The Very "Ordinary" Memoir

Reminders that the extraordinary appeared one ordinary night are everywhere during Advent.  The season teaches us that something marvelous can and will happen, not just once, but again and again when we least expect it.  In many ways, this is symbolic of the power of memoir.

By writing our story we discover the extraordinary moments that have made what might appear on the surface to be a very ordinary life both special and meaningful. 

Several years ago a woman sat poolside sipping her iced tea.  "Not everyone should write a memoir," she said after I told her I had just written mine.  "There's nothing special about my life.  It's been an ordinary life like most people.  Now her . . ." pointing to another woman we knew lounging near the pool, "she has a story to tell!  Coming to America from Europe when she was just a young woman, learning a new language!  We can't even begin to imagine that!" 

As the woman denigrated her own life experience by comparison, I thought about the truth of French author, Colette's, statement.  "What a wonderful life I've had!  I only wish I'd realized it sooner!"

I suspect many of us have heard something similar to what that woman said to me when we discussed memoir.  Yet the power and the pull of leaving behind our legacy in words is not going away as more people particularly Baby Boomers hop on the memoir train. I am often asked by others how to begin a memoir.  In response, I began offering a two-hour session that helps writers hone in on the moments that make for a dramatic story arc; or at the very least, the story they are longing to tell. 

We review the "timeline" moments; then comes the hard work.  Why that moment?  What made it stand out?  What is its relevance?

If the writer is disciplined and committed, she begins to put together the puzzle.  A picture emerges.  In my first memoir, Again in a Heartbeat, I took the rather ordinary story of what cancer does to a young marriage and learned that I was writing and healing from lost dreams and the death of the man I loved.  In Morning at Wellington Square I tapped into the passion and renewal that comes in middle age when we devote ourselves to creative pursuits.

Writers with the best intentions often begin a memoir yet never finish.  Their thinking is murky and their insight clouded by self-judgment of a derogatory nature or by those like the woman at poolside who sabotage the desire to write memoir.

Notes and journals are tossed into a carton and stuffed in the back of a closet.  "It was no good anyway," the writer sighs.  Sometimes, she is right.  Maybe she was telling the wrong story, not the story hidden under moss that wants to breathe in the light.

A moment from childhood, the birth of a baby, the death of a loved one; these are the memories that illuminate and lead us out of the darkness and, hopefully, into spiritual awakening.  In the Circle we light the candle as a symbol of that illumination; our journey as writers, as seekers of personal truth and as tellers of story take center stage without apology as we shut out the distractions of the outside world.

As Advent teaches, there is much to be said about preparing for the extraordinary.  In light of that expectation and belief that something miraculous is about to happen, our story can't help but unfold.

What about you?  Here in the Circle we would love to hear your thoughts and comments about the power of memoir.

 

An author, editor and former journalist with The Philadelphia Inquirer, Susan leads writing workshops and started the Women’s Writing Circle, a support and critique group for writers in suburban Philadelphia.  She has been a guest lecturer at colleges and universities on journalism and writing for publication. Susan is the author of two memoirs, Again in a Heartbeat, which is about being widowed at a young age, and its sequel, Morning at Wellington Square, a woman’s search for passion and renewal.  Her most recent work appears in Slants of Light, an anthology of short stories.  She is working on her first novel.  Susan lives in Chester Springs, Pennsylvania.

The Writer's Alchemy of Chance

Edda
 

When you are an independent author, connections and community play an integral role in meeting readers, finding new readers and letting the world know your book is out there.  But does a third ingredient play an even more important role? Perhaps, as Edda R. Pitassi explores in this essay, it is the serendipity of  chance; that unanticipated phone call or email that leads to a delightful encounter or journey. This essay is one in an occasional series featuring authors discussing the power, alchemy and joy of writing.

Community and Connections!  I thought about Susan’s blog post, emphasizing that very thing.  Let’s add ‘chance’ to those essentials.

Although one is busy with tasks and obligations, the serendipitous magic and power of community and connections can work their way into your life.  I was reminded of this recently.

 

On an early July afternoon, I happened to see an inviting book cover on the ‘New Books’ shelf at my local library:   Italian Ways: On and Off the Rails from Milan to Palermo.

