots for them, writing stories rich in reflection and insight. We can show the lessons we learn and what the bumps we roll over mean to us. These rich stories will satisfy our descendants, helping them quickly and easily understand us and our times.

The key to writing these rich stories is to take the time with each story we write to ask ourselves

• Why did this happen?
• What does it mean?
• What did I learn?

Include the answers to these questions in your story and intrigue readers of any time and generation. They’ll thank you for making the effort.

If you don’t have time or inclination to dig so deeply, fret not. Keep writing anyway. Remember,

Anything you write is better than writing nothing.

At the very least, you’ll leave them dots to connect if they wish.

Shifting Rhythms

It’s too soon to draft a  memoir about our move, but it’s not too soon to begin reflecting on my sense of things. As I sat in a glorious state of almost forgotten peace and relaxation earlier today, I realized that (speaking only for myself) we’ve entered a new phase, and not a minute too soon.

That corner was actually turned the day we were told that the photographer who would make our house look amazing on the web needed to arrive three days early. Before that I’d been in a total panicked frenzy, wondering how on earth we would ever possibly meet our self-imposed deadline for listing. But right on schedule, birds sang, bells rang, and angels descended. Only one room remained out of bounds for the photographer.

Tension drained.

Then, a few hours before we were scheduled to fly to Austin to find a house, that last room clicked into alignment, ready for showing. We flew off to Austin a few hours later. For three days we looked, well-prepared with seven months of web research. We did find a home, holding our breath until a previous negotiation fell through at exactly the right time. We never needed our backup choices.

 
Once that contract was signed, life became large, calm and amazing. Pondering the shift, I noticed some similarity to a symphony. Each movement has a different rhythm and tone. So it has been with us. Our transition symphony seems to have :

Deciding to do it. This was the beginning. We’ve talked for years about relocating. Our three children are widely scattered. We can only be near one. Which one? Or maybe suit ourselves and go somewhere else? We lived in a state of paralysis by analysis for a few years. Slowly, a decision emerged from the fog.

Public announcement. We “came out” in Austin last winter at a huge party at our daughter's home. Through the course of the evening, “We’re thinking about moving here” morphed into “We’re planning to move here.” We called a real estate agent and began our search.

Big shift!

Delaying phase. We both had commitments in Pittsburgh that had to be completed. Although listing around the first of April would have been ideal, it did not work out that way. I stayed mellow and loose through this time. 

Big shift!

Pressure phase. When not much had happened around the first of May, I got nervous. I got tense, fretful, even bitchy. I lived in a state of chronic fear and anxiety, dreading the thought of yet another winter here, and even more, the loss of time to dig in down there. As much as I’ve loved the time we’ve spent here and all our friends, it’s time to go! My clock is ticking louder every day. Productive years could possibly be counted on fingers. No time to waste! Committing to a listing date amplified that pressure several fold. Then, Ta Dah! We were done.

Big shift.

Transition. From the time that final room was vacuumed through the time when we signed our offer, was an intense transition, packed into a very few days. As I said earlier, signing the contract was an enormous relief. Time to kick back for a day or two. Intense or not, it was different from the previous phase.

Packing up. That’s where we are right now. Things may not stay mellow. Pressure is sure to increase.

Projected big shift.

Moving. Driving two cars from here to there and getting all the loose ends in place at our new house is bound to be intense.

Projected big shift.

Settling in. I’m hoping that after the first few days,  settling in will be a relaxed affair. No need to rush. This will be the end of this story.

I can’t tell the story yet, but I can see the plot. I see tension arcs within each of these phases, or movements. I think I see the thread holding it all together, but that’s another post for another day.

Write now: Think of a period of time when you went through a transition. Jot down some thoughts about turning points or Big Shifts as the transition evolved. Can you map out a story along that path? It may be a large story or a shorter one. Give it a try.

Tips for Dealing with Details

Several pages into a highly recommended memoir, a factual error popped my eyeballs nearly out of my head. Can you find the mistake?

In September 1963, the Cuban and Russian governments placed
          nuclear bombs in Cuba.
In October 1963, the Cuban Missile Crisis ended….
In November 1963, John F. Kennedy was assassinated.
In December 1963, I was born….

The Cuban Crisis was in 1962! Both that event and the JFK assassination are indelibly burned into my memory. The author can’t remember, I thought, but how could something this obvious slip by the editing involved in a traditionally published book? I checked Wikipedia to be absolutely sure, then kept reading. Along the way, I found half a dozen typos, and by the time I finished, I’d found several loose ends in the story along with an apparent contradiction.

But still, I do appreciate the book and its many strengths. The story is powerful and the author’s voice superb. I understand the book’s appeal. The mess saddens me on the author’s behalf.

In one sense I felt vindicated that such casual editing was released by an established publisher when self-published authors are widely slammed for flooding the market with slop. But the point is to write your personal best, not to meet standards.

Whether you are writing a few stories for family or a major opus for the world, these guidelines will help you smooth wrinkles in your stories.

Check your facts. Always validate times, dates or places, if you’re sure you know. Those erroneous dates for the Cuban crisis may be accepted as factual reality by younger readers. Your error about a birthplace or date could throw genealogists into a tizzy years down the road.

Look for loose ends. They may be subtle. For example, this author doesn’t mention how she generated income, but despite a divorce, she spent money like it grows on trees. She says she remarried. To the man she had the amazing relationship with?

Look for conflicts. She reports reflections of someone with her son’s name who met a celebrity she was about to meet. It makes no sense that her young son would have met this person before she did, or that he would relate such a mature impression. Ebooks make searching easy. No other person with that name was mentioned at any other time. Confusing!

Look for missing information. She cites results of certain studies with assurance. The topic is new to me and I’d like to read more. I don’t need footnotes, but I’d love to see an appendix with references and suggested reading.

Rely on beta readers. You aren’t likely to notice loose ends or missing information, because you fill in the blanks from memory as you read. Even family members may gloss over omissions like these. Discerning readers who aren’t privy to the backstory will pick them up in a flash.

Don’t rely too heavily on professional editors. I don’t know what shape this manuscript was in when it arrived on the editor’s desk. Perhaps she did as much as she was able in the time allotted to meet deadline or budget. Maybe loose ends fly under her radar. If you are paying for editing, remember that more time means more money, so have things in the best shape you can before you seek help. Professional or not, nobody is perfect, and any given reader will fail to notice something. Have two or three more people read for further edits and errors after the formal edit is done.

Be gentle with yourself. Readers love this book in spite of its flaws. Write great stories, give them your best shot, and then chill. If you pour your heart into them, readers view mistakes with compassion – if they notice them at all. Many won’t.

Write now: if you don’t already have a writing group or a list of trusted beta readers, find or start a group and begin a search among friends, local or online, who can read pre-release versions and give you reliable feedback.

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.