Searing Memories

Photo: Aaron Wagner

We all have them, those memories that are so vivid they blaze in our memories forever. We remember exactly where we were, what we were wearing, the time of day, and all the details — although we may not remember the specific date.

One of my searing memories takes me back to one wintry Saturday in eighth grade. The phone rang about eleven in the morning. It was a boy — calling me! History was made that day. I’ll save the details for my memoir, and tell you only that it was the hottest guy in our class, asking me to meet him at the ice rink that afternoon. No! This was too good to be true. Besides, my parents wouldn’t let me date until I was sixteen. Besides, he sounded just like my best girl friend, who had a rather husky voice, and I kept trying to get “her” to admit who she was.

When I called her immediately after hanging up, she assured me she hadn’t called. I believed her. The voice didn’t sound quite the same. When I got back to school on Monday, I was apparently invisible to Hunky Dude. Just as before, he never looked my way, even though our lockers were near each other. Had it really been him? Or was someone pulling my leg?

I’ll never know for sure, but I do know that I felt good about the way I played the game. I had a strong gut feeling that if it had been him, I was being set up for some awful humiliation at the rink. I can only guess what that might have been, but I didn’t need it and was blessedly spared. I felt strong and capable of taking care of myself. This searing memory is a turning point in my relationships with boys. The concept of actually having a boyfriend turned from the theoretical into the possible that day, even though I suspected it would be a good long while before anything tangible came along.

Searing memories, defining moments, turning points. In The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing I refer to them as watershed memories. It doesn’t matter what you call them, they are mileposts along our journey through life. We all have them. Some are joyful and mark advances. Some are traumatic, some may be quietly profound. All are significant and provide strong pillars for organizing related memories as you develop stories.

Taking time to list your watershed memories and arrange them along a timeline will  pay enormous dividends are you organize your life story or memoir, whether you are just beginning to write, or grappling with final organization.

Write now: review your list of watershed or turning point memories if you have one, and make an inventory of stories that remain to be written. If you don’t have a list, start one. Add to it as more occur to you. 

Photo Credit: Simon Harriyott

Working Together to Strengthen Writing Skills

What’s better than sitting in your favorite chair rereading one of your own stories? Sitting in a reading group, reading that story to an appreciative audience!

You’ve probably heard that the #1 fear of Americans is public speaking. If the option had been on the list, I have no doubt that “Reading my own work to a group” would surely be #2, and it might even be #1, because nearly everyone writes their own speech before delivering it.

Toastmasters was officially founded in 1924 by Ralph Smedley to help men improve their ability to effectively speak to groups. The seeds he planted have grown like kudzu, spreading around the world. More than 4,000,000 people, both men and women, have benefited from Toastmasters training, myself included. I recommend it to any writer, even if you never speak to groups. Membership fees are affordable, and the training in organizing your thoughts will help you think and write more clearly!

The key to the success of Toastmaster clubs is the use of peer evaluation. There are no teachers or professionals in Toastmasters, though some clubs have teachers or professional speakers among the members. Although thereare no classes outside club meetings, annual conferences at the area, regional and national levels offer workshops and presentations on honing specific skills. Members take turns evaluating each others speeches, highlighting things they did well as well as one or two points for improvement. Serving in the evaluator role helps members become more discerning listeners, enabling them to learn from the experience of others as well as their own.

Quite sadly, there is no well-oiled national organization available to give writers the same benefit, but that doesn’t mean you can’t experience it. Find or form a writers group in your local area. Find one that emphasizes the positive aspects of a piece as well as giving pointers for improving it. Participate with gusto, always bring a story, ready to read. Remember that the input you receive from others is only their opinion, and that you are free to take their advice or leave it. If you can't find such a group, start one.

Although nothing can beat the pleasure and value of reading your work aloud to a live group, online groups are also valuable. In an online group, you can submit your work and receive written feedback from a number of people, often strangers, Again, look for a supportive group that appreciates your strengths as well as tenderly helping improve your skills. 

Write now: a story about an experience speaking in public. Include plenty of sensory detail, like self-talk, wobbly knees, shaky voice, damp palms. Describe the way your notes shook in your hands. Let readers know how your tummy felt. Then think about reading this story in public, and join the Life Writers Critique Group to shore up your skills.

Aunt Paul Remembered

Few people think of funerals as a time for gathering family stories, but that may be one of their prime functions. Pittsburgh Post Gazette columnist Sally Kalson underscores this aspect of an otherwise grim event in today’s column, Family lore: There's no time like a funeral for remembering the good stuff as she commemorates her aunt, Paula “Paul” Ruth Mitchel, who was buried last Monday.

