Prolifically Raw

Announcements & Check In

2012-02-11T11:17:00.000-08:00

Listening to Enchantment by Corinne Bailey Rae and it's time to make Valentine's cards. Here she is, in the dining room and scissors, glue gun, glitter and multi pink paper is scattered across the table. She's not sure sticking candy canes is right for V-Day but I tell her it's the ultimate recycle move. A few minutes of thought and she agrees--turning the candy canes into heart shapes. She is a keeper.

And what of Spencer these days? Second semester is over, finals behind us and he is pulling A's & B's--3.5 GPA. Math and science are his best subjects. That darn Latin is doing him in, but that's okay. "It's a dead language," I tell him. "But it's the language of science, Mom, and that's not dead."

Got it.

For those who don't know yet, I am teaching for The Attic Institute as of March 15th and their fine team is managing my local registrations. Three local classes are out of that space. David Beispiel is growing his teaching space, doubling the studios and it's going to be a great addition to my own programs. I hope to see you there.

For my virtual students, you have class options too. Check out the list of classes and click on the ones that might appeal to you. I'm hear to answer your questions so please, write to me at jennifer@jenniferlauck.com.

Virtual Classes:

Phase I Teaching: Download Your Memoir (Five Week Class)

Phase II Teaching: Critique Circle (Five Week Series)

Phase III Teaching: Sell Your Book (One day teaching)

Don't forget there are one on one consults and manuscript review services. I'm booked until April but don't hesitate to get your project on the list and I'm there for you!

Retreats

Palm Springs, CA - March 2012: Click Here

Manzanita, OR - August 2012: Click Here

Writing Tip Monday

2012-02-06T17:01:00.001-08:00

"Hey! Where is my writing tip?" you may be asking.

Today is my daughter's 10th birthday and yesterday there was no class...which meant I was at a party which meant I was not teaching...which meant I didn't write a writing tip or prompt.

So you can take a rest. But I have glorious news for you. Hope Edelman will be joining me for a Valentine's Day Live Free Teleseminiar conversation about memoir, publishing and living the writers life. No one does it more honestly than Hope.

Join us by signing up HERE. Click, sign up on the site and you'll get the announcement and details for how to be part of this terrific call.

Writing Tip #20: Setting the Scene

2012-01-30T09:17:00.000-08:00

Painters, like Monet, understand that location is "everything." Afterall, without a location, what would they paint? Location is what holds people, events, experience and without location, there is nothing but emptiness.

As a writer, using words on the canvas of the page and later, the mind of the reader, how do you establish location. Do you do this at all?

Writers new to the craft traditionally write 90% mental activity and this includes "telling" what happened--that is, event downloading. They usually give about 10% to location and setting. I offer up a different formula and invite you to flip the equation around. 80% showing of space, place, people, time, objects and senses and 20% to "what happened." And this includes the setting.

To ground your reader in time, space, place, a good writer knows that location is as vital to the story as the people and the events that take place. Without a location and the details that establish that location, the reader is unable to “land” and truly "experience" what the writer is sharing. Setting grounds the reader and grounds the experience. Setting also holds the forward moving action and can be referred back to again and again.

Prompt: Think about a significant moment from your life such as a turning point or a marker of transition. IE: the day your child was born, the car wreck that changed your life, the day you met your partner or realized you were in love (or told that person you were in love with them), a death in the family, a national disaster (9/11).

Before you write about the event, recall the setting which includes the day of the week, the time of day, the weather on that day, the season, the year (and events in the news that were happening at that time), the way the light moved through the room (if you were in a room), the direction of shadows, the foliage on the trees (if you are outside), the smell in the air, the sounds around you (was music playing, children laughing, dogs barking, bird song, toast hopping, water boiling), the furniture and what collected items lay around, the décor and so on. In one line write: The day so and so happened …and then spend the rest of the writing establishing the setting.

Example: Crazy for the Storm by Norman Ollestad, pg. 1-2

February 19, 1979. At seven that morning my dad, his girlfriend Sandra and I took off from Santa Monica Airport headed for the mountains of Big Bear...

The Cessna 172 lifted and banked over Venice Beach then climbed over a cluster of buildings in Westwood and headed east. I sat in front, headphones and all, next to pilot Rob Arnold. Rob fingered the knobs along the instrument panel that curved toward the cockpit’s ceiling. Intermittently, he rolled a large vertical dial next to his knee, the trim wheel, and the plane rocked like a seesaw before leveling off. Out the windshield, way in the distance, a dome of gray clouds covered the San Bernardino Mountains, the tops alone poking through. It was flat desert all around the cluster of peaks, and the peaks stood out of the desert as high as 10,000 feet.

I was feeling especially daring because I had just won the slalom championship and I thought about the big chutes carved into those peaks—concave slides, dropping from the top of the peaks down the faces of the mountains like deep wrinkles. I wondered if they were skiable.

Behind Rob sat my dad. He read the sports section and whistled a Willie Nelson tune that I’d heard him play on his guitar many times. I craned my head around to see behind my seat. Sandra was brushing out her silky dark brown hair. She’s dressed kinda fancy, I thought.

How long, Dad? I said.

He peered over the top of the newspaper.

About thirty minutes, Boy Wonder, he said.

Homework: Notice setting in the book you are currently reading, or go find a few memoirs and make note of the setting in each one.

Remember, a well-rendered memoir establishes setting within the first few paragraphs and allows the personality of place, revealed through attention to detail, to lift and influence the story.

Small Talk & Annoucements

2012-01-29T23:24:00.000-08:00

Fred Meyer on a Thursday. Jo, me, 2x2 dressing room and overhead florescent lights that are so bright they feel as if they beat me between the eyes. A man with a gritty southern voice, a loud talker who works the various check stands and who I avoid because of that voice, announces fresh and hot sourdough loaves have just come out of the oven in the bakery

"Which one do you like?" Jo asks.

She's down to two dresses. One is white, drop waist (think Flapper from the 20's) and the fabric seems to have been drenched in glitter. I have sparkles on my hands, my arms, my sleeves, my shoulders, my legs, my books. There is a circle of glitter around Jo's feet.

"I'd go with the pink one," I say.

"I always do pink. I've never done white."

Another announcement scratches out over the intercom system and I uncross and re-cross my legs. I have been sitting in this closet sized dressing room for too long. My leg is cramped.

"Mommy," she says, "I can't pick. I love them BOTH. I always get myself into this kind of a pickle."

This makes me laugh. Out loud. And that's unusual. Jo isn't the one who gets me to belly laugh. The comedy job has been filled by Spencer for all these years (he's 14) but Jo--a few days from ten--is funny. Like her body grows, this sense of humor blooms too. She's busted me up several days in a row now. These one line zingers that come from no where.

"Don't yell at the teacher, he has more power than you do," I overheard her tell a friend the other day.

"A-t-t-i-t-u-d-e," she whispered when her brother was being a pill.

"That Eli," she said, after a boy asked her what time it was and then walked away, "he's a nice fellow."