 

Both the pleasant-sounding title and inviting jacket design suggested a breezy memoir a train aficionado could write (or read) as he or she rambled through panoramic Italian hills and meadows.  I was reminded of my solo Italian vacation long ago, and I thought, Let’s see what a Brit writer named Tim Parks has to say about today’s Italy.

 

Humor and nostalgia conveyed his complicated 30-year love affair with Italy and its people as Parks vividly described the good, the bad and the ugly of Italy’s commuter train rides.  I agreed with the author as he warns unsuspecting travelers:  “Italy is not a country for beginners.”

 

How wonderfully comic of him to communicate petty annoyances and the all-too-human frustrations over the Italian “flare for the absurd!”  How clever to contrast these against Italy’s grand history, beautiful landscapes and world-famous food.

 

His droll vignettes about anxiety-filled excursions in quirky, old-fashioned train compartments had me laughing and reliving my unique journey through celebrated, historic towns and urban centers of northern Italy:  Mantua, Modena, Milan, Ravenna. 

 

I loved the book and decided it would be the subject of my monthly review for Chester County Seniors! Newspaper.  It was published, and I thought nothing more of it.  

Within a few weeks, my husband, Mike, answered a call from a complete stranger.   I had just come home from my part-time job and entered the kitchen when Mike said, “You’re going on the lecture circuit.”

 

I’ve learned not to take my husband seriously when he delivers quips and one-liners.  I placed my handbag on a chair and said, “What are you talking about?”

 

Mike explained that he had just finished a 45-minute phone conversation with Harry, an Italian-American who wanted to know this: “Would Edda be willing to attend the next Sons of Italy Lodge meeting in Malvern and talk to the group about herself, Italy and the book?”

 

I was stunned that someone had gone to the trouble to look up my name and telephone number, call my home, and ask if I would “talk a little” about myself. 

 

 

That night I spoke with Harry.  We agreed I would attend the October 9 meeting of the Malvern Sons of Italy at the local St. Patrick’s Parish Center.  Funny.   Harry didn’t mention the book, the book review, or the book’s author.  After our conversation, I accepted the fact that he found someone of Italian heritage who might be a good choice for that month’s meeting.  With the Columbus Day holiday approaching, it all started to make sense.

 

Mike and I took the opportunity to eat out before the meeting at the Flying Pig Saloon, a small corner-pub eatery I’d always wanted to visit.  We weren’t disappointed, especially when we saw the extensive beer menu.  Another amusing thought:  An Italian-American enjoying a wonderful glass of Belgian ale before going to a parish center named after the patron saint of Ireland, to share some time with a Sons of Italy organization.  America!

 

When we got to the parish hall, 22 people greeted me with warm smiles and firm handshakes.  I caught one of the nametags and noticed the last name of a former friend of ours.  I shook his hand and asked him, “Are you Joe’s dad?”

 

The white-haired 90-year-old smiled and said, “That’s me.  I’m a deacon here at the church.  Harry said somebody special was going to be here tonight, and I didn’t want to miss out.”

 

As I stood at the lectern, I noticed a gentleman who had been a member of the Malvern Borough Council in the late ‘80s when I covered their meetings as a correspondent for the “Neighbors” section of The Philadelphia Inquirer.  I called out, “Hi, Dominic.”  He smiled back.

 

I spoke of my South Philadelphia childhood, my immigrant father’s love of reading the daily and Sunday newspapers, and the reasons why I wanted to turn any writing talent I had to journalism.  I went on to tell them of many nights writing articles after covering township meetings…how I’d deliver them to the local newspaper office at 2 a.m., get to bed at 3, and wake up at 6:30 to dress for my ‘real’job at IBM the next day. 

 

I believe they understood I took writing seriously.

 

Later that night, a man from the audience grabbed my arm. “I worked for IBM too,”  he said. We started talking, and he wanted to know more about the book, Slants of Light…Stories and Poems From The Women’s Writing Circle, that I had brought with me.  I had a short story and a poem in that book, I told him. He was fascinated that 15 women had collaborated and self-published a book. I told him he was remarkable for being 77 years young and still maintaining a 44-year work career with Mass Mutual Insurance Group.

