Post #12 - Women’s Memoirs, Book Raves - Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler

I’ve just finished reading Jessica Bram’s memoir, Happily Ever After Divorce: Notes of a Joyful Journey and am eager to share my thoughts about it. Like many readers of our blog, I know that the act of divorce is painful. Nothing about it seems joyful, even if it is what you want. Yet that is the perspective that Jessica brings out in her writing.

Since we do our book reviews from the perspective of what a memoir writer can learn, I began to see this interesting twist in Jessica’s memoir. She found a compelling message for the reader in her experiences. If she had written about the divorce while it was going on or in the immediate aftermath, there would have been bitterness and loneliness flowing off each page. But she didn’t want to dump that mess in our laps. Instead, she waited long enough that she could reflect on the experience and on what she had made of her life after the divorce. She used the divorce as a turning point in her life.

Jessica doesn’t just put on a happy face, of course. We would reject as false a memoir that said the divorce was a great experience and that she recommends it for everyone. Instead, she shares the many small and large hurdles she encountered in the months and years following the separation. We understand that it was a hard time in her life. However, she helps the reader to see how she moved from the negative into the positive and crafted a better life for herself than she had during the marriage.

As a memoir writer, what can you learn? Remember the reader. What do you want that person to get from your memoir? Is it a message that informs, or enriches, or entertains, or inspires? Eventually, the memoir isn’t just about you. It is about the reader.

A few special goodies. Following are some of my favorite passages. They will give you a flavor of her carefully crafted descriptions and beautifully phrased personal insights:

“I imagined the anger pouring off me like tar, trailing behind in a hot, gluey swath. I vowed to think positive; I would try to imagine the tar of my anger coating the bumpy country roads and paths beneath me, leaving it smooth for the other bikers. But the more it poured off me, the more my unlimited supply seemed to remain. Had it been real tar, every dirt path in northeastern Vermont would have ended up paved to perfection.” p. 76

“One Halloween night, after a particularly awful fight with Bill, I retreated to the patio behind my house with a bag of miniature Milky Way bars and discovered how difficult it was to cry and to eat candy at the same time. This did not, however, stop me from putting away a good many Milky Ways.” p. 103

[At the end of her first solo trip to Rome] “I knew then that I had my own special sense of direction. In my version, the markings were not street signs, but emotions stirred by memory. The attractions weren’t plaques or piazzas, but the sensual feel of Italian street names on the tongue or the scent of espresso wafting from tiny cafes. My souvenirs that week were not postcards but adventures freshly gathered…” pp. 134-135

“The dark days of the divorce were behind me … It still seemed a daily miracle to wake up each day to fresh air instead of the dank smell of a dying relationship.” p. 225

“Although there was no one in m life at that moment, it was reassuring to know that there was still inside me, like a pilot light, a tiny flame burning very low.” p. 226

My personal list of favorite passages goes on and on. I’m sure you’ll find your favorites and I think they’ll inspire you to express your well-crafted story.

Let me conclude by briefly telling you about Jessica. Of particular interest is that she is the founder of the Westport Writers’ Workshop. She has written for national and regional newspapers and magazines including The New York Times, Child Magazine, Women’s Journal, Sacramento Bee, and many others. In addition to writing, she is also an award-winning radio commentator and can be heard on “All Things Considered” and “Morning Edition.”

Since Jessica is an experienced teacher of memoir writing, you’ll be interested in her guest blog and writing prompt. If you haven’t read it, CLICK HERE.

Post #21 - Women’s Memoirs, Author Conversations - Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler

Come join us as we talk with Jessica Bram, author of the newly published memoir Happily Ever After Divorce: Notes of a Joyful Journey. Listen in as Jessica shares the description of the beginning of her writing life [...when I was seven years old I made a little desk out of cardboard and ...], discusses the importance of rewriting and rewriting, explains the use of a writing/critique group [there's a difference between constructive and positive...], tells us what to do with our tangents, and much more.

We asked Jessica your questions, plus a couple of our own. We’re pleased to share this informative and insightful interview with you:

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We’ll publish our review of Jessica’s book in a few days, suggesting the many ways you’ll learn about writing your own memoir when you read Happily Ever After Divorce. In the meantime, here’s your link to get her memoir.

Post #11 - Women’s Memoirs, Book Raves - Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler

My introduction to the work of Janet Grace Riehl has been through her new audiobook Sightlines: A Family Love Story in Poetry & Music (available for $24.95). Janet’s ability to express universal human experiences of times past and present, spaces loved, characters living and lost is powerful.

