matilda butler

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 #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 #11 - Women’s Memoirs, News & Announcements - Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler

This is a quick reminder: Novelist Donna VanLiere, whose recent memoir is called Finding Grace, is looking forward to being on the call with you tomorrow. This interview is the second in our new series called Women’s Memoirs Author Conversations. Here is all the information to get on the call:

Date: April 14, 2009
Time: 1 PM Eastern (10 AM Pacific)
Phone: 712-432-0600 access code 998458#

We’ve received some excellent questions for Donna. And there’s still time for a few more so if you have a burning writing question, please ask away. We’re looking forward to a good call.

We hope to “see” on the live call. And remember, there are a limited number of lines available for the free call, so you might want to call in a minute or two early.

Post #15 - Women’s Memoirs, Conversations - Matilda Butler and Kendra Bonnett

Our Memoir Moment series has been a real hit. Kendra and I get a lot of comments on the usefulness of the advice, lately focused on writing an opening for your memoir, from the authors we interview.

We keep those interviews short, always centered on a single topic. But it is hard to not go into more depth and that got us thinking. We decided it was time to launch a second series, this one called Women’s Memoir Author Conversations. We invite your questions and pose them in a teleseminar format.

Recently, author Susan Tweit spoke with us for almost an hour about her just published memoir, Walking Nature Home: A Life’s Journey. In the interview you can hear below, she answers your questions plus several more that we asked. She is incredibly open about the process of writing this book, a process that extended over a 25 year period. She provides tips on how to develop a title for your memoir, comments on her writing life, discusses how she put together her book blog tour, talks about the role of agents and publishers, and much more.

With our special thanks to Susan, here’s her interview:

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If you want to follow Susan,
her website is: susanjtweit.com
and her blog is: susanjtweit.typepad.com/walkingnaturehome

Post #14 - Women’s Memoirs, Conversations - Matilda Butler and Kendra Bonnett

In Memoir Conversations this month, Kendra Bonnett and I answered 11 questions posed on this website for our teleseminar. Kendra organized them by the themes they raised:

1. Handling traumatic events (such as abuse) in one’s life
2. Determining what constitutes the “true” story when different family members remember the events differently or when there are no remaining family members to help recall events
3. Finding meaning in your life that is worth writing about
4. Remembering relevant sights and sounds
5. Finding a voice for a memoir that is currently unconnected (but interesting) events
6. Protecting the innocent–and not so innocent–included in a story
7. Understanding the role of memoir versus autobiography
8. Considering publishing basics

and we both provided answers during the live call.

As promised, we are posting a recording from our 55 minute call and posting some of the websites mentioned.

For those interested in writing about traumatic events (#1 above), we recommend that you post your questions and tune in for our live interview with bestselling author Donna VanLiere on Tuesday, April 14 at 1 PM EST/10 AM Pacific/712-432-0600 access code 998458#). Donna’s memoir Finding Grace has just been published. Donna will be glad to answer your questions about writing a memoir that needed to address her childhood abuse. Be sure to post your questions in the Comments field of Donna’s guest blog on below. Click here to get to the specific blog post.

Second, we highly recommend another resource. Linda Joy Myers is a therapist who has long worked with women dealing with issues of trauma and abuse and uses writing as a healing technique. She is also the founder of the National Association of Memoir Writers. She is conducting a free teleconference that begins on April 23 at 1 PM EST/10 AM Pacific. It is entitled “Writing as Healing Teleconference.” To find out more information and to register, visit her website www.namw.org.

While answering the question about recalling the five senses (#4 above), Kendra mentioned an online class that we are teaching through Story Circle Network (SCN) called “The Craft of Memoir Writing: Using the Five Senses to Bring Your Story to Life.” The class meets via conference call on three consecutive Thursdays beginning April 16. In choosing a topic for this course, we felt that if there were only one skill you could learn to significantly improve your writing, it would be the effective and creative use of the five senses. The course includes 3 conference calls, 2 video lessons posted on our website in a password protected section, 3 writing assignments, and writing critiques. The cost of the course is $60 for SCN members (membership is $35 per year) and $85 for non-members. To find out more about the course and to enroll, click here.

And finally, everyone who listened to our call (including those of you who elected to listen to the recording) has been given a special discount code that entitles you to 25% off the cost of our newly released 5 DVD set: The [Essential] Women’s Memoir Writing Workshop. This code will only be good until April 10. During this time, you can get the DVD set for $99 instead of the regular $132. We tell you the code at about minute 27 of the Memoir Conversation recording posted below. If you miss it, just put your cursor in the white area of the audio player and drag it from left to right. This lets you rapidly advance the conversation so that you can get to the coupon code. Then, click here to put the DVD set into your shopping cart where you will find a box for entering your special discount code.

Now, here’s our Memoir Conversation. There is a lot of information that we hope will be helpful to you as you write your memoir. Keep writing!

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Post #13 - Women’s Memoirs, Conversations - Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler

As you gear up for your weekend, I hope you’ll have time to join us for the Women’s Memoir Writing Conference Call tonight. We’ve gotten some good questions. Here’s what we’ll be talking about:

• Handling traumatic events (such as abuse) in one’s life…handling it in a way that is meaningful not gratuitous.
• Determining what really constitutes the “true” story when different people in the family remember the events differently.
• Finding meaning in your life that is worth writing about.
• Finding a voice for my memoir, which seems right now to be a collection of unconnected (but interesting) events.
• Understanding the role of memoir vs. autobiography.
• Publishing basics, things you need to consider today.
• Remembering the sights, sounds, smells etc when they happened so many years ago, and using them to add sensory detail to your stories.
• Finding verifying facts to support my memories of our family’s story.
• Protecting the innocent–and the not so innocent–I include in my stories.

We look forward to having you on the call.