 

Harry seemed happy with the evening’s event.  “You’ll be hearing from me again, Edda,” he said.

What about you? Have you had a chance encounter, phone call or email that set you on an unexpected journey with your writing?

 

 

Edda R. Pitassi has maintained a love/hate relationship with writing since she started seeing her ‘letters to the editor’ in print at age fifteen.  A published journalist with several suburban newspapers, she currently contributes a monthly book review for Chester County Seniors! newspaper.  A former web content writer and proofreader, her employment history includes a 20-year career with IBM. Highlights of her writing life comprise a writing internship in New York City, editing Morning at Wellington Square, and contributing to the Women’s Writing Circle.

Writing Toward Creative Treasure

High hopes accompany writing a memoir or a novel yet enthusiasm often collides with the reality of writing and finishing the book.  What stalls the writer’s best intentions?  At our recent writing workshop focusing on how to unlock the creative treasures within, writers shared in the Circle the many things that block getting beyond even a first draft. 

Not surprisingly life's complexity intruding on solitude and reflection to undertake a creative endeavor is the chief impediment  to finding our creative treasures. We shared our lives as women, the many demands on our time from children and spouses, to careers and chores. 

As Anne Morrow Lindbergh writes in Gift From the Sea:  “I mean to lead a simple life, to choose a simple shell I can carry easily – like a hermit crab.  But I do not.  I find that my frame of life does not foster simplicity. The life I have chosen as wife and mother entrains a whole caravan of complications.  It involves a house, food and shelter, meals, planning, marketing, bills and making ends meet.  It involves health, education, clothes, shopping, laundry, cleaning; it involves friends, my husband’s my children’s, my own and endless arrangements to get together."

As the women in our workshop began expressing themselves, they admitted that the desire to create, to write a story begging to be told never wanes.  It comes down to taking ownership; focusing and committing to organizing our outward lives.  That enables the inward life to be renewed and restored through contemplation, solitude and downtime.

Sometimes, jumpstarting our writing projects is as simple as setting aside time to organize our writing space and decide which rituals foster creativity.

“Maya Angelou checks herself into a hotel room equipped to her odd specifications.  All potential distractions – visual stimuli – removed and the following items added: legal pads and thesaurus, playing cards and a bottle of wine."

Sometimes it means we escape to a coffee shop because writing at home, alone, and without distraction is impossible.  The laundry waits, the bills need to be paid, the toilets cleaned, the house straightened. 

My rituals involve writing in the morning when my mind is sharpest.  Lately, I have had to discipline myself to avoid social media interaction and commit to working on my new book.  Having a project gives me structure and purpose. 

My office is devoted entirely to my writing.  A framed original watercolor presented to me by the Women's Writing Circle collaborators on Slants of Light is displayed on my bookcase, a reminder of both the Sisyphean task of writing as well as the joy of others cheering you on. A window with view of sky and tree grounds me to the larger picture and what lies beyond.

“Ultimately, if the [writing] process is good, the end will be good.  You will get good writing.” Natalie Goldberg.

Hindrances to inspiration take root in fear.  Fear that what we write may not be good enough; that we might be subjected to criticism for what we write because it is too true and honest; fear that we are unworthy to commit the time and the energy to our creative lives. 

The soul-numbing that comes with perfectionism and holding ourselves up to impossible standards promotes both fear and procrastination.

“I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means.  What I want and what I fear.”  Joan Didion

"When we start at the center of ourselves, we discover something worthwhile extending toward the periphery of the circle.  We find again some of the joy in the now, some of the peace in the here, some of the love in me and thee which go to make up the kingdom of heaven on earth." Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Open the heart to possibility. With trust and faith that creative treasures await in the void, we welcome the blank page. 

What about you?  Can you share some of your insights and writing rituals to tap into the creative treasures within?
 

Nicholas Sparks Evoking Emotion

“Love is like the wind, you can’t see it but you can feel it.” ~ A Walk to Remember by Nicholas Sparks.

