Teachable Moments

Today’s Pittsburgh Post-Gazette features a story, Looking to Impart a Lesson, that discusses President Obama’s White House meeting “over a cool one” with Harvard professor Henry Gates and Boston Police Sgt. James Crowley scheduled for later today. Author Sally Kalson includes a quote from Ellen DeBeneditti, training coordinator for conflict resolution and mediation services of the Center for Victims of Violence and Crime:

“What could come out of this meeting, if it's done well, is that both sides have a better understanding of where the other one is coming from . . . resolution is not the only good outcome. Increased understanding of the other person's perceptions is also good. If there's a sense that you've been heard and gotten your point across, it's easier to be receptive to hearing the other person.”

Figures in the public spotlight are not the only ones with differing viewpoints and “teachable moments”. Families and community groups encounter these differences all the time, and life writing has something to offer in these situations. Writing and sharing stories of events in our lives, especially the touchy ones, is a powerful way of getting incidents out on the table where they can be aired and understood, paving the way for increased mutual understanding and respect.

Two things happen when you write a story. First, by getting your thoughts on paper, you make them visible and begin to forge them into a narrative, weaving them together in a more coherent fashion. Many people find things make more sense when their thoughts are out there, visible on the page, either in print or on the screen.

Second, it provides a way of getting the whole story out before discussion begins. A frequent response from a family member who reads a story of some past conflict or event is “I had no idea you felt that way,” or “I didn’t realize it affected you that way.” Had the matter been brought up in conversation, there are any number of reasons the account may have stopped short of full disclosure.

I hope today’s beer bash will indeed result in increased understanding and respect, but regardless of the outcome, I hope you’ll use your own life stories to build increased understanding and respect within your families and community groups.

Write now: about a tense situation you encountered with a family member. It may be recent or long past. The to best of your ability and memory, include your perceptions and reactions. Tell how you felt about the situation. When you finish editing the story to your satisfaction, share it with one or more family members and wait for their responses. Hopefully you'll all come to a better understanding of each other's sensitivites and points of view.

An Ethical Dilemma?

Considering my recent admonition that reading great works of memoir and fiction are the best do-it-yourself writing workshop you can find — at no cost if you have a library card — a recent fiasco involving the Amazon Kindle caught my eye. As a disclaimer, I should begin by stating that in spite of recognizing their convenience factor, I do not own a Kindle, nor have I ever had plans to buy one.

Part of this reluctance stems from the price. Only a small part. A much larger part stems from the fact that I realized I would not own the books I bought. I owned only the right to read them. I could not pass them along to a friend or relative. I could not donate them to the library or sell them at a garage sale. I couldn’t use sticky flags to mark sections I wanted to note for future reference (I respond best to visual cues), and I couldn’t run selected pages through the copier.

A third part relates to the first. I’m a library addict. If my local library doesn’t have a book I want to read, they can get it through Inter Library Loan. This is my personal plan to live within my means, avoid cluttered shelves, and “read green.” Not only do I save dollars and shelf space, but library funding is based on Use It or Lose It. Circulation figures weigh heavily, and not just in Pennsylvania where the Neanderthal governor and state legislature is threatening to cut library funding by 50%, sending us back toward the stone age.

Yep. I’m a geek who loves techno toys, but the Kindle did not make the cut. Neither did the Sony, which is favorably recommended. Nor did any of the other lesser known and even higher priced alternatives.

So where is the dilemma, and what does this have to do with life writing?

The dilemma is that today’s July 17 New York Times carried a report that “This morning, hundreds of Amazon Kindle owners awoke to discover that books by a certain famous author had mysteriously disappeared from their e-book readers ... “ Amazon stealthily removed copies of George Orwell’s classic novels Animal Farm and 1984. The good news is that they did credit the readers’ accounts.

Within hours, over 200 comments on the New York Times page had registered outrage, with over half expressing a firm determination stick with paper books — especially the library versions — rather than buying the Kindle they’d been considering. This has lit a highly readable firestorm of debate about Digital Rights Management, ethics, Amazon’s greed factor, and a score of other issues. More debate follows on the official Kindle Forum.

Another aspect of the debate and dilemma is the issue of copyright. These titles are in the public domain in most of the world, but still covered by what many consider to be unreasonably prolonged copyright protection in the USA. Apparently this was part of the reason for the scandal. The matter of copyright protection is one that concerns all writers.