But before I talk about her writing, you need a little background: The audiobook is an extension of Janet’s 2006 memoir, called Sightlines: A Poet’s Diary, which she wrote as part of her healing process after the death of her older sister Julia Ann Thompson in a car accident. Julia, by all accounts, was a brilliant and dynamic physicist who was also a beautiful soul with a love of music, poetry, cooking and helping other people. She was just 61. Julia and Janet’s mother, Ruth Evelyn Thompson, Julia’s husband David Kraus and their grandson were all injured.

Although Sightlines is very personal, the reader is not left outside to be a distant observer, peering through a cracked door or listening at the keyhole. The reader recognizes the history, the humanity, the process as if they were her own. The experience is both calming and reassuring. But there’s more. Janet moves beyond the physical and emotional loss to grapple with the meaning of the loss. She starts by dividing Sightlines into five sections. The first is for Julia, or Skeeter as she was called. The second is for her father Erwin A. Thompson, nicknamed Slim. The third section is called Sweet Little Dove, after her mother’s nickname. The last two sections are named for the places Janet called home: Homeplace is for the family homestead Evergreen Heights in southwest Illinois and Lakeside for Lake County, California, where Janet lived at the time of the tragedy.

Janet examines selected pieces of her family’s lives, picking them up, turning them over, scrutinizing them like pieces in a giant jigsaw puzzle. She tells the story of each piece as a vignette…with a twist. Narrative is not Janet’s medium, but rather something she calls the story-poem.

I admit, at first I was skeptical. I’m not a big fan of poetry—nothing against it; it’s just not my thing. Story-poems are different, and when strung together to paint a larger picture, to define a life or to give meaning to special places, they are things of beauty. Story-poems are spare, yet rich in sensory description and emotion. As you read, you become engrossed…a story unfolds. There is logic, if not always a chronology, to her story-poem progression.

Here’s an sample story-poem taken from the excerpts on Janet’s website. It’s from the section named for her father, Slim.

STOMACH
Back in California I give my Midwest cooking a rest.
Pizza out of the freezer passes for supper.

In Illinois I concoct elaborate stews and spetzle.
To cosset my father’s appetite.
To help his stomach march through Julia’s death.

His savor for life no longer sat
at the dining room table after the accident,
if that’s what it was.
“We’ll get through it,”
stubbornly flung over his stoic shoulder.
Her absence, his first-born, hard to stomach.
Punched us all in the stomach,
making it hard to breathe, let alone eat.

His pants lie low on his slim hips.
He sucks in the pain
like he sucks in his stomach.
“Slim,” a work nickname from gasfitter fame
could still apply at 89.

His back bends over
as though to pick up an imaginary pebble.
By some slight of hand,
he’s looked the same to me
since I had the sense to look.
I need to catch up,
to wake up to the march of his mortality.
How can I digest this news?
A world without him in it,
would be no world at all.

It’s one thing for the reader to read the story-poems for herself. It’s quite another thing to have them told by the author. I found myself caught up in each poem’s cadence, its economy of words. But this is not your typical audiobook. Listen; you will hear emotion, sensory description and deep feelings worn openly as if on frayed shirt cuffs. These 90 poems are an emotional experience made all the more compelling by the sprinkling of music (40 songs); family memories, like personal artifacts, told in dialog and narrative; and spontaneous laughter—verbal ephemera now captured for eternity. The slightly homespun sound only serves to enhance its charm.

With the Sightlines audiobook, Janet has given us more than a heartfelt family chronicle. She breaks barriers for the memoir genre that should get every memoirist thinking. The writer in me is inspired to create something unique for my family.

Click Here to Purchase her Audiobook.

Post #5 - Women’s Memoirs, Writing Prompts - Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler

It’s Writing Prompt Tuesday again here at Women’s Memoirs, and we’ve arranged a special treat for you. Jessica Bram, author of Happily Ever After Divorce: Notes of a Joyful Journey, shares her two-part process for first getting at the heart of one’s story and then going back and cleaning it up. If you’ve ever worried that in writing your story you might tell too much or embarrass a friend or family member, Jessica provides the perfect antidote.

Once she explains the process, she gives us a useful Writing Prompt that will help us practice capturing all of our personal story, then going back and measuring our every word. You’ll come away more comfortable writing with emotion and honesty, knowing you can ratchet back as needed during the editing process. Thank you, Jessica.

