Sunday, February 27, 2011
Annoucements: Classes, Appearances & Media
I've just scarfed a eggy burrito & a two day old jammer from Grand Central, drank cold coffee, had a "conflict in need of resolution" with my poor besieged "YOU'RE NOT DOING ENOUGH TO HELP ME" spouse, tearfully dropped my daughter with her dad for two days and am finally, FINALLY sitting down to get caught up on 12 hours of work for which I have about five. Taxes, a blog post, busy work and more!!! I will be here, working until midnight tonight but damn straight I will write these announcements.
1) Go to The Nervous Breakdown Website, right now if not sooner and check it out. They are so great over there, thanks to the heavenly (and hilarious Quenby Moone), I am featured all week as the Non-Fiction writer of the day or week or something. I don't know but I am on my knees bowing my thanks. This site is HOT.
2) The Spring Craft Class is happening and YES, I am teaching with Anne Gudger (who has been doing the Friday Book Talk segments while I'm promoting Found). Anne is writing a stellar memoir on the heartbreaking death of her beloved husband three months before their first child was born and has taught writing for thirty years. When I need teaching tips, I go to Anne. Enough said. So come, sign up, have fun.
You'll leave with 20+ new ideas to bring fresh life into your writing. It's creativity and craft combined. And if you don't also leave this class 150% clear on how to create a powerful scene, I'll give you your money back...okay, no, I won't do that...but I will be heartily disappointed. Learning how to write a scene that rocks is more than half the battle. Once you get this, your writing will go through the roof.
April 4 to May 30th, Monday evenings 5:30-8:00 p.m. Cost is: $375.00 First come, first serve, we close the class at 20 peeps. You can sign up with me @ jennifer@jenniferlauck.com or via Pay Pal (scroll down & look right). 
3) We are closing in on the Found book tour. Media is being set, event dates are set (look right) and I am coming to your city (if you are in the NW). I have a challenge for you. Bring me a joke, that makes me laugh (DO NOT EMAIL YOUR JOKES) and if I belly laugh, that's me bent over, clutching my side, a real full on gut buster, you will win a FREE CD. Free. So be sure to come to the readings and let me hear your great joke. After eighteen years on the road of my sad life story with a truly happy end, it's time to laugh. A lot!
Friday, February 25, 2011
Book Talk: Another Bullshit Night in Suck City By Nick Flynn
Contributed by Anne Gudger, teacher, writer, mother
Suck City is about Nick, who’s a caseworker in a homeless shelter in Boston and his father, Jonathan, who’s an alcoholic, homeless ex-con, deadbeat dad and self-proclaimed poet. Jonathan disappeared from Nick’s life when Nick was a boy and surfaced only through letters and stories. Adult Nick meets his father at a shelter: son as caseworker, father as homeless man.
Ouch.
On the first page, Flynn describes his dad pretending to make ATM “deposits” in order to get out of the cold. Later he writes, “I see no end to being lost . . . You can spend your entire life simply falling in that direction. It isn’t a station you reach but just the general state of going down.”
I love Flynn’s barebones story telling. I love the lack of hyperbole. I also love how he never asks for the reader’s pity, maybe just a little understanding. This kind of no nonsense style reflects in the structure too. The book is written like a series of snapshots where connective tissue is sometimes assumed. I felt like I was holding a flipbook and watching Nick grow up alongside his unstable father as the stories collide.In studying with Jennifer, questions of framing and what’s most interesting about memoir frequently come up. In writing my own story of being widowed at 28 while I was pregnant, I struggle with how much of my childhood to reveal. Childhood traumas and how I learned to hold things in as a girl effected how I grieved as a young woman. I’ve spent the past two years plus writing my widow stories and my childhood stories and wondering if I can be the master shuffler that Flynn or if I have two books instead of just one.
Flynn’s book shows me one possibility of how to write my adult story while letting my young stories flush me out as a narrator. If you have the same big question I do: one book or two? Try Another Bullshit Night in Suck City. Or if you’re looking for a memoir that is heartbreaking but not sentimental, experimental and not traditional, my suggestion is the same: Another Bullshit Night in Suck City.
And how could I write about this book without saying something about the title? I can’t resist: It’s not bullshit and it doesn’t suck.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Countdown to Publication: One Week!
The days are not days. They are blurs of days. From dawn until way past dark, I am eating, drinking, dreaming and talking about Found, which officially releases March 1st. The schedule of readings is up on my site, I’ve created and launched my audio book on memoir teaching (which I will be using as a free give away promo during the tour), I am setting up my teaching schedule for this spring, summer and fall, and I am connecting and cross connecting between my adoption support community and my writing community and my teaching community and last, I am writing up a storm for networking blogs like this.
It’s mayhem. Total can complete mayhem. And that’s to be expected. It’s a book release, right?
