Don't You Just Hate it When . . .

Don't you just hate when everything blurs together? When your stories run together, and memories fuzz up? The other day I read that something has changed in the basic vibrational level of Earth. It's vibrating much faster than it did even twenty years ago, and the fact that time seems to pass faster than ever is not a figment of our imagination. Time actually is passing faster. The source that I was reading was not one I'm inclined to rely on, so who knows, but most people report feeling this is so.

Blurring definitely happens with stories. Earlier last week I sent an e-mail to my daughter with a story about something that happened sixteen years ago. The story involved a person I was working with at the time. We started discussing the story and the circumstances around it, and the people in that group. Although she was in college at the time and we spent little time together, her memory of my thoughts on matters back then was surprisingly sharp and a bit different from my own. As I think about it, I suspect that hers is the more accurate.

This brings up two points you can use in writing your stories. First, if you start keeping a journal, you'll have that to refer back to later for more accurate recall about feelings, opinions, and such things. Second, it's fine to ask others what they remember about the situation, but it will be your call what to accept and what to leave on the sidelines.

In this case, total accuracy is not important in telling the story, but in assessing my own feelings and digesting some quirks in the story, her slant pops things into sharper focus. If you are writing for self-discovery and healing, these other points of view may be especially valuable.

Write now: about a fuzzy memory you have that you shared with someone else at the time who is currently available for consultation. Relax and try to recall enough to flesh the memory out as well as you can. Then share your story with the other person and note any discrepancies. How were they different? Did you learn anything that prompted you to change your story?

or

Write an essay on your changing perception of time through the years.

Sibling Rivalry and Story Albums

The tale of sibling rivalry, especially among boys, is as old as Cain and Abel. It may be mild and quickly pass, especially in siblings with a wide age difference, or it may be intense and, as in the case of Cain and Abel, even deadly. It can be the source of humor, lasting scars, or even both. It's almost the norm that siblings argue, tattle on each other, plot revenge, and set each other up. They may even slug things out on occasion. This is all frequent fodder for comic strips like Foxtrot, Jump Start, or Baby Blues.

It’s also fodder for blogs. Pete, the author of the blog Your Neighborhood Reverend, posted a piece titled “Memphis - the New City of Brotherly Love” in which he describes torments he suffered at the hands of his older brother. It’s illuminating. Don’t let your children read it! I learned some things about spit from that story that I never would have guessed, and that swinging body — how graphic! Besides telling of tortures, he also assures us that not only did he survive, but that nobody who sees those brothers together today would guess at their past.

This is a great example of a vignette story that works well standing on its own. However, even as a story complete unto itself, it contains many loose ends. I’m left wondering: Does he remember having good times with his brother during that same period? How did he and his brother get from this stage of villain and victim to brotherly love? Aside from terror, how did Pete handle things during this period? Did he ever tattle?

Obviously Pete couldn’t paint a comprehensive picture of life with his brother in the limited space of this post, and this is where the value of a story album or integrated memoir comes into play. You can write about the various angles I mentioned above in separate pieces to tuck in those loose ends.

You don’t have to weave all your stories artfully into a commercially viable memoir to leave a valuable legacy for your heirs. Few people are that motivated. Pete has given his descendants at least a glimpse of his boyhood. If that’s the only story he ever writes, they’ll be glad to have that. But if you read Pete’s blog, you’ll see that this mystery man has more stories than you can shake a stick at, and they don’t generally relate to each other in any specific way. What would Pete do to pull those stories together for publication?

The simplest thing for Pete to do is to put together what I refer to in The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing as a Story Album, or collection of short stories. Arrange them in any order that makes sense, which may be topical, chronological by your age in the story or when your wrote the story, totally random, or whatever. You’ll find further guidelines for assembling them in my book, and you can look at any book of short stories for further inspiration.

Now that’s a long circle, all the way from sibling rivalry to book layout, but this post was inspired by Your Neighborhood Reverend, and he’s also given to such rambles, so ... be alerted that what you read influences your writing.

Write now: about sibling rivalry in your family. How did your brothers and/or sisters torture you? If you were an older sibling, how did you cause grief for your younger ones? What is the other side of the coin? What good times and joy did you share together? If you were an only child, write about your longing for a sibling. Share your stories with your siblings, if you are really brave. I almost guarantee they’ll have quite a different version of the same story. Just remember, this is your story. They can write it their way if they wise.