All this is in preparation for our next Women’s Memoirs Author Conversation. Matilda Butler and I will interview Jessica Bram on Thursday, June 25, 2009 at 5 p.m Eastern Daylight Time (2 p.m. Pacific). We’ll be asking Jessica your questions so please add your questions about writing and her new memoir Happily Ever After Divorce to the COMMENT section at the end of this post. Then join us for the live call with Jessica:
Date/Time: June 25, 2009/5 p.m. EDT (2 p.m. Pacific)
Phone Number: 712-432-0600 (access code: 998458#)
Now here’s Jessica Bram’s Guest Blog:

I was interviewed not long ago by a reporter about my recently released collection of memoir-based essays Happily Ever After Divorce: Notes of a Joyful Journey. “Gee,” she said, “you shared so many personal details in your book. Didn’t you mind being so … revealing?” From time to time during the interview she kept coming back to this point, as though it was something very unsettling. “How did you find the courage to expose so many private details about yourself?”

Courage? No, not really. It was something else.

What were those terribly revelatory, potentially embarrassing details she was referring to? Let’s see. In “Losing It” I wrote about the time my young sons could hear me sobbing through the closed door one night and timidly knocked, pleading for an explanation. I revealed in “Eating and Drinking” that my habit of comforting myself as I went through my divorce with cookies and Ben & Jerry’s Super Fudge Chunk developed into a full-blown eating disorder. In one of the more humorous chapters called “My Lost Romance.com,” I confessed to letting my imagination get a little too carried away during an online dating correspondence, with both disastrous and comical results.

In the memoir and personal-essay workshops that I lead in my studio in Westport, Connecticut, this issue of how much one needs to reveal about oneself is a familiar one, and it troubles many first-time memoir writers. “There’s a lot I want to write … but what if my [fill in the blank: husband/mother/children] ever read it?” they ask. There is actual fear in their eyes.

My response to that is to describe what I call “The 2-Part Development Process” of writing the memoir. This process is also what On Writing author Stephen King calls “writing with the door shut, and writing with the door open.”

During Part One, writing with the door shut, you are writing your story while banishing from your mind the idea that anyone in the entire world will ever read it. It’s the time to let go of inhibition, restraint, even good grammar rules. It’s when you have to let go of the idea it has to be good writing. Forget about finding exactly the right word or the perfect way to express something. Your story just has to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth—even if that includes some very personal and embarrassing details. Part One is all about letting yourself go. Opening up each moment to reveal everything there is to discover. Bringing in thoughts, feelings, reflection. There is no editing or judging in this stage.

Sometimes my students worry about writing about other people in their memoirs, especially parents or other people who are close to them, who might be terribly hurt should they ever see the work in print. I reassure my students that there will be plenty of time later to protect other people from exposure with tactful editing. Don’t worry, I tell them; no one is going to snatch your memoir away from you and publish it before you are ready. In Part One you must write only with honesty and passion, and without inhibition. Don’t even think about showing your work-in-progress to a spouse or significant other. That will be the kiss of death to your work, in this tender early stage.

Then only later comes Part Two, or what Stephen King calls “writing with the door open.” It is when you open the door to let the critic in, and when you put to work not so much inspiration, as craft.

Part Two, the revision stage, is when you begin to shape your work for a reader. Often this comes after you have received feedback for an early draft from a trusted reader or critique group. This is when you clarify, reorganize, tighten language, ferret out ambiguity or redundancy. You eliminate tangents that are not important to this particular story—not to delete them, but set them aside for use in another piece. You revise and revise until you are sick to death of your own voice and your own story, and the process can seem endless. And yet, I find Part Two an exciting part of memoir writing, because it is when I find myself using every bit of my critical mind, and my writing craft, to elevate the quality of the work.

Then, finally, and only at the end of this vital Part Two, do you finally consider the sensibilities of others. Sometimes you might seek out an independent review of your work for this purpose. I had my sister read my manuscript of Happily Ever After Divorce: Notes of a Joyful Journey to make sure there would be nothing hurtful to my mother or brothers, whom I include in many reflections about my past experience as the child of a badly handled divorce. Surprisingly, most of the things I worried about revealing turned out not to be problems at all, while she pointed out a few items I hadn’t considered.