I sense a watershed here involving the world of electronic publishing. Which way will it go? Who will determine the outcome?

The tie to Life Writing and your personal writing opportunity, involves personal essays outlining feelings about this ironically Orwellian issue of eBooks versus paper, copyright, rights of ownership, and related matters. This is your chance to put the stamp of your opinion on the history of publishing.

Write now: write that essay. Tell how you feel about technology in general, and digital books in particular. Do you have a Kindle? How do you feel about that now? Did you realize you wouldn’t own the books you purchase in the traditional way? If you don’t own a Kindle, would you consider buying one? Let it all hang out on paper or screen.

Google Advisory, aka Trouble in Cyberspace

For over twenty-four hours I've been unable to log in to view Ritergal's gmail. I am also unable to log onto this blog site on computers that weren't already connected when whatever it is happened. Right now my oldest computer, the one that's running Linux, is the only one connected to any Google services. If it happens to shut off, I'm out!

This morning, on my way to the monthly Pittsburgh Writers Project meeting, I was listening to speculation on the news that the North Koreans were causing havoc in Cyberspace. Maybe they hit Google. Who knows?

Anyway, if the blog goes blank for awhile, I'll be back as soon as Google is healed and lets me back in.

I think of this as yet one more sentence or paragraph in my ongoing story.

Write now: about a cyberspace adventure you've experienced.

The Durable Part of Memory

Photo by Helga Webber

Yesterday I was hit over the head with a hammer regarding the durable part of memory. While we were fellow travelers in Africa, Alice and I spoke briefly about a paper she wrote in grad school while she was studying to be a psychotherapist. She read a pile of memoirs and synthesized some conclusions. Had we not been on vacation, I would have hammered her with questions, but at the moment, admiring elephants was more important.

Early yesterday I recalled that conversation with regard to my upcoming presentation on writing and healing. Maybe Alice could tell me a few things not already "out there." I quickly jotted an e-mail, asking about her dissertation (well, I assumed that's what it was). She quickly responded. "I don't know what you are talking about. My dissertation was on (something very different)." I wrote back and reminded her of the memoir reading and how she said she had wept her way through much of the project.

"OH! That project!" It was not a dissertation. It was in a class on Jungian psychology and for each one she read, she had to derive and write some personal synthesis thing. Obviously this is a Jungian concept or practice I am not familiar with, but that detail doesn't matter. Her only memories of the experience were of the intense pain of going through it, both the reading and the personal analysis. None of the hard data or details of her insights or the titles of the memoirs have stuck over the intervening thirty several years. The experience affected her on a deep level and shaped her life.

The mention of memoir and the report of weeping, the emotional part, is what I remembered. Emotions, feelings, those are the enduring parts of memory, and they matter so much, because they shape our lives. I remember the connection with memoir because it is intensely personal value-laden for me and resonated strongly.

Weaving those emotions into our stories is every bit as important as any possible facts surrounding the experience. Indeed, the emotions, the feelings, may be the story — as in this case.

There is another angle to this story that Alice and I have discussed. That is the power of reading about the experience of others, empathizing with that experience into our own lives. Deeply immersing ourselves in reports of other lives, real or fictitious, can be as powerful as going through the experience ourselves and often less costly in every respect.

That certainly sheds more light on the value of sharing our own stories. We may help someone else get through a rough patch of their own, whether that gravel lies in their past, present or future.

Write now: about reading a memoir — or a novel — that affected you deeply and caused you to view your life a little differently. Something that made a deep impression. Tell how it affected you, and what you remember of the experience.

The Life Writing Progression

The graphic above is fresh out of my head. You have never seen it before. I came up with it this afternoon as I worked on the handouts for a program titled Writing for the Health of it that I’m presenting in a couple of weeks. For some time I’ve been cogitating about how to pull together all the information and knowledge (there is a difference) I have on this topic. I had identified the categories in this graphic, but not until this afternoon did the pieces fit together so beautifully.

Each of these levels has health benefits. The "Raw Writing", especially the rants, has the most clearly demonstrated physical benefits, according to the hundreds of studies that have followed the pioneering work by James Pennebaker, PhD. I summarized this research in a previous post. The work of Kay Adams and members of the Center for Journal Therapy have clearly demonstrated the value of journaling, using dozens of specialized protocols. Kay has an amazing series of internet radio programs you can download and listen to if you are interested.