Find the Story

“Find the story” or “Where’s the story?” References to finding the story have been staring me in the eye in blogs, books and articles on a regular basis for weeks. There has to be a message here, something I need to learn.

I know about story. A story narrates action and has a beginning, a middle, and an end. It has a element of suspense, and it is told from someone’s point of view. Those are the basics. That element of action is what differentiates story from mere description.

It’s simple enough to write a short piece that qualifies as a story. You can see the development of the action in a short story. You can put your finger on the drama and conflict, whether it is between people, a person against outside forces, or a person battling her own inclinations.

When you write a book-length memoir, the challenge increases exponentially. To keep readers interested, a memoir needs to have an ongoing thread of conflict and development, similar to the plot line in a novel. This story line laces the string of component stories together into an integrated whole. It is crucial in determining which experiences and elements of life to include, and how to arrange them within the memoir.

Finding that story line, especially in your own life, can be an agonizing experience. Many would-be memoirists become gridlocked in their thinking, suffering paralysis by analysis. They don’t find much help in books on writing memoir. All of the many books on my shelf are heavy on memory retrieval tips, and most discuss how to juice up your writing, but none tell you how to pull together a major project. If it’s mentioned at all, it’s with a vague “start writing and the structure will emerge” type of statement.

In The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing, I do describe tools for compiling random vignettes into a finished project, but I have not provided a recipe for selecting the best tool. Even I, a nuts-and-bolts person, have to agree that “start writing and the structure will emerge” is Truth.

But that belief just softened. A few days ago I found a tool that should work for people who want to get a grip on the overall stories within their lives. Serendipity led me to a post in the Philosophy thread on the phpBB Arts and Humanities bulletin board. This post poses the question, “What’s your lifestory? Just the long and short of it?” It urges people to write something like the thirty second “Elevator Speech” that sales people contrive for networking. You may find the posted stories instructive. The longest takes fifteen seconds to read aloud.

Only a couple of the posted replies show enough thought to make an overall life theme clear, but don’t let that throw you. This is powerful. I tried it. I picked up a pencil and pulled over the scrap of paper I'd been using to jot random notes. These words poured out of the pencil with no preliminary thought on my part:

Raised as a geek. Stood outside the window looking in at life. Discovered real life is on my side.

How about that? That's free writing at its best. I do not recall ever having that thought in my life, and simplistic as it is, this sums things up rather well. I never cease to be amazed at the insights my subconscious mind, aka my Muse Sarabelle, will send my way if I simply pick up a pencil and scrap of paper and start moving my hand, ala Natalie Goldberg's advice in this terrific interview.

I could take this one more step and indulge in the Six Word Memoir rage, distilling it down to

Felt alone. Discovered love surrounds me.

Hmm. I think I’ll go post that one on the Smith Magazine Six Word Memoir site or NPR. Who knows? I might make the next NPR Six Word Memoir gallery.

Write now: the long and short of your life. Write the first thing that comes to mind, and sweep over your whole life. Keep it short. Keep it very short. Sum it up in six words, and post on Smith Magazine or NPR. Please also share the long or short version in a comment here!

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Dingle Peninsula

I’m proud to have Irish ancestry myself on my mother’s side of the family. One branch left as recently as the Potato Famine, the other left sooner. I know quite a lot about the more recent immigrants. They were coal miners, arriving first in Braidwood, Illinois then moving down to New Mexico where the family dug in.

Maybe it’s that Irish blood in my veins, or maybe not, but Celtic music is among my very favorite, and I feel best in the summer when I’m surrounded by green. Perhaps those roots explain the dreamer part of me.

Two years ago my husband and I spent ten glorious days rambling around the Wild Irish Roads in the southwest corner of the Emerald Isle, and what an experience that was. We soon discovered the wisom of reserving a subcompact car, with a trunk so small that it wouldn’t hold both our suitcases and carry-on luggage. Many of those roads had lanes only inches wider than that car, with stone walls along each side. Hubby is a veteran at driving on the left, but nerves were taut on those roads.

Street in Dingle

I was able to verify that Ireland really is as green as the pictures, except for the houses. Especially in older parts of towns, they are vividly painted in all colors of the rainbow, perhaps to offset the frequent grayness of the sky that provides the mists and rains to keep the Isle green. I couldn’t tangibly verify the spirits that lent mystique to the misty Cliffs of Moher, but I certainly felt them.