The important point is this: The more confidence that there will be ample time and opportunity to do all that revising in Part Two, the less inhibited you will be, and the better the material, in Part One. Having faith that there will be a Part Two is what allows you to write your heart and soul out in Part One. Because it’s that truth and soul-wrenching honesty that makes a memoir worth reading.

Ernest Hemingway, who admits to revising the first part of A Farewell to Arms at least fifty times, put it this way: “When you first start to work you get all the kick and the reader gets none … but after you learn to work—when you can do that, the reader gets the kick and you don’t get any. You just get hard work…It’s the hardest work there is.”

I bring this up to get back to that initial question of whether it was courage or something else that allowed me to share such personal information about my life after divorce. Hemingway’s quote highlights that all-important participant in the memoir writing process: the reader. Because even if we are writing the most intimate memoir, we as writers are not there to tell our story for our own satisfaction, but to serve a reader.

It was because I suspected that I was not the only person in the world who had ever sobbed and eaten and fantasized through a divorce, that I was able to share such personal experiences. I regarded sharing my story not so much as an act of courage, as an act of generosity. I believed that somewhere would be a reader who might identify with, and find comfort from reading a story like her own. Most of all, I wanted to give that reader hope that since my life had turned out to be joyful even after all the hard and miserable times, that indeed hers would too.

Memoir writing, I tell my students—sharing one’s own personal stories in a way that might enable readers to identify and understand their own lives better—is one of the most giving acts that a person can ever perform. Somehow, from this knowledge comes unlimited courage.

WRITING PROMPT
“With the door closed,” write about an experience of shame. Have you ever known it? What was the situation that triggered the feeling of shame? How did it feel, and how did the experience change you?

Banish from your mind any thought of anyone who might ever read this. You are just there to tell the story. Let the writing be either bad or cliché-ridden or unclear—it doesn’t matter. (“The first draft of anything is shit,” according to Hemingway.) What’s important is that you write truth.
Then put it aside—somewhere safe and private where it will not be accidentally discovered. And then later—only if you choose—begin Part Two. [See guest blog above for more information on Part Two.]

Post #20 - Women’s Memoirs, Author Conversations - Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler

If you missed our informative conversation with Janet Grace Riehl, author of the memoir CD called Sightlines: A Family Love Story in Poetry & Music, you can listen to the recording below. Here are a few of my favorite parts of the interview:

- Janet has two writing places including one she calls the goddess gather room. Listen as she describes her inspirational spaces.
- Janet outlines the seven steps in creating a CD of spoken word and music, including how she put her team together to successfully carry out this important project. Be ready to take notes as you listen to Janet as it will help guide your work.
- Janet talks about her promotion efforts for her print version of Sightlines that was published in 2006 as well as what she learned in the interim that is framing the marketing of the CD version.
- Janet shares the special time when she sat with her father, watching his face with its range of emotions, as he read her completed book.
- Janet describes toggling between poetry and prose as a way to flex our word muscles.
- Janet, as a special treat, sing the 1863 song Dear Evelina, Sweet Evelina, a song that she and her father frequently sang to her mother (Ruth Evelyn Johnston Thompson) in her last years. Then, Janet concludes by reading one of her story poems, Appetite, the final poem in the section of the memoir featuring memories of her mother.

We know you’ll enjoy this interview.

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CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE JANET’S CD SIGHTLINES - A FAMILY LOVE STORY IN POETRY & MUSIC.

Post #10 - Women’s Memoirs, Book Raves - Matilda Butler and Kendra Bonnett

In our book reviews, we examine memoirs from the perspective of what writers rather than readers will find to help them along their creative path. Heather Summerhayes Cariou’s Sixtyfive Roses: A Sister’s Memoir is like entering a candy shop filled with more tempting confections than you have ever seen or imagined. Read this memoir, consume large doses of her writing polish and you’ll find yourself on a creative high.

But first, a brief synopsis. Heather Summerhayes Cariou and her younger sister Pam were best friends. They shared a bedroom, shared made-up games, shared secrets and laughter, and all too soon, shared sadness. When Heather was six and Pam was four, their parents finally had a diagnosis for why Pam (called Pammy by her family) failed to gain weight, why she had violent coughing spells in the middle of the night and why her skin was often blue. She had Cystic Fibrosis. Heather’s parents, determined to do everything they could for Pam, founded the Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, sought out every medical expert they learned about, and gave their children a model of fierce determination even in the face of odds that could not be beaten.