"Pickle," I say. "Yes, I suppose you're in a pickle."

The search and purchase of a birthday dress is my little ritual, I don't recall when I got it started, but Jo has latched on the way kids do. They love routine. And now, every year, we go shopping for a dress.

"Which one would you get?"

"Pink," I say again. "Your skin is perfect with that pink."

And then it happens. Jo, her own person, makes a decision--not based on what I think but based on what she wants.

"I've never had a white dress," she says. "I'm taking the white."

You would think, maybe, that I would care that she picked a dress that I didn't necessarily like. You might think, "well, that girl is going to be a handful when she's a teen." But I don't think about things that way.

While it's almost her birthday, I am the one who just got a huge gift. Jo, my child, is on her way to being her own wonderful self with her own tastes and thoughts and conclusions. I have given that to her, hard earned in a way because I still am not as confident as Ms. Jo. Jokes are easy but confidence--true confidence in yourself and your choices--that is hard.

As yet another announcement for hot fresh sourdough bread grates over our heads--sound pollution.

We leave the pink dress behind and take the white dress to the check out stand. Hand in hand we walk, Jo happy with her choice and me. well, I have glitter all over my hands.

~

CLASSES & RETREATS:

I'm planning the spring/summer schedule and it's going to be packed. In February, I begin the Critique Circle of just six writers reading their work to one another. This is a tight, salon style teaching and will be lovely for those who are working on a larger body of writing and want support, instruction and community.

CLICK HERE for cost and details.

Over at The Attic Institute, a memoir technique class is nearly full. It's affordable, it's intense and you will savor this experience.

A spring retreat is shaping up in Palm Springs, thanks to Tammy Coia, The Memoir Coach and those details are found by clicking here!

Finally, I have set the dates and times for the annual Beach Retreat. This one will be about you, about time to write, about relaxing and about WRITING! Read on and sign up early. This will be closed at eight writers.

~

8 Writers, 3 Days ~ Write, Relax & Restore.

The 2012 Summer Retreat is for writers in search of depth instruction and personal mentoring. Come to Manzanita, a tiny coastal town snugged on the Oregon coastline, and savor four full days to write, receive teachings and read your work aloud. This unique, once a year opportunity, combines the best of camaraderie, solitude, teachings and celebration.

SCHEDULE:

Fri:
10-1 p.m. Breakfast & Teachings
1-6:30 p.m. Personal writing time
6:30 - 9:30 Desert, teachings, reading & conversation

Sat:
10-1 p.m. Breakfast & Teachings
1-6:30 p.m. Personal writing time
6:30 - 9:30 Desert, teachings, reading & conversation

Sun:
10-1 p.m. Breakfast & Teachings
1-6:30 p.m. Personal writing time
6:30 - 9:30 Desert, teachings, reading & conversation

COST:
$375.00 Early Sign Up (Prior to May 15, 2012)
$450.00 Late Sign Up (May 16, 2012)

Jennifer covers your teachings, breakfast and evening desserts.
You cover your travel to and from Manzanita and your accommodations.

While we can help make accommodation recommendations for writers and can arrange meetings between students for ride share, we will not be responsible for your travel or accommodations. You are encouraged to find a place to stay that allows privacy, relaxation, restoration and space to write.

RECOMMENDED LODGING:

(Luxury)
Inn at Manzanita
Coast Cabins
Ocean Inn

(Affordable Shabby Chic)
Spindrift
Sunset Surf

(House Share Opportunities)
Sunset Vacation Rentals

Book Talk: Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller

2012-01-26T04:58:00.000-08:00

In this book, a loaded gun appears in the second sentence of the opening page. Mom is passed out on page 13.

To me, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller is a big story, seemingly as big as the continent on which it is set—Africa.

Fuller’s life in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) was a dangerous combination of poisonous spiders, snakes, terrorists and drunken parents who were farmers, colonists and soldiers in the newly formed white-only government.

My question, in reading this book (and considering my own memoir), is this: how do we share our stories that are simply too large? Even for writers who grew up in one house, in a small town, without African wildlife and war, the story can overwhelm. The setting and the people can take over. The tragedies can be more than the reader can bear.

Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight bulges with history, geography, the author’s larger than life parents and sister. Fuller’s accounting of the war could be it’s own book and yet, in the writing, she takes command of her story. Even in the years when Bobo (Fuller’s nickname) is a very young girl, she is the story. With big open eyes, she describes this enormous world of hers and we stay riveted with the young girl as narrator. She is the smallest in the family, smaller than the ghosts of previous siblings who had died.

This exchange with her father, after she had a night of little sleep, and much to fear, displays seven-year-old narration in a pitch perfect tone.

“Morning Dad.”
“Sleep alright?”
“Like a log,” I tell him. “You?”

Bobo is stoic. She is in a dance with her father. She does not whine about her fear of the terrorists under the bed. She is a third generation white African farmer after all.

When her family moves, “right into the middle, the very birthplace and epicenter, of the civil war in Rhodesia and a freshly stoked civil war in Mozambique,” her life goes on as any young girl who attends school and wears fresh clothes on her trips to town. When she has to say goodbye to her father, she shares,

There’s a lump in my throat that hurts when I swallow and I can’t talk or I’ll start to cry. Mum puts down her hand. I slip my hand into hers and we begin to walk back to the house. It feels strange to hold Mum’s hand and too quickly there is an uncomfortable film of sweat between us.

Her father leaves to fight in a tangled and bloody war and she, like many of us who must say goodbye to Dad, won’t allow comfort from her mother. She is a tough girl, tough like those of us who’ve never even seen a poisonous snake or an Uzi gun.

Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight reminds me that the only way through a big story is straight through. A writer must keep her senses on alert and her ears open to the narrator in her heads. A writer must also trust the reader will come along on the journey when we simply describe our story with wide eyes. A big story is harder to tame perhaps, I have learned that a writer must learn to keep command of her story. ~ By Clover Cohen

I'm happy to present Clover Cohen, a long time student in the Master Class. Cloie is one to watch! Enjoy her insights on memoir. She's a hard working writer who is paying her dues.

Writing Tip #19: Your Place in the Family

2012-01-23T14:44:00.000-08:00

Writing about our family is hard. Here are some questions I hear all the time:

"What if they read what I write and they disagree?"
"What if I'm wrong?"
"What if I hurt someone I love?"
"What if I break our generation-long 'code of silence?'"

Here are a few ways to practice breaking into these fears and breaking out of the habituated ways you look at the people in your life. Your family members are not props on your stage, they are mysterious and complex. You don't have to figure anyone out, you just need to present them accurately and with a level of complexity. Good writing is being a great witness and also being able to describe people in such a way that you touch on the mystery of human beings and human interactions.

