The pull to give up is an all too frequent hazard on the writing path. As we get older, the drive to advocate for ourselves can diminish. Our wish to fight against injustice in our own personal world or the world at large or to tell our own story can fade. What does it matter anyway? Who am I to write a book? Let’s get crystal clear that the process of writing a book is deeply personal and generally isolated. In truth, isolation – whether we buy into this or not – is actually how we live our lives. And that is not necessarily a bad thing. It is realistic. “We’re born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we’re not alone.” – Orson Welles. No matter how well someone knows you, they cannot know all of you. They cannot know who you were at that moment, what your options were, the constraints of your situation, or the limited choices you had. I often hear in response to stories of domestic violence: “I would never stand for that treatment. I would head out the door the moment someone raised a hand to me and never come back. Why didn’t you just walk away?” Always delivered with a look of disbelief and faint disgust, a wrinkled nose, and a raised eyebrow. Oh yeah? Only other survivors or sufferers of domestic violence can credibly relate. Rape survivors often get the same reaction and experience when disclosing their pain to others. Most women conclude disclosure isn’t worth the risk. You take risks whenever you share anecdotes about your life with other people – both the hilarious and the horrific. And by hilarious and horrific, I mean both the anecdotes and the people you share them with. You cleverly couch and cover up your experience by sharing insights you gained from your pain and your healing. You refer to the “ah-ha” moments that changed your life. Because while it is a nice and tidy platitude, no one else can ever really walk a mile in your moccasins. For example, you have been bombarded by advertisements against smoking all your life, but then witness a beloved relative – perhaps a parent – succumb to cancer. That brings it up close and personal. Everyone can relate to sadness and loss but no one can feel exactly about that particular incident what you felt. They could not have seen what you saw, heard, smelled, or thought at the time. So why not give up on this impossible task from the get-go or even bother to set off on this fool’s errand? Face it. What you have to say likely doesn’t mean anything in “the grand scheme of things.” So here’s why I won’t give up. Because I am the only me there is. Because books and the words within them saved my life. From an early age – about three years old – I learned to read and write. It made Grade One a boring cakewalk. As the adults around me were doing daily crazy, I crept up into my little “book nook” in the space above my bedroom closet wearing my thin cotton nightie. I had a stack of books beside me then just as I do today. Different books, mind you. The authors back then became my close-ish, personal friends. Back in the day, it was anything written by the Grimms Brothers with their dark implications about life’s dangers in their “fairy tales.” The wonders of the Childcraft encyclopedia took me everywhere and sowed the seeds for lifelong eclectic learning. Aesop’s Fables afforded me lessons in morality and cause and effect that I wasn’t getting from my parents at home. Crazy adults, remember? Mom made sure local author Desmond Pacey’s The Cow with the Musical Moo was always on display in the house where visitors – especially Professor Pacey himself – could clearly see it. At some point, “doing the best they could with what they knew at the time” doesn’t quite cut it. There is much they chose not to know. They have long been forgiven but the scars are immutable. Scars can certainly be softened over time but not erased. It’s similar to forgiving rapists who were – you know – just looking for love in the only way they knew how. “Boys will be boys after all,” they say. And the dumbfounded women they’ve terrorized sink inward and deeper until they are in danger of completely fading away. Until one day they are no longer there. Fuck that!