As I create this final countdown post, I reflect on what I have done—in this process, from creation to release—that has mattered the most. I also have pulled together a few nuggets of wisdom that might be helpful as you continue on your own writing journey beyond this post.
What mattered most is that I wrote Found (and the three books that came before Found). It matters that I stayed the course with my own deep questions about life, truth, mother and happiness. I knew so little about these things before I began at the tender age of 29 and have learned so much. These lessons will last a lifetime and I am honored to have an ancient storyteller living within me who drove me to work hours and hours a day, for eighteen years of my life. I am also very pleased I did not listen to naysayer’s who shouted doom from the side of the road. I wavered but never forsake myself. Bravo!
What I would recommend to you, fellow writer?
- Stay Your Own Course. Doubt, fear and worry are exit doors that will only lead away from your creations. Kick all small-minded thoughts out those doors and bolt them closed.
- Write, Write and Write a little more. Writing is an art form and to become a master, one must clock many hours.
- Hold Yourself to the Highest Standard as an artist. I really cannot say this enough. Become a truly great writer and do so by reading, practicing your craft and by listening to really good teachers.
- Take full advantage of the Social Network scene. Yes, it’s hard to figure out and keep current with Facebook, Goodreads, Shewrites and Twitter and all the other venues for interacting, but stay with it. At first, I was also freaked out by this world but one day, I decided, “that’s it,” and began. I invited friends, began conversations and pushed past my more reclusive nature. I have made lasting contacts with people I value deeply. I am writing this post because SW Kamy Wikoff was a friend of Hope Edelman’s (and Hope knew me) and Kamy and I met and became friends on a trip she made to Portland and now her boyfriend’s band (The Dimes) has their music on my video promo and will be playing an acoustic performance at my book release next Tuesday and because of Kamy and Shewrites.com, I had the guts to go to AWP in Denver last year and met my publisher who is Seal Press.
WHEW!
This whole social networking thing may feel awkward but that’s okay. Surf anyway. Follow the energy. Connect. Say hello. Drop your fear and try it out. Remember human beings are on the other end of these forums and we all want to connect. Be friendly, be real and be helpful. Share yourself and you’ll see. It works out. - Join Groups and Attend Conferences. Associated Writing Programs. International Women’s Writing Guild. Your local writing association. Join. Be friendly there too. Attend meetings. Mix.
- Do Not Be a bi$%#! (My son called this being a “bee-ach”) I believe this goes without saying but let me tell you, a lot of smart, talented women can never rise because they are catty, unfriendly and crabby. This kind of behavior gets around faster than you know. And for the record, I cringe to admit I have been a bee-ach, thinking I was all- that-and-a-little-bit-more, which was my own insecurity and fear, and my bad behavior always bit me in the rear end. (P.S. For those who knew me when, I hope you all got your apology chocolates in the mail.)
- Show Your Appreciation as often as you can. Like right now. Thank you for reading this post and listening to me tell you of my travails and trails and inner thoughts. I am honored to have had the opportunity to share the countdown to Found with all of you. Thank you Shewrites.com. This is a terrific community and I am so proud, honored and awed by what is possible here.
Come see me on the tour, in Portland, Seattle and the Bay Area. Come take a class. Send an email. Twitter me, join the Fan Page on Facebook or say hello in Chicago at AWP next year. Where ever, whenever, I am not past a hello and a hug! I’m no “bee-ach.” I’m your sister in the writer trenches and I’m delighted to say a hello. Until then, I wish you all the very best.
Now go write!
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
What's Up with All These Memoirs
Memoir is an explosive cultural phenomenon. According to Neilsen Bookscan, which tracks about seventy percent of U.S. book sales, total sales of memoirs increased four hundred percent between 2004-2008. In 2007 and 2008, in England, seven of the top ten best selling hard covers were memoirs. All this success, which shows no sign of wavering, begs the question: what's with all these memoirs?
In a posting on the Daily Beast, Taylor Antrim, author of the novel The Headmaster Ritual, not only asks this question but also asks, "Are they [memoirs] somehow... easier?" Antrim pokes a literary sword at two new memoirs, Happy by Alex Lemon and The Ticking Is the Bomb by Nick Flynn, suggesting that all memoir writing -- including the writing in these two books -- is cheating: "Too often, memoir seems to me an excuse to be fragmentary, incomplete, narratively non-rigorous." What he's saying ultimately is, "Why don't these guys just write novels instead?"
First, as a four-time memoirist, I can testify that for me, memoirs are not easy to write. In fact, memoir is likely the most intense journey a writer can take because she isn't just telling the chronology of a story, she is telling her life, her secrets, her fears and there is no fictional veil to hide behind. Memoir writing is truth with a capital T and it's truth with the one person you'd best not lie to, yourself.