Prompt: Create a picture of your family based on some simple gesture: the way they sign, laugh, cry or kiss. Begin with a vivid, original description of these gestures, then describe your father, your mother, yourself, or any other family member. Try to see how examining these small gestures reveals larger details about the family. (Thank you to Brenda Miller and Suzanne Paola from Tell it Slant for this prompt)

See an example of how to do this prompt by reading this excerpt from The Fine Art of Sighing by Bernard Cooper

You feel a gradual welling up of pleasure, or boredom, or melancholy. Whatever the emotion, it's more abundant than you ever dreamed. You can no more contain it than your hands can cup a lake. And so you surrender and suck the air. Your esophagus opens, diaphragm expands. Poised at the crest of an exhalation, your body is about to be unburdened, second by second, cell by cell. A kettle hisses. A balloon deflates. Your shoulders fall like two ripe pears, muscles slack at last.

My mother stared out the kitchen window, ashes from her cigarette dribbling into the sink. She'd turned her back on the rest of the house, guarding her own solitude. I'd tiptoe across the lino-leum and make my lunch without making a sound. Sometimes I saw her back expand, then heard her let loose one plummeting note, a sigh so long and weary it might have been her last. Beyond our backyard, above telephone poles and apartment buildings, rose the brown horizon of the city; across it glided an occasional bird, or the blimp that advertised Goodyear tires. She might have been drifting into the distance, or lamenting her separation from it. She might have been wishing she were somewhere else, or wishing she could be happy where she was, a middle-aged housewife dreaming at her sink.

My father's sighs were more melodic. What began as a somber sigh could abruptly change pitch, turn gusty and loose, and suggest by its very transformation that what begins in sorrow might end in relief. He could prolong the rounded vowel of OY, or let it ricochet like a echo, as if he were shouting in a tunnel or a cave. Where my mother sighed from ineffable sadness, my father sighed at simple things: the coldness of a drink, the softness of a pillow, or an itch that my mother, following the frantic map of his words, finally found on his back and scratched.

The Lesson: Cooper gives us a terrific sense of how to examine something as unique as the human sigh. I have seen other students take this lesson and apply it to eyebrows, hugs, the way men in the family cry and waistlines. You are only limited by your own imagination.

As you write, keep asking yourself where you fit in your family and if you can observe, with minute detail, your place and their place. Can you separate yourself out and make room for the largess of the others? Can you be the more complete witness?

Book Talk: Found: A Memoir by Jennifer Lauck

2012-01-19T14:24:00.000-08:00

Taking a swerving diversion off the Book Talk path, I am using this time to speak a bit about a "web tour" that has been orchestrated by Lori, an adoptive mother and a writer. Lori, via her website, coordinates book tours where interested bloggers sign up, read the book and then--on a designated day--review the book.

Found was chosen. The tour posts began Friday, continued Sunday and were done by Tuesday.

To read for yourselves, click here. Beware. Some of these posts are not fun to read. Others are simply stunning. To save yourself a whole lotta of cruising around, I list my favorite blogs here:

By Adoptees

Neither Here Nor There
Insert Bad Movie Title Here
Rhonda Rae on Examiner Book Tours

Birthmothers

Letters to Ms. Feverfew
A Birth Mother's Path

Those Who Adopt & Experts in Adoption Counseling

Zeina
Parenting Your Adopted Child
Mommies Here
Too Many Fish to Fry
Mommy Musings
Production, Not Reproduction

I want to note that of the twenty bloggers who took on Found, only three were adoptees, two were birth-mothers and the rest--15--were adoptive parents, people who are advocates of adoption and experts who are part of adoption placement.

This is pretty typical of the demographics for this type of conversation and while I would have something to say about this, under less formal circumstances than this blog, I will keep my opinion of the demographics to myself.

I will say this tour transcends issues of "good" or "bad" reviews and goes to the essence of what it is to write a memoir. One writer seemed to find it vital that I provide my "sources" for information in Found, and this writer cannot be faulted for the request. I've had similar requests, especially from people who are so stirred by the writing they are bent on proving me and it wrong in some way.

Let's do a little primer on memoir: Memoir is not biography, autobiography, journalism, novel, poem and/or critical paper. Memoir is a unique genre which is defining itself with each book published.

Memoir is memory explored via literary devices and memoir is the truth of the writer at the moment the book was written. Memoir is, at the core, lived experience mulched for meaning. The reader of memoir is not the writer of memoir, although often a reader will become entangled in emotional wires that lurk within their own psyche. The reader is, and can only be, a voyeur. The reader stays in the relationship with a memoir for many reasons but I believe this is the primary one: the reader sees the writer working to get to the meaning of lived experience and in that effort, the reader is able to then derive some meaning of their own which can be applied to similar experiences.

Effort is the point. The memoir writer makes her best effort to be truthful, she struggles with truth and works hard to find meaning.

In Found, I know I did my best. I wrote my truth and it is a powerful truth that touches many. I get emails everyday. The person I hoped it would touch most deeply was the adoptee. I was changed by the zigzaggedy path I took to find my way home and I hoped that perhaps there would be something in my experience that would help another adoptee see herself and himself.

You see, to be an adopted person is to live a lie and many of us are asleep to the lie. We are the living Sleeping Beauties who live and work and love among you. We live as if we are part of the greater whole but within so many of us, there is a gaping wound only we can feel and a few others can sneak a peak at now and again. We are not found yet. We are lost and we are angry and we are sad. But we'll never tell you this is the way it is. We will become Steve Jobs, wow you with our super powered ambition, we will blend, fold, talk the talk and walk the walk, but deep down--the hunger and the sadness is complete. It owns us.

I wrote Found for you--adoptee. I wrote it like a little map to help you find your own way home and I wrote in a language you would understand--the language of the heart.

In the end, I had a global comment about the weblog book tour and placed it on the site where I felt it would be best heard. I did not know Judy before this tour and now I do. If you want to read it and post your own comments, please do. Click here.

Writing Tip #18: 16 Editing Must Know's

2012-01-17T06:32:00.000-08:00

Blatantly stolen from: Tips for Writing Well by Austin Govella

My advice: Print this and keep it near your writing space.

Be vicious when you edit. Vicious. Follow these recommendations with zealous fervor. They help your writing say what it should in a way we’ll understand.

1. I think, I’d say, in my opinion, what I’ve found, in my experience… Yeah. We know. You wrote this. These are your thoughts. If they’re not, provide a reference. If they’re yours, the byline is enough to remind us.

2. Delete all adverbs and adjectives unless they’re absolutely, totally, inherently necessary. Each unnecessary word weakens your impact and clarity.

3. Remove prepositional phrases. Prepositional phrases are less important than your main point. If it’s not important enough to deserve its own sentence, it’s not important enough to read.

4. Active not passive. Kill “to be” verbs. All of them. Always.

5. Kill -ing words. Restructure your sentence so the -ing is an active verb.

6. Lead with the bottom line up front: BLUF. Then include an example, re-state the bottom line, include an illustration, and when you end restate the bottom line. For every point you make, follow this pattern. That’s bottom line, example, bottom line, another example, and then the bottom line (again).