Women Talking
When the writing retreat in New Smyrna Beach finished, I headed straight home to my husband. Most of the writers at the retreat were women with two exceptions – the director and a friend of his known to most of the repeat attendees. By making the commitment to write a book, I’ve learned something important. You cannot take your foot off the gas. You can coast for a little to enjoy the scenery and take a break or two. Ultimately you have to get back on the road and keep moving forward. It is a choice. And no one has to make that choice but you. I hate that. During the retreat, I realized I do not spend much time in the physical company of women nor do I hear much directly about women’s day-to-day experiences. I never did which is an issue and consequence of my upbringing that I mean to address in my book. In recent weeks, I have connected with and become part of an enriching 3X weekly writing accountability group. We are women from a variety of backgrounds who live across the United States from Hawaii to California, Colorado, and Texas to Florida and as far down the continent as Costa Rica. Our writing interests are equally far-flung and diverse. A professional chiropractor is writing about sleep. There are two astrologers in the group and one of the regular participants is male. I like to chide him that his knowledge of astrology is so deep, he will need to put a glossary in his book. Another woman is a past professional webmaster and her contribution to sorting out our technological roles is almost as important as her creative endeavors. The 3X weekly writing group emerged from our mutual involvement in the Hay House Writer’s Community. Hay House has a twice-annual contest inviting book proposals from its members. The winning proposal will be published and receive a $10, 000 advance. Great incentive and it was the reason I initially joined the group. I was heading for the May 5 – June 5 deadline for submissions until I had a hard reality check. The sample book proposals Hay House circulated are in the range of 65 to 120 pages long. Color me intimidated. I am revising my expectations and internal deadlines. If I get a book proposal in this spring, I will have accomplished more than I expected. If I don’t, so be it and I will head for the next deadline in December. I am learning it is healing for me to be in the company of caring and intelligent women. For the longest time in my life, I wasn’t much interested. My mother was someone who might best be described as “more like the boys than the boys.” A lot of catchphrases like that floated around in the 60s and 70s to describe successful women who wanted and sought out power. It seemed they could only achieve it by doing what the men did in terms of competitiveness, empire-building, and outmuscling their competition for the roles and rewards that come with generating attention. It baffles me that women are still subjugated and dismissed across the board in society. A hopeful phrase now circulating out there is “the future is female.” Perhaps we are all done to death with the power imbalance of male privilege and energies shaping our lives. Or, more likely, young women have woken up to the necessity of creating their own power. If you are interested in an extreme example of women’s subjugation and their collaborative attempt to rise above it, see the Academy Award-nominated film, Women Talking. The script beautifully articulates the dilemma women traditionally live with. They love the men who are their husbands, brothers, sons, and relatives. But the women can no longer tolerate what the men consider their physical due. Either by complicity or by force. To say much more would be to spoil the film’s trajectory and ending. But I encourage women to see it. It’s tough going in parts but aren’t our lives inherently tougher than men’s? If this fact of life has escaped your notice, then you live in a very fortunate bubble. So if you are one of those lucky women, see this film anyway. It may horrify you, but it may also change and incite you. Women’s voices have often been seen as second-best to men’s voices. There is an ever-so-subtle shift away from that in the emerging generation. Today I get to reconnect with the writing group over ZOOM. Our writing sessions always begin with a beautiful meditation to ground our efforts and focus us on our writing. I so look forward to it. We get to catch up on the past few days, work together, share our work with each other, and implicitly hold each other up. This is alchemy at its finest.
The Color of Mom
Writing requires organization and discipline. In order to write a book, you need to make choices about what to include and exclude from your story as the process unfolds. Some writers sit and free-write faithfully, and from this exercise, a book eventually emerges. These writers – I recently learned – are called “pantsers.” They write their book, literally, “by the seat of their pants.” I am normally that type of person on many projects I undertake. In this case, I have been told I have too much material to draw from and too many anecdotes to share. I have to put them in some sort of order. A narrative arc I believe it is called. I explained in an earlier post that I went to a stationery store, and bought lots of writing paper, and bright neon-colored index cards: pink, yellow, blue, pink, and green. “Assign a color to each major character,” I was advised. “Collect your stories and observations about that character on that single-color index card as they come up for you. Carry the blank cards with you so you can jot down ideas that come up on the fly.” I may be overthinking it but I immediately wondered: what color should Mom be? She was a tiny, feminine woman so maybe her cards should be pink. Then again, she was not very much maternal and had a hard and bitter edge. I vacillated while considering the yellow cards. She committed stunning acts both of bravery and cowardice in her lifetime. Does she deserve to wear the yellow stripe of cowardice in my musings? Given our troubled history, it would not have been inaccurate. What about the blue index cards for the sadness and chaos she created in my life and her own and that of many others? And certainly not the green index cards. Poet Irving Layton once wrote a phrase about poets and poetry that has stayed with me: “The poet’s colors are green and black – the colors of life and death.” Green is sacred to me. It has always evoked life and renewal. I’ve painted the walls of my home in shades of green. I crave the fresh green palate I encounter on forest walks. My doctor insists fresh greens on my palate will prolong and enhance my healthspan. I cannot assign this precious color to musings about my mother. Sadly, so much of what I remember about her is sad and sick and life-sapping, not life-giving. I told my husband about the dilemma I faced. He replied immediately: “Perhaps you should make her cards in dual colors.” Duplicity was a strong character trait of hers so that could work. “Put a diagonal across the index card. Write your pleasant memories on one side of the line and the not-so-pleasant memories on the other side.” A logical compromise, I think. But as to the color? Possibly white. White-faced. Bloodless. Whitewash. Cadaverous. A void. I have so few warm or pleasant memories of my mother and that is sad. What I mostly remember is surviving her. For years, my survival was nowhere near a foregone conclusion. We’ll see how the card color selection plays out. Meanwhile, I will take the advice of author Anne Lamott. She advises authors who are reluctant to share bad things that others had done to them to let it all out: “You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”
What Color Should My Mother Be?