When I wrote my memoir about falling in love with my husband and his death from cancer at the age of 47, someone told me our story brought tears to their eyes.  It reminded them, they said, of The Notebook, a novel by Nicholas Sparks.  Being compared to him felt like a huge compliment.  Sparks is the master of writing  true love drenched in tragedy and transformation all within a short, well-crafted page turner. So when I got a chance to hear him speak, I took it.

Nicholas Sparks walks onto the stage at a private school here in suburban Philadelphia that provides instruction for students with dyslexia and other learning disorders. (Sparks’ son has Asperger’s.) He is dressed in black blazer and slacks and white shirt looking a little like the guy next door except that since The Notebook was published in 1995 he has sold 90 million books.  Speaking with a slight lisp at times, he jokes that while other authors do readings, he won’t.  He is a bit cocky. “You’ve enjoyed reading my books or why else would you be here?  Why would I think you can’t read and read to you? "  Then on a more personal note: "I’m assuming you want to know about my writing journey so that’s what I’m going to talk about.” 

For the next hour he talks about what led an Olympic track and field star hopeful and business major at University of Notre Dame on a journey that would lead to all 18 novels being adapted for movies or optioned.

“Why not write a book?” his mother suggested.  He was 19, a down period in his life when he realized his dream of going to the Olympics was over.   An admirer of Stephen King he tried writing. “A horror novel!”  his audience at the school finishes for him. At 22 he tried emulating  Agatha Christie.  Mysteries? No luck.  It wasn’t until he had gone through waiting tables, appraising real estate, selling dental equipment, being rejected from law school, that he realized how long it had been since he had chased a dream. That book his mother had once suggested.  What about that? Why not write about family? A corsage and boutonniere left for a couple too sick to attend his wedding got him thinking about youthful impassioned love, the decline into aging and dementia and a couple who were still in love after 60 years. His wife’s grandparents became Noah and Allie  . . . he pauses and the audience of several hundred shouts “The Notebook!”

He randomly picked out names of literary agents. Oddly it was an agent he hadn’t contacted – who had heard about his manuscript and offered to represent him within 48 hours of when he first sent the manuscript which he wrote in six months. (All 24 other agents rejected it.) Two days later she leaves a message to call.  Warner Books has offered  $1 million dollars.  Shortly after that, he gets another message from her.  “Call me."  Another offer . . . turning The Notebook into a movie.  

He laughs and talks about the sound of big rigs roaring along the highway near the pay phone booth where he heard the news from his agent.  "It was surreal." 

"I know you'll want to know this," he says. "Yes, I have a lot of control over casting. " He doesn’t mind that his stories are often changed from how they appear in the books.  “I wrote them, imagined them, you read them and your imagination took you into the story, now let another’s imagination go with the story,” he says of Hollywood.

                                                                     
Sparks followed The Notebook with Message in a Bottle about a widower who grieves his wife.   Sparks’ father had “dressed in black for seven years" after his wife died, writing her messages which he placed in glass bottles. (Sparks’ mother died instantly from a cerebral hemorrhage after her horse reared and her head hit a rock.) Just after his father joyfully announced he is engaged to be married, Nicholas gets a call.  His father fell asleep at the wheel and is dead.    Someone in the audience asks how he deals with trauma. “You move on.  What else can you do?  Life is a journey," he says.

Readers, Sparks grins, were beginning to look at him with "sad, down turned" faces.   His third book, A Walk to Remember, was based on the true story of his little sister who would tragically die of cancer, not before the man she loved got down on his knee and proposed knowing they would never have a life together. Sparks, along with his brother Micah, is the sole survivor of his family.  He wrote a memoir with Micah, Three Weeks With My Brother. “It’s a story of tragedy and joy, hope and support,” Sparks writes in the introduction.

Family and friends continue to sow seeds for his stories set in small coastal towns in North Carolina where he lives.  The ill-fated couple in Nights in Rodanthe  (my personal favorite) was based on his aunt and uncle.

He writes all the time. “I was writing on the plane coming here and in the hotel room earlier this evening.”  He can write anywhere, works out of a room above the garage in his house where he enters “the zone,” shuts out the world and becomes totally immersed in his story. He knows the ending before he starts writing the book.  