As far as I’m aware, nobody has scientifically studied and documented the value of writing stories and personal essays for physical health, but testimonials about its value for healing resentments, increasing self-esteem, lightening depression and similar thing are well known to anyone who teaches in this field.

Far fewer people engage upon the more rigorous undertaking of writing memoir, at least not beyond simple vignettes. Until recently, most people have thought of memoir primarily as a project to be undertaken primarily for the purpose of seeking publication. Why else would anyone undergo such a rigorous exercise? Since I became involved in the early stages of writing a memoir myself, I’ve come to see that sharing the finished story with others is a minor part of the value.

The more important value lies in examining a large collection of memories in an organized way, looking for the common threads that tie them together, finding meaning in unexpected places, and seeing my life as an ongoing arc of story. I’m finding more continuity than I expected, and am delighted to report that several old scabs have fallen off long-standing grievances, leaving no evidence of scar tissue below. Insight enables forgiveness and personal peace. Now, isn’t that worth investing some time in?

I have no plans to seek publication of my memoir project, but who knows? Neither Heather Summerhayes Cariou or Karen Walker had publication in mind when they began their memoirs, and ultimately their stories have emerged between covers, to the benefit of a growing number of readers. Both shout the healing power of memoir from the rooftops.

This graphic shows that memoir begins small, and develops in a predictable progression. If you sit down to write a memoir with no previous journaling or stack of vignettes, you’ll be combing back through memories, searching old letters, calendars and anything else you can find. And you’ll write stacks of vignettes and essays before they coalesce into a smoothly flowing story.

But you don’t have to progress to the stage of memoir to experience health benefits from writing. Much of the value can be derived from the simple act of ranting on paper, according to Pennebaker’s guidelines.

Hang onto Inspiration

Last night during the preview session for the NAMW Make Your Stories Sparkle teleseminar previewing my upcoming teleclass by the same name, I mentioned the value of building a collection of inspiring passages from books you read. My focus last night was on collecting a wide selection of descriptions that grab my eye and attention, but I also collect other types of examples.

I began this collection several months ago for the purpose of comparing and studying how various authors I admire use various descriptive techniques. It has since grown to include other types of amazing writing. I have found that perusing my collection is sort of like reading the Bible or other inspirational material, and it has been a great help in furthering my understanding of effective description and my skill in writing it. Reading a concentrated collection of pure excellence primes my creativity pump. It pushes me out of my perception ruts and nudges me to expand my awareness boundaries and see things from angles I may not otherwise have considered.

One caller last night asked me to explain exactly how I create and manage this collection. I was delighted by her interest, and realized that others will probably also want to know.

The process begins with reading. I’ve begun keeping a pad of flag-sized sticky tags at hand as I read. When I find an especially delightful, succulent passage, or one includes a powerful thought I want to hang onto, I stick a flag along the side of the page, as in the passage below from Anne Lamott’s book, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith. I carefully position the flag to cover the row just about the first sentence of the passage I’m interested in, and a smidgen beyond the edge of the page.

When I finish reading a book by an excellent writer, it generally looks like a porcupine, with a dozen or more tags protruding from the edges. Then I type the relevant passages into a jerry-rigged database consisting of a table in OpenOffice (my preferred alternative to Word, which would work the same way). That may take half an hour or so for an especially inspiring book, but I find the time is an excellent investment, reinforcing the power of the examples and setting them more firmly in memory. I’ll let this picture save a few hundred words of how-to explanation.

Click to enlarge this image, then use the browserback button to return to the blog

Notice that I include the page number for the passage, in case I want to go back and find it later. Publication data is minimal. I can get that online later if I need it. As I enter the material from each book, I leave the Source column blank, then type that once, copy it, and paste it in each row below for that book.

The Tags column is especially valuable to me, because I use these examples increasingly often in blog posts, articles, and workshop materials, but anyone will benefit from them. If I were using a more sophisticated database, I could put multiple tags in one field. They can be anything that helps or interests you. Keeping it to one word allows me to sort the table on the Tags column and find all the material on that particular topic quickly and easily. Of course I could also use the Find function to do this.

My method is crude, and someone with more savvy could improve upon it. Possibly a spreadsheet would be a better approach, but the boundaries of my geekiness don’t include spreadsheet or database expertise. A gal’s gotta have limits!

Write now: start a new file with a simple table like the one in the example and purchase a stash of sticky flags so you can start your own collection of juicy examples for further study and inspiration. Your writing skills will soar as a result. If you need help creating the table, refer to the last chapter in The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing.