Monroeville Library Lifewriters

The Monroeville Public Library Lifewriters group began meeting five years ago after students in a six-week lifestory writing class I taught at the library wanted to keep meeting as an incentive to stick with their writing projects. All agreed to meet on a regular basis, twice a month, without adjusting the schedule to accommodate absences of any members, myself included. The group has continued to meet skipping only the second meetings in November and December, ever since. We have no formal membership or structure, and our average attendance has grown from around six at the beginning to a dozen today. Only a couple of original members still attend. The rest have cycled in at various points since.

Several members contributed short pieces for this post telling about the value the group and lifewriting in general has had for them. Excerpts follow.

Ellen: I am passionate about lifewriting because I am telling my own personal story in my own voice. Others can listen if they want, but the joy is in the telling. The joy of the lifewriting group is that there are eager listeners to my personal story—and they validate my life. I am passionate about lifewriting because I am telling my own personal story in my own voice. Others can listen if they want, but the joy is in the telling. The joy of the lifewriting group is that there are eager listeners to my personal story—and they validate my life.

Helma: I began writing my memoir in 1987 and continued to add to it periodically but never on a regular basis. I began with the marriage of my parents and tried to write a chronological-type bio. It was slow and infrequent work. Then one morning at the health club I happened to overhear two women discussing the writing club at my local library and decided to investigate, which I did and found that I would be welcome to attend. At first I was somewhat intimidated by their knowledge of writing and grammar, but the warm welcome and positive input soon changed that. In the short space of time that I have been with them I have gained much from the positive critiques. I look forward to each meeting.

Joan: The group gives me advice, critiques my work, accepts me for being me. My life is an open book and I enjoy sharing the good times as well as the not so good times. No one judges me. When I hear another person in the group read a story about something in their life, it inspires me and triggers another one of my memories, which could have stayed dormant forever.

Margaret: I really enjoy the group, and the friendly interaction of each one. It's good to know other people’s stories and how they grew up and what their thoughts are about life. It's heartwarming to know that we can connect to other people, no matter what our up-bringing or circumstances.

Chuck: I have taught many different university-level writing classes, edited technical writing, and written 42 plays and two writing text books, so I know how to write. So I do spend a lot of time proofreading and never dash something off the morning of the class. And yet, I can overlook my own typos, and I always appreciate the keen eye of one of the group spotting an error. I definitely find being a part of the group extremely enjoyable. People in the group are great; and the group serves as great motivation to write. I've been deeply moved by something that each person in the group has written.

Nancy: For some time, I had been thinking about writing my memoirs, using "I remember when  . . . " as my theme. I tried a class at the Penn Hills Library in the summer of 2010, but was somewhat disappointed to learn that it was a group for all types of writing; in addition, once my fall schedule began, I was not free the night the group met. One of the members of the Monroeville Library group, a friend from church, encouraged me to visit. I have thoroughly enjoyed the group, hearing others' memories and sharing some of my own. The constructive criticism and the positive reinforcement meant so much to me. Our two-hour meetings twice a month work well for me, and we always seem to find time for every person to read his or her story.

Paul: You could display my two books that you inspired me to author and publish after the age of eighty.

Paul, the author of Living to Serve and Bridges to Peace wrote this brief response while on vacation. He is working on a third book and is a charter member of the group. I mentioned him in an earlier post.

Thanks to all the members who responded. I hope their comments may inspire others to join a group, or start one if you can’t find one.

Write now: about your experience with writing groups. If you don’t belong to one, write about benefits you might receive from one, and reasons you may think of starting one.

Writing Group Profile: The Hale Street Gang

Kickoff event for Hale Street Gang anthology:
Sara Tucker, standing, Idora Tucker, right

Today we have a guest post written by Sara Tucker, author of The Hale Street Gang and Me blog. In this post, Sarah tells the story of the origins of the Hale Street Gang, a remarkable group of life writers that I discovered last fall when I visited the remarkable show of their work at the Vermont Folklife Center in Middlebury, Vermont. After viewing the exhibit and surfing Sara’s blog, I was so impressed with what they have accomplished, I had to know more.

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In the fall of 2008, my mother and I signed up for a memoir-writing class at the senior center in the little town of Randolph, Vermont. Six weeks later the class ended, the instructor left, and we were on our own. Because I am a professional writer, the others decided that I would be their leader. At 56, I was the youngest in the group by about 30 years.