Mary Karr, author of three memoirs, including the recent Lit, concurs. In The Paris Review, Karr was asked if writing The Liars' Club was difficult. "Awful," Karr said. "The emotional stakes a memoirist bets with could not be higher, and it's physically enervating. I nap on a daily basis like a cross-country trucker."
The suggestion that memoir be something it is not, that is, fiction instead, isn't novel. Since the emergence of the genre, there have been heated debates that demand memoir be classified as journalism or even autobiography. Ben Yagoda, author of Memoir: A History, is contemptuous of memoir for its lack of what he calls accountability; he insists on interchanging "memoir" with "autobiography" as a way to support his conclusion: "The past four decades will probably be remembered as the golden age of autobiographical fraud." Over at The New York Times, Neil Genzlinger goes so far as to instruct writer's to stop penning memoirs altogether unless they have earned the right, "by accomplishing something noteworthy or having an extremely unusual experience or being such a brilliant writer that you can turn relatively ordinary occurrences into a snapshot of a broader historical moment."
Memoir has been called misleading, fraudulent, over-sharing, narratively non-rigorous and too easy to write and still, the stunning success of the genre and its ongoing rise in the marketplace and in the hearts of readers means this renegade genre isn't going away. As Genzlinger points out, type in the term "memoir" to a search on Amazon and you'll find, "40,000 hits, or 60,000, or 160,000, depending on how you execute it."
Rather than wondering "What's with all the memoirs?" we might make peace with the genre and ask, "What is memoir and how are we to read it?"
Michael Gladwell of the New Yorker says it nicely:
Memoir is a genre in need of an informed readership. What the memoirist owes the reader is the ability to persuade him or her that the narrator is trying, as honestly as possible, to get to the bottom of the experience at hand.
From my view, memoir is, most simply stated, memory. It is a given that memory isn't factual or accurate, nor should anyone claim it to be. We all know the debate of the six people who witnessed the same car accident and had differing versions. Memory is personal to the perceiver and to explore memory -- in the form of memoir writing -- is to explore a personal truth of perception.
Life in a memoir is not like life in a novel. Life in memoir is real life (or as real as the writer can attempt to tell). Like life, memoir cannot be expected to hold itself together with the same literary connective tissue as that applied in a novel. Life, at its most true expression, is a series of fragments, moments, memories, dreams, perceptions, lies and stabs at truth. More, life is a gathering of experience, from which we glean our deepest wisdoms about how to be alive. Memoir writing about life is the active process of separating the slag from the gold, which the reader gets to witness -- if they are paying attention.
In The Situation and the Story, Vivian Gornick writes:
What happened to the writer isn't what matters; what matters is the larger sense that the writer is able to make of what happened.
One reads and absorbs memoir -- not as a fiction aficionado or with a jaded eye that's ready to spot distortions of truth -- but with a feeling state that, if the memoirist is doing her job, has the reader struggling too. Memoir is a form of writing that takes the narrator deep into the interior of the soul and has that narrator (and thus the reader by voyeuristic association) emerge changed by that struggle. Memoir is meatier than a novel when considered in this raw light. Memoir is, at its best, the heroic journey of a writer courageous enough to walk, fall and even crawl toward understanding on the page.
Monday, February 21, 2011
Fresh Writing: What the He%& is Going On?
1) It's the final loop on the Mayan Calendar. Need more info? See this post explaining
2) Mercury Retrograde is coming
3) Full moon in Leo. LEO! Enough said.
4) Pluto squared Saturn (Lord of Karma and the Lord of Death) which is basically the four horsemen of the apocalypse condensed into two planetary positions.
WIth that in mind, I do not have fresh writing but turn inside to a great story--the best life story I've read. Portia Nelson is concise and accurate. Read on:
Life in Five Short Chapters
CHAPTER 1
I walk down the street.
There's a deep hole in the sidewalk.
And I fall in.
I am lost. I am helpless. It isn't my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.
CHAPTER 2
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don't see it. I fall in again.
I can't believe I am in the same place.
But it isn't my fault.
It takes a long time to get out.
CHAPTER 3
I walk down the same street and there is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it there, and still I fall in.
It's a habit.
But my eyes are open and I know where I am.
It is my fault and I get out immediately.
CHAPTER 4
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.
CHAPTER 5
I walk down a different street.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Announcements: Audio Teaching Available
Well here you go!
· How to set a time line.
· How to write your first draft in 90 days.
· How to write scene, summary and rumination.
· How to establish a daily writing practice.
· What are the secrets to becoming a writer who gets published.
I also talk about memoir writing philosophy, the spirituality of writing and provide important definitions of this highly popular genre. Writing Life is a practical tool for writer's who are looking to get the writing job done.