He and his wife, Cathy, have five children. He doesn’t do the racy stuff in his books because he imagines his grandmother reading sex scenes and it feels "icky."

If he could have dinner with any author living or dead?  Charles Dickens, he answers without hesitation.

In the end, Sparks' stories of  love and loss have struck a universal chord in millions of human hearts.  His challenge is simple he tells his audience.  To write stories that “evoke genuine emotion.  I work hard at that.” 

As I left the auditorium of the Benchmark School on a windy November night, I thought about how we  can apply Sparks’ writing journey to our own.  Here's some ideas:

• Dream the dream and live it. 

• Get into the zone and don’t let others distract you from writing.

• If you start a book, finish it.

• Draw from your life because the stories within your family are rich and varied.

• Understand why you are writing what you are. 

• Write a story from the heart that compels authentic emotions.
• Believe in magic.  Who knows?  Maybe someday you'll get that call.

Bookstores, Authors and Pooh

As an author, I want a diverse bookselling community.  As much as online sales, I want the opportunity in brick and mortar stores  to make connections with my readers, face-to-face, sharing stories and answering questions about writing.  Absolutely nothing takes the place of conversation and community found in a little store smelling of books, musty, new and otherwise. I have been very lucky to have had this opportunity.

As a child growing up on Philadelphia's Main Line, I remember the little corner bookstore just off Lancaster Ave. in Wayne.  One particular Saturday, Dad took me into the store. I was eight years old and my father let me pick out any new book I wanted. 

My eye was immediately drawn to a hardback book with a beautifully illustrated cover in pale yellow and green.  A funny little bear with protruding tummy stood with hands on hips. It was, of course, The World of Pooh by A.A. Milne.  I particularly cherish the memory of being in that store and sitting in a cushioned window seat with  a view of  mottled beige and white tulip poplar trees gracing sidewalks near the train station.  I thumbed through the book, entranced with the illustrations and stories.  Later, when Dad and I got home, he inscribed it for me in beautiful blue ink.  



Wellington Square at Christmas

While the future may be eBooks, there is little doubt  that independent publishing . . . writers taking control of their books (largely trade paperbacks) in terms of how they want them priced and packaged, illustrated and designed, is also the future.  Hardback books are slowly going the way of the landline and coffeetable books gather dust on 65 percent off discounted tables. The economy and ease of storing books on eReaders are undeniable.

All of us know independent authors; many are living among us in the community.  We are the people who find the time to establish relationships and share stories and observations with our readers and other writers. 

For this reason, the independent bookstore is our lifeline . . . and for those stores who grasp the undeniable value of establishing community, authors are their lifeline, as well.  By offering signings and talks, we bring people from our neighborhoods, schools, churches and civic organizations into their stores. 

Recently, I wrote a small tribute to Wellington Square, an independent bookstore here in Chester County, Pennsylvania and home to the Women's Writing Circle.  How many times had I heard, "I had no idea this bookstore was here until this morning!"  There is synergy.  We give back to each other.

Our Women's Writing Circle has also held signings at Baldwin's Book Barn, and Open Mic nights at Chester County Book Company and Wellington Square. Authors are a quirky bunch and more than sales, we primarily want our books to be out there, to offer a reading, to make connections over coffee, conversation and the written word. 

It is a sad state of affairs that the large chain bookstores and big box stores that sell books, often shun signings by independent authors or refuse to stock their books.  The impersonality of these stores would benefit from what the independent bookstore already cherishes.  They foster a community's cultural identity within their walls.


In this recent article by  Porter Anderson "Is Amazon Really in Retreat?" he references a story in Shelf Awareness, which covers book retailing.  It is about an Amazon executive who tried to build Amazon's own publishing efforts by bringing in bestselling authors under the Amazon imprint, but failed due in large part because "Barnes and Noble and indies refused to stock Amazon published works. You can order a print copy of the Amazon books via BN.com but no physical store would carry these books including the non traditional but big accounts like Walmart or Target."

As a creative person writing and editing stories and leading a writing group, I prefer not to dwell on the fact that publishing is a cutthroat business . . . yet it is hard to ignore what is going on and wonder how this came to be or where it is all leading.

