Lessons from Michelangelo

After twenty years or so, my growing collection of hard drives has bits and pieces of old material hidden away in odd places. I opened one of those odd places today and found a short piece I’d searched for while writing a recent related post about Michelangelo. I wrote the original piece for a newsletter. Don’t be fooled by the third-person parable form; it is a true account of personal experience. The story follows, unchanged from the 1982 original:

One day when Laurie was visiting Guru, he told her a fable about a small boy who asked Michelangelo how he was able to carve a horse out of a solid block of marble. The maestro explained that it was quite simple. He looked at the block, saw the horse inside, and chipped away all the marble that did not look like the horse.

Another day Laurie saw Guru again and, in the course of their conversation, she told him how a mutual friend had, for the avowed purpose of helping her become a better, more successful person, used her as the dumping ground for a tremendous amount of anger and frustration. Even though Laurie had realized that nearly all this anger was expressed at the self-image reflected in the mirror of her face, it still hurt, and a huge gap grew between them.

After a time she did learn some lessons from the experience, more valuable than the ones her friend had intended, and the traumatic memory became a source of strength. Her wound healed, and their friendship was renewed, growing even stronger than before.

Guru listened intently. When she finished, he nodded his head a bit sadly, saying, "I'm happy for you, my dear, but there are always scars..."

His response did not feel quite right, and she thought for a minute. Then she reminded him of Michelangelo's horse and explained that she had no scars. Quite the contrary. In this process, several chunks of marble which had not been part of her true form had been knocked off.

Guru had been right, as far as he went. There were scars. And they remained as long as she continued to feel angry, bitter, and vengeful. The scars were part of the marble which kept her from being fully herself, and once she was able to forgive the friend who inflicted them, those chunks fell away. She emerged, able to move ahead more freely and rapidly with the lightened load.

Like Laurie, we all move around under the weight of chunks of marble we haven't lost yet. For some the chunks may be made of anger and bitterness like they were for her. For others they may be fear, feelings of despair, or self-imposed limitations. They are always attitudes or beliefs, and they always slow us down, keeping us from being all that we could be. We can continue to carry them around, or we can allow them to drop away. The choice is always there, and it is ours to make.

As I recall, I wrote a few unsent letters before those chunks of marble fell away, so a type of journaling was part of the insight process, and a precursor to this story. I’m happy I found this file, because it’s an example of one of my early forms of published life writing, composed before self-disclosure was accepted form. It documents an important life insight, and it illustrates the versatility of life writing. I still like the parable form I chose, because it gracefully accommodates the generalization at the end.

Write now: experiment with writing a short memory in parable form, or as a short story using third person and an assumed name. Contrast that with the same story written in first person as your own experience. If you belong to a writing group, ask for input on the strengths and weaknesses of each form. If you’re looking for a(nother) writing group, you are welcome to join the Life Writers’ Forum. We don’t post much writing, but we have great discussions about writing.

A Gift to Yourself

Kim Pearson, an author, ghostwriter and editor, shared a wrenching story on Womens Memoirs. Kim’s jolting experience with an art teacher taught her a lesson for life about the importance of doing our best. Although stunned by her teacher’s seemingly appalling behavior, Kim came to see it as a gift – it instilled respect for excellence in her developing mind.

Kim learned a lesson in seconds that I spent years acquiring. I grew up with a mother who insisted that ever stitch in every garment be perfect, and I sewed constantly. I hated her perfectionism at the time, but came to value it later.

That ethic transfers to editing and making my writing the best it can be on any given day. I don’t curl up and die if a typo or missing word occurs in a Forum or blog post, but I’d just about as soon go out in public with my shirt buttoned crooked or jelly on my face as send sloppy writing out into the world. It’s about more than ego and self-respect. I see it as respect and consideration for readers. I want to make my message clear and easy to understand.

It’s a huge challenge to figure out how to balance this message about the importance of respecting your work by polishing it to perfection with the counter one:

Anything you write is better

than writing nothing!

I shout this message from the rafters in classes of new writers. It is often the key to unlocking the fingers of people who were terrorized by teachers earlier in life.

The balance I found turned out to be quite simple and consists of two parts:

Write first, THEN edit.

Suit the polish to the purpose.

Purpose implies choice. Choice is involved in setting the purpose that determines the appropriate level of polish. To illustrate that concept, think of drinking wine. If you just finished unloading the moving van, any clean cup will do the trick quite nicely. If you’re preparing a formal dinner, crystal goblets are in order.

I give my mother full credit for giving me the gift of choice. You can only choose to do less than your best if you know what your best is. I did eventually learn that it was okay to not spend an hour ripping dense stretch stitches to correct a tiny pucker in the sleeves of toddler pajamas. And it’s okay to leave my journal and experimental drafts unedited.

It all boils down to purpose. When she died, Mother left a secret stash of manuscripts covering the first 19 years of her life. Her primary purpose was to complete a draft. If she had taken the time to perfect every word she wrote, she probably wouldn’t have gotten past the age of six. How glad we are that she wrote first, saving the edits for a later that never came. I could do the editing, but I couldn’t write stories from her private memory.

If you write for yourself in a journal, forget about editing. If you decide to share what you wrote with friends or family, make it the best you can within the time you have available. If you write for publication, do whatever it takes to make it glisten and gleam.

Mastering the craft of editing – not just the basics, but also scene, character development, dazzling description and more – may seem daunting, but the time you spend buffing stories often sinks them deeper into your soul and shows you depths you didn’t realize were there. Ultimately the time you spend editing your work is a gift to yourself, not just window dressing.

Write now: pull out an old story and buff it up. Make it the best it can be. Make plans to read a book on the craft of writing or take a class to hone your skills.

Write It Your Way

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post about the great Paper versus Pixels experiment. It’s been ages since I posted anything geeky, so today you get an inside look at the template I set up to use when I want to write something personal on my computer.

I made this template because writing in my standard Garamond font on a white background feels like I’m writing for publication, no matter what I tell myself. On a whim I decided that making the display look like warm paper, and changing to a font that looks like something flowing from a pen might help. Indeed it did. You see the result above.

Rather than go into every detail of how I made the changes, I’m going to summarize them, and refer you to a couple of websites for specific instructions on working with templates and styles. Use Help or do a web search for any other steps you don’t understand. Begin with a blank document, and and …

1.  Change the paper color.

2. Reset the margins  to 1.25”.

3.  Select a new font. I spent hours surfing font sites. My favorite site  for this purpose is Font Garden. 

4.  Modify the Normal style. If you don’t do this, ever new document will revert back to Times Roman – or more likely Calibri, the Word default for 2007.

• Change the font.
• Modify Paragraph settings: Spacing After to 0. Set line spacing to Multiple, 1.15. Set Indentation to First Line 0.5”.5. 

5.  Modify the Header 1 style to 14 pt, bold, 0” indentation.

6. Create a new style for paragraphs with horizontal lines: 0” indentation, 6 pts before and after.

7.  Put hearts into header. Open header. Select Symbols font. On Insert tab, Insert Symbol. Find heart in the menu. Click to insert. Add spaces between. Copy heart and spaces. Paste until line is full. Select color and size to suit. Center line.

8. Save template as instructed on website link above.

9. If you decide to print what you’ve written, by default the paper will be white. If you want to print the background, click the Options button on the bottom left of the print menu, and check the Print Background option under Printing Options near the bottom. You’ll still have a white border around the edges.

---

These instructions can be modified with different paper colors, different fonts, or different symbols in the header. You could use a picture in the header. You can add photos to your journal.

I add my entries at the bottom of the file so they stay in chronological order. You could do it blog style, with the newest entries at the top. This is your journal. Do it your way!

Now that you have this gorgeous page set up, all that’s left to do is to write your heart out!

Write now: play with format settings. It will help you with general layout in all documents.

Stick to Your Own Story

During a recent discussion, someone (I’ll call her Darla) mentioned that she “needed to learn more about my grandmother’s history so I can explain why she acted the way she did and why she was so over-protective.”

Although this aspiring memoir writer had only the best of intentions in mind, her comment set a couple of red flags flapping for me. Life story or memoir writers who claim to know why someone else did something, or what that person was thinking, lose credibility with me. Here’s my thinking on this topic:

#1

Only fiction writers can explain why someone else acted as he or she did, or what that person thinks, and only then when writing in the third person. Darla’s granny is long gone, so there is no way Darla can tell us why she acted as she did. Even if Granny were available, Darla could only report what Granny told her, what she observed Granny doing, or her own speculation about why Granny did what she did.

#2

This is Darla’s story. It’s about her experiences, thoughts and reactions. It doesn’t matter why Granny did anything. The fact that Granny did do something is what affected Darla. Granny’s deeds and Darla’s reaction and understanding are key story elements, not the reasons why Granny acted as she did.

If Darla wants to do research on her grandmother’s history and speculate on why things were as they were, that speculation may be relevant, but to maintain credibility, she’ll be well-advised to use phrases like probably, it seems like, or might have as she spins her tale. 

Speculations about motives and reflections on your understanding of other people’s behavior can add important context to your stories, and will shed light on the way you view things. Examples of behavior are a great way to support your reflections and weave them seamlessly into the narrative. For example, one of my grandmothers had eccentric gift-giving habits, as shown by the following example:

Granny didn’t even bother to wrap the battered old suitcase she used to hold the collection of used kitchen items she gave me as a wedding present. For a few months I resented the fact that she gave me cruddy old cast iron skillets and dishes she’d used for years. She could have afforded to buy me new things. I felt like she was telling me I wasn’t good enough for new things. Then I realized that she had given me things she had used. All of it was useful, and it reminded me of her more powerfully than anything new would have. It gave me a sense of connection with her, of continuity between generations. Maybe she was being stingy – that wouldn’t be surprising considering the austere circumstances of most of her life – but it doesn’t matter. I came to  love her old gifts, and I’ve already promised to pass those by-now-antique cast iron skillets on to my granddaughter when she marries.

By showing what Granny did (gave me used gifts), and how my attitude toward them changed, I’ve given you a view of Granny and also my own thought. Would you believe me if I tried to explain why Granny did what she did? Does that matter? 

As you write stories involving other people, especially people who aren’t available to explain their versions of things, be sure you stick to your own story and your understanding of what they did. You can only speak for yourself. 

Write now: do some writing practice using a person you make excuses for, at least to yourself as your prompt. In your writing tell what happened to the person to cause what you consider to be inappropriate or disappointing behavior, how you feel about it, and how you handle and explain it. Use examples of behavior. If you feel inspired, turn this account into a story.

Love Letters — Good for Both Heart and Soul

Cupid has got to be behind this synchronistic web discovery. Just hours before St. Valentine’s Day I found a link to a PsyBlog post explaining that Affectionate Writing Can Reduce Cholesterol.

Previous posts here have explained how writing about trauma is good for your health, and also that writing about happy stuff is good for you. But love letters and affectionate notes had not made the list, and I have not previously seen reduced cholesterol linked with any form of expressive writing. This is great news!

Based on the simple report on PsyBlog, this study appears to be among the hundreds of variations on the Pennebaker research model that has people write for about twenty minutes on three to five occasions:

According to new research, writing down affectionate thoughts about close friends and family can reduce your cholesterol levels. Floyd et al. (2007) randomly assigned participants to one of two groups: one experimental and one control. The experimental group wrote with affection about one person in their lives for 20 minutes on three occasions over a five-week period. The control group wrote mundane descriptions of their activities over the week, jobs they had done and places they had lived.

(read full article)

Note that the experiment involved writing three times. I’m inclined to think that writing to more people, more often could amplify the results and have the same stress-reducing effect as keeping a Gratitude Journal. This could be worth turning into a habit or way of life!

Write now: pen a loving note to a special person in your life. For best results repeat often, at least once a week. You may get even stronger results by using pen and paper rather than sending an e-mail!

Picture: Sharon Lippincott © 2011

It’s Been Five Long Years

A little birdie just whispered in my ear, “Check the date of your first post.” Sure enough. Today is fifth anniversary of that first post. It’s hard to imagine that it’s been that long.

For those who came in more recently, this blog began about the time I fully formed the intention of writing The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing, and the blog bore the same name as the book. By the time the book was published about eighteen months later, my interests had broadened beyond just story writing, and within a year or so I renamed the blog, omitting the “story” to arrive at the current title. 

Over the course of the five years in nearly 500 posts, I’ve covered almost every topic relating to life writing: story writing tips and techniques, working with your muse, journaling tips, elements of memoir, the nature of memory …  If all the archives were printed out, they’d fill about five volumes.

Some have asked where I get my ideas for posts. Sometimes my muse Sarabelle whispers them in my ear. But a majority are written in response to questions students ask or comments on forums and other blogs. Now and then I write about a book I’ve read or a news item. In short, they come from anywhere and everywhere. 

Through the five years I’ve become keenly aware of the power of Story and blogs to create community and connection among life writers. Many have told me my blog is a sort of coach (I’m also available for standard coaching). It’s been a nudge to my creativity, and hopefully yours. I’ve shared computer tips. 

More than a few times over the last couple of years I’ve felt like I’ve said it all, and perhaps it was time to post a “Finished” sign. But there is always more to say. I’m working now on plans for expanding the scope of the blog. Stay tuned for more details. 

Write now: jot down some thoughts about an ongoing project of your own. Take stock of your accomplishments as well as your plans and dreams for its future.

Paper versus Pixels: the Debate Goes On

In January I participated in an experiment to explore the relative merits of journaling on paper versus keyboard. The research project was spearheaded by Amber Starfire, owner of Writing Through Life, a blog and ezine devoted to the fine art of journaling. For one week we wrote by hand. The second week we used the computer, and the third week we mixed the two. 

Official results have not been released, but I was a little surprised by my personal findings. From the time I received a Hermes Baby typewriter in preparation for going to college, I used a keyboard for just about everything but taking notes and signing checks. For over a dozen years I kept sporadic journal entries in ongoing documents, adding to them through the space of a year. 

Three years ago I began journaling on a regular basis, loosely following the Morning Pages model. After spending two or three weeks reconditioning my writing muscles, I fell in love with hand writing, finding deep pleasure in watching words pour from my hand onto paper. They seem more real, more immediate, more connected in three dimensions that any pixels on a monitor ever will. Writing by hand often invokes a meditative state. While writing stories, essays, blog posts, articles, and all that other stuff is still fine on the keyboard, journaling by hand has become something of an obsession. Magic happens. I feel more creative. I don’t recall my muse  Sarabelle ever visiting while my hands were on a keyboard.

But still, I’m up for experiments and try to keep an open mind. I’m aware of the advantages of using the computer. Amber summarized them beautifully in a post about journaling software. 

My experience confirmed my preference for writing on paper, for all the reasons I already knew, but it also reactivated my appreciation of computer journaling. My journals have pale golden pages as warm as morning sunshine. After recoiling from the icy white digital page, I set the page color in Word to palest pink, adding a header of slightly darker hearts. Then I downloaded a hand printing font not too different from my own and used deep violet “ink”. This combination tricked my eye and made a world of difference. My E-journal feels less like “more work.” 

However, I did not find myself drawn into the meditative state. My thoughts remained closer to the surface. This may partly be due to the crisp percussion of hitting keys versus the smooth, analog glide of gel pen on paper. Clicking versus silence. The rhythm and flow are different. Also, the keyboard and touchpad on my laptop are wiggy (I will journal in my comfy chair, not at my desk, however I do it). The cursor jumps around now and then. To avoid chaos, I must often reposition, which breaks the flow.

Focus is a concern. When I write on paper, I’m journaling. That and nothing else. I’m aware that I could type in some of what I write, but that never happens. If I use anything, I rewrite it. When I write on the computer, some tiny portal remains active, reminding me I can easily recycle parts into a blog post, email, or whatever. That keeps one eye on the window to the world. 

For me, 95% of the value of keeping a journal lies in the writing. If my journals are lost or destroyed, so be it. I cherish this break from the keyboard and need it for personal balance. But I think I will be using the keyboard to capture more thoughts that aren’t so deeply personal. I might even invest in journal software for the purpose. 

Write now: try Amber’s experiment for yourself and draw your own conclusions. Then send me an email with the results. If you already have strong feelings about this, post a comment and share them.