7. Telegraph and signpost what you will say and why we care. We’re not reading mystery novels. We want to know who died, how, who killed them, and why we care up front. That way, we know why we want to read before we begin.

8. Use clear, informative headers. Cute or artsy might be pleasant on the first read, but when we reference it later, the cute header makes it a pain to find things. What you’re writing is worth going back to, right?

9. Introduce new terminology in the intro. If you’ve created a new term or applied a new phrase to describe something, define it at the beginning, and use the new terminology throughout your writing. Readers need the entirety of your piece to learn and assimilate the new phrasing.

10. Typically, sometimes, often times, usually… Yeah. We know. You don’t have to tell us.

11. Say “you” and “your”. Don’t use nouns when talking about your audience (like “User Experience Practitioners”). And don’t use “one”. Speak to us.

12. Ditch clunky words. Instead of “via”, write “using”. Instead of “upon”, say “on”.

13. Remove cliches and common phrases. Every time you take a common phrase shortcut, you’re telling us it’s not worth our time.

14. Use contractions. Write with proper grammar, and people will read. Write like you talk, and people will listen.

15. No pronouns. Repeat the noun over and over again. If you get tired of that, use synonyms.

16. Delete your best lines. We don’t care about poetry, wit, or slyness. We care about what you want to say.

After you edit…

The finished piece should be so tight, terse, concise, and clear that it’s boring.

Boring.

Then sand off the rough edges.

Write like you talk. Where the concise feels awkward, add conversational. Where tight lacks nuance, tease details. Where terse is cold, be warm.

The first 16 recommendations remove fluff and force you to think and communicate. Once you’ve finished editing intellectual work, go back and make sure you write like you talk. Writing begins a conversation. If we feel like you’re talking to us, we’ll listen.

Small Talk & Annoucements

2012-01-14T15:41:00.000-08:00

The holiday season is officially over and it's "back to work," with a full roster of classes. The Master Class has met twice and I'm teaching for The Attic Institute Monday, Jan. 16th. That class, on Downloading, is full but keep an eye on The Attic schedule for additional classes.

My studio is hosting two more classes this winter: 1) a Critique Circle for writers to workshop pages each week and 2) a class on how to Market, Sell & Publish your book. These are going to be terrific classes so don't miss out.

Here are the details:

Sell It: Market, Sell & Publish Your Book the Creative Way

This class will be helpful to you at any stage of your writing process. You could just be at the beginning phase, at the 4th draft phase or you could be ready right to sell it right now. This five week class will teach you the creative way to sell your book. You will hear the unique story of how I was able to publish my first book as a totally unknown writer. You will be given prompts to create your own way to achieve your goal. And you will be taught the tried and true way of getting published. Learn about marketing comparison survey reports, platform building, networking and how to call on stores of courage you will need to see your book in print! You leave this class with a 85 page workbook and an audio CD of instructions.

DAY/TIME/DATE: Tuesdays, 7-9 p.m., February 7, 14, 21, 28, Mar. 6
WHERE: 2325 E. Burnside, Suite 102
COST: $325.00 (see refund policy at bottom of school page)

Students leave with a Workbook & a CD of the class

Six Writers-Six Weeks–Critique Circle:

This class is for the more advanced writer who is progress on a manuscript or essay length work (articles are acceptable too). You needs to hear yourself read and to get skilled critique. You will be part of a very small group, just six writers and are invited to bring 8-10 pages of your current work per week. You’ll read and discuss your work in the circle.

REQUIREMENT: You must have taken a class with Jennifer or have an interview to discuss your project.
DATES: Tuesday 7-9 p.m., Feb. 6, 13, 20, 27, Mar. 5 & 12
COST: $40.00 per class/$240.00
NOTE: Yes, this class has the virtual option via Go To Meeting

Book Talk: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver

2012-01-12T03:27:00.000-08:00

I'm happy to present Clover Cohen, a long time student in the Master Class. Cloie is one to watch! Enjoy her insights on memoir. She's a hard working writer who is paying her dues.

I know why Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver enthralls me as a reader.

The topic is food.

Food equaled love in Mom’s family, the Scotch-Irish Rutherfords of Burlingame, California.

There were five course meals, a collection of comfort foods (like macaroni and cheese, pot roast, Jell-O salad with suspended fruit, spinach salad with toasted almonds and mandarin oranges, brussel sprouts with hollandaise sauce), and we we’re all together at the big table in Grandma Gertie’s dining room.

The table could seat 12 or more if the kids sat on stools at the corners. There was loud discussion, arguments, platters passed, trips to the stove to refill the serving dishes, a frenzy of eating that left no leftovers. One or two of us cleared the dishes, breaking off from the group to start washing by hand in the plastic tub in the sink. Grandma had a dishwasher that rolled over and hooked up to the faucet, but I’d never seen it used even once. The rest of us sat the table sit with full bellies, talking but not so loud as before, and then we continued to argue until the volume ramped up again. Kids left the table from boredom, wandered off to watch TV in Grandma’s room, then when it was time, dessert was served and the frenzy of eating started again.

In the family of my parents and sister, food equaled love as well. Having spent my early years on an isolated farm following the "Back to Land" movement in the 1970s, I knew where meat came from, knew how the beans were cultivated in their circular plantings around bamboo teepees to climb and flourish, knew that butter came from milk squeezed out of the cow’s pink udders. Our food was wholesome and fresh. It was just the four of us at the table, if Dad was there, or many more when he brought home a collection of buddies he met at the bar. Our move to the Portland suburbs disconnected us from the earth and from each other. Mom and Dad got divorced. Mom tried to keep us connected to our food source as she could. We picked strawberries every summer in the fields planted high on a ridge above the Sandy River. In every rental, even the apartments and duplexes, Mom had planters of tomato plants or herbs. When there was no outdoor space to carve out, she grew sprouts on the windowsill of the kitchen.

When Animal, Vegetable, Miracle was released in 2007, it was just in time for Mom’s 58th birthday. At the bookstore, I found the display with stacks of the hardcover books, covered in my favorite pale grass green with the texture of burlap. It was the perfect gift for Mom, a book by one of her favorite authors.

After she read it in just a few days, Mom lent it to me to read. She was flush from the luxurious story, deep in her remembrance of her own time on the farm. I poured through it just as fast and was so sad when I got to the end, that I checked out the audio version from the library to listen on my morning and afternoon commutes with the kids. They groaned and complained when the voice came through the speakers, then quieted to listen to the tales of weeding for days and days, making pizza dough from scratch, lopping off the turkey heads then hanging them to drain their blood. I liked it that they were interested at some level.

The storyline of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle follows perfect the growing season and the way the earth changes each month. It seared in to my brain, which vegetables come in which succession throughout the year. I made up my mind that I would not eat out of season or buy produce that had to be shipped from across the world.

Woven between the author’s narratives are informational pieces written by her husband and recipes shared by her oldest daughter. The loveliness of the family’s recipes gave me warmth. Their peaceful cooperation and weekly pizza night made me feel safe. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is an insider’s view of how food can really equal love.

By: Clover Cohen

Your Turn: Do you have a food/family tale to tell? Leave a comment.

Writing Tip #17: Back to the Scene

2012-01-09T06:26:00.000-08:00

As Brenda Miller writes in her book, Tell it Slant, scene is the backbone of creative nonfiction. There are exceptions but not many. Yet people are still under the misguided perception that creative nonfiction is actually a kind of free association journal writing exercise. No. Creative nonfiction means you lean into literature and use the tools of proper storytelling--scene being as important to your writing as a hammer is to a builder.

I pulled this from a book I'm reading titled Wake Up to Your Life, and while this isn't a writing book (it's a spiritual book on meditation), this paragraph speaks more clearly to why we need to write scene--active, present, emotional and detail laden scene--more than anything else I've seen.

In the midst of action, intellectual understanding is much slower and less powerful than emotional understanding. To access intellectual understanding, we have to remember to bring what we know intellectually to bear on the situation. With emotional understanding, the understanding is part of our experience of the situation. We don’t have to remember. For this reason, emotional understanding leads to deeper and more extensive understanding in our lives.

The writer is explaining something that is true about human nature and the thinking process. To think, to rationalize, to go to the intellect is actually a slower process than the feeling process. This is why good writing is emotional writing, good writing is clear and active and experience based. Anything less forces a distance intellectually and it slows down what it is to be alive because the intellect

moves
so
s l o w

And when you write in a way that makes a reader call on the intellect, you slow them down and boredom sets it. Your book is put down and the reader is off to something he can relate to--a story that catches his interest and his understanding at a feeling level.

Okay, so you get it. Write scenes. But then there is the question of how?

Ironically, expository writing is fast but scene writing takes time and effort and a lot of words.

This post will not touch what needs to be done. The specifics of how to write a scene require you to take a class (which you can do here on the site, CLICK HERE).

And you need to study the writing of others who come before you. Here is an example of a scene being set. This comes from the beautiful work of Joanne Beard, The Fourth State of Matter:

THE COLLIE WAKES ME up about three times a night, summoning me from a great distance as I row my boat through a dim, complicated dream. She's on the shoreline, barking. Wake up. She's staring at me with her head slightly tipped to the side, long nose, gazing eyes, toenails clenched to get a purchase on the wood floor. We used to call her the face of love.

She totters on her broomstick legs into the hallway and over the doorsill into the kitchen, makes a sharp left at the refrigerator -careful almost went down - then a straightaway to the door. I sleep on my feet in the cold of the doorway, waiting. Here she comes. Lift her down the two steps. She pees and then stands, Lassie in a ratty coat, gazing out at the yard.

In the porch light the trees shiver, the squirrels turn over in their sleep. The Milky Way is a long smear on the sky, like something erased on a blackboard. Over the neighbor's house, Mars flashes white, then red, then white again. Jupiter is hidden among the anonymous blinks and glitterings. It has a moon with sulfur-spewing volcanoes and a beautiful name: Io. I learned it at work, from the group of men who surround me there. Space physicists, guys who spend days on end with their heads poked through the fabric of the sky, listening to the sounds of the universe. Guys whose own lives are ticking like alarm clocks getting ready to go off, although none of us are aware of it yet.

The dog turns and looks, waits to be carried up the two steps. Inside the house she drops like a shoe onto her blanket, a thud, an adjustment. I've climbed back under my covers already but her leg's stuck underneath her, we can't get comfortable. I fix the leg.

She rolls over and sleeps. Two hours later I wake up and she's gazing at me in the darkness. The face of love. She wants to go out again. I give her a boost, balance her on her legs. Right on time: 3:40 A.M.

~

What has happened here? Very little. A woman takes her dying dog out to pee. So little happens but then again, EVERYTHING happens. That is the power of being in a moment and setting the stage and letting the action take over.

Prompt: Get up from your computer and go outside right now. Look up, down, right, left, front and behind and make note of as much as you can. Remember the actions of standing up, going outside, looking around and then returning to sit down. Now write that entire moment out. That is a moment in time. See what your observations reveal about that one moment but be in that moment. Don't go anywhere else. Just be with what it and write it down.

Write: 25 minutes

Post: Put your results here on the comments section.

Good luck

Book Talk: A Million Little Pieces by James Frey

2012-01-05T06:20:00.000-08:00

I'm happy to present Clover Cohen, a long time student in the Master Class. Cloie is one to watch! Enjoy her insights on memoir. She's a hard working writer who is paying her dues.

A Google search brings up over a hundred thousand results for A Million Little Pieces. They seem to mostly refer to the controversy. Is it memoir or fiction? Were readers betrayed by Frey’s embellishments? Was Oprah really duped by this cunning author and his lying publishers? I don’t care about the controversy and am not sure if it’s because I happened to see the Oprah episode where she confronted Frey (and I felt sorry for him), or because I had read his book before all was “revealed” and decided I still liked the book. Truth is not absolute and our memory comprises a small portion of millions of multifaceted moments that happen every day. If I want to write about the lunch lady in second grade who smelled like baby-powder, I don’t care if she really used baby powder or if her name was really Janice as I remember. And I don’t care if it was acid or psychedelic mushrooms that my Dad took on the day he wigged out and broke up our house. He was out of his mind and shook my world. That is what matters to my story and I’m sorry if a reader will feel duped if I don’t get the exact type of drug right.

What matters to me about Frey’s story is that I could not pull myself away on the first or second or third read through. I stayed up in to the early morning hours reading, knowing I would suffer the next day and need to drink more coffee just to make it through.

Frey invites us in, so close to his experience, and keeps us close the whole way through. The absence of quotation marks confuses me at first, but I get the hang of his style fast. I don’t know if he’s speaking or if someone else is speaking or if he’s just thinking. It amplifies the feeling that we are with a damaged person, in a chemical fog, being enveloped by an even thicker psychological fog full of demons and regret and tragedy. We are in the middle of his addiction and the start of his recovery. We are inside his family that is not unlike many of our families. We know their dysfunction, ask the same questions.

Why does one brother become a raging addict while another does not?

I was much more careful with James than I was with Bob (jr). I knew we weren’t going to have any other Children, and I wanted James to be perfect and healthy and safe. I can’t say it any other way. I wanted him to be safe.

What horrible things did the parents do to create such a monster?

It went on for almost two years. James just screamed and screamed. Bob started doing well at his Firm and got a raise, and as soon as we had some extra money, I took James to see a better Doctor. As soon as he looked at him, he told me that James had terrible infections in both of his ears that were eating away his eardrums. He said James had been screaming for all that time because he was in tremendous pain and that he had been screaming for help.

Where did it all go so terribly wrong?

Ran over a Nursery School Teacher with a Big Wheel. I did it on purpose. I was four. Hit a boy with a bookbag full of books and broke his nose. His name was Fred. I was six. Dug a hole and tricked a boy named Michael into climbing into the hole. I put a board over the hole and I sat on it for three hours. He cried and cried and cried. I laughed. I was seven.

I’ve thought many times that if I can just keep my kids safe, safer than I was as a kid, that my purpose in life would be fulfilled. I blamed myself many times for my own son’s untreated ear infections, where he didn’t cry or tug at his ears, but the doctor would again and again find inflamed red ear drums that eventually led to surgery. I watch my kids and their struggles with impulse control. I don’t think either of them has intentionally trapped a kid in a hole, but are they on the path to becoming addicts anyway?

Or is Frey’s alcoholic grandfather the smoking gun? A Million Little Pieces reminds us that absolute answers are rare. It reminds us there is no sure fire way to prevent a child from becoming an addict.

If genetics are really as strong as they say when it comes to addiction, my kids are screwed. There are alcoholics, prescription drug addicts, sex addicts, gamblers, compulsive overeaters, smokers, and compulsive liars just one or two branches up the family tree. As a family, we suffer from obsessive-compulsive disorder. depression, manic depression, schizophrenia, hyperactivity, delusion, anxiety, and all the disorders related to sleeping and eating. Some of us medicate with doctor’s prescriptions, others with our own prescriptions.

If one of the paths to overcoming addiction is to be honest and open and conscious, then the only thing I can really do is tell the stories. When they are ready for them, my kids will hear the stories of my dad and how he got high and violent and lost his family. They will hear about Grandpa Jack and how he predicted the end of the world and scared the daylights out of his family. They will even hear about Joe and I and our crazy years of partying before they were born. They will hear about the aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents and how they struggle everyday. The stories will be truthful, but more important, they will tell the story.

Small Talk & Announcements

2012-01-04T12:50:00.000-08:00

A mini moment:

Jo jo and I stand at the front door of her school (she's ten). We wait for the bell to ring. We have about 5 mins, perhaps more. We both agree it is better to wait outside vs. be corralled into the stinky gym by control-freak hall monitors. We wait. We chat. Little Eli comes over & asks the time of Jo as if she has a watch. 8:30, I say. He says thanks and is gone. Jo watches him disappear. "That Eli," she finally says. "He's a nice fellow." I laugh at how she says "fellow." "What?" she insists. "Fellow," I say. "It's just a great word. We don't say fellow enough these days." She rolls her eyes.

~

The winter classes are filling up fast. The Master Class has just one spot left and the Sell It, Download and Craft Class are full. If you would like to join the Critique Circle, there is space and it's a weeknight class.

Six Writers – Six Weeks – A Critique Circle:
This class is for the more advanced writer who is progress on a manuscript or essay length work (articles are acceptable too). You needs to hear yourself read and to get skilled critique. You will be part of a very small group, just six writers and are invited to bring 8-10 pages of your current work per week. You’ll read and discuss your work in the circle. REQUIREMENT: You must have taken a class with Jennifer or have an interview to discuss your project.

DATES: Tuesday 7-9 p.m., Feb. 6, 13, 20, 27, Mar. 5 & 12
COST: $40.00 per class/$240.00

Memoir Technique Class:
Lists, prompt, write, share. This is a class for the more beginning level student. You are the writer who is just getting going and don’t feel as confident as you would like in the craft area of your work. You’ll enjoy this relaxed, playful class that gives you more ideas and techniques for dealing with writer’s block and memory doubt.

DATES: Tuesday, 7-9:00 p.m., Feb. 7, 14, 21, 28, Mar. 6
COST: $220.00

Writing Tip #16: The So-Called "Time Lack" Delimma

2012-01-02T04:39:00.000-08:00

You don't have time to write.

Is it true?

So often, too often, this is the mantra of the would-be writer. Unfortunately, when we say a thing over and over again, guess what? The thing comes true.

You may be a person who has plenty of time to write but because you keep telling yourself, "I don't have time to write," you cannot see the truth right in front of you.

Here is a terrific exercise to challenge you right now. This comes from Writing & Selling Your Memoir by Paula Balzer. Balzer is a literary agent and while I don't adore this book, it does have some dead on advice--including this exercise:

Spend a week keeping track of what you do. And when I say "what you do," I mean everything you do. The idea here is to search for blocks of time that can be used in a more productive fashion. Yes, you may have to give up a few precious hours of Jersey Shore viewing or even sleep in favor of writing, but if it's your dream to write your memoir, and you're under the impression that you don't have enough time to do it, I'm by all means going to do everything in my power to prove this isn't the case.

In her book, Balzar posts a chart that lists the day in half hour blocks beginning at 5 a.m. As we don't have the book here today, I suggest you get a legal pad, write 5 a.m. and then go down a line and write 5:30 a.m. and so on all the way down to 11:30 p.m. Next to each of these times, write down what it is you actually do with your time. Do this for seven days and report back. I'd love to hear how you use your time.

Another excerpt from Balzar's book: The tale of how John Grisham wrote his first novel A Time to Kill is part of publishing lore. He wrote the now famous novel over a three-year period in the early morning hours while working an incredibly stressful, 60-80 hour a week job as a lawyer. He also had a wide and two young kids.

Good luck watching your day and writing it down. You have nothing to gain but the truth and a little (or perhaps a lot) of time.

Resolve to Write

2012-01-01T01:53:00.000-08:00

"The combined force of Jennifer & Anne, as readers, is a real gift. The depth and
feedback on each week's pages was far more than I ever experienced in a workshop before." ~ Gail Robinson

The Master Class Series is master level teaching with two teachers--myself and the very talented Anne Gudger. We give you two points of view, based on our collective sixty years of writing experience and forty years of teaching experience.

Develop your writing muscle in the areas of scene, point of view, arc, plot, dialogue, setting and detail infusion. Learn the skillful navigation of reflective writing and how to explore memory without being confined or limited. While this is a class geared toward the memoir writer, fiction writers are welcome too. There is prompt based teaching, there are handouts and we workshop two writers each week. There are 18 slots to read so you will surely get your pages worked over!

Details:In Portland, we meet at my suite on Sundays from 3:00 - 6:00 p.m. For the out of town writer, we use the best technology to bring you the class in your home via Go To Meeting. All you need is a computer! If you have a camera, we can see you too but you don't need that. You can see us via a web link and you listen via your computer speakers or through a dial in connection.

COST: $375.00 ($100.00 deposit to hold your spot)

REQUIREMENTS: Contact Jennifer at jennifer@jenniferlauck.com for waiver, instructions & space availability

WINTER SERIES: Jan. 8, 5, 22, 29, Feb. 12, 19, 26, Mar. 4 & 11
(5 spots available)

What other students say about this class:

"Feedback from Jennifer and Anne is pure gold." ~ Cloie Cohen

"I've been writing for 12 years but the learning curve of this class has been truly remarkable." ~ Sue Holbrook

"I came into this class feeling like I was way out of my league. I came away with so much amazing wisdom and knowledge and it just keeps coming." ~ Amos T

"I have so many new ideas, I can't wait to put them on the page." ~ Ruth Wariner

Happy New Year

2011-12-31T22:19:00.000-08:00

As for my next book, I am going to hold myself
from writing it till I have it impending in me:
grown heavy in my mind like a ripe pear;
pendant, gravid, asking to be cut or it will fall.
~Virginia Woolf

What is your New Years Resolution? Mine are:

1) I resolve to be happy.
2) I resolve to relax.
3) I resolve to be calm.
4) I resolve to be grateful.

Thank you all for being a part of this memoir writing website.

Happy New Year, Jennifer

Book Talk: Crazy for the Storm by Norman Ollestad

2011-12-29T09:02:00.000-08:00

This week, it's me writing the column Book Talk. Anne and Cloie are busy writing future posts.

From Amazon: The story itself could take your breath away: an 11-year-old boy, the only survivor of a small-plane crash in the San Gabriel Mountains in 1979, makes his way to safety down an icy mountain face in a blizzard, using the skills and determination he learned from his father. But it's the way that Norman Ollestad tells his tale that makes Crazy for the Storm a memoir that will last.

This book was handed to me, in the same way a runner hands off a baton in a relay race. My co-teacher Anne passed it over last month. She hoped it would provide needed inspiration. I was in the midst of coaching a writer who just wasn’t getting the message.

After listening to me kvetch, Anne let me borrow her copy of Crazy for the Storm.

I must confess this is not a book I would usually read. I’m not much for the “in your face” testosterone laden memoir. Afterall, what does Ollestad have to do? This story practically tells itself. The monumental tragedy, which happens in a relatively short time frame, is an obvious container. Stay in real time, tell the story and boom—bestseller. Plus it’s very masculine and heroic and let’s face it—a man’s book about a man being a man—well, you’ve got yourself a no-brain winner. This is America. John Wayne mythology abounds. Women want the Marlboro man to sweep them away. Men want to be that brink-living-brave hero.

Come on.

It’s too easy.

But then I started to read.

It wasn’t the tragedy that captured me. It wasn’t the bigger-than-big father who pushed himself and his son to the edge of human limits and beyond. It wasn’t the “do they survive” breath stealing quality either.

It was the writing.

I’m not sure Ollestad wrote this book–something in me suspects a ghostwriter lurks in the shadows–but in the end, who cares? Whoever wrote this book, there is great skill and craft here. Some of the lines took my breath away. And, Ollestad used a brilliant device to tell the story. He worked the front story (the accident and the hours that followed as he alone made his way off the mountain and away from the crash) in tandem with the backstory (a trip to Mexico with his dad which brought the reader up to speed with the life the young boy—pre-crash—was living with his screwed up mother, his abusive step father and his “live else where adventure hungry” dad).

It works because he holds both the front and the back-story very close. He doesn’t wander around into every moment of his life with his father pre-crash and he doesn’t get sentimental which is something that would be easy to do when commemorating a manly man like his father. Instead Ollestad tells the story straight, stays close to a manageable time frame and never drops us from that time line.

As a memoir teacher, I would encourage all memoir writers to read this book. It’s so tight and clean and yes, obvious. But it’s the most obvious story line that can help you see your own container for your story. Ollestad (or his ghost writer) teaches us to keep things simple, keep it moving, keep it clear, keep it clean and most of all—keep it on the bone honest.

A valuable lesson for you waits in this book. Get it. Read it. Study it.

Annoucements & Updates

2011-12-23T15:46:00.000-08:00

Life May Have Been Your Enemy but a Writing Teacher is a Friend:

A writer sends me her work, she says "you are the writer for me. I am dying to be taught. My work is attached."

I write back, we set up time to speak, I take a deposit, I read her work and I make my comments. We set up time to speak but hold on...the writer disappears. When I send an inquiry, the writer is hostile and defensive. It turns out I am not the "the writer for her" after all and it also turns out the writer is not "dying to be taught."

It is not easy to hold my center in these situations. I work hard to remind myself that I am still the same writing teacher and the same person. It is the writer who has shifted. One moment hopeful, the next hostile.

There is something about memoir that seems to draw out the most poison in people and rather than seeking to be freed of the poison, so many keep it inside, curl up around the pain and attack anyone who might draw near with a solution.

A thought: If you cannot "respond" to advice and critique but instead are stuck in the "reaction" phase (negative emotion tinged with discomfort), it is not time to get feedback.

Wounds take time to heal--years in fact. Some wounds will never heal and that is our lot as human beings. Change is hard. Waking up is very hard. Making the shift from reaction to response requires effort.

While I love to help writers grow, I will admit this is the least pleasant and most perplexing aspect of my job. The writer who knows if she is processing vs. writing is the wise writer indeed. If you find you are needing to process, that's okay. Take your time. And when it's time to write, remember, you will need to let people read your book and you will be served by gaining the distance necessary to hear what they have to say. Life may have been your enemy but writing teachers and editors are your friends.

~

The Download Class at The Attic Institute is nearly full! Do not miss an opportunity to learn, at a very affordable price, how to get your memoir off to the best start possible. CLICK HERE to learn more.

The Portland Master Class is at half capacity. That means we have room for about seven more writers. Will you be one of them? And...if you are not in Portland but would like to take this class long distance...let's talk! I have devised a perfect way for you to attend so that class fits into your schedule. jennifer@jenniferlauck.com or CLICK HERE to sign up.

The Phase III: Market, Sell and Publish Your Memoir class is coming. I am testing brand new material, pulled together this month which teaches you everything I know about getting your book in front of agents, editors and publishers. You can get published and this program will open your mind to how it can happen. Ask questions by writing me at jennifer@jenniferlauck.com or CLICK HERE to sign up.

Book Talk: The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

2011-12-22T06:20:00.000-08:00

I'm happy to present Clover Cohen, a long time student in the Master Class. Cloie is one to watch! Enjoy her insights on memoir. She's a hard working writer who is paying her dues.

Extreme poverty sears itself in to one’s senses. The damp cold bites the nose and cheeks when there is no heat in January. A mouse’s scuttling in the dark perks the ears. Salty Rice-a-Roni from the donated food box burns the tongue. Smoke seeping out from the car’s hood alerts to another impending break down and a long walk home.

When I first read The Glass Castle in 2005, I had not started writing yet. I didn’t understand how a writer tells her story and the devices she uses. After years of reading and both receiving and offering feedback, I want to suggest to Jeannette that she slow down. Set the scene. Use sensory details even more to make the story come alive. We want to be there with you.

In Jeanette’s story of her crazy, neglectful parents and their transient life, we see the places where they settle then abandon in the middle of the night. We hear their conversation in dialogue that’s fantastic. We understand the characters and their complexities. The sense underrepresented in this story is smell. This sounds weird, even to me, but I want to smell this story.

I want to know:

What burning flesh smells like (even though I’m sure it’s beyond disgusting), “I smelled the burning and heard a horrible cracking as fire singed my hair and eyelashes.”