I think back on that small bookstore in Wayne where Dad and I browsed shelves brimming with books of all stripes, stories and colors.  I think about Winnie-the-Pooh.  He called himself a "bear of very little brain."  He had no pretensions, no expectations, he just lived for sharing the simple joys with friends.  Yet he was a wiser philosopher and stauncher friend than most.  I think there's a lesson there.
 

A 'Virtual Blog Tour' Experience

Recently I was asked if I would participate in a virtual blog tour for a collection of short stories about women debuting this month.   I agreed, albeit with trepidation. I had never been asked to do this before and was not familiar with the author’s work.  Virtual blog tour?  I suspected that the author’s publicist had contacted me because the Women’s Writing Circle focuses on women finding their voices through writing.  Our audience of almost 4,000 views a month is primarily women.  In virtual blog tour lingo, "good traffic" and "targeted audiences" are key.

While I had heard other authors doing this, I had not pulled it together to do a blog tour for my own books.  Of course, I had not hired a publicist either, which in hindsight might have been a mistake. Online visibility and reviews spell life or death for a new book.

“It’s good publicity for you to do these things.  It gives you visibility,” someone who knows the vagaries and power of social media told me  Still, it felt like one more social media “to do” chore. 

                                                                                     ***

It is a relatively recent phenomenon that women have been encouraged by other women to seize their stories and compile them for anthologies and short story collections.  We did this in the Circle with Slants of Light, which included memoir, poetry and fiction.  Again, maybe we should have hired a publicist or gone on a virtual blog tour, since the book has not been selling as much as we hoped.  In any case, writing our stories vis-a-vis the snapshots that comprise anthologies is a way to break down, analyze and express the isolation and feelings of alienation many women experience. In that alone, it is a worthy exercise.
 

I began reading Kathleen Wheaton’s collection, Aliens and Other Stories, the winner of the Washington Writers' Publishing House Fiction Prize.The more I read, the more I experienced the thread of  women exploring their lives with poignancy and cynicism, resignation and a “tomorrow is another day” Scarlett O’Hara determination to get on with the business of being a woman in a man’s world.

Wheaton’s publicity package emphasizes that Aliens and Other Stories refers to many of her characters who “are exiles, immigrants adrift in middle-class America.”  Some are political refugees from Argentina, others survivors of a Cuban shipwreck.  But what struck me most were the universal messages embedded in the narratives of this 220-page compendium; women longing for connection but often resorting to their inner lives to find sustenance missing in marriages and family.   

In several stories women are betrayed by other women who take boyfriends or husbands without a second thought.  But there is no pitying tone here. In one short story, "Aliens," Sarah realizes Paul’s narcissism is so prevalent that he views his betrayal as a non-intentional love affair; something neither he nor his girlfriend, Amy, were “looking for.”   As her husband turns to leave, she says softly, “Go to hell.”  But not before she struggles with the embarrassment of dropping her daughters off at Amy’s house where Paul is now living.  “I almost died,” people say.  That’s what it feels like:  mortification so massive that she hears a roaring in her ears,"  Wheaton writes of Sarah.  Then Sarah meets Amy, who looks at her as if she, too “might pass out.” 

In "Milagros," Mila  is in Mexico with George, a successful novelist bedridden with typhoid fever.  She has worked with him for years as muse, "helping him invent backstories for his women." "If we're to be friends," she tells him, "we would have to talk about me sometimes."

While George is sick in the hotel bed, Mila heads to the pool where she meets Mario, the father of two young daughters and a charming, sensual man who appreciates their shared Cuban heritage.  After they make love, Mario reveals he is not divorced, as he had led her to believe.  Rather, the love affair has been a way to cap off a vacation away from his wife.  He presumes Mila has the same laissez fare attitude.  “I thought we were on the same page,” he says.  "You come here with one man and the minute he gets sick you go off with another."   Mila, who has fallen in love with Mario, protests.  "That's different.  George knows about you.  He encouraged me to spend time with you!"   Mario dismisses her protests as she lays naked in bed, surveying her from his "moral high ground."  "You know the whole open-relationship scene is just too much for me,"  he says.

