Tag Archives: Writers Resources

by | July 24, 2014 · 5:20 am

The Truth-Teller’s Club

How long have I been examining memoirs to see what I learned?

I just went and looked up the answer. I started these at the beginning of January of this year. It feels as if I have been doing it longer, but that is still over a half-year. So I must have written at least 26 memoir review posts!

How is it that I haven’t yet written about Mary Karr’s books? I will admit that my omission has been on purpose. I find it so daunting to talk about her books. She is the memoir writer I most look up to, both for her first memoir The Liar’s Club and for the trilogy (The Liar’s Club, Cherry, and Lit). 

When I first started reading memoirs on purpose, I read Jeannette Walls’ memoir The Glass Castle and Mary Karr’s The Liar’s Club. They were both stories with narrator voices that appealed to me and both about the experiences of little girls growing up in trying circumstances.

These two writers unintentionally persuaded me that I had a story to tell, as well.

Mary Karr’s book is a great one to use as a model for a coming-of-age memoir. If I were teaching a course in that type of memoir I would certainly use The Liar’s Club as a text.

To say that Karr’s story is that of a girl and her older sister growing  up with alcoholic parents would be to greatly simplify and reduce a great work of art.

Since I could spend days writing this post (and I can’t do that and you wouldn’t have time to read it anyway), let me focus on a couple of points.

The book opens with 7-year-old Mary being questioned by her family doctor in her family home. Something is terribly wrong. He’s very gently asking to examine her, but she’s formed her nightgown into a protective tent. Karr’s descriptive powers and use of figurative language create scenes for the reader to actually inhabit with the narrator/protagonist. She knows just how to suck the reader into her life in a small blue-collar town in Texas, circa 1962. She goes on to use this method, as well as flash forwards and flashbacks, to tell her story. She also centers the narrative around certain years in her life, rather than trying to cover her entire childhood. And she introduces her father’s storytelling to add texture and an enhanced viewpoint to the story.

Karr also plays with tense in this book. For example, in the middle of the book, she describes her mentally ill mother as looking on one particular day like Anthony Perkins in the movie Psycho. But she’s not content to just make the analogy. Instead, she says:

Mother’s back to me in that rocker conjured that old Alfred Hitchcock movie Psycho she’d taken us to in 1960. In the end, the crazy killer was got up like his nutty old mother with a gray wig. He rocked in her personal chair. Mother turned around slow to face me like old Tony Perkins. Her face came into my head one sharp frame at a time. I finally saw in these instants that Mother’s own face had been all scribbled up with that mud-colored lipstick. She was trying to scrub herself out, I thought. Sure enough, the scribbles weren’t like those on an African mask or like a kid’s war paint. They didn’t involve the underlying face that much. They lacked form. No neat triangles or straight lines went along the planes on the face. She looked genuinely crazy sitting in her mother’s rocker with the neatly ruffled blue calico cushions in front of that blazing stove with the smell of charcoal fluid and her own face all scrawled up bloody red.

And from that moment on, Karr switches scenes and tenses at the same time, “Then we’re in the lavender bedroom I share with Lecia.”

If you don’t watch for the tense shifts you won’t notice them, but they add intensity as if a camera is zooming in and out of the subject.

If you haven’t read The Liar’s Club, what in the world are you waiting for?!

 

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by | July 17, 2014 · 5:20 am

Lit Journals Again

Last week I posted a poll on Does Short Form Memoir Count?

Although the results are limited by the few numbers taking the poll, I was heartened to see that the highest percentage was for people who subscribe to at least one journal. But when you add rarely and never together, you get the same score.

So why don’t more of us read lit mags? And I put myself in that category because I haven’t been consistent. More often than not, I would skim a new magazine and end up not reading it because I turned to a book instead.

Now that I’ve been reading literary journals again, I feel so energized, enthused, and educated. I think my writing will be better for reading them. So I plan to continue.

How about you?

 

Photo by Marisha

Photo by Marisha

Next Thursday: I (sort of) review an iconic memoir.

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by | July 14, 2014 · 5:20 am

A Baker’s Dozen?