Final night at the Murphy Writing School in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. The twelve memoir students read in the dance studio what they worked on this week. Throughout the readings of these diverse pieces of writing by diverse writers, I was transported to eras, countries, and life situations to which I had no previous exposure or knowledge. If I did know about them at all, my knowledge was glib and superficial.
These memoirists shared raw, wretched, deep, delicious, hilarious, poignant, wry memories and observations. We spent time in a psychiatric hospital with one writer tonight. When the writer’s husband left her for a 17-year-old girl shortly after the birth of their first baby, she mused that there was only one difference between her and her patients: she had the keys.
A young first-generation Vietnamese told the wrenching story of the long COVID his mother was suffering. She shunned conventional treatment because she followed the orange-headed leader’s claim that bleach would kill the bug and cure the problem.
An older American fellow revealed what he went through to extract a psychiatric evaluation to keep him out of Vietnam when he was drafted. Agemates of his were not as fortunate. One Vietnam veteran casualty was buried close to his family’s plot in their hometown.
A woman of Filipino descent shared her father’s World War II stories. One, in particular, underscored his futile attempt to stop a Japanese pilot friend from committing kamikaze, or, “divine wind.” It appears young Muslim suicide bombers have stepped up to weather the mantle of martyrdom.
Another woman mused tenderly about the inevitability of death for us all and how she wishes to embrace it when the time comes. A woman living with a stroke wrote about constant vacillation between hope and despair with her and others in physical therapy. A woman raging against the physical vagaries of age spoke hilariously on behalf of hundreds of thousands of aging women. In her diatribe, she spoke convincingly about the necessity of undergoing the same sort of renovation for her body as her house had recently been through.
The poetry readings last night and the memoir excerpts tonight had similar impacts: both were powerful and highly humanizing. School director Peter Murphy says, “Yes. This happens every time.” People’s personalities and characters emerge and their issues take shape when they focus on their writing And even more powerfully when their work is witnessed. Murphy continued: “Whether it is a smaller group like ours with under 50 students, he said, or workshops with 200 or more. There is magic in the doing of the writing. It changes you and it changes those who hear or read it.”
That, at the very least, is my dearest hope and ambition. Has the title of the post confused you at all? Well, me too. if I’m honest. I meant to talk about where my mother will likely fit in my life story and how I am going to capture the wealth of events and anecdotes. For a physically slight person, she was fairly imposing and affecting. But why do I have to decide what “color” she will be is TBD – to be decided. A next step in the book writing process.
As I leave this nourishing workshop environment today and head back to “real life,” you’ll just have to hold on to your questions until I fully explain tomorrow. I believe that is called a cliffhanger in LitSpeak.
If Words Be The Food of Life, Write On
Borrowing ever so loosely from William Shakespeare, I was humbled last night by the sheer talent of my fellow colleagues at the Murphy School of Writing Retreat here in Florida. I had drifted away from a felt sense of why words and writing are so vitally important. A general cynicism had befallen me after years of writing professionally. I use the term “writing” in the “government communications” context ever so loosely. Producing and publishing words for politicians and greedy, soulless clients whose only interest was whether they could manipulate the reader into parting with hard-won cash or votes was soul-crushing. Tonight, I started the process of relearning that words – which, admittedly, have their own limitations (more on that in a future post) – are the most effective tools we humans have to share our human experience with other humans. Words make us laugh. Words cross gulfs of isolation. Words make us think. Words teach us stuff. Words can make us cringe, bring forth tears, and leave us breathless with awe and wonder at the breadth, depth, and vagaries of the human experience. A mother speaking tremulously and tenderly about the birth of and life with her dearly beloved child who has cerebral palsy. A woman “of a certain age” speaking about finally discovering joyous orgasms after finding a loving partner with a “slow hand” in a sly nod to the Pointer Sisters’ massive 80s hit song. A woman who disclosed and bears the deep and immutable childhood insult and primal wound of incest. She called it a “dent.” Another with similar primal wounds due to rape shared her outrage at those who would question how “it” happened. Rape victims hear that line of questioning all the time. Another recalled a carefree day in her youth exploring a big, dirty city with a dear lifelong friend. Her final poem was a study in controlled rage and exasperation over the America she loves and lives in which – she implored – “desperately needs to get its act together.” And from a farm-raised writer, sharing the sensual joy of spraying warm milk from a cow’s udder at cloying kittens with open mouths. I had forgotten or lost contact with words’ ability to transport us somewhere else in time, place, or experience. Glennon Doyle wrote and encouraged us to know and understand that “we can do hard things.” These writers certainly did and do. I had forgotten about the power of words to move and deeply shake us emotionally. I had completely forgotten about the power of words to change us by changing what we know, how we think, and even our sense of who we are. Most basically, words can make us feel less alone and isolated on this big crazy planet in this crazy time. For that learning alone, this retreat has been worth it. Tonight’s performance will be by the memoir group. I am still reeling, chortling, and choking back tears after tonight’s iridescent performances. After tonight, I could well be emotionally apoplectic.
