Telling Herstories: The Broad View

Read It...Research It...Learn from It

Wednesdays over at SCN Lifewriters are for "Real Words", the sharing of favorite quotes.  There are always some thought-provoking bits of wisdom imparted.  I loved the one Susan Albert shared this week because it's wonderful and because it fit right in with what I wanted to share this week.

To me, writing is about how we see. The writers I want to read teach me how
to see--see the world differently. In my writing there is no separation
between how I observe the world and how I write the world. We write through
our eyes. We write through our body. We write out of what we know.
Terry Tempest Williams

We need not read textbooks or literary tomes or even "how to" books to pick up valuable insights about writing.  Not that there aren't some fine books about writing.  There are and there are reviews of some of those on the SCBR website.  But, look again at what TTW said here:"The writers I want to read teach me how to see--see the world differently."  Is there something new you need to see, something about writing you need to learn?  You might be surprised where you can find it.

If you are writing about a new location and you want it to be realistic and interesting, read a book about that place.  Are you experimenting with dialogue or a different dialect or accent?  Read  authors who successfully use that type of speech. Steep yourself in the genre, the period, the locale--be it customs or costuming, accents or slang, food traditions, ethnicity--someone has written about that. Research need not be tedious.  Read novels, biographies, travel memoirs. Google your need or enter a broad category (Victorian England) in an Amazon search. Ask friends for suggestions.  You'll find what you need.  If you're lucky enough to travel, gather whatever info you can on the area.  You never know when you might need it.  Outings become opportunities.  Visit museums and historical sites. Can't travel?  Every tourist bureau is more than happy to send packets of information.

Did you ever wonder how it is that Susan Wittig Albert's Cottage Tale books are so authentic?  Hop on over to her Cottage Tales Festival and you'll learn just how she managed that.  She has some wonderful stories about the background and research for the series.  Easy?..I suspect not.  Enjoyable?...I'd almost guarantee i

If you follow Susan's Lifescapes blog, you'll learn that she's reading novels about the South right now, as preparation for the new series she has coming out set in 1930's Darling, Alabama--about as south as you can get! She wants to make sure her Darling Garden Club ladies look and speak and dress just right.  Check out the end of this post for links to her Facebook page and her research.

In one of the first books I read on writing techniques, and still one of my favorites, Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird the author was writing about a woman with a garden.  Now Anne couldn't grow a silk plant much less a garden  What did she do?  She called on the talents of a nurseryman who helped her design a huge fictional garden, just the kind she envisioned for her character.  She just knew this woman had to garden; Anne loved gardens but had no knowledge or talent.  She found someone who did.  She calls this sort of research and planning "set design."

Make this part of your writing life fun.  You won't be wasting time, but rather investing it.

That's all for this time, except for reminding to watch for the next SC Book Review Newsletter, coming out soon.  Books to read, books to savor.  Ya'll come!

Writing the Hard Stuff

Difficult times hit everyone's lives. How do we write about the hard stuff? Can writing help us work our way through pain and misery, anger and grief? Sometimes.

A few weeks ago, a dear friend died in a rafting accident. As I struggled to accept the loss and find a way to not let the black cloud of grief settle solidly over my days, I realized that I needed to write as a way to honor both Carol's life and my feelings. So I wrote my own version of a personal obituary in my weekly newspaper column:

The call came on one of those afternoons when life moves so quickly that even though you're going as fast as you possibly can, you feel like the Red Queen in Through the Looking Glass, as if you're barely keeping up.

"Susan, it's Jim," my friend said, and then paused. "I've got sad news: Carol Jacobson died yesterday in a rafting accident on the Green River."

"No," I said.

We were silent, me attempting to make sense of nonsensical news; he probably wondering what he should say.

"But she was so excited about that trip," I said, as if that could change what had already happened. "She had always wanted to run Lodore Canyon."

"I'm sorry," he said.

"What happened?"

"The raft flipped in Triplet Falls and she fell out. They picked her up in the pool at the bottom, but she never recovered consciousness."

Silence again while we both tried to digest the news.

Then we talked for a bit, remembering the previous fall when we had signed books at her store, and how she had loved books and ideas and stories--and being home in northwestern Colorado after thirty years away.