Friday, February 18, 2011
Book Talk: Faraway Places by Tom Spanbauer
By Anne Gudger, a veteran teacher and memoirist who lives in Portland, Oregon 
Faraway Places by Tom Spanbauer is a stunning little book. In only 124 pages Spanbauer probes sexuality, racism, and violence all set against the backdrop of farm life in Idaho in the 1950’s. It’s a coming-of-age novella where 13-year-old Jake’s adolescent rebellion dovetails with him witnessing a brutal murder. The life Jake lived starts to unravel, then implodes and explodes, and in the end is blown to smithereens.
As a writer, I marvel at how Spanbauer waxes poetic without being sentimental and moves the action forward by giving the reader a peek view of what happens but also manages to withhold the entire story until the end. As a reader, I turned pages to find out what Jake saw, what Jake knows and who Jake is.
I am especially wowed by Spanbauer’s attention to detail and how the small becomes huge. What Spanbauer does with sky is truly remarkable: “There was sky everywhere: outside the windows, under the beds, between the ceiling and the floor there was sky. There was sky between your fingers when you spread them, and sky under your arms when you lifted them up. Sky around your neck and ears and head, and sky pressing against your eyeballs. When you took a breath you were breathing sky. Sky was in your lungs. My mother hung up wash around the sky. I swung in my swing through the sky. There was no escaping it. The sky was as everywhere as the nuns at the St. Joseph’s School said God was. Only the ground stopped it, and even then it didn’t stop there.”
Notice he doesn’t just tell you the sky is blue or big. He evokes memories. He engages the senses. He starts with sky and ends up talking about God without saying “The sky reminded me of the nuns.” As a writer you can use the same technique to immerse your reader in the environment and when you do, you can take them further and deeper into your story, into your memories.
Read Spanbauer’s sky again and look out the window or go outside. I bet the sky will look different to you. Try the same thing in your own writing. Look for near and far away places to engage your writer senses. Spanbauer teaches us, by example, how to go beyond describing how something looks and into how it feels, smells, sounds, even tastes. These sense loaded details are where the gold is. That’s where you’ll win your readers’ hearts and once you have our hearts, we’ll follow you anywhere.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Count Down to Publication: 13 Days
Excerpted from SheWrites.com
Found has been shipped and emails come from fans: “Amazon is shipping.” “IT JUST ARRIVED!” “I can’t PUT IT DOWN.” “I LOVE IT.
My book is not set for official release until March 1st but who are we kidding. The damn thing is out and I even went to my local book store, Powell’s City of Books and found it on the front shelf with my name announcing the day I’ll be doing my first ever reading at that store.
Publisher’s Weekly has come out with a pretty great review, “...she shines when she allows the abandoned child to peek out. Lauck searches out her birth mother and finds her deceased birth father's family, completes the circle, then moves on. People who have struggled for a sense of belonging or with anger and grief will find wisdom, comfort, and guidance in Lauck's discoveries...” and the review by fans are going up on Amazon.
Last week, when Found arrived and I attached a small piece of paper to the cover that read: “1,000,000 copies sold in hardcover.” The goal I wrote out and put on the cover wasn't just "wishful thinking" though, like dreaming about being an NFL football player or an astronaut. In fact, this is an acheivable goal and setting the goal, in a real and visible way, is an important part of the goal setting process.
Of all the things I have done in preparation for this book release, one of the most important has been “adjusting my attitude.” I took an in-depth, nine week training from a young man in Portland, Oregon named Jacob Gudger who was just fresh from a Bob Proctor Goal Achiever’s Seminar (of The Secret fame). Jake taught me how the conscious and the sub-conscious mind works. Much of what he was teaching me was in line with what I had been taught in the high thin air of the Rocky Mountains as I studied Tibetan Buddhism. Number one, I manifest everything is happening in my life—everything and this includes the good, the bad, the odd. It’s all coming from me. Once I put Jake's teachings and my own common sense together, I got to work following his recommended formula of goal setting and then I maintained a Zen like focus on my goal which includes daily practices.
It’s working.
A week after I set my first goals, I secured a book deal. Two weeks later, I was able to purchse the car I wanted (I know, it sound’s silly but there you have it. I hated my old car and needed a different one). And many small and large victories later and here I am, with my book shipping around the U.S. And, I have set the next goal which is sell one million copies in hard cover. Three days after I set this most recent goal, I was given an unbelievable opportunity to write a controversial editorial for Huffington Post, which sparked intense interest and debate. I had know idea what the Huffington Post even was (I know, talk about the dark ages) and boom, now I'm on it! If that isn’t the universe parting to show me the way, I don’t know what is. Now I have written a second post and am being invited to write more. Not only do I get to write about a topic that is very important to my heart and spark important debate, my book is being exposed to an audience of 215 million people. That’s the way to get the job done.