Sally’s column is full of fun, like the story about the time Aunt Paul put a dent in her husband’s brand new car. Within the column are enough snapshot stories to fill an entire volume about Aunt Paul and her whole delightful family. Between peals of laughter as I read, several thoughts crossed my mind:

• It’s refreshing to read something positive and amusing on the OpEd page of the paper best known for critical, negative and generally less than uplifting content. I’m grateful to Sally for sharing the shining example of her aunt’s life.

• Anyone inclined to write about family history should always have a thick notepad and pen handy at funerals — few events are richer in story content, and your story idea list will swell.

• If we write stories about our loved ones ahead of time, we’ll be ready to present a eulogy with less stress when the time comes.

• For a landmark birthday some time ago, a friend presented me with a story she had written about me that she instructed me to put with my will, because she wanted it read at my funeral at some time in the distant future. Being several years older than I, she does not expect to attend. I was stunned and touched, and I’m reminded now of my intention to return the favor.

Wherever you live, I suggest you click over to Sally's column and read it as a fine example of a way to commemorate the highlights of a whole tribe of relatives. It would work equally well for a celebration of friends, community members, or long-time colleagues, and you don't have to wait for a funeral.

Write now: use Sally’s essay as a pattern to write a collection of snapshot stories of your relatives. If you don’t have a funeral to attend, pull them from memory. When you finish, e-mail your story to everyone in the family.

Take a Lesson from Uncle Remus

Not just everyone grew up with Uncle Remus, but he was a frequent bedtime favorite in my family. My dad was born in Oklahoma into a family that hailed from further South only a generation or two earlier, and he read Uncle Remus with gusto. But my sister got the Uncle Remus book when we were grown, and I’d quite forgotten good old Br’er Rabbit until a friend used the Tar Baby as a metaphor.

Wanting to read the story again, I headed to Google, and sure enough. Uncle Remus is on the web. “The Wonderful Tar Baby Story" is found on a website sponsored by the University of Virginia. As I reread about Br’er Rabbit's encounter with the Tar Baby, I could just hear my daddy readin’ along, drawlin’ and havin’ the bess ole time. He didn’t always talk that way, but he sure could when he read Uncle Remus stories.

This story reminded me that people from other countries or ethic backgrounds, or Americans who have lived or traveled abroad, often wonder how to handle dialect in their writing. “It just doesn’t sound like Grandpa if I don’t include some of his funny sayings, and even spell words to sound like he said them. So how should I handle that?” Grandpa, Mama, or even you may have come from the old country and use a lot of foreign colloquialisms.

Let’s take a look at a couple of lines from Tar Baby and see what to make of it:

One day atter Brer Rabbit fool 'im wid dat calamus root, Br’er Fox went ter wuk en got 'im some tar, en mix it wid some turkentime, en fix up a contrapshun w'at he call a Tar-Baby, en he tuck dish yer Tar-Baby en he sot 'er in de big road, en den he lay off in de bushes fer to see what de news wuz gwine ter be.

Would that sentence have the same impact if it read,

Mister Fox mixed some tar with turpentine and used it to coat a contraption he called a Tar-Baby. He set the Tar-Baby in the road, and hid in the bushes awaiting further developments.”?

Of course not! You see the main challenge though. It’s a little hard to read the original as Joel Harris wrote it, but most people can rise to the occasion and feel the richer for the experience. In your case, your dialect scenes will probably not be a major part of your book, and you may want to dilute it a little. The other aspect of dialect you may need to know is the use of foreign words. It’s fine to sprinkle in a few. Put the original in italics, and follow it with the English translation the first time you use it unless it’s a word like pizza that’s in such common usage it needs no translation. For example, “ ‘Te amo, I love you,’ he crooned softly.”

Write now: a story featuring a relative or friend with unusual dialect. Use plenty of dialogue and work in some colorful words and phrases, adapting spelling to convey the flavor of their speech.

Make Your Pages Eye Candy

Appearance definitely matters. This is no less true for pages than people, and I include both digital and paper pages. In a single afternoon I came across four  instances where choices of font, type size, color, or formatting made reading a challenge for me. It’s never a good idea to make reading difficult. It’s way too easy for readers to set your work aside, or click away from it.  Here’s what I found:

A memoir with double-spacing between paragraphs. The story seemed choppy. I finally realized that my eye was interpreting the extra vertical space as a “pause signal.” This format option is standard for business letters and web layout, where your eye needs the space as a marker to remain oriented on the page. But it is not standard on printed pages where it is typically used to indicate a break in thought or scene. 

A double-spaced manuscript printed in the old standard of 12 point Courier. Although they were the standard for college research papers, I never found this form easy to read, and was thrilled when Times New Roman edged out Courier for everything but complying with the demands of old-school editors.  I know the writing buddy who requested the help of my editorial eye will reformat before sharing more widely. By the way, if you are submitting work for publication, follow the submission guidelines on formatting to the letter!

An e-mail from a primitive list-serve that included a 1768 word story submitted for critiquing. It was a wreck with stray code, uneven line lengths, and a system font. I was tempted to pass this one up, but by pasting it into a Word document and cleaning it up, I discovered a delightful manuscript that needed little work. I won’t do that again. It took far too long, but I could not have fully appreciated the story if I hadn’t. In this case the problem was technical limitations of the system, not the preference of the author.

A website with text rendered in a micro-font the equivalent of ingredients lists on candy bars. It was even harder to read because the text was only a few shades darker than the background. I couldn’t even use the standard trick of enlarging the text size by holding down Ctrl while scrolling with my mouse wheel, because the page was displayed in Flash. Did I stay on that webpage? No!

Bottom line: to thine own words be true. Honor your efforts and your readers’ eyes by making them easy to read. Indulge your fancies with formatting, but pamper your readers by

• selecting readable fonts (see The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing for a list of recommended easy-reading fonts)
• using easily read type size
• keeping line spacing between single and about 1.5
• ensuring high contrast between text and background — black and white are hard to beat. 

Double-check your personal taste by showing samples of your layout to several friends. Ask them for an evaluation of readability. Check some best-selling books and pay attention to their layout techniques. Some features vary, like margin widths, header styles, and graphic enhancements may vary but general font and spacing standards stick to the tried and true. Simon and Schuster wouldn't risk their investment and readership by selecting fonts and layout that are difficult to read. Would you?

Write now: print out one of your finished stories and ask a couple of friends for their opinion of its appearance and ease of reading.

Hand or Keyboard — Does It Matter?

Flickr photo by SwimParallel

Within the online writing community you’ll find an ongoing discussion of the merits of writing by hand versus keyboard. Virtually all articles and posts are anecdotal, with a conspicuous lack of research. One exception is an intriguing blog interview Joy Castro  held with author and writing teacher Heather Sellers that comes close to supportable evidence. Heather claims that she can tell with near 100% accuracy by reading a student’s work whether it was written by hand or on the computer. “The best work is always written first by hand.”

As I’ve noted several times, I have become a true convert to journaling, on paper, by hand. When I recently had an idea for a focused journal on a specific topic and  wanted to share part or all of it with others, I reached for the keyboard. My attempt failed miserably. After much stumbling, fumbling, and frustration, I turned to my paper journal, and words flowed again. Eventually I realized that I was writing exclusively about feelings, emotions, and inner sensations — heart and gut stuff. That stuff is analog and organic, difficult to transfer to a stiff digital medium.

I became aware of the grandfather clock tick-tocking away across the room. When I’m aware of the clock, the river of time seems to fragment into discrete pixel-like seconds. That seems a metaphor for the way thoughts emerge from my fingers on the keyboard, in click-tocks rather than a free-flowing river. Thoughts spray forth in a wide swath through eight fingers and a thumb onto the keyboard. When I write by hand, my thoughts are forced to converge with laser-like focus into that single point at the end of my pen.

Words written on paper have an earthy, sensual feel. They seem more real, more vital and durable — not quite carved in stone, but worth the effort of recording. Digital words seem are ephemeral, easily poofed off the page, remaining only as long as I approve them.

Letters on the screen are discrete, not touching. They are fragments, pebbles in a pile. Handwritten letters flow together. Even my hybrid of print and script flows, though somewhat jerkily, along a continuous line. That flowing line forms a smoother path for the arrival of new insights. While it is true that more than a few e-mails I’ve sent over the years include some line like “I don’t know where that came from — I’m obviously thinking with my fingers!” I’ve never once been transported to that “Place of great peace beyond all the words” by keyboard writing.

For deeply analytical, insight-seeking writing, I’ll keep that pen firmly in hand! When I want to crank out the words as fast as I think, the keyboard keeps its edge. What a wonderful world we live in, that we have this choice!

Write now: conduct your own experiment to learn where you fly best with each style of writing, paper or keyboard. Google some search terms like “handwriting keyboard” or “benefits of writing by hand” and follow several links. Form your own conclusions.