"I'm sorry," he said again.

"Me, too."

That was a month ago, and I'm still trying to make sense of the news that Carol Valera Jacobson, age 54, co-owner of Downtown Books in Craig, Colorado, poet, teacher, memoirist, storyteller, gardener, mom to three grown sons, re-married barely two years, is dead.

We had just "talked" in email a few days before, as she was getting ready for the raft trip. She asked for advice on dealing with slugs and grasshoppers in her garden; she nudged me about arranging my trip to sign books at her store and talk to her memoir-writing classes; she wanted information on writing workshops I'll be teaching.
And then she fell out of a raft going over a series of drops in Lodore Canyon and she's gone. Just like that.

Carol lit up a room. She loved life--people say that, but Carol really did, and was engaged in every moment of it, from gardening to giving the best hugs and laughing whole-body laughs, to improving downtown Craig, the ranching and oil town where she had grown up and to which she had returned six years ago to be closer to family.

More than 400 people came to her memorial service, and the tears and laughter and remembrances went on for two hours.

I keep thinking of things I need to tell her. And then I remember she's gone.

I want to honor Carol's life, and her passion for stories and literacy and for the community of land and people there in Moffat County.

I want to carry forward her laugh and her stubborn genius for making good things happen; I want to be the writer she believed I am.

And I want to make sense of the door that closed with her sudden death, and watch for the one I'm sure she's holding open somewhere else.

Writing--whether it's about difficult times, difficult memories, or difficult feelings--can open that door. It can help us find a way through times that are tough, a way out of emotions that threaten to swamp us. And it can be a way to honor our losses and the scars we carry, those lessons that we wouldn't have chosen to learn, but which shape our lives.

 

(Carol Valera Jacobson in Downtown Books, Craig, Colorado)

This one's for you, Carol. My love and blessings go with you as you continue on this great journey, wherever it may take us.....

Blogging is Dead...In Case You Hadn't Heard

Kendra Bonnett--Getting Read #7

I read the other day that blogging was dead. Wow, I thought, I'm glad someone told me. I might have gone along blogging completely oblivious to the fact that my platform was dead, at least in terms of influence and relevance. Don't you believe it for a minute.

Actually, I read such a headline every few months, and it doesn't even phase me. You see, I've been through this before. In fact, it might interest you to know that Facebook is dying--now that young people are supposedly leaving because adults are joining in record numbers. Twitter is pronounced dead every other week for reasons ranging from too rapid a growth rate (at one point 1382 percent) to the fact that Google has yet to buy them. Podcasting is another technology tossed into the dead pool regularly because...well just because.

It's true that the rate of growth of blog posting has slowed. According to Technorati (the world's largest aggregator and networker of blogs) bloggers were posting at a rate of 1.5 million per day in March 2007; a year later the rate was between 900,000 and 1 million posts a day, and we don't yet know what 2009 will show. I don't know about you, but since I can only read between 10 and 20 posts on any given day--and still be productive--blogging will have to all but disappear for me to feel any of the tightening.

The truth is I can't think of a single technology that hasn't slowed after enjoying several years of growth at rates that few industries can imagine, let alone boast. And looking at the carnage and debris scattered about the current economic battlefield, bloggers should be pleased that slower posting rates are all they endure. No, I think the reports of the demise of blogging are not only greatly exaggerated they miss the real story.

But first, let's ground ourselves in a few stats so we know just what we're talking about. According to Technorati, the blogosphere In 2008 (2009 numbers are not yet released) looked something like this:

• 184 million people worldwide (26.4 million US) started blogs
• 346 million people worldwide read blogs
• 77 percent of active web users read blogs 
• 95 percent of the top 100 newspapers have reporter blogs 
• Roughly 1 million posts are made to blogs every day 

With numbers like these, you're probably wondering why anyone in their right mind would suggest that blogging has even a fever, let alone is in ICU or dead. I suspect much of the doomsaying comes from 1) technophiles who only have eyes for the next new thing, 2) some percentage of traditional journalists who feel threatened by the "citizen journalist," and 3) naysayers that love to decry the end and death of anything and everything.

So what's going on? And what does it mean to authors blogging (or planning to blog) to boost interest in their books? You'll find my answer over on the Women's Memoirs blog under the post entitled "Is Blogging Dead...and Should I Care?"

One More Time

Are there books you re-read?  Do you keep certain books on hand just so you can read them again when the mood strikes?  Are your bookshelves bulging?

I began thinking about this when I read an article recently in Newsweek, Now, Read It Again by David Gates.  He favors Dickens, books on baseball or mountaineering, and various mysteries for his repeat reading.  In his experience, he has found the authors most likely to be re-read are Dickens, Shakespeare and Jane Austen.  I have no quarrel with those, having gone back to several selections in this group myself.  As a matter of fact, I have most of Jane Austen on my iPhone right now.

There are other books I favor for a return visit.  Recently, I read Refuge by Terry Tempest Williams for a second time. Now I know I read this book carefully before because it was the resource for an SCN weekend seminar on writing that I attended several years back.  But, you know, I'd swear there were things in that book that weren't there before.  How could that be?  I have the same heavily annotated book I used for that weekend.  The same thing happens when I re-read any of Anne Lamott's trilogy of books on faith, and always when I delve into her Bird by Bird time and again.  Do I have little editing elves amongst my books?  No, it's just that I am a different person in a different place in my life when I peruse familiar pages at different times.  One point or statement or description may "speak to me" today whereas if I read the same thing a month ago, I might not have experienced the same spark of interest.  That's the beauty and the magic of re-reading.  A good book, a book that is special to you, holds a certain magic.  Books grow with us, change with us.

Speaking of growing, I think I mentioned bulging bookshelves.  Mine are, and I have books packed away due to lack of space.  This will, I hope, become even more of a problem in a few years.  That is to say that, when we retire, my husband and I hope to be rather mobile, having only a small home base to come back to.  Books, in quantity, are not very mobile, at least not in a travel trailer or the like.  So I'm looking at big time down-sizing.  Some books I know I'll never get rid of, but as for the rest, it will be a struggle to decide.

Of course, modern innovations such as the hand-held electronic readers will help.  I mentioned having Jane Austen on my iPhone.  I'm saving for a Kindle (not pushing a brand here, just the one I'm most familiar with).  Imagine 350 books in a hand-held device!  I'd have no worry about room for books as I travel.  Now if some one could just come up with a solution for copious amounts of yarn...but that's another discussion.

Gates mentioned in his article that one might feel a bit sinful, as in self-indulgent, re-reading old books when there are so many new books out there and so many new subjects one should learn about.  He mentioned stock trading and steroids among others.  Whatever...  I'll admit I'm always on the lookout for new books--those by favorite authors, a new memoir I don't want to miss, a new author that looks interesting.  But re-reading a favorite?  That's like coming home to a roomful of your best friends, always welcoming, always comforting, just sassy enough to keep you on your toes.

Here's to best friends and favorite books!! 

(Oops, hope I'm not stepping on any toes--this was supposed to have come out on Thursday--my apologies.)

Cyle 3.4 Fie on Fear! Success & Failure: Two Sides of a Coin

Toss a coin. Success or failure? Which side do you want the coin to land on? Most of us would cross our fingers, arms, legs, or even our eyes in the hope that the coin lands on success. We’ve learned to think in terms of polar opposites: black/white, funny/serious, good/bad, Yet success and failure trot together side-by-side, not as a tag team with one in front and the other behind.

Fear of failure and fear of success also move together. If we fear failure or success, we pit one part of our psyche against another, sabotaging our creative expression. By examining and learning to work with the fears in our creative lives, we can move forward more smoothly. We need to practice treating them as friendly neighbors rather than enemies.

American mainstream culture puts a premium on success. It conditions us feel that if we fail--if we don’t measure up to what society defines as success--it means that we’re unworthy. In America success means bigness: “Big profits.” “I hit it big.” “She’s HUGE (as in a phenomenon)” Buying into this belief is a surefire road to creative sabotage.

What are your personal fears about failing? Take time in a quiet place to reflect on this. Make notes on what you discover about your beliefs. You don’t have to share them, so be honest with yourself.

Now take a look at your fears of success. Do you feel overwhelmed by the idea of being successful beyond your wildest dreams? Does the thought evoke fear that you’ll be unmasked as an imposter? Again, reflect on this question and take notes on what emerges.

Compare your lists of failure and success. You might find that they aren’t as different as you thought they would be. So toss your imaginary coin again and visualize it landing on its edge. No finger-crossing necessary!

In our next post (3.5) in our Fie on Fear! cycle we’ll discuss finding new ways to relate to our fears. We’ll then close this cycle in our third post by helping you define your own success. Why not make success safe, comfortable, attainable?

In this "Creative Catalyst" column for the SCN blog, we present each theme cycles in three posts: first, a keynote, followed by two posts to develop the theme. Our first cycle defined working creativity and regular practice. The second 3-part series looked into creative cycles. Our third cycle set the groundwork for working productively with fear. Our fourth cycle delves more deeply into our creative fears.  See the Creative Catalyst archive at: http://storycircle.typepad.com/scn/creativity.

Column written by Janet Grace Riehl of St. Louis in collaboration with Stephanie Farrow of Albuquerque.

Pose questions about practical creativity; give ideas for future cycle themes; and join in the dialog in the comment section below. If you’d like to see previous articles in this series, go to http://storycircle.typepad.com/scn/creativity/

1) Buy our new audio book “Sightlines: A Family Love Story in Poetry and Music” at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/janetgraceriehl.

2) Catch-up on Janet’s internet audio book tour at http://is.gd/1zIwQ.

"Let It Be" - Advice for Women Memoir Writers Looking for the Opening

Opening Salvos #9 by Matilda Butler

In a recent Women’s Memoir Author Conversation with SCN member Karen Walker, Kendra Bonnett and I were intrigued by a number of her responses to questions from our listeners. We invite you to listen to her entire interview. But right now I'd like to focus on just one response. Near the end of the interview, I got to ask my question about memoir openings. Specifically, I asked Karen to read her first three paragraphs and then tell us how she came up with the idea for her opening and why she chose this way to get her memoir started.

Karen’s memoir, Following the Whispers, started out as a rehash of her journals -- more than 700 pages of rehash. “Then I turned my manuscript over to an editor and she told me, ‘You have a story in there somewhere. Just tell it.'” That was the beginning of a long journey for Karen, a journey that included going back to college and taking every creative writing class they offered. During those classes, she began the rewrite of her memoir.

For anyone who has written, we know that meant the rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite of her story. Karen told us that her current opening “was not the beginning of my memoir when I started.” Because Karen originally thought of her story as that of a woman who had lost custody of her young son, she had started the story with that loss. Later, as she rewrote her memoir and eventually worked with another editor, she came to see that her story wasn’t about losing custody. It was a story of ignoring her inner whispers, whispers that gently urged her in the right direction, and finally learning to follow her whispers. 

As Karen neared the completion of her memoir, she still didn’t have a good opening. Her advice to writers is: “Don’t worry. Just let it be. Just allow the right opening to come. It always does.” Karen got her inspiration one evening at a regular folk dance gathering she attends. She saw a friend dancing around the room with his two daughters snuggled in his arms. Karen said, “At that moment, I saw how different my childhood was from these two lucky little girls. I also saw I now had the perfect opening to my memoir.”  

Be sure to listen to all of Karen’s interview. Click Here to go to the blog with her interview. She has many interesting points for memoir writers. You’ll especially like her discussion of the Golden Thread.

By the way, I’ve spent the past two weeks working on a short video in which I share the first of seven secrets to writing an effective memoir. I too struggled with how to begin that video. In a video you have to grab a viewer even more quickly than you do in a memoir. The video is now posted on YouTube. If you’d like to check it out, Click Here or go to http://www.tinyurl.com/lpnkb9  If you like it, please click on the Subscribe button. We’re working on the second video - Women’s Memoir Writing Secret #2. 

We hope you'll share the video with other life writers. Be sure to let us know what type of information you'd like in these videos and we'll add your suggestions to our list.