We are living in an extremely important time for writing and publishing. Yes, the dinosaur of New York is dying away and yes, the way we are selling books is changing but there is good news. I believe it’s getting easier in some ways, due to the social networking opportunities. Pay attention to what is available out there, use the technology and see what happens. I have come up with a way to be home, with my kids, but reach thousands and this will be by offering myself to any book group that asks to host me. I will appear in any living room, across the country, via Skype. This will save in time, travel, money and physical wear and tear. I don’t know if it will work but I’ll willing to try and remain open to other opportunities. That is what it takes, as a writer and an artist. Be open. Be willing. Change your attitude. Learn. Grow. And sell those books!
Please come see me, live, in Portland, Seattle and the Bay Area. Look here on the site for details. I'm challenging all my fans to bring me jokes because I love to laugh! Best joke wins a free book!
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Adoption Myth Buster: What Does it Take to Wake?
From Huffington Post
Earlier this week, I posted "Adoption versus Abduction" on HuffPost, and in no time, comments racked up from adoptees, fast to point out how satisfied they were with their adoptive parents and families. There were also adoptive parents on the board, eager to share their own feelings of contentment, calling adoption a gift and a blessing.
I once assumed my own adoption had been a gift and a blessing too. In fact, the term, "gift from God," was bandied about more than my own name. My adoptive mother, with a tumor growing in her spine, trusted that if she were truly meant to die, God wouldn't have given her a baby. For three years she had what some called a miraculous recovery and was able to leave her bed and walk intermittently. The tumor continued to grow however, and my adoptive mother suffered through many surgeries only to die when I was seven.
Analyzing the outcome with only a child's knowledge and ability to reason, I concluded the magic must have worn off and that surely I caused my adoptive mother's death. My father's death of a heart attack a mere eighteen months later sent me spinning. Many years later, my older brother (their natural child) ended his life with a single bullet to his brain due to depression; I became convinced I had doomed my family.
That's what magical thinking, the realm of children's minds, can do to a person. Magical thinking is black or white, good or bad, up or down. This way of thinking, a common consequence of surviving anything traumatic as a child, can grow to rule adolescent and adult thought patterns if not exposed and demystified.
Awakening began when I sat with my son at an eye specialist's office. My nine-year-old had neurological damage in his optic nerve and I had been sent to the specialist for further tests. The doctor asked a series of questions, one of which was had my son had a severe fall or a car accident? When I said no, the doctor asked about the circumstances of my son's birth and if we had ever been separated. In fact, yes was my answer, my son had been taken from me for most of four days. He was healthy, but hospital procedure for premature babies born earlier than 34 weeks' gestation required that he be, not in my arms bonding, but in intensive care for a battery of mandatory tests.
The specialist suggested I read up on infant separation trauma and the work of adoptive parent Dr. Nancy Verrier, who wrote on this phenomenon.
Verrier's work in Coming Home to Self, published in 2003, points to a study by Joseph Chilton Pearce, author of Magical Child and Evolutions End, who states that it takes less than forty-five minutes for an infant separated from his mother to go into shock.
Beyond Verrier's work, I found a study titled: Randomized controlled trial of skin-to-skin contact from birth versus conventional incubator for physiological stabilization in 1200- to 2199-gram newborns. This study showed that within six hours of separation from the mother, babies experienced "protest-despair" biology and "hyper-arousal and dissociation" response patterns. The conclusion of the Randomized Controlled Trial was: newborns should not be separated from their mothers.
Lamaze International states the benefits of keeping moms and babies together are so impressive that many professional organizations have made recommendations promoting skin-to-skin contact and rooming-in and opposing routine separation of mothers and babies to include the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine (ABM Protocol Committee, 2007); American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP Expert Workgroup on Breastfeeding, 2005); the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG Committee on Health Care for Underserved Women & Committee on Obstetric Practice, 2007); the Association of Women's Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses (2000); the World Health Organization (1998); and the International Lactation Consultant Association (1999).
Despite all this evidence, I couldn't budge from my conditioned magical thinking about my own adoption or apply what I was learning to myself. I could get my son treatment and restore his eyesight but I still held fast to the belief that my adoption had been good and that my adoptive family had simply been unlucky, likely because they adopted me and I had failed to be a good enough child.
Next I read the work of Bert Hellinger, a former Catholic priest who spent his life in study of the energy dynamics within family units. Hellinger wrote Love's Hidden Symmetry, published in 1998. In that book, Hellinger states that adoption with ill intent leads to consequences in the adoptive family such as divorce and death. "In its most destructive form," Hellinger writes, inappropriate adoption can lead to "illness and even suicide of the natural children."
Finally my magical thinking shifted and I saw the outcome of my adoption made me a statistic in the context of Hellinger's research.