In my post called Target My Structure, I talked about how Stuart Horwitz’s book Blueprint Your Bestseller is helping me organize my memoir.

One of the most important steps of structuring a book, according to Horwitz, is to identify the series in your book. As I mentioned in that post, “a series is anything that has ‘iterations.’ Repetitions, a pattern. But not just any pattern–a pattern where the series “undergoes a clear evolution.” It happens or shows up more than once and changes a bit? It’s probably a series.”

There is no set number of series a book should have, but 12 is a reasonable number.  By happenstance, I have 12 series. Most of mine have to do with emotions, which is something that surprised me a great deal. I like imagery and metaphorical language, so I kind of thought I would find series with certain central metaphors or images. But when I did find iterations (repetitions) of an image, I would see that the image fit squarely within certain emotions that repeat throughout the book.

For instance, the image of a gun shows up in several scenes. In one scene, it’s a rifle. In another, it’s a pistol. In yet another, it’s a shotgun. But what is more important than the guns is that they represent the emotions fear and anger. Fear and anger are represented in different ways in many scenes. Guns are just one way they manifest themselves. But these emotions also show up in verbal arguments, physical abuse, and hiding/secrecy.

Once I had a list of my scenes in hand, I noticed that they correspond fairly well to the major emotions as identified by Pia Mellody.

ANGER

FEAR

PAIN

JOY

PASSION

LOVE

SHAME

GUILT

I also have a few other series in addition to these emotions, but I might add a 13th.  And it would be called THERAPISTS ;).

 

Do emotions show up often in your writing?

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by | July 10, 2014 · 5:20 am

Does Short Form Memoir Count?

Lately I’ve been reading shorter memoir pieces in back issues of literary journals, rather than book-length memoirs. I’ve noticed a few things by reading stories in journals:

  1. I don’t know what I’m going to get ahead of time. These pieces are usually listed until the category of “nonfiction.” A story might be a memoir, but it also might be a political essay or a lyrical essay. I’m more likely to find an experimental piece than if I read a book. Whether that matters or not is another issue. But I have long suspected that the reason we have “genres” is that we know how to “take” something when we read it.
  2. The piece is more likely to have some contemporary slant to it than if it were part of a book. These essays tend to be more “timely,” but sometimes that feels like a magazine trying to be trendy.
  3. I don’t become as obsessed with any of these short stories as I do when I read a book. I am less invested. Are the writers less invested, too? Nevertheless, some of the short pieces are thrilling in their brilliance.
  4. I am exposed to a wider range of thoughts and emotions by reading a variety of essays by a variety of writers.
  5. By reading many writing styles, I learn more about writing at the sentence and paragraph level. By reading books, I learn more about structure.
  6. I can read one short piece at each sitting, so I feel as if I’ve accomplished something.
  7. BUT I am not drawn back to the story as I am when I have to take a reading break during a book.
  8. I can learn a lot about where to submit stories by reading the journals.

 

Click on this link to order back issues of Plougshares

How often do you read literary journals?

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by | July 3, 2014 · 5:20 am

A Slut’s Story: Review of “Loose Girl”

Ever call someone a slut? Or a ho?

You might think twice about the object (not subject since we objectify when we call someone names) of your label after reading Kerry Cohen’s memoir Loose Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity.

Sex addiction is a real disorder–and treated by therapists and in rehab facilities around the country. This is the first book I’ve read about a girl who has this addiction. Her self-worth is completely connected to getting attention from guys. I use the word “guys,” rather than men, because at the end of the book, in an interview of Cohen, she explains that men have feelings and needs of their own, but that a “loose girl” doesn’t view males that way. She uses them for her own overpowering needs.

In this book, the reader is brought into the mindset of a teen girl and, later, young woman who is a sex addict. For me, this book was horrifying to read. Cohen knew intellectually the dangers of having unprotected sex, and yet she did, with guys she barely knew–one after another after another.

I suspect there are women and young women I know who have engaged in this kind of behavior.  There might be many women like this.