“So cad,” Mila decides, “is good for something: a taste of what you might have if you fell in love for real.  But if I did fall in love, George would have to be part of the package, like a crazy abuela from the old country, living in a room off the kitchen.”

                                                                    ***
What does Wheaton hope her readers take away from Aliens and Other Stories?  “I hope that readers who have been aliens as well as those who simply have felt that way will find they have something in common with my characters.” 

As we say in the Women’s Writing Circle, “Job well done!”  I was pleased to have had the chance to explore this little treasure, although it is work to read a book, write a review and decide how to hone it to your own platform.  Let’s hope I have done justice to  my first virtual blog tour.  Whether I will partake in another is up in the air.  For now we’ll file it away as another social media experience, among many!

Have you participated in a virtual blog tour? What has been your experience?

Memoir "Takeaway" Reflections

When we gathered on Saturday, lit the candle and began our memoir workshop, we learned  about first drafts, taming the inner critic and mapping significant turning points in our lives.  We learned the need to balance the light with the dark in shaping our story's narrative arc.

 

At the end of writing and rewriting, what do we have?  We hope we have the icing on the cake: the takeaway.  This is  our message, truth, or lesson we proffer to our readers.

What have we learned from our grief, loss, trouble, heartache or poor choices? The reader wants to know. 

Learning to write a life story is not a cerebral or didactic exercise.  It's a dynamic journey of  the human heart in all its truth, messiness, beauty and passion. Our Women's Writing Circle provides the safe "container" to hold our truths and explore the "takeaway" in the companionship and reflection of other writers.

My takeaway at the conclusion of the excellent memoir workshop taught by Linda Joy Myers, founder and president of the National Association of Memoir Writers, is this: The most precious tool to tackle the gargantuan task of writing our life stories is community and connection.   In the midst of sharing and reading to each other, we hear stories that echo the innermost recesses of our hearts.  We learn compassion and empathy, insight and appreciation for the human condition . . . and in doing so it helps us create characters that come alive and scenes that deliver an impact. It makes for better writing. 

Writers have always needed other writers, other artists; like-minded souls to bounce off ideas, to help see through the angst and doubts and encourage leaps of faith. Hemingway and Fitzgerald knew this as did Gertrude Stein who provided the gathering place. And so this past weekend we experienced many powerful moments and heard heartfelt writing in our own small "salon." I was especially gratified that Kathy Pooler traveled from upstate New York to be with Linda Joy and me and offer her support to our Women's Writing Circle.  And many thanks go to Linda Joy for her informative presentation brimming with professional content.

And so  I would like to share some of the "takeaway" reflections from our Love, Truth and Craft: A Memoir Workshop.  I asked the writers who attended to answer these questions.  What did I bring with me?  What am I taking away? 

Here's what they said.



Kathy Pooler, Linda Joy Myers and Susan Weidener

"I brought the desire to start writing again and wanting to share my voice and support others to find their voices.  I took away more ideas to write, more creative thoughts, more a sense of community and the security of being with like-minded people."

"I brought, curiosity, excitement, enthusiasm. I left in awe of all the stories that were read, about the many ways a story can be told."

"I brought to this workshop questions about the form and structure of memoir writing.  I had feelings of inadequacy about my ability to write my story and lack of purpose as to whether I should even continue this quest.  I am taking away structures, especially the timeline and development of scenes and characters.  I am inspired by women telling their stories and my ability to be open and supportive in moving forward on my journey to tell my story."

"I brought the desire to learn the craft and to understand why others are driven to write their memoir.  The program was outstanding; reputable authors, fantastic preparation, knowledgeable teachers with good experience and camaraderie."

"I brought my dragon and got to put it to bed in different ways.  I take away a boost - energetically and intellectually."

"I brought a willingness to learn and share.  I left with increased inspiration, more knowledge about writing scenes, weaving light and dark in memoir.  I take away a renewed appreciation for the value of listening to others' voices."

"I brought some concerns about my work-in-progress memoir and I left with a renewed sense of connection and purpose relative to my story.  As always there is so much richness when we share our stories."
 

Gathered in the Circle for a memorable day.