It was a long way, but we did get to Tipperary, and went on to kiss the Blarney stone. We stayed in the countryside rather than exploring cities. We saw sheep, sheep and more sheep, and almost that many ancient ruins of castles, churches and cottages. We attended a medieval banquet in Bunratty Castle. We saw seashore, rivers, and plants with leaves so big they made me feel leprechaun-sized. We even discovered that Ireland has something that passes for mountains! We visited a couple of “living museums” that included villages and farms demonstrating the old ways, making it easier to envision the Spartan conditions my ancestors lived in. We visited a Famine museum that helped understand why they left.

At that museum I learned that before the famine, the average male Irish peasant ate eleven pounds of potatoes per day. The women ate eight. They had a few wild berries, greens and fruit in season, and some buttermilk now and then, but their diet was potatoes. Historical studies show that those potato fed people were stronger, taller and healthier than their counterparts on the Continent who primarily ate bread and gruel made of wheat. Imagine that! My respect for the potato soared.

Yes, especially now that I’ve visited my Irish homeland, I’m proud to be as Irish as I am, and drink a toast to St. Paddy.

Write now: about your roots. Where did your ancestors come from? Has your ethnic background influenced your life in any significant way? Did your family observe ethnic traditions? Do you continue to keep those?

Archetype of Spring

Thoughts of spring instantly activate a mental image of a specific scene in my mind: a late April day near the end of my sophomore year in high school. I see the scene as an out-of-body experience. I’m standing near the gray, limed-oak table in the dining room where the rest of the family is still sitting at breakfast. I’m ready to leave for school. The sun is shining brightly outside the picture window as I gaze out on the ponderosa pines lining the rim of the canyon beyond the fence, and the fragrance of lilac mixed with apricot blossoms wafts through the open window.

The focal point of the scene is the dress I’m wearing. It is my personal archetype of spring. I made this dress of the butter-yellow calico, sprigged with blocks of tiny spring green leaf motifs, that my grandmother sent me as a birthday gift a couple of weeks earlier. It’s a simple dress, with a scoop neckline, simple elbow length sleeves, and gathered skirt, and I added a sewn-in cummerbund and sash of solid green, matching the print. I feel like the Spirit of Spring in this dress. I love it more than any I’ve had, before or since. My heart bursts with gratitude that my grandmother let me make my own decision about how to use the fabric.

Sinking into the scene, I recall the joy of being sixteen, with the ink hardly dry on my driver’s license, busy as a bee pollinating apple trees with the drama club’s full-score production of Oklahoma!, chairing a Rainbow Girls’ bake sale, helping write the class skit for Topper Review, practicing my string bass solo for Music Festival, and even studying now and then. Life was good!

For me, spring is synonymous with buttery yellow, joy and sunshine, lilacs and fruit blossom scents, the buzzing of bees, freedom from sweaters, sweeping projects, and infinite possibility.

Today I glance out the window, looking for swollen buds on the forsythia, scanning the sky for swollen buds on trees, and counting the days until the first coltsfoot blossoms appear on that small sunny slope just down the road, as they predictably do between March 21 and March 25. I think about looking for something to wear, something buttery yellow, to offset the lingering clouds of winter.

This memory is not a story, but it’s the stuff of which stories are made. It encapsulates the joy and unbridled optimism of being sixteen, sure that April Love is just around the corner, and experiencing life to the hilt in the meantime.

I have similar memories for fall, Christmas, Easter, and other annual events. I write these memories down, with every sensory detail, to jumpstart my memory when I do write of these times, or of spring, or anything remotely related. I store them in a a folder full of “joy fragments.” As they stand, they may not interest anyone else, but they are worth their weight in gold to me. I read them when I need a Bliss Break.

What image comes to your mind when you think of spring?

Write now: about moments of bliss you have experienced, such as a spring day, the feel and smell of a newborn nestled against your cheek, snuggling with a kitten, flying down the hill on a bicycle ... pour it all out in vivid living color, smell, skin sensation, and all.

The Job From Hell

Once upon a time I had what I still refer to as The Job From Hell. I meticulously documented the details of the pervasive insanity I dealt with on a daily basis from my own management and the internal clients we served. As time went on, I observed that the whole organization exhibited aberrations identical to those of dysfunctional families. All of this is recorded in notes, ranting journal entries, and e-mail exposés that I squirreled away, with the thought of eventually writing a memoir of the experience. Within less than a year, I quit.

Over the intervening years I have periodically looked at some of those notes, and thought of the situations I faced. Eventually a strange thing happened as I replayed those memories. They began to shift. I began to toy with them, looking at them with additional insight. I began thinking in “What if” mode. What if I’d taken more time to consider my manager’s whole situation? What if I’d handled this other difficult person a bit differently? What if I’d had more compassion?