Pam, at the age of four, unable to say the words Cystic Fibrosis, announced to everyone that she had Sixtyfive Roses, which became the name of this brilliant, insightful, honest memoir.

I’m going to tempt you with just a few of Heather’s pieces of candy. You’ll find confections like this on almost every page:

“We would balance a potent cocktail of emotions with the practical demands of our day-to-day functioning.” p. 47

“Essentially, my family was alone when we began our journey through the war zone of catastrophic illness. … Our hearts might have grown hard but for the way our losses broke them open.” p. 58

“The very air rushing in behind them smells fresh with excitement.” p. 64

“She could not bandage the scrape on my heart with gauze and white adhesive tape from the medicine chest. I knew that, and the knowing only made the needing worse.” p. 92

“Her cough started deep inside the cave of her chest with a dark, wet rumble that rolled up and out of her like the sound of thunder with heavy rain. The sound poured into my ears, making me shiver.” p. 112

“BOOM! The compressor in the basement started up and I was suddenly awake, gulping for air, shivering, hugging my knees to my chest, my covers kicked into a tangle at the end of the bed. … The compressor shut itself off. The tent hissed. The wind moaned. The house was still as a tomb. I strained my ears to hear if Pan was breathing. I was scared she would die in the night, without warning.” p. 116-117

“Panting, I … threw myself on the ground, and let go the fierce tears that had been pushing at me from inside. The incessant knot of paint that sat in the wel of my chest burned red up through my esophagus and screamed out along the path of my tongue. I sobbed and heaved against the pungent earth. My nostrils pressed to the dank soil, I inhaled the sweet, piercing scent that soothed my hot head. The fallen leaves were damp and cool against my cheek.” p. 136

“She [Heather’s mother] rearranged me too, controlled me, dumped my dresser drawers upside down, turned my whole insides out and made me put them back, all my feelings my entire wild spectrum of emotions, organized into straight lines and folded into neat piles.” p. 150

“As time went on, I learned to relinquish the right to own my own physical pain, and suffered the death of my ability to voice it.” p. 160

“[Pam’s] laughter was contagious, a jumper cable wired straight to my heart.” p. 161

“[My mother] stood square in the kitchen, leafing through the red Purity Flour Cookbook, feeding us on homemade chili sauce, cabbage rolls, pot roast, and the remnants of her lost dreams.” p. 185

My list of favorite passages goes on and on. But this sampler is enough to illustrate the incredible care that has been taken in the telling of Heather’s story. Heather is serious about the craft of memoir and Sixtyfive Roses is her way of sharing both her life and her passion for writing with us. A real treasure.

If you have not listened to our interview with Heather, CLICK HERE. She offers valuable pointers and suggestions for writers.

Post #4 - Women’s Memoirs, Writing Prompts - Matilda Butler and Kendra Bonnett

Guest Blog #4: Janet Grace Riehl

It gives us great pleasure to announce that Janet Riehl has made Women’s Memoirs one of the stops on her blog book tour for Sightlines: A Family Love Story in Poetry & Music, which is an audio extension of her 2006 poetic memoir Sightlines: A Poet’s Diary. Janet kicked off her tour with a virtual visit at Velda Brotherton’s blog. And on Thursday, June 4th, our friend Susan Tweit will interview Janet for her blog. You can find a complete list of Janet’s tour on her blog.

On June 11th, Matilda Butler and I will be interviewing Janet as part of our Author Conversations series; we invite you to listen in live. More importantly, we encourage you to participate by asking your questions of Janet. We don’t take questions during the call but rather invite you to pose your questions as Comments at the bottom of this post; we’ll be sure to ask Janet your questions.

So before I leave you to enjoy Janet’s thoughts (below), here is the information you need to be on the call when we talk with Janet on June 11th:

Date/Time: June 11, 2009 at 10 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time (1 p.m. Eastern)

To listen, call: 712-432-0600 access code 998458#

 

Poetry is a genre often overlooked in writing memoir. Writers may feel that “Poetry’s too hard.” “It’s just for special occasions and emotions.” “It’s only for poets living up there in the clouds.” Alternatively, writers may have the opposite set of perceptions: “Anyone can write poetry.” “Even the copy on the back of the cereal box is poetry if you re-arrange the lines.” In believing this, we deprive ourselves of a form that can be a valuable addition to our memoir-writing toolbox. 