Life Lessons from Life Writing

Punji Pensive, by Indi Samarajiva

Jamie’s sick, so I’ll have to fix a casserole to take over.

This is such a simple and typical thought — the type that generally passes unnoticed, or at least unquestioned. Lately I’ve begun to notice these thoughts and question them. Increasingly often as such thoughts begin to form, I pause and rethink the situation.

Is that true? Do I have to (fix a casserole, do the laundry, write a blog post) now?

Generally, the answer is No. I don’t absolutely have to do that. But I want to. Usually I’ll simply go ahead and do whatever it is, but because I stopped to think about it, I realize I do have a choice, and I do the task with more awareness and presence. Any hint of resentment fades. My life has gradually become more peaceful, more joyful, and less stressful as a result. For that I am enormously grateful.

What does this have to do with life writing? I’m convinced this powerful thought-habit sprang from journaling. This isn’t anyone’s fancy system. I’m a self-taught journal writer,  just “doing what comes naturally.” What comes naturally is to ask myself questions when I feel out of sorts or whiny about something.

“Is that true?” is my favorite one. “Are things really that bad?” “Is that so?” I write an appropriate question in third person, as if to someone else. Then I answer it. Sometimes I write two or three questions before I feel finished. It’s amazing what I’ve discovered. This technique works equally well for current things I’m whining about today, and things I’m still whining about fifty years later.

Once I got in the habit of using this technique in my journal, it began to seep out into my thoughts at other times, and you’ve read about the results. If I weren’t already convinced of the value of life writing in all forms, the results of this inadvertent experiment would prove it to me. Try it. You’ll like it!

Write now: promise yourself to spend ten minutes each day for the next ... week (or more — just keep it believable) writing about whatever is irritating you or causing you stress at the moment. You’re likely to get your best results with smaller things first while you build mental muscle. Whine your heart out on the page. Then write “Is that really true?” Think carefully, and write your answer without preconceived notions. Maybe it really is true! If it is, write “How else can you handle this?” or “What are your options?” Don’t wear yourself out. You don’t need to solve all the world’s problems. You are simply training yourself to think differently. To question your “have to” statements. I promise that if you stick with it, you are going to see some dramatic results in your thinking. You may not change your behavior, but you’re going to feel a lot happier about what you’re doing.

Celebrating National Grammar Day

Today is National Grammar Day. To celebrate, I’m sharing some amusing grammar mistakes that made it into print.

“Except for a tragic accident, the 35th annual Bath Heritage Days parade went off without a hitch.” The Times Record (Bath, Maine). A tragic accident is a minor deviation from going off without a hitch!

“The Patchwork Quilt Guild met to celebrate Christmas with a gift and cookie exchange. Kay Hanley wore a necklace and she was lit up and flashing all during the meeting.”  From the Fallon (Montana) County Times. What was in the punch?

“Hundreds of marijuana plants were discovered growing in a south Lakeland home Saturday. Two were arrested.” From the (Polk County, Florida) Ledger. Only two out of hundreds?

“Domestic diva Martha Stewart still needs a crutch to lean on as she recovered from hip surgery during a cocktail party in the Hamptons.” From the Globe. Most of us have surgery in a hospital.

“On All-Star weekend, the city gleamed with banners welcoming visitors hanging from lampposts.” From the Titusville (Pennsylvania) Herald. What about the visitors who persist in walking around?

Each of these examples violates both a rule of grammar and common sense. In this case, forget about the rules, because very few people mentally thumb through rule books as they write. Hopefully you’ll catch these as you reread. Use these tips to up the odds of finding errors like these and other less amusing ones before your general readership does.

1. Set your work aside for a day or more. A week or month is even better. Letting some time pass weakens the memory of writing those words and refreshes your vision.
2. Read your work aloud. If you can get someone to listen as you read, so much the better. If not, read it aloud just as if someone were sitting there. This requires you to focus on each word.
3. Trade proofreading with a writing pal. E-mail works well for this purpose.
4. Show it to a critique group, local or online.
5. Hire an editor. This step is calling in the big guns, not a step you take for casual material.

If a mistake like this does slip through, console yourself by realizing how much fun people are having reading it and don’t beat yourself up.

Write now: if you don’t already have one, find a writing buddy or two, and also a critique group. Do an online search to look for groups. Margot Finke published an excellent article on this topic. You’ll find other suggestions in my post, "What to Do When You Can’t Afford an Editor."