Telling Herstories: The Broad View

Day Trippin'

The day trip was well-planned.  I knew when I'd leave my driveway, when and where I'd stop for rest and food, and when I'd head back home.  But then, I spied a few of those historical markers along the roadside.  And, the plans went out the window!

You know those markers, don't you?  They speak to me every time I come upon one of them.  I can't help it.  I simply love to read about the people and places they describe.  And, even more, I soak up the history of the spot so marked and yearn for more - more information, more to see, more to explore. 

Today's trip was one such well-planned-trip that got sidetracked.   I was on a mission that would take me on a four hour drive and back... through parts of Tennessee that I hadn't yet seen and then into Kentucky for the first time ever.  But, on the drive to Kentucky, I spied several of those markers.  Being on a tight schedule for arrival, I made mental notes of the markers' locations. 

Then, on the way back, I threw all schedules and plans to the wind and went exploring.  I was in heaven!  Once home, I started thinking about those markers and all the stories they tell.  And, in the process, had a thought:  What if I were to write some markers to tell the stories of my own family, the times I grew up in, the locations I've been?  What if I crafted them in such a way as to be "word postcards" for the passersby (family and friends) who, just like me, can't resist learning more. 

And in that moment, a new source for writing prompts emerged!  Using the concept of the historical markers we've all seen and read, write your own versions using life story materials.  Perhaps, if you are so inclined, you'd like to go even farther by doing some drawing or mixed media art work to embellish the words you post on your markers.  Think about where you'd choose to "post them" and why! 

So there you have it!   Your challenge 'til I return in two weeks.  Begin writing your own life's markers!  What would your marker say to all who stopped at the roadside "lookout" that is the window on your life?

   

Copyright: Protecting Your Blog Posts

M Jane Ross

A week ago, an SCN friend contacted me for advice on a thorny problem. She suspected that whole paragraphs, personal reminiscences of her own, and photos she had taken had been lifted from her blog and from her 2008 book of personal stories and inserted into very similar stories on someone else’s blog. 

My friend sought advice from several quarters, including her lawyer brother, decided how she was going to handle the situation, and within a week was successful in seeing much of the copyrighted text removed from the other blog. There were some useful lessons in this SCN member’s experience for any of us who might find our writing has been copied without permission. If this happens to you, how can you know for certain whether the other party has infringed your copyright and what should you do about it?

My advice as a publishing professional is this (see disclaimer below):

1. Understand that your writing is covered by copyright law as soon as you write it. And it is covered when it is posted on the internet. Never mind the fact that you have no way of physically preventing someone from copying your words, copyright law still applies. You do not need to register your copyright or even have a copyright notice on your blog or web page for the copyright to exist.

2. Make sure you are very clear about the exact passages of your text that have been copied and the ways your words have been altered to make them seem superficially different in the copy. Vague similarities or a blog post on the same theme as yours do not constitute copyright infringement.

3. Once you have documented the extent of the copying, don’t wait to deal with the issue. Act as soon as possible to address it.

4. Do not use a public forum (such as your blog) to accuse a particular person of plagiarism! In the first instance, give the copier the benefit of the doubt. They may simply be unaware that their copying is unauthorized. Plagiarism is a very dirty word and accusations of plagiarism have destroyed careers. So tread softly. At the same time, you can certainly post on your blog how it feels to suspect that you have been plagiarized, without naming names or linking to the offending blog. In fact, your copier may read this post and take down the copied text of their own accord.

5. Do turn to your own writing community for advice, especially if you have a lawyer or a publisher in that community. But be careful not to libel the person you believe has copied you nor to start a witch hunt against them.

6. Make sure you own the moral high ground and that you yourself have not copied anyone else’s work without permission, including pictures. Downloading and reposting pictures from Google Images or Ebay is as much a breach of copyright as copying someone else’s text. So do the right thing: remove any material from your own blog that you do not have permission to use. Use only pictures that you do have permission to use or pictures that have a Creative Commons license such as those on the Flickr photo-sharing website’s creative commons area.

7. Be prepared to contact directly the person whom you believe has copied your text, giving very specific information about the instances where their text is identical or close to identical to yours. Though copyright is a legal matter with complex rules, very often the issue can be resolved with a polite but firm request to the person you believe has made an unauthorized copy of your work that they remove this copyrighted text from the web. The copying may have been done without a clear understanding of how this constitutes plagiarism and the offender may be anxious to save face.

8. Tell your truth. Point out how you have put considerable time and energy into writing your blog posts. Explain how the other person’s use of your words could damage your reputation as an author, if future readers don’t notice that your original piece was published before the copied version. Tell them you expect them to remove the text that they posted without permission by a certain date. Or alternatively if you prefer, ask them to give you credit for the text they have copied.

9. Do add a copyright notice to your own blog.

If this approach does not work and you feel strongly about retaining the copyright of this copied text, it may be time to call a lawyer for advice.

And take some time to learn about copyright. There’s lots of good information online at the US Copyright Office and plagiarism.org. Sharon Lippincott includes some excellent links at the end of her blog article on copyright here.

Disclaimer: This advice is for information only. It is not legal advice. If you need legal advice on a specific copyright-related issue, consult a lawyer. The advice presented here is the view of the author alone and not of Story Circle Network.

Finding My Voice in Silence

 When I began my first book of personal essays about the desert where I then lived, I struggled to find my writing voice. I had always written as an expert, telling stories of science. That was easy for me: I was trained as a scientist and grew up in a family that valued observation, data collection, analysis, and detachment. Articulating my personal voice--the voice of my heart and spirit--was much more difficult. How did I do it? By cultivating quiet, stilling my mind, and treating my writing as a spiritual practice. Here's an excerpt from my memoir, Walking Nature Home, just released by University of Texas Press that tells the story:

I threw myself into my writing, beginning a book on the desert where we lived. I read archeology, anthropology, and history. I waded through hydrology and water law. I burrowed into geology, botany, and zoology. I searched out journals of early explorers, poured over Spanish land grants, went to the county courthouse to examine old deeds. I found stories galore, but no matter what I wrote, the sentences came out stiff, the tales lifeless. I couldn't seem to find my writing voice. ...

A background in science made it easy to speak as an expert, but the results didn't satisfy me. When I turned in the first few chapters of my desert book, my editor returned them with one word in all caps scrawled atop the beginning of the manuscript: "Personalize!" What was I supposed to say?

Quakers find their voices in silence. Friends' silent worship stems from the belief that the voice of the divine, the urgings of the spirit, can only be heard from attentive stillness. Out of the quiet comes sacred speech as individual Friends stand up and give voice to their insights. ... In Quaker practice, silence speaks.

I began to treat my work as worship, striving consciously to cultivate the inner and outer quiet necessary to hear the voice of my spirit. Once Richard left for campus and Molly biked off to school, I sat down at my computer, a mug of herb tea close at hand. For the first half hour or so, I cleared my mind by spilling its clutter of  thoughts, emotions, images, and memories into an unedited, uncensored journal file, simply writing them out of my way. Then I settled in to work in the stillness I had created, ignoring the ringing of the telephone, the summons of the doorbell, the noise of cars passing on the street outside. Whenever I found myself giving in to the oh-so-urgent call of household or garden tasks, I recollected what I was about, hauled myself back to my office, wrapped the stillness around me, and resumed writing. 

In essence, what I was doing was honoring my writing by giving myself the conditions I needed to nurture my creativity. Silence, both metaphorical and literal, helped me listen to the voice of my heart and spirit, key components of my writing voice.

What do you need to nurture your writing voice? How do you find silence--or whatever nurtures your creativity--in your life? 

I'll be back on Telling HerStories on April 10th as part of my blog book tour for Walking Nature Home to talk about my journey with this story, including how long it took me to write. I'll also talk about what I've learned about reconciling my private and public lives since the memoir has been released. For more on my blog book tour, visit my web site.

In the meantime, join the discussion: How do you make writing your practice?

Are There Books in Your Bed?

In her book, Page by Page, writing instructor Heather Sellers' Chapter 6 is entitled “Sleeping with Books”.  For her this is literal, as she claims to have magazines, newspapers, books, etc. tangled up in the sheets and having her bed surrounded by stacks of more books.  "With books", she says, "I am promiscuous." (p. 50)  Now, I frequently fall asleep with a book and find it when I roll over on a sharp corner, but I don’t know that I find that much literary stuff in my bed.  Highlighters, bookmarks, reading lights—maybe…but promiscuous???  I love my books, I do.  Ahem...well...

Her point is that being passionate about books is a really good thing, especially if you are a writer.  "You can't get too far off track as a writer if you're reading.  In fact, I don't know any successful writers who don't read. Writers read. (emphasis mine)  Reading completes the gesture.  Reading is what we do.  An enormous part of learning how to write better is learning how to read, sensitively, attuned to all the colors and emotions.  In order to get better as a writer, you have to be able to read your own work, again and again and again. After a while, you learn how to listen for the clunky parts, the rich passages.  The best way to tune your ear for this work is to read with passion and abandon." (p. 50)

Of course, she says, you should immerse yourself in books of the genre you’re writing, but read some of everything. She calls this extending oneself, and says "You have to read against your grain."

Think about it.  What you’ll learn in background knowledge can be invaluable.  You may find a style that entices you, a phrase that starts your creative juices flowing,  You just never know.  Perhaps it’s one word or one paragraph that will crystallize a thought that’s been niggling at you.  Read, read, read!!  Not a hardship for most of us, right?

I love Seller's enthusiasm.  "My reading is a full-body experience.  I bathe with books and they bloom, like peonies.  Bath and the hot water mix together in a steamy decadent scrumptious love fest of reading." (p.53)  She does love reading, doesn't she?

Then, says Sellers, take that same passion you have for reading, that same enthusiasm for the next page and the next,  that love of words and phrases, and bring it to your writing.  For her, that means "My reading is infused with the same kind of obsession I want my writing to maintain." (p. 53)

Her best advice to those who love to read and want to write: "To discover or deepen your proper writing practice, I want you to think Love Affair.  I want you to make love to books!  Now I want you to imagine your writing life is a love affair.  Make a little love list.  What kind of relationship are you having with your writing life?"  Her idea of a good writing life: "nothing like school and everything like passion.  Even when you aren't doing it, you are happy because there is always something to think about, something next, something delicious and tempting and good.  Use your passion for books as a way to develop your passion for getting lost in your own writing." (pp 53-54) 

Does it get any better than this?  Another reason to read!

Speaking of reading...  There have been so many outstanding reviews which you can read on the Story Circle Book Review site so be sure to visit.  More books to read and savor and learn from and love...

Listening: the Lost Art or a Gold Mine for Writing Prompts?

"Listening is becoming a lost art - practice it."  Nancy McFadden, Sr. VP Public Relations/PG&E Corp.

 

Have you ever been out at a restaurant or in a store where you've been witness to verbal exchanges that have not only caught your attention but started your brain to bump into high gear?  Perhaps it's  an endearing moment for a couple.  Maybe it's an outburst directed toward a parent by a child.  Maybe you overhear a caustic remark made between husband and wife and it causes you to bristle a bit -- or to feel compassion for the one on the receiving end of the comment.  Perhaps you've been able to sit and watch AND LISTEN to children playing make-believe.  

And, on a more personal level, when is the last time you really listened to what a family member or co-worker was saying?  When was the last time you listened to yourself and thought about how your words might impact another person?

In today's fast paced world, the urge to push onward - rushing to get to the next point- has gotten in the way of real soulful listening for some.  Manners and courtesy are no longer extended by some... either they've been forgotten or were never learned.  Being an active, gentle, discerning listener is indeed an art... and in many instances it is fast becoming lost.

But, listening can provide the writer with a plethora of writing prompts.  Next time you are at the grocery store, take a few extra moments in the produce or frozen food section.  Casually browse your choices but do so with at least one ear tuned into the conversations around you.  Last week, while searching for the perfect salad fixings in the produce section, I overheard an exchange between a man and woman (who I presumed were long time husband and wife).  The words were caustic, accusatory, and downright disrespectful.  I immediately felt uncomfortable.  I felt the sharpness of that quick tongue and was catapulted to a time and place I'd tucked way back in my memory bank.  A similar exchange (one of oh so many) between my father and mother when I was younger.

"How can anyone talk to another person that way?  Especially someone they call family?"  I thought.

But, later in the day, as I recalled the stinging exchange between these two strangers, I found myself recalling more and more verbal exchanges in my memory.  Not all were angry or caustic.  Some were the kind that bring a smile to the unsuspecting face.  It amazed me that a few words not even intended for my ears set off a whole host of memories ripe for the picking.  Suddenly, I was jotting down notes about "the time when Daddy said this or that to Mother" and "the way my brother explained his day at school - much to my delight at his boyish enthusiasm."  

If you travel, you are in the perfect position to eavesdrop on all sorts of conversations (or snippets of them) that might just find their way into your writings -- either intentionally or quite by accident.  Why not carry a small notebook where you can jot the key words or the circumstances of the encounter.  Then, the next time you are stuck for a writing prompt, pull out your notes on "the things people say" and start ruminating on one or more of those you've happened upon recently.  You might be surprised just how far a few words can take you on your memory path and journaling! 

The Future of the (Autobiographical) Book: Print Is Still Where It’s At

(A continuation of my thoughts on the future of the book)

M. Jane Ross

The web may be the perfect forum for those who write about breaking news and the latest trends and ideas, and some web experts see the future of the book as primarily digital. But for those of us who write about our own lives and the lives of our family, for now print is still the very best means for preserving and sharing a story that is rooted in the past. The physical book will remain the preferred container for longer memoirs, in part for the very fact that a book is not subject to change by its readers. After all, unlike today’s top online trend, the facts of our own story are fixed and certain. Or are they?

Well, yes…and no. The more I learn about the psychology behind lifewriting, the more intrigued I am by the way the very process of writing our memoir changes us and therefore changes our story. In the psychology literature, there is a growing recognition that “psychologically mature” adults are those who have a “coherent narrative of their own lives.” But the reality is that this coherent narrative has to be constructed in an evolving process that can sometimes take decades. As we write, we re-evaluate each memory to see how it fits into the sense we have of the journey of our life and its meaning and purpose. The dates and place names may not change, but our understanding of the events of our life surely can.

The real work of writing our stories and gathering them into a book is not the typing; it’s this psychological work of constructing our coherent narrative and it’s not easy work! We may use the web to bounce ideas off our writing colleagues, but once we have created a narrative that we feel really represents us and our life, we want to put it out into the world in a form that has a sense of permanence and authority. The web is never going to give us that, but a printed book will.

For many SCN writers, the web is the place where we get the sustaining sense of community that allows us to do the hard work of creating our narrative. Many SCN authors who have a memoir in print have also had a web presence that may have grown over the years. Just look at the growing number of SCN memoirists with both a memoir in print and a strong web presence: Susan Tweit (Walking Nature Home), Linda Joy Myers (Don’t Call Me Mother), Linda Wisniewski (Off Kilter), to name just a handful. So the web is integral to what we do. But for most of us, the printed book is the gold standard for its ease of use, its physical durability and the immutability of the print.

It turns out that there has never been a better time for lifewriters to publish our stories as a book despite the economic difficulties of the traditional book publishing industry (and the bricks-and-mortar bookstores, too). We may think of publishing through a traditional book publisher (whether a major publishing house or a small independent publisher) as conveying more authority than self-publishing. But print on demand (PoD) is open to anyone and PoD publishing services like Lulu.com offer memoirists much more creative control over the text than they’d get with a traditional publisher.

So as you think about how you might want to preserve and share the accumulated stories of your own life's narrative, know that creating your own printed book is easily within reach. And at the same time, know that you can use the web to gain the support of your fellow writers and to tell others about your book and to share your process, should you choose to do so.

Journaling to Italy

When you read this, I will be on a plane headed for Italy for a 10-day vacation. (To say I am wildly excited is an enormous understatement.)

My friend Karleen Koen sent me a journal for the trip. She wrote in the accompanying card, “It doesn’t matter what you put in here… just put something!” The thoughtful gift prompted me to think about the importance of keeping a journal while traveling. The journal enables me to revisit Italy after I return to Texas, and the descriptions of place will give me the seeds for developing memoir pieces, essays, poems, travel and culture writing, etc.

Because I’ve been to Rome before, I know how sensual the city is. I believe Florence, Assisi, Sienna and Venice will be equally so.

I have written the five senses inside my journal because I want to be aware of how I taste, see, touch, hear and smell my surroundings as I move through this country and experience its culture.
Through my senses I will experience a heightened awareness of my journey. I will be more fully present in the “now.”

I should focus on the experience rather than the documenting.  I don’t need to record much—I can record snippets, employing the economy of words that a poet or a Zen master wannabe would use, so that “shimmering images” ignite with the flash of memory.

Karleen is right; it doesn’t matter what I write as long as I keep some kind of record to elbow my ability to recollect (as in re-collect) the memories of my trip.

Au revoir.

CREATIVE CYCLES: BALANCING ACT (Number 2 in a series of 3)

 

"Woman Carrying Water," by Leslie Frances, Innisfree, Lake County, Northern California, clay sculpture

See Creative Catalyst archive at: http://storycircle.typepad.com/scn/creativity/

As you gaze at the highest point of the Big Top, you see the tightrope walker. She navigates the wire that’s barely visible from the bleachers below. There’s tense silence—and then a gasp as she loses her balance, swaying over the precipice. And then a sigh of relief as this mistress of the air rights herself. She regains her stability with deft use of her balancing pole.

Writers and artists require a balancing pole too. We've discussed in previous posts how we’re in constant creative flux. Our creative cycles move inward and outward. They can make us well centered or unstable, much like the tightrope walker, who loses her footing from time to time. Daily, weekly, monthly, or seasonal, our creative rhythms require conscious balancing.

A writer’s precipice isn’t as visibly dramatic as the tightrope walker’s. It’s invisible: a holding back and restraining of our talent. But creative energy demands its turn in the spotlight. It shouts out for the freedom to perform. Not releasing all that we have to do and say and be in the world can leave us teetering.