As I asked these questions, I began to see more clearly what I’d always known on some level: I was an active participant in these circumstances, not a passive victim. My own decisions and actions produced consequences. That is not said to exonerate the villains, but to acknowledge that I could have handled some things better on my part. I’ve come to see that I was doing the best I knew how at the time, and that (God forbid!) should I ever have occasion to repeat the experience, I’d handle it rather differently. Likewise, those villains were doing the best they knew how. I never did believe that any of them had evil intentions. We were all laboring within a corporate culture that had somehow sold its soul to the devil.

When I originally thought of writing about that experience, I was thinking in terms of self-vindication, of revealing the evil inherent in that corrupt system, and ... seeking revenge. There may still be some purpose to be served by exposing manipulation tactics identical to brainwashing techniques. This corporate culture has certainly not disappeared. But, quite frankly, I don’t have the energy or inclination to tackle that, and vengeful writing has a way of backfiring.

No, if I write about it at all, it will be to convey some of the insight I’ve developed over the years. I can explain that more forthright discussion with my manager probably would have worked out better than the basically passive/aggressive tactics I indulged in (of course I never saw them as such at the time). I may examine the forces coming to bear on managers as each strove to salute and deliver according to mandates from above. I will certainly explore the pervasive culture of fear, and the resulting epidemic of heart dis-ease.

I did write about this at the time, while the story was fresh, the wounds raw and oozing, and my mind cluttered with angry debris, but I never compiled it into documentary form. I’m glad of that. I would not want such a digest of self-righteous condemnation to be my lasting legacy to my heirs. In my opinion, it will be far better to leave a legacy of personal peace, forgiveness and understanding. Far better to leave an example of growth and compassion rather than anger. Such a story can only be written after enough time has passed for the wounds to heal and allow me to view the situation with a clear mind as yet one more of life’s learning experiences — which it most certainly was!

To everything there is a season,
a time for every purpose under the sun.
...
a time to keep silent and a time to speak;
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

Likewise, there is a time to write privately and a time to disclose. Fine words, like fine wine, will improve with age.

Write now: about a time of tribulation and testing you have faced, whether at work or elsewhere. If this is still raw and painful, file it away without sharing and revisit it in several years. Do some free writing about the incidents to explore new angles. If you have already developed insight worth sharing, polish it up and send it around.

Writing for Self-Discovery

In my last post I mentioned that it’s hard to write about changing and evolving topics, like beliefs. What I failed to point out is that writing may be as much part of the solution to the fuzziness as a victim of it. Writing for deeper self-understanding and personal clarity is one of the huge and less-often-mentioned benefits of life writing, whether that be memoir, journal, or random free writing rants.

Jerry Waxler picked up on this topic in a recent post on Memory Writer’s Network. He discusses a memory he’s had since he was in high school, way back when. Not until he began crafting a story about the memory did he realize that there may be other ways to look at the situation and interpret it. He discovered a side to himself he hadn’t been aware of. He points to the value of writing in helping him reevaluate this belief, reporting that “All of these lessons about myself come from the simple act of trying to tell a proper story.”

Jerry's post reminds me that if I begin to journal or free write about my fuzzy beliefs, my thoughts on the topic are bound to become more clear.

Perhaps I’ll even turn to Writing As a Tool for Self-Discovery, an oldie by Heather Hughes-Calero. This book has been gathering dust on on my shelf for ages. I picked it up at a used booksale quite some time ago and keep meaning to read it. I quite often find books like this on my shelf. I’ve discovered that my subconscious mind tends to plan ahead, leading me to stockpile books, storing them for the day when I’m “ready” to benefit from their wisdom — a sort of twist on the Zen proverb, “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”

This student is ready. There is a long list of other books on this topic, so I’ll simply trust that this is the one I should read.

Even writing this blog post is generating a certain amount of clarity and substance to my beliefs:

• I believe in the power of my subconscious.
• I believe in the Truth of Zen proverbs, at least most of them, and especially this one.
• I believe Truth is universal, not proprietary to any specific belief system.

I could expand this list further, but you get the point. Yes, writing about our lives and how we think about them is powerful indeed!

Write now: do some free writing about a fuzzy belief of your own. Select something that’s puzzling you, and let your fingers move, without analyzing what they write. Let it flow for at least ten minutes before rereading and thinking about it. The longer you write, the better. Highlight key phrases and concepts and write more about those. Clarity will come, but it may take some work.