The book is an engaging read, although the subject was disturbing. I stayed up too late finishing it as I wanted to have things set right for me at the end. I don’t want to include any spoilers here as I want you to have the same suspenseful read I had, so I will just say that the ending surprised me.

From this book I learned that in memoir the most critical scenes and shifts or turns in the plot don’t have to be earth-shattering. They can be more subtle, as often happens in life. In fact, in this book sometimes the most dramatic events don’t trigger any change in the narrative, whereas something almost invisible can trigger more change.

I did notice a couple of places where, if the book was in my group’s critique session, readers would demand something more. For instance, after Cohen develops a medical problem, readers don’t get to see how this affects her relationship with her boyfriend at the time. Instead, we jump ahead to “summer.”

Another opportunity missed might actually be intentional and part of the design of the book. Most of the characters, other than the male sex objects, are barely described. I don’t really have a good idea of how Cohen looks (other than her photo at the back of the book). Or her parents or therapist or best friends. The only exception is her sister Tyler, another victim of their neglectful upbringing. I suspect Cohen wants the reader to see the world as she saw it–cute boys with straight or curly hair and pretty eyes that single her out with their gaze. She may have described Tyler as a nod to Tyler’s shared family experience.

This book can benefit society by showing us what’s at stake when we just call someone a slut in a derisive way and don’t examine the root causes of her behavior.

 

 

 

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by | June 26, 2014 · 5:20 am

A Story of Grief

WordPress blogger Carol Balawyder‘s book Mourning Has Broken explores her grieving process after the death of her sister.

As with many griefs, Carol’s is entangled with her mourning over losing other relatives and friends and even her retirement. She writes:

I try to separate my sister’s loss from that of my mother, who died nine months before Diana. Daughter. Sister. They weave into each other by stitches on a quilt. To grieve the loss of a mother and a sister at the same time is more than the sum of the two parts.

Carol identifies her book as a memoir, but it’s not a memoir in the usual sense. Instead, it’s written in the form of lyrical essays. They are all stand-alone pieces, but together they function to give the book an arc, thereby making it a memoir in a nontraditional sense.

The journey of Carol’s grieving takes place against a spiritual landscape, but Carol herself is not a particularly religious person. That she keeps searching in religious and spiritual arenas shows me that she is a very spiritual person.  She refers to herself as an immature person on more than one occasion, but I found her to be a wise person in many respects.

The high point, or climax, of the book’s plot arc, occurs in the title essay “Mourning Has Broken.” In this piece, Carol’s new Reiki Master tells her that at the commemorative for Diana, Diana will give Carol a sign if Carol asks for one. When Carol’s sister gives her a sign it’s more powerful than imagined and has a profoundly healing effect on both Carol and on the reader going on this journey with Carol (the book’s protagonist I refer to here, rather than the actual Carol).

The writing style of the book is beautiful and distinctive, but I felt as if my best friend was sharing with me. I found myself very charmed by the book. I also made notes throughout the book, so that I can refer back to passages later.

All memoirs are part reflection and part storytelling, but the majority are heavier on the storytelling than the reflection. Lyrical essays tend to be heavier on reflection. In this book, Carol creates a perfect balance of the two (50-50? maybe), which I find fitting for the subject of living through grieving.

Carol’s book is the loveliest book about grief and mourning that I’ve read.

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There are a few typos Carol’s editor left in the book, but Carol is cleaning them up in the Kindle edition. If you’re interested in reading Carol’s fiction, she has a story online at the literary journal carte blanche. You can find “The Witness” here. 

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by | June 19, 2014 · 5:20 am

Secret War Hero: One Woman’s Story (A Memoir)

Years ago, my friend, Lisa Ercolano, urged me to read a memoir by a friend of hers who had passed away. This is how she describes her friend for this post:

Over the quarter of a century that I worked as a newspaper reporter, I met and interviewed a lot of interesting people. There was treasure hunter Mel Fisher, famous for finding the 1622 wreck of the Spanish galleon Nuestra Señora de Atocha at the bottom of the sea; “The Amazing Kreskin,” a mentalist who flabbergasted me with his seeming ability to read my mind; comedian Professor Irwin Corey, “the world’s foremost authority,” whose conversation was so off-color that I left blushing to the roots of my hair; and a Wiccan priestess and her son, Merlin, who frightened me out of my wits by “calling the wind” and making things blow off the family’s living room shelves. I have interviewed survivors of Iwo Jima, hypnotists, Native American shamans, nudists, actors, musicians, poets (including Allen Ginsberg), children’s author Maurice Sendak and a woman who believed that the spirit of Elvis Presley visited her as she was baking in her modest kitchen. And I enjoyed (almost) every minute of those interviews.

But my interview with a tiny, white-haired woman named Hiltgunt Zassenhaus changed my life. I knocked at her door one spring day in 1993 looking for nothing more than a good story for my newspaper, and I came out with a friend. I cannot remember any other interview in which I connected so instantly to another person, nor that person to me. It was like we had known each other our whole lives. From then on, I visited her several times a week, sitting among the potted plants in her little backyard, hearing not just about her harrowing life during World War II (which she writes about in her memoir, Walls) but discussing the books we had read, her life as a doctor and mine as a reporter, our families, politics and more. No matter how varied her opinions and experiences, what came through loud and clear was her strong, unbending and unwavering lifelong commitment to helping other people and, as she put it, “serving life.” She told me, “We all have to do what we can, every day, to serve life and help others. People who hear my story are always saying ‘Oh, I cannot imagine what I would have done in your place going through all that.’ I tell them ‘You don’t have to wait — you shouldn’t wait — for some big, dramatic thing to happen. You have to act now.” Her words have echoed through my life ever since, informing decisions big and small.

Since reading Hiltgunt Zassenhaus’ book,  Walls: Resisting the Third Reich–One Woman’s Story, I have also felt inspired to live my life in a better way.

I’ve read many memoirs by Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, but this one is by a German woman, a Gentile, who decided not to play it safe, but to “fight back” against the Nazis.

Her story reads like an adventure tale. I became caught up in the danger that Zassenhaus put herself through to save Scandinavian political prisoners. I learned what it was like for her and for her family, living in Germany during the war. Although she does anything but draw attention to it, Zassenhaus’ strong ethics and sense of honor inform the book. She refused to compromise these codes when her resulting actions put her life in danger.

The main theme seems to be how important it is to speak up or act in resistance against dangers to freedom like Nazism. Her clearly written scenes allowed me to envision how and why an entire nation was caught up in Hitler’s madness. As an example, one character, her neighbor Mr. Braun, is an angry man who doesn’t get along with any of the neighbors. There is something a little “off” about him. But as the Nazi movement takes over the country, Mr. Braun becomes  the Warden of the precinct that Zassenhaus and her family live in. This gives him control over their freedom and their lives. By transferring control to “small” and dangerous people like Mr. Braun, Nazism was able to create a net (network) that captured all of Germany in its mesh.

I had to force myself to consider what I learned about writing memoir from this book. After all, I didn’t read it for analysis, but was caught up in the events of Zassenhaus’s life during the war and how she would survive. After I finished, I was overwhelmed with feelings of inadequacy and admiration for such a brave and honorable woman.

But then I remembered what Lisa had told me: that Zassenhaus told her not to wait for a dramatic event in life, to step up now and perform an act that makes a difference. In memoir writing this advice could translate this way: Those of us with less horrific or courageous stories might discover that there are others who find our stories important, even inspirational.

Psst: about Lisa. She’s in China right now, helping take care of babies in an orphanage, thanks to Hiltgunt’s inspiration.

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by | June 12, 2014 · 5:20 am

I Found A Memoir About Loss

The book is called Found. And I am so glad I did. I have been searching like mad through my brain trying to remember who recommended this book so I can thank her.

Found is actually a sequel to a memoir called Blackbird, which I have not read. There was no need to read it first, although I plan to search for it.

Jennifer Lauck is an award-winning journalist, a skilled memoir writer, teacher, and speaker. But before she was those things she was a newborn never touched by her biological mother, a baby adopted by a sickly woman and her husband who both died by the time Jennifer was seven, and a little girl sent to live with various relatives of the adoptive parents. Later she was adopted by relatives who were inadequate and abusive. She knew they didn’t love her and wanted her social security money.

Apparently Blackbird is the story of her childhood, but in Found, Lauck gives the reader enough scenes of that childhood to understand the woman Lauck became. Found is the story of that woman.

Lauck presents herself as a “tough cookie” who goes after her education and a career as a reporter with determination. At the same time, the reader learns that there is a gaping abyss of loss and crushing feelings of abandonment at her very core. When she begins to search for what is wrong, she ends up at a Buddhist retreat, and for years, she commutes between the retreat and her home. But it’s a long time before she realizes that she needs to search for her birth mother. The irony of the seasoned reporter not realizing she had the tools necessary to search indicates how far down Lauck had suppressed her real feelings.

There is so much about Lauck’s story that is tragic. In the midst of the trail of tragedy the reader follows Lauck on, guide posts are placed. These guide posts are clues back to, or threads leading from, her original identity. They also add suspense and tension to the story.

Where this book moved beyond other adoption stories I’ve read is that Lauck allows the reader to explore with her the complexity of her feelings about her losses, about adoption, and about her family members, especially her birth mother.  There are so many emotion-filled scenes, but a quiet moment that really touched my heart was when Lauck agrees to be the mommy driver for two of her daughter’s classmates. She recognizes them as fellow adoptees. In their case, they are international adoptees, from Vietnam and India, whereas Lauck’s adoption was domestic (and private, not through the state, which made her search more difficult). With this one expert move, Lauck shows the reader her growing awareness of how the trauma of adoption has affected her personality, that she has learned compassion for others (yes, others have gone through this early abandonment and loss, too), and that some of the same problems of adoption still exist today.

As an adoptive mother and sibling, I feel so strongly that anybody considering adoption today needs to read accounts by adult adoptees and make sure she pursues adoption for the right reasons and in a manner that is set up 100% to benefit the child (and maybe not even just that one child, but children in general).

Although this book focuses on adoption, most people have experienced or will experience losses in their life, and this book will resonate triumphantly within the heart and soul of any reader.

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by | June 5, 2014 · 5:20 am

The Other Addiction

Maybe you don’t know a gambler whose destructive addiction has taken its toll and still think of gambling as an amusement of a sophisticated man like Nicky Arnstein in the movie Funny Girl or Jim Sturgess’ character Ben Campbell in 21. The reality is that a gambling addiction often leads to financial and emotional losses, even prison and suicide. I call it the Other Addiction because we hear so much about drug and alcohol addiction, but gambling can be just as deadly.

To find out what it’s like to live your life as a person with this terrible disease, read Bill Lee’s memoir Born to Lose. Lee is a 2nd generation Chinese-American, born in 1954. The origins of his addiction have their roots in his genetic history (father, grandfather) and in his upbringing (struggle between traditional Chinese home disturbed by mental illness and dysfunction and life on the tough streets of San Francisco amid gang life).

Lee’s book is written in a straightforward, no-nonsense journalistic style, very different from the lyrical style of The Kiss or Another Bullshit Night in Suck City. There is a simplicity to how he tells his tale that belies the hard work he put into (I’m sure) structuring his mainly chronological story. I say “mainly” because the story begins with a framework that allows him to share his story as he might “therapy” in a 12 step meeting. It begins with Bill hosting a GA (Gambler’s Anonymous) meeting and when he’s asked to share for the sake of a new member, the story begins:

My mother was convinced that the men in our family were cursed by a gambling demon.

I love how this opening focuses on how bad and longstanding the problem of gambling was for Lee’s family, as well as how it shows his mother as a traditional Chinese woman who believes there can be such a thing as a “gambling demon.”  Also, when I noted the structure, I thought “of course” because the structure seems to fit the idea of a recovery story so well. Because that is what happens and the reader knows it from the beginning. Lee’s story is one of addiction and recovery.

In some ways this book is a complement to books like The Joy Luck Club, which focus on the stories of Chinese and Chinese-American women. We get some insight into what it is like to be a Chinese-American man of Lee’s generation.

Lee also writes much of his life as a Type-A businessman in the Silicon Valley and how he juggled the demands of his job and the demands of being a single father with the more intense demands of his addiction. Addictions are soul-deadening, and that is what Lee shows the reader by allowing us into his private world.

One little warning: before you go over to Amazon, know that there is a spoiler in Lee’s bio. It doesn’t ruin the book, but something horrific occurs in the book that reminds me of another memoir I’ve reviewed here. If you want to experience it as a shock, as I did, don’t read the bio or reviews on Amazon, just order the book!

OK, now a little postscript: Lee does a great job of showing his contradictory reaction to GA meetings and depicting that the meetings and people involved are not all a positive experience. It’s a sign to stop looking for perfection. By reading this book, an addict who comes up with excuses for not going to 12 step meetings can learn that it works to take what one needs and leave the rest. I really like his whole philosophy about rehab. Let me leave you with this portion.

Many Twelve Steppers believe people can only begin their recovery after they hit rock bottom. That’s probably true for the most part, but we need to be mindful that as addicts, there is no guarantee that we have hit rock bottom. All addicts are a slip away from relapse and a potentially deeper bottom. That’s why as addicts, it’s important to accept our addictions as lifelong diseases–we’re never cured. [Then Lee gives an example of a man named Robert who was left alone, while other gamblers waited for him to hit bottom before they helped him more actively. Unfortunately, Robert died during his next relapse.] But what Robert taught me is that we need to reach out and carry the GA message to other compulsive gamblers before they hit their bottom, which in many cases is prison, insanity, or death.

Brilliant. And good advice to those who love addicts, as well.

 

 

 

 

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by | May 29, 2014 · 5:20 am

The Most Difficult Book Review

I find it so hard to write a review of this book that I can’t help but wonder how Kathryn Harrison wrote it. It was a New York Times bestseller when it was originally published in 1997 and has been read by many. The Kiss is a very disturbing story. It’s about incest. And betrayal. And mental illness. And a “man of God” who was anything but. But mainly it’s Kathryn’s story* and how she negotiated growing up and learning how to be a woman. She accomplished it–painfully–in the midst of predation and neglect and without even a pretense of protection from anyone. The writing is hypnotic, reflecting the way Kathryn felt drugged or poisoned by events and by the power of her father’s personality. The tense is present, making the reader feel as if events are happening “right now” and “always and forever.”

One of the fascinating things about this book has been the response of critics and readers. It tends to polarize people. There are many who sympathize greatly with Kathryn for what she went through  and others who wonder why she was compliant. There are others who question her motives for making her family’s story public. People who despise the tell-all nature of many memoirs villify her for exposing a taboo subject.

My task, as always, is to see what I learned from the book. The book’s arc seems to take an odd twist. It begins with how the father developed as such an obsession in Kathryn’s mind. She grew up without him in her life, witnessing him in the house as if he were a ghost. The story continues by showing how Kathryn was caught like a fly in the father’s web when they met as adults. And, finally, it moves to how their relationship ended. But the twist is that, near the end, the relationship with the mother is made central. There is a forgiving and coming-together of mother and daughter when the mother is dying. The book is dedicated to the mother: Beloved 1942-1985.

Because the book was so successful, I have to conclude that it is possible to twist and tweak to give a story the sort of long-range perspective the writer desires. Nevertheless, I wasn’t persuaded. The mother was not presented positively. She abandoned her daughter to be brought up by a mentally ill grandmother. Is that forgiveable? Forgiveable enough to make the book about the mother?

Or is the forgiveness on Kathryn’s part because Kathryn realizes that as her father ruined her life, he had done so with her mother’s?

I don’t think there can be a satisfying ending in the face of the tragedy that occurs in the book. But I am wondering if the through-line of the book is damaged or distorted by trying to make it “about the mother” at the end.

Have you read the book? If so, what do you think about the storyline?

Flawed or not, it’s a book you will never forget.

* I purposefully rely on Kathryn’s first name here to give her a breathing presence because of all she went through as a child and young woman.

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