Just Great
The much-anticipated meeting with memoir mentor Nancy Reddy here at the Murphy Writing School in Florida took place yesterday. I had previously supplied Nancy with the requisite 1000-word memoir draft excerpts for her review to make the most of our brief time together.
We had an animated discussion about the genesis of those childhood “scenes” and what they said about how I got here (to adulthood) from there (that childhood). She then articulated a challenge I hadn’t fully grasped that I have. “You actually have too much material to draw from,” Nancy intoned. “You will need to decide and get clear on your focus and throughline and a theme for your book.”
“It could be fractious and conflicted mother-daughter relationships. It could be the limited availability of helping options in toxic mid-century WASP North America after World War Two. Whatever else, you should choose to focus on the transformational aspect of your story. How you developed skills that helped you survive what otherwise might have been unsurvivable.”
Great… just great.
I grant you, an unstable childhood riddled with physical violence, sexual molestations, alcoholism, sex addiction, neglect, prescription pill addiction, my mother’s serious suicide attempt when I was 11, and, eventually, a jagged divorce between my parents that was never really final is a lot of material to wade through. And a lot of material to choose from. Hell, it was a lot to live through!
Nancy advised me to make essential choices to get organized and clear about where to focus my story’s stories. The dutiful student that I am, I hied me to a stationery store and loaded up my cart with index cards (white and colored), highlighters (multi-colored), looseleaf paper, and a binder to hold it all together. Holding it all together has been another repetitive throughline in my story. I have embarked on the book organization path before but with less gravitas and focus. Now, this truth must out.
I expect the book to be a shout-out of encouragement to other “identified” black sheep family members. The hope is that other survivors will read and resonate with what I went through and how I managed to survive. They may be emboldened to tackle and break down intransigent and seemingly immutable patterns of intergenerational trauma in their own families as I have tried to do in mine. No mean feat I assure you.
But explore it I shall with all the heart and humor and love and discipline I can muster. I could just walk away, of course, and coast happily to my grave. No one would notice or care. Author, Joanne Fedler wryly argues, “So, you want to write? Steal time. Make time. Sneak time. Take time. No one gives it to you. Or just don’t write. The only person you will make miserable is you.”
I sigh in resignation and remind myself again that I chose this path. With cause.
Getting Away to Write
Nestled on the Atlantic Coast of Florida, the setting of the Atlantic Center for the Arts is a writer’s paradise. Florida itself is a sun-filled paradise in the middle of March for those who make their way here from chilly northern climes. Coming by car, I turned the corner into the Center and the imposing black iron gates opened with the assigned code. Wooden walkways lead to various studios and buildings at the Center and, happily we are warned, keep one elevated above the resident rattlesnakes. I now dearly wish I’d brought my Wellies. The room is both spare and inviting. All the necessary amenities like a coffee maker, microwave, small fridge. Both windows in my room look out on a cacophony of gangly palm trees and exotic jungle-like greenery. The copious greenery is equal parts soothing and stimulating. I’ve come to this writing retreat as a Writer-in-Residence to focus on writing and to rub shoulders with 42 other writers for six days. The Murphy School of Writing is based at Stockton University in New Jersey and had hosted retreats here for decades until COVID. Now the School, like the rest of the world, is getting its’ feet under it again and holding in-person retreats here and in New England and New Jersey. This retreat offers two dedicated workshops specializing in Poetry and Memoir. Led by Writing School Director Peter Murphy – a Welsh-born American – and author Nancy Reddy respectively, the students meet and write together for four hours daily. As the Memoir workshop was full, my goal here is to inject much-needed rigour into the writing process I’ve undertaken. I aim to produce the book that has been simmering in my head for decades about the strategies I used to overcome an unstable and fractious childhood. There will be quite a lot of juicy bits about pitfalls and backsliding along the way. The process feels like subjecting myself to a university course while chasing a degree again. I know my focus and several scenes have already solidified. The required research has started. The themes are emerging and clarifying. The necessary discipline, according to nearly every writing guide I’ve ever read, is to write for at least two hours a day until a draft manuscript is produced. The greatest writing advice out there for those in need of guidance? “Put your bum in the seat.” “Shut up and write.” Having a manuscript in hand, there is more work ahead to review what’s been written, edit, polish, rewrite, edit, proofread, cut, and review again until there is a collection of words that hangs together to ultimately attract several readers’ interest. That’s the goal at least. There is alchemy involved, I know. And part of the alchemy is starting down the path with the belief that with constant application and elbow grease, my goal will be achieved. And there are all of you, of course, to keep me on the straight and narrow. Hopefully, along the way, there will be sufficient tidbits of information about writing and general observations about the ludicrousness and beauty of life to keep you engaged. Or at the very least, even if you are bored stupid, you will be kind enough to refrain from saying so. Writers need that kind of support and encouragement.