Write on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal

Your Best Insurance Policy

Have you ever heard the term “Blogicide”? Doesn’t the very idea raise the hair on the back of your neck? I found it on Don Lafferty’s blog. The idea of having my whole blog go poof! is seriously chilling. Don confesses to killing his own blog by experimenting with Wordpress, but there are other ways a blog could vanish from cyberspace, like massive server meltdown or sabotage.

If Don’s story had to happen, I wish I’d known about it a month ago today when I was sitting on a panel about blogging at Story Circle Network’s Stories From the Heart conference in Austin. Using blogs as online journals and places to save your writing with related issue of privacy, public blogs versus closed ones, and similar matters were under discussion when a light went on in my head.

“Always keep your blog backed up. Over the long run, you can’t assume online storage in a single location is any safer than storing things on your own hard drive,” I cautioned them. I was thinking of online server disasters. It hadn’t even occurred to me that we can be our own worst enemy. Don’s story would have been the perfect illustration.

Whether you are blogging or writing stories (or anything else), saving your work in more than one place is good insurance. I need the fingers on both hands to count the growing number of friends who have lost major chunks of work to a hard drive crash or fatal virus. It’s like losing part of your soul!

This is post number 228 for me. These posts collectively represent a huge amount of work and are irreplaceable. I’m not taking chances: I copy the finished post from my browser, pictures, links, and all, and paste it into the bottom of an ongoing OpenOffice document. (I stash the source pictures in a separate folder before uploading them.) I start a new document each month, adding new posts as each appears. If I’m in a huge hurry and get lazy, I can add it later, but I don’t let too many pile up.

I keep those files on an external hard drive with my other documents. Every week or two I back that folder up onto an internal hard drive. I keep promising myself I’ll learn how to do automatic backups to keep things current on a daily basis, but ... you know what they say about good intentions.

The external hard drive is my choice now for all the files I use on a regular basis. Not long ago I had major computer problems and faced the likelihood that Hotshot would have to spend time in the hospital. By moving my working files to a removable drive, I could keep working even if that happened.

I feel safe from blogicide and other forms of digital disasters. How about you?

Write now: about your experience with lost work. This may be due to a computer fluke or crash, or it may be a craft project that was destroyed, photos that were lost, or any other type of work. If you’ve never lost anything, write about the safeguards you employ to keep things safe. Or, write a plan of action for safeguarding your work in the future.

Write on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka, Ritergal

Reactions to Gretchen

After posting my introduction to Gretchen, my newly emerged Inner Censor, I read it to a writing group. The first response was, “Is this fiction or what?”

“No. It is not fiction. Strange as it may sound, I did meet Gretchen, and she is quite real — at least to me.” That explanation sparked a lively discussion of reality, truth, writing about arcane events and beliefs and all sorts of good things. Somebody mentioned that it’s normal for children to have imaginary playmates.

“Sarabelle and Gretchen are not imaginary.” I assured them. A few eyeballs briefly rolled at that. If they didn’t know me so well by now, I have no doubt that some would suggest medication or exorcism!

After several minutes, we collectively agreed that I had accessed some deeper well of creativity in my right brain, and all considered it a fun story and intriguing concept, whatever the source. That seems to represent comfortable common ground for all belief systems, from secular to sacred, and it’s a tidy and functional way of putting things.

This discussion poses an interesting dilemma. If I put the story of my Inner Writing Team and all the conversations I have with seemingly imaginary people in a collection of stories for future generations, they may well think that Granny was a total nutcase, assume that these conversations are purely creative writing, or both.

Obviously, if I want them to be taken seriously, I must place these stories in a larger context. I could take the easy way out and simply explain them as the workings of various aspects of my creative subconscious, but I’m inclined to be a little more explicit. I do believe there’s more to it than that, but the alternate explanations are highly intuitive and fuzzy in my mind. It's a matter of degrees of self-disclosure. For strangers and casual acquaintances, the easy answer is fine.

One major challenge I face in writing such a story is that it keeps changing. My understanding continues to evolve as I learn new things and explore various aspects of what I already know. I anticipate this will be the case as long as I live, so whatever I write can be only an approximation. Perhaps I need to take my own advice and remember that “anything I write about this is better than writing nothing.”

Write now: about a non-traditional idea you have, whether in the “woo-woo” realm or simply questioning common wisdom and beliefs.

Write on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal