Telling Herstories: The Broad View

The Sole of the Writer: From Dani Greer

Dani Greer is a Story Circle member, co-mom of SCN's Lifewriters Group, and a founding member of the Blood-Red Pencil. When she isn’t knitting, drawing, reading, or writing, she finds time to edit a couple of mystery or history novels each month. She and her husband made a stunning (and much fought-over!) contribution to the Silent Auction at SCN's recent conference, Stories From the Heart V. In this post, "The Sole of the Writer," she tells us about it.

Recently, my husband and I collaborated on a silent auction contribution for the Story Circle Network Conference held in Austin, Texas. We called it the Sole of the Writer Sock Box and here’s a picture of it.

He carved the conference logo on a wooden box styled to look like an old library card catalog, and lined the three compartments with aromatic cedar. Tabs on the three divider cards had Dewey Decimal System numbers related to the three stages of creating a book. What are the three stages, you might ask? Let me tell you my thoughts as I knit the three pairs of socks that went into the box.

The first stage in any writing project is getting the words down on paper, without regard to form, grammar, punctuation, or anything your inner critic might find to pick apart. This is where the writer dreams with reckless abandon – or in the case of a memoir - remembers without reservation. The sock yarn I chose was a bright multi-colored self-striping yarn, and though we don’t necessarily write only happy, playful stories, the process itself should feel unfettered – like child’s play, never knowing where exactly the story will lead. I call the socks Beautiful Dreamers with a mantra knit into each stitch that said, “wake unto me.”

The second major step in writing involves revising and editing. This is where we examine the holes in our stories, and as editors, poke in a few more before the author hunkers down to the business of repairing the flaws. I chose a lace pattern for the socks, because it’s not my favorite sock to knit. In fact, it can be downright frustrating, much as editing one’s own work can be maddening. But even with a few mistakes when finished, the end result is usually quite beautiful. The socks, of course, had to be red. What else for a queen of editing?

Finally, and particularly in today’s publishing environment, comes the third major component of the writing life – marketing. One cannot get around it. If you’ve ever attended a writers conference, you’ll know what most suitcases contain – dark mix-and-match basics that are wrinkle-free and can be dressed up or down with ease. I thought about knitting socks in black or navy wool, but then found a lovely dark money-green yarn with a few specks of color. The color of money was just too hard to resist, and truly there is nothing wrong with working a healthy payback into your writing equation. The mantra as I knit these? Sell, Mel, Sell. Okay, maybe that could be more poetic. How about “I am a money magnet”? No. Perhaps the words from Fiddler on the Roof: "If money is a curse, may God smite me with it, and may I never recover!" Yes, now that has a nice ring to it.

May whoever wears these socks enjoy all the joys of the entire writing process including fame and fortune. What about you? Are there any special talismans you wear in your writing life to give you that little extra edge at every step?

Dani, thanks so much for allowing us to republish your post. It's a delight to read, and definitely too true. Joyce Spurgin won the socks, and has warm and beautiful feet! Generously, she gave the box to Peggy Moody.
 

A Circle: A Powerful, Magical Thing

Lisa Shirah-Hiers is the president of the Story Circle Network's board of directors. We loved her welcoming speech at Stories From the Heart V and asked her permission to share it with you. If you were at the conference, you will remember her talk with pleasure. If not, you're in for a treat. Lisa's comments reach into the heart of Story Circle. She's telling our story, the story of our unique and remarkable organization, and she understands exactly why it is so powerful. It's all about circles and stories, isn't it? Thank you, Lisa!

Ladies, look around you. Isn’t SCN is something special? If you have been to a conference, or Writing from Life, or you’re in a circle, you already know that. But if this is your first time, if you’ve been getting the journal but never been to our events before, or if this conference is the first time you’ve had any connection with SCN, I predict that you will simply be blown away by what we are, by what we do. Because what we are—all of us in this room—is a circle. What is a circle? Well, for one thing, it’s round. And round, it turns out, is very, very strong.

In Tai Chi we round our arms because that way we can better withstand an attack. If you lock your arm or your wrist when an opponent comes at you, the bone will break. But a round arm absorbs the shock. I tell my little piano students to keep their knuckles rounded when they strike the key, because round is strong. A rounded finger can take the stress of pounding away for hours a day on some of the smallest joints in the body.

The Romans understood the strength of the circle when they discovered the arch. The curve of the arch distributes the stress in a way that makes it better able to withstand the force of gravity. So we see that roundness, the circle, is inherently strong. A circle is also egalitarian. We circle around a campfire, because in this way, we are all equidistant from the heat. If we “squared” around the fire, the folks in the corners would be cold. King Arthur’s table was round so that all the knights would have the same status, sharing the power and prestige equally.