Since then, the members of the Hale Street Gang (as we now call ourselves) have published seven books and started a blog. We’ve read our work on college campuses and on the air. We’ve toured the state in partnership with the Vermont Folklife Center, encouraging other seniors to write down their stories. We’ve been a hundred times more prolific and had way more fun than we ever imagined on that September morning when our first class convened.

I asked one of the members to help me account for our success, and she came up with the following explanation, which happens to mention me several times. It should be noted that the writer is my mother, Idora Tucker. Mom gave me strict orders not to omit the paragraphs about Yours Truly (I wouldn’t dare). Here’s what she wrote:

“We are a diverse group of oldsters. We write during the week and read the results to one another in our weekly gatherings, allowing time for discussion of each manuscript and encouragement for each writer. We expect regular attendance, bringing some writing to the group each week. It is understood that what we read to the group will not be shared any further without the permission of the writer. We have no firm assignments, although we occasionally do a writing exercise for fun and inspiration. Our focus is on telling the stories of our own lives as we remember them.”

My mother then goes on to enumerate our accomplishments thus: “Early in our history a high school friend of Sara’s, well-known professional photographer Jack Rowell, became interested in our group. He and Sara teamed up with the Vermont Folklife Center to mount an exhibit of our work. Starting with that project Sara became our volunteer general manager. Not only does she lead the weekly meetings of the writers, but she is also our publicist, our chief fund-raiser, and the coordinator of everything we do. Sara edited an anthology entitled The Hale Street Gang: In Cahoots and arranged for its publication. She helped me to publish four small volumes of my memoirs, written for my children and grandchildren. Another member has published a memoir about bringing up her daughter, born with Down’s syndrome. Our Gang meets with various groups to present our work; Sara arranges these events. In addition, she has published her own memoir, Our House in Arusha, We consider ourselves a success, not only in terms of our output, but also judging from the fact that we are still meeting, still growing in numbers, and receiving increasing recognition. And our work is selling!

“Most of us have thought that no one would be interested in our writing. Not true. We have thought we could not write. Also not true, as we all have found out when we sit down to write. Details that we thought we had completely left behind come crowding back, wanting to get into the manuscript and to be shared with our small group. In the process we learn not just about our fellow writers, but about ourselves. I am finding it to be one of the most rewarding activities of my old age.”

My mother, who is 90 and brings several new pages to the group every week, offers this advice to aspiring memoirists of any age:

• Everyone has a story to tell.
• A writers’ group will help you to keep writing.
• Any group will eventually fall apart without a leader.

To learn how to lead a life-writing group, I picked up a few books, including Telling the Stories of Life through Guided Autobiography Groups, by gerontologist James E. Birren and Sharon Lippincott’s The Heart and Craft of Lifewriting. Shortly after I discovered Sharon’s book, she discovered the Hale Street Gang and introduced herself to me via our blog. Talk about serendipity.

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Sara Tucker is the author of Our House in Arusha, a family memoir set in Tanzania. Her blog is The Hale Street Gang and Me . You can email her at halestreetgang@gmail.com.

Writing Groups

I’m a firm believer in the power of writing groups. Perhaps I indirectly learned their power from my participation in Toastmasters, Int’l many years ago. Toastmasters is based on the concept that peers can use basic training materials to mentor each other as they develop their ability to communicate in groups. In retrospect I realize I received a heap of benefits from my Toastmasters experience:

A continuing audience. My fellow club members listened to me time after time, which enabled them to track my progress in a meaningful way and provide helpful feedback.

Action deadlines. Speakers must perform, and need audiences. Writers can write in solitude, but the commitment to share with a  group is powerfully motivating.

Structure. In the beginning, the Toastmasters manuals provided guidance through initial steps of learning to organize and deliver short speeches. Writing groups that begin with classes also offer this advantage. Over time I moved beyond the manuals, but still benefited from the structure of a group that regularly held well-planned and organized meetings.

New friends. This proved to be a fringe benefit I had not expected. Members of Toastmasters clubs tend to become well-acquainted and close friendships often develop. The same is true, perhaps even more so, in writing groups especially life writing groups.

Group effort. Learning to communicate in groups is not something you can do alone. It takes a group. Toastmasters fills that need.

Not all writing groups are equally successful. I’ve belonged to a few that fizzled. One was a general writing group that met at a Barnes & Noble store many years ago. The group had no formal leader and completely dissolved when a scary person began attending. Another was begun by a person with personality quirks that send new members fleeing. A third was formed by several mature women who saw writing as a career enhancement tool. All became too busy to continue.

The groups that have been the  most rewarding and helpful have been life writing groups. All the ones I’m currently involved with spun off from classes I began teaching with the specific intention of keeping myself writing. Members of these groups have grown to feel like family. Each of these groups provides the same benefits as a Toastmasters club: a group of people who regularly read each other’s work, provide feedback and monitor progress, deadlines for writing, a certain amount of structure (especially in the preliminary classes), group effort and new friends.

I especially stress that last factor. There is something about sharing stories from our lives that opens hearts and bonds people. There’s another advantage to hearing other people’s stories: new story ideas flow thick and heavy, nurturing creativity and expanding the reach of personal memory.

As members move on to other areas, new groups are beginning to form. To encourage the development of more groups all over the country and the world, I’m planning to showcase a few groups I know of. If you belong to a group and would like to have it featured, please send me an e-mail.  If you’d like to start a group, stay tuned. Guidelines for starting and maintaining a thriving group will be forthcoming.

Write now: write an essay about your experience with writing groups or other support groups. If you belong to a group, write about the people in it and your experiences. How do you feel about the group? What would you change? How has it helped you? If you don’t belong to a group and would like to, make plans to find one or start one.

Photo credit: James Mitchell

Hemingway Speaks to Life Writers

I’ve never been a huge Hemmingway fan, finding the couple of novels I read dull and dissipated. How could anyone possibly drink as much as his characters and still manage to walk around? Besides, the action seemed to move slowly. Maybe it was a guy thing, I decided, determining to abandon this dissolute literary icon.

But my opinion has changed. To pass the time on a recent road trip, my husband and I listened to a recording of The Snows of Kilimanjaro and I reached for my Moleskine to jot some notes. Hemmingway may have been writing fiction, but that story has a lot to say to those who write memoir. Intrigued by the recording, I found a book of his short stories at the library, and found more passages of specific relevance in other stories.

I admit it. I plan to finish the book, The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Short Stories. Who knows? I may even try another of his novels. Here are three clips I especially liked:

Now he would never write the things that he had saved to write until he knew enough to write them well. Well, he would not have to fail at trying to write them either. Maybe you could never write them,and that was why you put them off and delayed the starting. Well he would never know, now.

The Snows of Kilimanjaro

Who would dare to delay writing after reading that passage? Who knows which day the bell will toll for us?

It was not so much that he lied as that there was no truth to tell.

The Snows of Kilimanjaro

The subject of Truth is always a topic of interest and conversation among groups of life writers. Hemmingway has much to say about Truth in this particular story.

The major, who had been the great fencer, did not believe in bravery and spent much time while we sat on the machines correcting my grammar. He had complimented me on how I spoke Italian, and we talked together very easily. One day I had said that Italian seemed such an easy language to me that I could not take a great interest in it; everything was so easy to say. "Ah, yes," the major said. "Why, then, do you not take up the use of grammar?" So we took up the use of grammar, and soon Italian was such a difficult language that I was afraid to talk to him, until I had the grammar straight in my mind.

 In Another Country

This passage seems especially relevant to those who fear the Grammar Police, whether that be the one resident in your head or the one in your writing group. Note that the two men talked together easily before the main character acceded to the major’s coercion and began to learn grammar. While I don’t downplay the importance of grammar and the value of learning correct usage, I suggest that you not lose sight off the primary importance of writing the story. Let grammar cleanup be secondary. And be gentle with others lest you have the effect of the major and destroy their joy or stifle their urge to write.

Write now: pull out your Story Idea List and add a few new entries. Then pick one and write that story. Now. Before your leg begins to rot and it’s too late.

Photo credit: Stig Nygaard

Too Silly to Write About?

“Is anything too insignificant or silly to write about?” asked Margaret, a frail-looking resident at a retirement community where I was presenting a program on lifestory writing.

“Any subject can be fascinating if it’s well written. Do you have a specific topic in mind?”

Margaret looked down at her lap and spoke almost in a whisper. “I was remembering the first time I shaved my legs,” she said. “My father didn’t tell me anything about how to do it.”

“Oh, that’s a wonderful story!” I replied. “I’d love to hear a story like that about one of my grandmothers!”

“I can’t hear!” “What’s did she say?” My reaction had raised everyone’s curiosity.

“Do you mind if I tell them what you said?”

She blushed and shrugged in agreement, and the large group responded like school kids. Everyone turned to a neighbor and began talking at once. “I remember the first time I shaved …” Men and women alike had shaving stories. Margaret’s shy question had touched every heart in the room, bonding them into one big memory mass. Aside from any interest for descendants, this seemingly mundane topic revived youthful memories and added extra zest to the day. Everyone had extra spring in their step when they left the room after the program ended a few minutes later.

Her core question was how she could take make such a mundane matter into something other people would be interested in. The first step is to lock in content. Looking at the woman’s brief topic statement, several story possibilities emerge. A few starter questions are:

• How did she happen to choose that day for her first shave?
• Had she been teased about hairy legs, felt self-conscious … ? 
• How long did it take her to build up to this event?
• Did she ask permission, or just do it?
• What sort of razor did she use? Shaving soap or cream? Blade? 
• How did she feel afterward?

Margaret’s statement raises an intriguing and uniquely personal  question: why did she mention her father as the person who had not taught her what she needed to know? Most girls would turn to their mothers with questions like this. That one phrase hints at a much larger encompassing story.

That list of questions  could be adapted for any similar personal anecdote to identify the basic story. The next step is to give your story a highly personal voice and add sparkle. This calls for adding plenty of sensory description, like the smell of shaving cream, the feel of the suds and the razor slipping across your skin or pulling against stubborn hairs. You might mention the sting of a nick or red blood flowing wetly from a gash. Details like these, along with your feelings and thoughts about the event, will set your story apart and delight your readers.

To answer Margaret’s original question, no, nothing is too silly or mundane to write about if you use your imagination and look at it from a creative new angle.

Write now: use these guidelines to write about your first shaving experience. Include lots of sensory description along with your thoughts and feelings to make a compelling story of this rite of passage.

Tell It Like It Wasn’t

You know how you keep hearing the importance of writing your Truth, and telling it the way you experienced and lived it? And you know how sometimes that keeps your story bottled up inside you? Here’s a radical idea: tell it like it wasn’t. Now before I go any further with this, let me be clear: I am not advocating falsehood, nor do I condone misleading people. But it is true than sometimes you can best convey Truth by breaking away from truth.

The most common reason for memoir writers to lapse into fiction is to protect the privacy and identities of other people in your story. You may do this from compassion and integrity or from the desire to stay out of court. You can tell the Truth of what happened while altering enough facts to protect privacy and minimize damage to relationships and emotions – your own included.

Another reason is to gain the freedom to tell as story like you wish it had been. Perhaps you’ve always wished you’d signed up for the tennis team,  gone whitewater rafting on that outing with your buddies, or had the perfect come-back when that bully dissed you in front of all your friends. You may regret a road not taken. On the page you can explore those other branches. It may not take a novel to cover these bases. Fictitious short stories can be immensely rewarding and allow you to express the Truth of the option your wiser self would choose today. Write the story, write your dream. Postpone decisions about who, if any, your readers will be.

A third reason springs from limitations of writing in first person. Sticking precisely to fact precludes the possibility of reporting anyone else’s thoughts. In memoir, or first-person fiction, it’s an absolute no-no to tell the reader that “Sally deliberately told me a lie about that. She knew she was planning to … .” You can’t know that. You can tell us what you assumed, or what Sally told you, or someone told you Sally told them, but you can’t impute motives.

Finally, wrapping Truth in fiction, telling it in third person and a new setting distances it from you, scrubbing issues of personality from the equation. Some who may reject what you said as fact may be open to hearing your fiction. In a sense you are mythologizing your experience.

When you have tough Truth to tell, universal messages, separate the Truth from the facts and consider telling it like it wasn’t.

Write now: think of one of those times when you think, “If I knew then what I know now …” Write the story as it would have happened if you had known then what you do know now. Be wildly creative. It’s time for your Inner Censor to take a nap and your muse to come out and play.
Image credit: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com