The last barrier to the magical thinking I'd been using my whole adult life came when I met my original mother and my birth family. Finally my nervous system and my brain had recognizable genetic markers to latch onto. My mother smelled right, sounded right, looked right, was right! I discovered that an essential part of me had been waiting to make contact with my homeland -- the mother who had given me life. Basic biology.
Make no mistake, my reunion was no panacea for me or my original mother. The wounds of separation, 47 years deep, will take a lifetime to heal; but I am now fully aware that I was not the cause of my adoptive parents' death, and to take that awakening a step further, I began to accept that my adoption was not such a blessing after all. I could see my truth from other perspectives. If separation from original mothers has negative effects on babies, as it had on my own son, then it had, necessarily, a negative effect on me. I did not have to be happy about my adoption, nor did I have to feel thankful for it.
At this point in my journey, post awakening, I feel strongly that adoptive parents need to examine their deepest intention around the desire to adopt and then set the intention to be of true benefit to the child first. This examination isn't only for the adopted child, it is for the well being of the adoptive family and for all of the future generations of that family.
Those who place their children for adoption would do well to study into their own decisions too. If it is true a mother cannot keep and raise her own child or keep her within the family -- maternal or paternal -- what are the other options other than adoption?
And society must look at its role in this unregulated industry of baby trading. What parameters can we place on the "for profit" side of adoption? What interventions can be put into place to properly screen, educate and prepare adoptive parents? What information can be provided for birth families about their decision, in order that they think more deeply before parting with one of their own?
Perhaps what we are exploring here, in this discussion of adoption, is the deeper understanding and value of motherhood. In British Columbia, at a conference called the Vancouver Dialogues, Deepak Chopra asked His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama this question: "If we make motherhood the most sacred profession on our planet, is there a possibility for world peace?" The Dalai Lama responded, "Yes, that's very good." Applause silenced the discussion for several minutes.
Every human being on the planet comes through the womb of a mother. To force a mother to choose between keeping her offspring or losing acceptance by the culture is to force her to split in half and as a result, to collapse. Rather than divide mothers, can we keep women intact, empower them and thus empower children to feel whole, safe and content?
Examining our own minds for magical thinking, reflecting on our intentions to adopt, exploring all of the options before giving our children up for adoption, and especially, breaking open the mythology that adoption is the answer can be a beginning toward an important collective awakening.
Friday, February 11, 2011
Book Talk: Olive Kitteridge By Elizabeth Strout
I started Strout’s novel, Olive Kitteridge the next day. Three cups of coffee later I was half way through. Strout doesn’t have to worry about bad subtext. Her book, brilliantly written, is a collection of short stories that overlap to make a novel. Strout orbits 13 stories around the unforgettable Olive who is the primary planet in this system. Olive is bigger than life, full of opinions, stern, frightening, loving, insightful, oblivious. Set on the rocky shoreline of the small coastal town of Crosby, Maine, the reader is shocked when Olive rummages through her daughter-in-law’s bedroom and steals a blue bra and one shoe. We’re touched when Olive meets an anorexic young woman, bursts into tears and tells her, “You’re breaking my heart. . . . I’m starving too. . . . We all are.”
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Abducted Versus Adopted: For 1.5 Million of U.S. Adoptees, What's the Difference?
What White expresses about her sense of belonging is what I have felt for all the years of my own life—only I am called adopted versus abducted.
I have to wonder, what is the difference in these terms, especially when I consider the circumstances of my own birth and subsequent relinquishment.
I was born December 15, 1963 at St. Mary’s Hospital in Reno, Nevada. My mother, seventeen years old, was told she had no legal right to keep me. The Catholic agency who facilitated the adoption also told my mother that, with their help, a good family would raise me. The doctor who delivered me, told my mother she would not be a good mother and would not allow her to hold or even see me when I was born.
And what of the promises made by the agencies who facilitated adoptions? In my own case, the Catholic agency placed me in the home of a terminally ill woman. My adoptive mother died when I was seven. My adoptive father died when I was nine. I was homeless and wandering the streets of L.A. by ten. A long investigation into my case revealed that the Catholic agency knew of my parentless circumstances, noting the deaths of both my adoptive parents in their files, but they did not inform my original mother.
And it turned out that my original mother became a very good mother despite the fact she was told such a reality would be impossible. She married my father when she was eighteen and they had a second child. She went on to have another child as well. Both of my mother’s kept children grew to be successful, well-educated and productive adults.
Ms White has been reunited with her biological first mother. DNA tests this week confirm her as the daughter of Joy White and Carl Tyson and her case has made headline news in the US and internationally.
I have also been reunited with my mother and am confirmed to be her child but my story will never make headlines in the US or internationally because at this time in history, human beings have sanctioned adoption as a moral act and have given it legal and even religious support. Despite the fact that nearly 60% of American’s are impacted, directly and indirectly, by the fall out of adoption and adoption policy, as shown in research by the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, we remain steeped in denial.
My mother has lived in a forced pocket of secrecy so deep she wasn’t allowed to tell about me and so our reunion is complex. My mother has re-experienced the deep shame she felt as a young girl and the pain and loss of separation from relinquishing her first child—none of which she was allowed to talk about by the rules imposed by family and society. The only coping mechanism available to her has been denial. On my side, I have re-experienced feelings of abandonment, sorrow, fear, confusion and even anger—the natural fall out of separation from my mother. Together now, by sheer will on both our parts, we work together towards forgiveness and healing.
My mother and I are two of hundreds of thousands of separated mothers and children who struggle in near silence to regain dignity, identity and wholeness. There is no justice surrounding our story and even less recognition of the injustice done.
Jennifer Lauck is the author of Found: A Memoir, The True Sequel to Blackbird with Seal Press and her book video trailer can be seen on YouTube. She is also the author of the New York Times Bestseller Blackbird, Still Waters, Show Me the Way. She is a regular blogger on Prolifically Raw and Shewrites.com.
Wednesday, February 09, 2011
Found: The Trailer
Count Down to Publication: 18 Days
Click here for the Countdown post on Shewrites.com
Last night I had a dream that I was in the hospital, pacing around, about to have a baby. I was a bit shocked to be pregnant but already adjusted my attitude, life and calendar to accommodate this new complexity. I told myself it was all fine. I'd just get a snuggle carrier and keep the baby close for the next two months, it wouldn't be that big of a deal, babies don't need to crawl around much for about eight weeks anyway, I told myself.
Isn't that just like a woman?
And aren't I giving birth? 
In eighteen days Found is officially out and frankly, it's already out because Amazon is shipping the darn thing around the US. I'm getting fan mails, via my site, with people telling me the news. "Amazon just shipped!!"
In my own life, my schedule is being cleared for the next two months. My teaching partner is taking over the first six weeks of the term for me, my child care duties are being divide between the ex-husband, the current husband and my best friend, my writing responsibilities for the blog are being passed around to others who will keep the flame burning, my intern is being prepped for what she needs to do via Facebook and Twitter and I am setting up all manner of speaking engagements from now to next year. A contract is being drawn for a speaking agent in LA and we are talking about ways to get this book made into a movie--because it's that good.
At Seal Press, a pitch letter is being composed and my agent is desperate for copies of the book to send out to foreign presses and of course, this is the time that my son gets sick--vomiting and a rash around his eyes and mouth--and all my work must grind to a halt.
How do we do it? How do women with children make it all work and yet, a book coming out in the world is a child too. A baby is born in the release of a book and that's how this all feels. Urgent and crazy and painful and scary.
I console myself with this one mantra--this too shall pass--because I know it's true. All this will pass soon enough. The birth will be over and the growing of a book, over time and in the hearts and minds of people, will begin. A slow process. Blackbird is now ten years old. Still Waters is nine and Show Me the Way is seven years old. Here comes Found, the baby of the bunch. Will she be a brat or a golden child? Only time will tell and yes, yes, soon enough we will know.
Monday, February 07, 2011
Fresh Writing: If I Were in Charge of the World
This week, I am posting the freshest writing I can find by a group of 1-3 grade kids who are part of a group called The Alders. The kids did a series of very honest poems that were based on the work of Judith Viorst, which I've listed first. The kids then used the same template and boom, wrote their vision. They were so honest, inspiring and true.
If I were in charge of the world
I'd cancel oatmeal,
Monday mornings,
allergy shots, and also Sara Steinberg.
If I were in charge of the world
there'd be brighter nights lights,
healthier hamsters, and
basketball baskets forty eight inches lower.
If I were in charge of the world
you wouldn't have lonely,
you wouldn't have clean,
you wouldn't have bedtimes,
or "Don't punch your sister."
You wouldn't even have sisters.
If I were in charge of the world
a chocolate sundae with whipped cream and nuts
would be a vegetable,
all 007 movies would be G,
and a person who sometimes forgot to brush,
and sometimes forgot to flush,
would still be allowed to be
in charge of the world.
~ Judith Viorst
Here are a few of the kids versions
#1
If I were in charge of the world
everything would be powered by sunshine,
no money would be exchanged,
& I could stay up as long as I wanted.
If I were in charge of the world
I’d climb the biggest mountain, seven times in a row,
people would only trade for what they needed
& we could cut fewer trees.
If I were in charge of the world
I would save the rainforest but
people would still get what we needed
& people wouldn’t need to power a car from gas,
we’d just use batteries.