Circles are protective. The pioneers circled the wagons when they were under attack, so they could keep the most vulnerable safe in the middle, just as the womb encircles the unborn baby and keeps it safe and protected.

The circle is feminine. Women understand it on a very deep level. We gather, we encircle the one who is crying, the one who is ill, or giving birth, or dying. We understand the power of the circle, of coming together, the wisdom of sharing, the necessity of connection, the strength in softness, in curves, in arches, in roundness. That deep, unconscious archetype is part of our feminine heritage, our collective memory. It is the source of our unique strength.

Perhaps for these reasons, the very idea of the story circle resonates so deeply with every woman I’ve ever spoken to. For not only circles but stories are our domain too. In the old wive’s tales, the fairy stories collected by the brothers Grimm and others, the favorite family stories about great uncle David and Oma’s oma’s oma, we hold the precious memory of the ancestors, we hold the myths, both universal and particular, the truths that make us who we are, that give each of our families it’s own history, its own culture, and which, at the same time, unite us in a common bond of understanding.

Drop a stone in the water, and the rings it gives birth too will ripple outward far beyond your ability to see them. The Story Circle Network is like that with every member like the stone that sets the water quivering. We are a circle, we in this room, we members of SCN, and every woman who has ever participated in anything we’ve ever done. We are a circle, where stories are the arch that spans the distance between us. We are a circle which gives equal honor to all, shares power and prestige and resources, allows each member to reach the warm source of heat and life in the center. We are round and we are strong. We are just what we say we are, a network, an interconnecting web of relationship and memory. Every conference has been a circle of women, a circle containing smaller, interconnecting circles. And every WFL, every Lifelines retreat, every gathering of the SCN in every time, in every place. We are each like the stone dropped in the pond, which sets the circles spinning, rippling far beyond us, changing us, changing the world we live in. In the safety of the circle we give birth to new words, new worlds, we give birth to ourselves. For we are a circle, a Story Circle. And that is a powerful, magical thing.

Lisa Shirah-Hiers (Austin, TX) has published numerous profile pieces for austinwoman magazine, Austin Monthly, and the Story Circle Journal. Her essay "Spinning Water into Gold" appeared in What Wildness is This: Women Write about the Southwest and was reprinted in Desert Call Magazine. She is SCN's board president, a circle facilitator, and frequent workshop presenter.

Behind the Scenes at STORIES FROM THE HEART

This post is written by Susan Wittig Albert, co-chair (with Peggy Moody) of STORIES FROM THE HEART V.

We've been reading posts about our recent SCN conference from presenters and participants about what it was like to offer or attend one of the thought-provoking (and story-provoking) sessions. I thought you might like a glimpse behind some of the other activities at the conference.

Here's a glimpse behind our silent auction, for instance. We love this part of the conference, because it reminds us that the art we create and collect is an important part of our stories. Each one of the beautiful art works in the auction had a story to tell, and each woman who won a piece of art will make it part of her own story.

Back in October, Judy Whelley worked with Peggy Moody to set up the webpages for the auction. Over the next few months, items were contributed and we all got really excited, looking at them online--like this stunning Dick and Jane quilt by Jinni Turkelson, one of SCN's creative quilters. Wow! It was really coming together! We began sharing the photos with our friends, and that generated even more generous donations.

Finally it was time for the conference. Most of the art items were sent to Peggy, who brought them to the conference hotel the day before the fun began. Judy flew in from Ohio, and her team members (the gals who were helping her put the auction together) drove in from around Texas. They gathered all the items in Judy's room, camped out there, and worked for hours on Thursday afternoon and evening and Friday morning, then started moving everything to the Lady Bird Lake room. They had to organize and display the items and set up the bid sheets (a huge job!), and were finally ready to open for business at 6 p.m. on Friday.

By that time, the Auction Team must have been ready to take a break--and maybe ready to collapse! But they soldiered on, making sure that everything ran smoothly for the full day the auction was open. They had another big duty, too: awarding the door prizes on Saturday and Sunday, at lunch. Here they are, over lunch on Saturday: from the left, Judy Whelley, the auction organizer, Becca Taylor and Susan Ideus, from the Houston area, and Rhonda Esakov, from Round Rock. (Can you tell that they're having fun together?)