Poetry found me when I wrote Sightlines: A Poet’s Diary. Writing from the heart, I created 90 story poems for three people and two places I love. I hadn’t necessarily intended to write poems; they simply spilled out. Although each poem stands alone, the book as a whole is an extended story poem. Each new piece fits into a larger puzzle, making the narrative of the book that much clearer. There are all sorts of other names for a story poem, such as the narrative or prose poem, but that straightforward phrase—story poem—felt in keeping with the work itself. 

What is a story poem? Here’s my definition: A story poem combines highly compressed narrative, musing, and observation using poetic techniques such as alliteration, imagery, and metaphor. In the story poem, as in prose, the sentence rather than the line is the primary unit.

The same material handled in a personal essay would use many times the words and pages. I crafted the story poems in Sightlines to be simple and direct, to reach heart to heart between the reader and myself. 

Poetry is an excellent genre for memoir because of its inherent qualities. It condenses the story, handles emotion deftly, and is open to non-linear constructions. The story poem fosters dialogue, character, event, and understated language.

What happened to our family—an accident killing my sister and severely injuring two family members, including my mother—was traumatic; the story didn’t need added drama. Understated language became the language of healing not only for our family but for the poems’ readers as well. 

I grew up in the Midwest surrounded by songs that told stories, jokes that told stories, and family stories told around the kitchen table. During the year I worked on Sightlines, most of my time was spent in the Midwest, surrounded by plainspoken people who come from farming stock. My writing surrendered to and reflected the language of the people I wrote about. 

The backbone of the book is the story poems with lyric poems interspersed as grace notes. Lengths vary—short, medium, long, and bedtime story-long.

Frankly, I wondered if it was an effective form. Then I received responses that reassured me. A friend, who is a fine musician, said when he first read the poems, “I hear music here. Would you mind if I put them to music?” Needless to say, it was music to my writerly ears. 

EXERCISE (WRITING PROMPT/TAKE-AWAY)

Even if you don’t choose poetry as the primary form of telling your story, you can use poetry to toggle between compression and expansion. Try this:

1) Take a story you’re writing in prose, and condense it into a poem or story poem. Even if you don’t keep it in this condensed form, this exercise will reveal the essence of your story. It can take you to the kernel.

2) Take a poem you’ve written and expand it into prose. This exercise will reveal an alternate way to structure your prose, handle emotion, and incorporate more imagery into your memoir.

CONTEST: Read the review of Sightlines: A Family Love Story in Poetry and Music here to answer today’s question: “Who wrote the review?” When you find the answer, contact Janet through her website. The first person to contact her with the correct answer will receive a free copy of the audio book.

Post #19 - Women’s Memoirs, Conversations - Matilda Butler and Kendra Bonnett

Memoir author Heather Summerhayes Cariou’s blog and writing prompt were previews of the vibrancy and depth of this wonderful woman that Kendra and I had the pleasure to interview.

Heather is currently in Ireland, making this our first intercontinental interview for our Women’s Memoir Author Conversation series. Heather answered twelve questions from women interested in advice on writing their memoirs as well as talked about her writing life. You’ll love the description of her Virginia Woolf room as well as how she carves out a writing space for herself even when she is on the road.

From discussing the importance of writing for ourselves as well as to heal and understand our lives to discussing her journey to find a publisher, Heather provided ideas and suggestions that you’ll find especially useful as you create your own path.

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For more information about Heather and her beautifully written memoir, click here.

Also mentioned during the interview are two conferences for women lifestory writers:
(1) Story Circle Network where Heather will be a keynote presenter at the Stories from the Heart V Conference, February 5-7, 2010 in Austin, TX. Click here to find more information and to sign up to receive details of the conference.
(2) International Women’s Writers Group. Heather serves on the board of the IWWG and recommends their upcoming conference, June 12-19 at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY.

Post #3 - Women’s Memoirs, Writing Prompts - Matilda Butler and Kendra Bonnett

In preparation for this month’s Author Conversation, an interview with a memoirist, Matilda Butler and I are pleased to post this guest blog by Heather Summerhayes Cariou, author of Sixtyfive Roses: A Sister’s Memoir. And we believe you’re in for a treat. Heather’s memoir is a powerful story of love, heartache, perseverance as a family (and a sister) struggled with the all-too-harsh realities of Cystic Fibrosis.

What Heather has chosen to write here is as powerful and inspiring as her memoir. Personally, we find this one of the more comprehensive and heartfelt definitions of memoir we’ve read.