Self-awareness allows us to hand-knot a resilient safety net. With practice and experience, we perfect using the balancing pole to correct the inevitable “wobblies.” For some, the balancing pole is physical activity, for others a spiritual practice or community volunteer work. Whatever it may be, we must seek out our personal point of balance. We don’t want to falter too close to the precipice.

In terms of our creative practice, we need to balance cycles of being out-in-the-world time with in-the-studio times.

I became aware of this creative cycle when I was in my 20s and living in West Africa. A Ghanaian man, who was growing into himself as a writer and painter, became my dear friend. He taught me how to fully engage in out-in-the-world time and then the in-the-studio time. We shopped in the outdoor markets, reveling in the red of tomatoes and the rust-colored chili. We soaked up the old men’s songs and stories drinking millet beer. We took simple adventures—night walks or sitting on our metal roof under the stars. In short, we delved as deeply as we could into the life surrounding us.

Following all this, we returned home to rest and digest. We consciously processed all that we'd seen and learned. During these downtime days, insights about our experiences emerged. We could see how to craft our out-in-the-world time into fruitful in-the-studio time. We had followed an outward path and were now able to branch off onto the inward, art-producing path. I was incredibly fortunate to have this example early in life.

In midlife, I experienced a period I call “When the Art Came In.” Creative energy was unstoppable; it welled from every pore of my being: visual art, storytelling, composing, and writing.There was no way I could not create!

The creative strategies I’d learned in Ghana were just as effective in California. I blocked out painting days, giving myself a personal painting retreat in effect. (At this point I was painting in addition to writing.) To prepare, I cooked soups and stocked the refrigerator. I paid bills, returned phones calls, and made other practical arrangements. When I started painting, then, I could give myself fully to the sacred space of image and story. In-the-studio time was devoted solely to my art. Out-in-the-world time was transformed into tangible work.

When I have smaller chunks of time, I use the same principles so that I'm fully there. It’s how I’ve learned to handle the outward/inward cycles of creativity. It’s how I’ve crafted my balancing pole.

Your balancing pole is no doubt quite different. What it looks like, though, is immaterial. What matters is that it can guide you from the gasp of slipping to the relieved sigh of stability.

If you have comments or questions, please join in the dialog below or send me a private message at www.riehlife.com. Column written by Janet Grace Riehl (St. Louis) in collaboration with Stephanie Farrow (Albuquerque).

 

Do you start with action or backstory?

Matilda Butler - Opening Salvos #5

“Sprinkle story background in your memoir like an herb in your cooking,” said Joyce Boatright in a recent interview with me. I had asked Joyce to tell me about her thoughts on writing openings to memoirs. She responded, “My standard advice is to begin with action.” However, she quickly gave me an example from the memoir she’s writing where “the background or the seed of the story is too compelling to ignore.” Therefore, Joyce begins her memoir with a few background statements that hint of the story to come.

Her words immediately caused me to remember the women I interviewed for my collective memoir, Rosie’s Daughters: The “First Woman To” Generation Tells Its Story. I began my questions by asking about their experiences in the years just after high school. Initially, I was surprised when many women said something like, “Before I tell you about that, I have to explain what happened when I was a child.” Eventually, I saw the obvious. It is difficult, probably impossible, to separate pieces of our lives. Yet, how do we weave the background, or the backstory, into our memoir writing?

Joyce, who you probably also recognize as the new President of Story Circle Network, caused me to reflect on her wonderful analogy between backstory in memoir and spices in cooking. An herb or spice is never the main ingredient. Rosemary grows bountifully throughout my garden. Today, as I look through the raindrops to a nearby berm, I see the pale blue flowers that adorn my winter rosemary. Perhaps I’ll pick a stem or two, finely chop the dark green leaves, and toss them in with olive oil and roasted Yukon gold potatoes for tonight’s dinner. Too much rosemary, a disaster. Just right, a delight.

I hope this insight from Joyce will help you as you craft an opening to your memoir. By the way, there is an equally important concept of why you are telling backstory information. Remember, it isn’t there on its own or to take over the entire memoir. 

What do I mean? The backstory is an ingredient that has helped make you the person you are today. In writing about it, keep in mind its use in your memoir. Even if the backstory is important to an explanation of the person you have become, it is critical to remember you are telling the story of iced mint tea, not the mint. One is just an ingredient in the final product. 

Want to hear Joyce’s interview? Click here.  In addition to discussing memoir openings, she shares a tip about using "fast write" to silence your inner critic as well as a clever way to involve children in family storytelling.