The auction closed on Saturday afternoon, with a final few moments of really exciting bidding and squeals of delight when the moment came to claim the items we were coveting. (That's okay: coveting is not a sin in a good cause--right?) Joyce Spurgin won Jinni's quilt: she said she learned to read with Dick and Jane and that reading is her passion. So she just kept on bidding until the quilt was hers.

And then, of course, Judy's team had to help winners claim and pay for their items and close down the displays. Altogether, the silent auction was a  huge job, an organizational challenge, and a major contribution to the excitement and fun of the conference.

And a huge contribution to Story Circle, as well, for the auction brought in over $2300! Thanks are due to Judy, Becca, Susan, and Rhonda, who contributed their ideas and energy and time to make this event happen; to the nearly 40 SCN artists and friends who generously donated their art work; and to the many conference attendees who bid on the items.

This is how a circle works, isn't it? Everyone contributes, everyone shares, and it all becomes a part of our stories.

Susan offers another behind-the-scenes glimpse at Matilda Butler's and Kendra Bonnett's website, womensmemoirs.com--a look at the highly successful Heart-to-Heart Coaching session that took place on Friday morning. Matilda and Kendra have also posted a few photos. Drop in and see if you're included!

Getting Published

Helen Ginger blogs at Straight From Hel and moderated a panel discussion called Getting Published at the Stories From the Heart conference.  In this post, which originally appeared on Matilda Butler and Kendra Bonnet's blog called Women's Memoirs she shares with us what the discussion was about.  There is good information here!

Recently, I had the opportunity to attend the Story Circle Network national conference and sit in on the Getting Published panel with five fabulous memoir writers: Kendra Bonnett, Matilda Butler, Laurie Wagner Buyer, Susan Tweit, and Linda Wisniewski. Put five successful authors at the front of the room and dozens of up-and-coming writers in the audience and all I had to do as moderator was sit back and let the questions and answers fly.

The first question, Are memoirs growing or waning in popularity? received a definite “growing” from all panelists. Matilda presented convincing statistics to prove that memoirs are becoming more and more popular. When you also take into consideration the popularity of TV reality shows, the increasing number of baby boomers, computers making it easy for anyone with a story to write a book, and the rising number of authentic, unique voices, it’s easy to predict that memoirs will continue to sell.

Some wanted to know how to find an agent interested in representing memoir. First, do your research. Check sites like Preditors and Editors. Check the acknowledgment page of memoirs you like–see if the author thanked her agent, then Google the agent’s name and visit her/his website to see what kind of material she/he likes to represent. Follow agents’ blogs. Go to conferences to meet with agents and editors. If you can’t afford a conference or can’t find one nearby, check conference websites. There most likely will be bios on all the agents and editors attending, and you can see up-to-date info on what they’re looking for.

A large part of the panel’s time was spent talking about that ominous word “platform.” What is an author’s platform? Platform isn’t just for celebrities who can get their face on television to promote anything. Platform is for you and me. Publishers want us to have a platform, too. A platform is a means to promote and sell your book. Clearly, you and I may not be able to get on Oprah or Good Morning America, but we can build our own platform. To build a platform, you have to start now. If you don’t have a blog, start blogging. Join Twitter, Facebook, and whatever other ways you can network and build your “presence” online. Claim your domain and create a website. Write articles for other blogs or sites. Get your name out there! Hand out business cards. Go to conferences and meet other authors and readers. Join writers’ groups. As one person said, “Be persistent and passionate.” But don’t let it take up so much of your time that you forget writing and editing your work. If you start building a platform early, you can build it slowly and solidly.

There were so many questions and so much great advice from the authors that the panel’s hour and a half flew by. As soon as we all stood up, the doors swung open and wait staff rushed in to rearrange our room to make it part of the luncheon. Although there were others waiting to eat, those of us who had been part of the Q&A were still chatting and getting to know each other as we left. Without even thinking about it, we were meeting new people and taking a step up onto our platform-in-progress.

Tribes

Dawn Espelage is a Certified Journal Instructor through The Center of Journal Therapy and has worked in the social work field for thirteen years.  Here is what she is saying about the Stories From the Heart conference on her Life Lines Journaling blog. 

I just returned from an inspiring weekend participating at the Story Circle Network conference. I had been looking forward to a weekend of like-minded sisters but had not envisioned what that looked like. The sense of community, the spirit of validation and nurturing and the vibrant courageous women telling their stories was a memorable, awakening experience. The thread of finding your "tribe" was woven throughout.

Carve out a few minutes to write and reflect on what "tribe" means to you and who your tribe is. Consider if your tribe needs expanding and if so, what would that look like?