We hope that Heather’s comments here will stimulate lots of questions, which we invite you to pose in the form of Comments for this post, because on Friday, May 22, 2009 at 10 am Pacific time (1 pm Eastern) we’ll be interviewing Heather. This is a live call, and you’re invited to listen in. But you’ll need to ask your questions in advance as we mute out the audience. Post your question as a Comment below and we’ll read your question during the call, and Heather will respond.

Date/Time: Friday, May 22, 2009 at 10 am Pacific (1 pm Eastern)

To listen, call: 712-432-0600 access code 998458#

Questions for Heather? Put your question in the comment field below. (To have a quality recording, we do not take question during the call. But please do listen in while Heather is on the line with us.)

We asked Heather to comment on her personal experience with the memoir-writing process, here’s her explanation. And don’t miss her special writing prompt at the end:

Heather Summerhayes Cariou

I had to write my way out. I wrote on big yellow pads, the backs of old envelopes, and cocktail napkins. I wrote around the edges of magazine pages as I waited in line for the bus. I wrote in small notebooks that I carried with me everywhere, buying and beginning new ones when I’d forgotten to bring the old. I wrote in my head at the supermarket and scribbled sentences on the backs of register slips. I left a pad and a pen by my bed because I wrote in my sleep. I piled the bits and pieces on my desk, typed them into the computer, printed out a day’s work. Next morning I’d sit with the hard copy, read it out loud, and listen for the speed bumps and the phrases that rang false. I edited the pages with a pen, crossed out and rewrote, typed them back into the computer, and went on.

It took me twenty years. I wrote like crazy for periods of time, then would stop for several months because I had to leave the past and come back to live fully in the present. I had to digest my own experience. Sometimes I went to therapy to discuss what I had discovered through my writing. I exploded my own myths.

I attended as many writing workshops as I could. I made it a project to read every National Book Award-nominated memoir each year that I was writing, so I could be assured I was reading—and learning—at a high level. I read every book on the craft of writing that was on the shelf. I researched the history of my hometown, books on siblings, and university studies on siblings of disabled children. Then I wrote again.

Through the years, I went through several drafts: the pity-party draft, the agenda draft (where I vented my anger on everyone), the faux-literary draft, etc., etc. With each draft, I changed as a woman and developed as a writer, so that I found I needed another draft, convinced I could write the next one at a higher level. I drove my friends and supporters mad.

There were days when I would write a few sentences, lay down on the floor and cry for an hour, then get back up and continue to write. At first I was concerned about what my family would think, how they would feel, but as I went on I wrote more and more for me and for the story…because it was necessary. I did not write for publication until the very last draft. If you are worried about what others are going to think, you can’t write the story the way it needs to be written, and there’s no point in doing it. I wrote to find out what the story was, and to serve it. I wrote to heal myself, to make sense of the chaos I felt, to excavate the truth, not just as I remembered it but also as I discovered it to be in the process.

To write an effective memoir, you have to be willing to go to the well and damn the torpedoes (if you’ll excuse the clichés). I had a quote by Virginia Woolf above my desk the whole time: “If you don’t tell the truth about yourself, you can’t tell it about anyone else.” My goal was to reach as much truth as I could within myself, peeling through the layers of what I had previously thought was truth, finding deeper truths I didn’t know existed. This effort alone is tremendously worthwhile for you as a woman and a writer, even if in the end you have a work that you feel you can’t publish while others are still living. You will have given yourself a Masters course on your life, and your writing.

Perhaps if you need to, you can then take the bones of the story and create fiction out of it that will have a shape and a depth it would not have had if you hadn’t done this work. This is exactly what I’m doing with my next book, a work of fiction that will be autobiographically based.

For a long time, I tried to tell my sister’s story. This was impossible. I finally learned I had to tell my own story, and that my sister’s story would be revealed in the process. This taught me to value my own story, and therefore myself. I learned that in memoir one must master both a narrative voice and a reflective voice. Reflection is a huge part of memoir. I took my husband’s advice and wrote everything, because an important factor in writing memoir is what you choose to put in, and what you choose to leave out of the final, crafted draft, and you can’t know that until you’ve written it. These decisions cannot come ahead of time.

There is no need to rush a memoir—in the writing or towards publication. What you put out there will be out there forever, so you want to make very sure you’ve said what you wanted to say with the best craft and compassion possible. To write a successful memoir, you have to have found distance and perspective. Sometimes this comes through the writing itself. You must endeavour to write with love, forgiveness, and understanding, or at least write your way towards that.

Consider that your memoir will have a gift in it for your readers, so that they can leave your story changed in some positive way. Although my life experience was painful, I wanted to make it a light for others, not just a dark confessional. Remember also that memoir is not autobiography. It is not the facts of an entire life, only a window into a life—it focuses on a specific place, time, or relationship, and as I said before, it requires reflection. It uses the elements of imagery and metaphor. It is a life not merely reported on, but distilled, like a good poem.

Writing a memoir takes guts, patience, emotion and craft. It takes discipline and resilience. Sometimes you will sit at your desk despairing, asking the empty room, “Why would anyone else care about this?” The question, however, is why do YOU care? Have passionate thoughts about the consequences of your own life. Take responsibility for your own experience. Make peace with the facts; tell the story for the story’s sake, without a hidden plea for help or sympathy. Decide where the integrity—the honest heart of the story—rests, while at the same time giving respect to events as you remember them.

Then write your ass off.

Heather’s (and Dr. June Gould’s) Writing Prompt
I best learned the craft of writing (especially memoir) over the past 25 years from the women of the International Women’s Writing Guild at the amazing “Remember the Magic” summer conferences and workshops at Skidmore College. One of my mentors there is Dr. June Gould, and what follows here is what I call “The Gould Method.”

One: Go online (or to a library or bookstore) and research two or three poems from the following list, and print them out. These poems have been chosen especially for their specificity of imagery and emotion. You may have other favorites on your own shelf that you could use:

• XI What We Lost by Eavan Boland
• X We Are Always Too Late by Eavan Boland
• My Father by Yehudi Amichai
• What the Living Do by Marie Howe
• What I Learned from My Mother by Julia Kasdorf
• My Mother’s Kitchen by Choman Hardi
• Starlight by Philip Levine
• Poem to my Grandmother in Her Death by Michele Murray
• Five Poems for Grandmothers by Margaret Atwood
• Grandmother by Valzhyna Mort
• A Portrait of a Mother in Fall by Valzyna Mort

Two: Make a list of up to 5 people who are lost to you, or potent for you emotionally. Pick one.
Make several lists of 5 things that person wore, 5 things she/he said, 5 objects you associate with her or him, 5 foods you ate with her/him, 5 activities or events you participated in together. Circle one item on each list that is most potent.

Three: Think of a place that is lost to you and that you associate with that person.

Four: Now, read the two or three poems you have selected. Choose a line or image from one of the poems, something that resonates for you, or choose one of the lines below:

• This is the last time I will tell you…
• I am the woman who…
• This is everything I know/remember about…
• Give me back my…
• I write for my _________ because…

The line you choose will be your opening line. It might be your closing line as well. Set a timer for 20 minutes and write very quickly, without your pen leaving the page, and without stopping to cross out or edit. Make sure your writing includes the person and place you have chosen, and the 5 items you have circled from your lists. I think you’ll be surprised and delighted by the results. Many of the passages in Sixtyfive Roses were started with this exercise. And if you wish, send me what you wrote!

Post #18 - Women’s Memoirs, Conversations - Matilda Butler and Kendra Bonnett

Recently, I listened to Sharon Lippincott’s podcast with memoirist Karen Walker. I was struck by Karen’s description of her 10 year process of writing her memoir, the ups and the downs. She eventually realized that for a portion of her life she had ignored her inner wisdom. The whispers of this wisdom were always there and she learned to follow them.

All of us have made mistakes in our lives and some of us have more of a talent for big mistakes than others. You may find that the process of writing your memoir helps you to see the patterns of your life to date and gives you the insight to change the future–lets you find and follow the whispers of your inner wisdom. In the interview, Karen describes a marvelous moment at her book launch when more than 50 family members and friends were gathered. She says, “I was standing there, holding my newly published book, when I realized that I had stepped into the person I was trying to become.” Such is the power of memoir writing.

With Sharon and Karen’s permission, I have linked to this informative interview. Click here to listen to Sharon Lippincott’s interview with Karen Walker.

Although the focus of this blog is Karen Walker’s interview and memoir, I want to also mention Sharon Lippincott’s book. As you work with it, you’ll come to think of the book — and indeed Sharon — as your personal and practical guide along the path of writing. Most of us get stuck at one time or another in our writing and turning to Sharon’s book will give you the “heart” to keep moving forward.