I Ain’t Afraid of No AI
The interweb is drenched with horror stories about the looming prospect that our brains and very livelihoods as writers will be overtaken by AI (artificial intelligence), accelerated by the recent release (November 2022) of user-friendly ChatGPT.
One short hop – the horror-struck assert – to total world domination by HAL’s (of A Space Odyssey fame) technological descendants. “Humans will be replaced.” “Writers will lose their jobs.” “Humans and writers will become redundant.” Great sci-fi plot drivers but, in reality, I’m not so sure.
I’m heartened by Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker’s take. “Fear of new technologies is always driven by scenarios of the worst that can happen, without anticipating the countermeasures that would arise in the real world.” Ref: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/02/will-chatgpt-replace-human-writers-pinker-weighs-in/
Ego-driven, self-preservation-mandated lot that humans are, Pinker doesn’t think the worst-case scenarios currently being bandied about will happen. Neither do I. We are famous for bringing ourselves to the edge of crises without actually going over the falls to eradicate humankind. Ergo, saber-rattling around World War III. As objectionable as Vladimir Putin is, I doubt he is seriously inclined to wipe out the world as we know it in order to reclaim sovereignty over a small piece of Ukraine. That would be the most unfortunate Catch-22 ever.
Unfortunately, this does mean I won’t rely on AI to write the book I have committed to this year. Sigh. Pinker anticipates considerable pushback from our collective ego and common sense to allow that to happen. He cites this example: “Another pushback will come from the forehead-slapping blunders, like the fact that crushed glass is gaining popularity as a dietary supplement or that nine women can make a baby in one month.”
The speed at which technology can do damn near anything better than humans since it arrived in popular culture some thirty years ago has hornswoggled us all. Quantity trumps quality. Bling trumps class. Speed of output has won out over deliberation and thought. Technology is so pervasive we struggle to define or even remember what it is to be human.
So we suffer. En masse. And self-help book publishers, therapists, and a great swath of pill pushers reap the rewards. Even if there was no other argument to make for the value of writing, what matters is that it captures for us what is essential for us as humans. There is a crucial role – and one might argue an essential role – for humans that focus on human stories and issues now more than ever.
So, AI, honey. Hold my beer.
On My Way
Words and I have had the strangest and most intense relationship for as long as I can remember. An ambivalent relatuonship I like to say as I both love words and I hate them. (More about that in posts to come.) Words have been close companions, sparring partners, lanterns in the dark, and sources of comfort when all human comfort eluded me. To say nothing of the vast amounts of knowledge and scads of insight I picked up along the way. Damned handy tools to have in my arsenal it turns out. I have been told all my life by people I admire and respect that I should write a book. So this is me starting out to do just that. I intend to write here every day for one year and see where I am a year from today. I anticipate gaps (giving myself a built-in “out clause”). I anticipate frustration. I anticipate hair-pulling, gnashing, wailing and carefully curated whining. I am extremely good at suffering. Ultimately, I anticipate a sort of soul satisfaction simply by putting out into the world what has milled about in my head and heart for eons. Well, okay, decades. Tomorrow is March 15, the ides of March. Traditionally it marks a turning point. It certainly did for Julius Caesar. Similarly, I hope to kill off the doubt, insecurities, and ennui that have held me back from becoming a “real writer” in this world, on this plane, in this time. Such a broad term “writing.” My life has been infused with all the juicy stuff required for riveting writing: tragedy, love, pathos, violence, comedy, struggle, humiliation, triumph, achievements, births, deaths, family dysfunction and tenderness. Love – as I understand it – has always led the way. You, dear reader, are my accountability tribe. If you are onboard with me on my journey, give me a like or a ribbing, or anything but a virtual poisoned dart. I cannot abide trolls. So let’s see how I do over the next 364 days. One to five minutes at a time.
Humble Beginnings
Beginning humbly. Which is to say I’m not writing much at all. Which is the issue. I am not writing much at all. So I will start here.
Expressive Compulsive 