If I were in charge of the world
we wouldn’t need to make electricity,
there would be no violence
& parents would never hit a kid
who was in charge of the world.
If I were in charge of the world
I would make sure everyone was treated fairly,
people who wanted a job could have one
& everyone had enough food, water & people who loved them.
#2
If I were in charge of the world
I would make sure animals were treated fairly,
there was no war
& everyone was a vegetarian so no animals would die.
If I were in charge of the world
everyone would always eat Mac & Cheese,
& wear polka dots everyday.
If I were in charge of the world
I’d travel to different countries,
everyone would ride elephants & alligators
& I would run for president
where everyone would vote for me,
the person in charge of the world.
#3
If I were in charge of the world
I’d have a dad! That would be first.
If I were in charge of the world
I would be color blind,
I’d end world hunger for poor people
& for everyone.
If I were in charge of the world
I’d be a friend with everyone,
I’d help poor people
& I’d cook for everyone too.
If I were in charge of the world
I’d make everyone laugh,
I’d make world peace
& I’d make everyone recycle—that is
if I were in charge of the world.
Aren't they wonderful?
What would you do if you were in charge of the world?
Saturday, February 05, 2011
Announcements: Two New Classes
Spring Memoir Series
Let's face it, writing memoir is tough! All that emotion, all those experiences on the time line, all that wisdom we are dying to share with the world. How do we do it? How can we get it all organized and on the page to be beautiful, interesting, unique and even publishable? With four of these "bad boys" at my back, I have learned a trick or two about penning memoir. One trick is that writers need to find ways to get back to basics, have some fun and learn how to ENJOY this hard work of rendering the life-story.
DATES: Portland based class: Monday nights from March 21 to June 13, 5:30-8:30 p.m. Virtual Classes via conference call, same dates, 10:00-1:00 p.m. (NO CLASS ON MEMORIAL DAY)
COST: $65.00 a week. Deposit for the first two classes required to hold your spot and students can then make payment arrangements with me.
REQUIREMENTS: Students need to have an interview with Jennifer, submit work, sign term of agreement and submit a deposit.
Write Your Book in a Year
Everyday, I meet people who are eager to write a memoir but don’t know how to get the job done. So many writers start but then give up, overwhelmed. I have found this to be true even with writers who attend college level writing programs nationwide.
I have written and published four memoirs in ten years and have a formula to get the job done. My books have been on The New York Time Bestseller list and translated into many languages.
Write Your Memoir this Year is a nine-month intensive set on the Oregon Coast where I will bring eight memoir writers together to set goals, get foundational instruction, establish a regular writing schedule and receive ongoing support and write three full drafts of a completed memoir! With my technique, writers will learn how to get their first draft complete in two months time, their second in four months and then will be guided to use their months in the program to polish and focus their third draft. Throughout our time together, writers will be taught exactly what memoir is, how to establish “voice” which is the driver in memoir writing and how to craft effective scenes, summaries and reflections.
You can find some of this kind of direction in a three-year MFA program and you will pay between $25,000 and $40,000 with no guarantee of emerging with a final draft. In this program, as long as you do your part, you will get results you are looking for—a complete and publishable book.
SCHEDULE:
Aug 26, 27 & 28, 2011 2.5 days Kick Off Workshop
The kickoff workshop will get you on track with your goal, your schedule and your outline. You will also be given intensive instruction on writing a memoir and we will do some work-shopping together as well as writing prompts.
Sunday, Sept. 25 Full day teaching with dinner Sat. night
Sunday, Oct. 23 Full day teaching with dinner Sat. night
Sunday, Nov. 20 Full day teaching with dinner Sat. night
Sunday, Jan. 23 Full day teaching with dinner Sat. night
Sunday, Feb. 20 Full day teaching with dinner Sat. night
Sunday, Mar. 19 Full day teaching with dinner Sat. night
Each month, we will all meet in Manzanita for a full day of teaching, conversation, sharing and will share a meal together. Writers will send pages of what has been accomplished in their writing and these partial manuscripts will be read/discussed/edited during the full day teaching.
Apr. 30: Two Day Wrap Workshop
We will focus on final revisions/goal setting, marketing and pitching (if appropriate), meeting with literary agents and holding a public reading for the community of Manzanita.
Who Can Attend?
Eight students will be accepted. Acceptance is based on several conditions: interview and approval, signing of terms and conditions and down payment.
Tuition & Teaching Costs: $4500.00 – (includes some meals & snacks).
Lodging is separate and available at our location INN AT MANZANITA for the following rates: Off season Oct/May: $99.00-$129.00 per night. On season June/Sept: $179.00-199.00
Other wonderful accommodations at varying rates are also available and a list will be provided. Students are required to arrange their own transport and accommodations although we will help coordinate car-pooling options.