How the chemicals at the dump in Phoenix burned their nostrils as they unscrewed the lids and tried to set them on fire, “So we mixed up a batch of what Brian called nuclear fuel, pouring different liquids into a can. When I tossed in the match, a cone of flame shot up with a whoosh like a jet afterburner.”

About the stench of the inside of a dumpster, “When no one was looking, Brian and I pushed open the lid, climbed up, and dived inside to search for bottles. I was afraid if might be full of yucky garbage. Instead we found an astonishing treasure: cardboard boxes filled with loose chocolates.”

How an open pit of rotting garbage smells, “He explained that we was going to hire a truck to card the garbage to the dump all at once. But he never got around to that, either, and as Brian and I watched, the hole for the Glass Castle’s foundation slowly filled with garbage.”

How the stink of a molded out cabin in West Virginia must overwhelm, “Everything in the house was damp. A fine green mold spread over the books and papers and paintings that were stacked so high and piled so deep you could hardly cross the room. Tiny mushrooms sprouted up in the corners.”

About the breath of a drunk man as he tried to force himself on her, “His hands dropped down. He squeezed my bottom, pushed me on to the bed, and began kissing me.”

About the absence of smell, or perhaps the pleasant scent, of a nice apartment in New York City, “Eric’s apartment had cross beamed ceilings and a fireplace with an art deco mantel. I actually lived on Park Avenue, I kept telling myself as I hung my clothes in the closet Erick had cleared out for me."

How a person reeks of body odor when they live on the streets for years, “Mom broke into a huge smile and started hurrying toward us. Instead of an overcoat, she was wearing what looked to be about four sweaters and a shawl, a pair of corduroy trousers, and some old sneakers.”

It’s easy to be on the other side of the page and make these requests. I have become greedy as a reader. Yet as a writer, it’s a laborious challenge, to say the least, to infuse every scene with every sense. We live in our heads and our memories are dominated by what was seen.

Our auditory and olfactory memories are accessible though.

Like when I pass by the make-up counter at Macy’s, a whiff of Estee Lauder’s Youth Dew drops me back in the middle of Grandma’s bathroom, in my 6 year old body, as I snoop through her make up and spritz the brown bottle of perfume on the inside of my wrist, them rub it together with the other.

As I click through the radio stations on my drive to work, “Today” by the Smashing Pumpkins transports me back 16 years to my wedding day, to the moment when our vows were sealed and we turned to walk back down the aisle, when tears seeped from my Mom’s eyes and I had to pause for a millisecond to catch my breath.

Music can be easily accessed through YouTube or iTunes. Images are easy too when Google can verify a memory in seconds. Taste, touch, and smell have to be sought out though, away from the quiet house, with sleeping kids, where the only sounds comes from the whirring dishwasher and the sharp clicks on the laptop’s keyboard. These going-outs have to be part of the process to inform the writing, to offer another layer for the reader. I have no doubt Jeanette remembers the stench of her youth or at is reminded when she passes a restaurant’s dumpster. She may have even tried to wipe them out by surrounding herself with sweet cut roses and perfumed candles. But as her reader, I want those memories. As a writer, I am reminded again that I need to work harder to seek out my own.

Writing Tip #14: How Does Your Writing Make the Reader Feel?

2011-12-19T14:51:00.000-08:00

When I wrote my memoir Blackbird, I told the truth of how my mother died when I was seven and my father died when I was nine. I also told the truth of how I fell through the cracks of my family support system and found myself both homeless and preyed on by abusers—psychological and physical. These were not pretty stories.

I had been trained as a journalist in hard news events, which meant I reported on murders, drug busts, domestic strife, abductions and even gang activity. In early drafts of Blackbird, I decided I would write like I reported which meant I would give the hard cold facts.

My goal? Let the reader come to his or her own conclusions.
My rational? If I could survive it, you could read it.

Thanks to the gentle and not-so-gentle guidance of many good teachers and editors, I made different decisions in my later drafts.

Thank goodness.

Memoir is not a news report. Memoir is a genre that invites the writer to use the tools found in literature in order to explore memory. These tools include the use of vivid details and scenes that evoke deep emotional responses in the reader. When you write memoir, you are going to create something that makes the reader “feel” a great deal.

It was Maya Angelou who said, “people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

This is never truer than when we write a memoir. We have all read memoirs that made us feel so deeply that we couldn’t fall asleep at night, had us holding our children closer or even made us become kinder and gentler people as a result. We have also read memoirs that made us so furious we vowed to never read another book by that writer.

The difference between the good memoir and the unbearable memoir is care for the reader and a good measure of restraint.

As David Huddle writes in his book The Writing Habit, restraint means decorum, control, a holding back, a measuring of language against silence. Huddle, a professor of literature at the University of Vermont, is referring to the fact that writers are artists and the artist sensibility is what is needed when approaching storytelling. Memoir is no exception.

Yes, we as memoir writers will admit we have had a pile of misfortune heaped upon our shoulders and on our backs, but we must also recognize that how we tell our story truly matters. A recounting of the grisly details does not make a work readable or even interesting. A writer of memoir must remember he or she is digging toward meaning, essence, the pith and the gold that is lodged away at the core of a lived experience. The grisly details can lead us to that core but in the final edit, many of these details must to be carved away.

As my former teacher, Tom Spanbauer (Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon, Far Away Places, In the City of Shy Hunters), used to say, "never drop the reader."

To me this translate to mean hold your reader close. Don’t let a reader “fall out” out of your story or away from you as the guiding force who knows all and tells all (in careful measure). Lots of vivid details told with balance and attention to space, place, time, people are necessary to paint your story in the readers mind. Understanding the psychology of your reader—what makes him and her tick—is also important. For example, we all know that a reader is a human being and that human beings want to feel safe, they also want to be in on the secret and they want to know things are going to turn out okay, or if they aren’t going to turn out okay, they need to know they won’t be left dissatisfied about how things turned out. This means you need to wrap up your loose ends. Don’t leave the reader hanging (unless that is your goal and you want them to buy your sequel). The bottom line is that you want your reader to know you’re on their side—not against them. You want your reader to know the writer is working hard to get to true meaning under the events of her life. The reader respects the writer who struggles on the page and presents this struggle with humanity and humility.

It’s a balancing act. We must have room to “get it all out” of our system and write poorly. That’s a huge part of being a memoir writer. But we must also know when it’s time to write well and when we think about the reader—with kindness, empathy and even a share of gentle compassion—we are on our way to creating a better book.

TALK BACK: What memoirs have you read that made you feel amazed, blown away and inspired? What memoirs have you read that made you feel furious? Leave your comment

Image Credit: Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, Woman Reading a Book, 1845/Flickr.com

Learn more about Jennifer Lauck at Jennifer Lauck Memoir Writing.com

Annoucements

2011-12-16T17:01:00.001-08:00

My first video class is available! Check it out and share the word.

The foundation of our beloved genre of memoir is SCENE.

A scene is a moment in time when something happens to move your story forward. It is active, it is vivid, it is alive. Do you know how to write one of these? Do you know the primary elements of this format?

If no, get ready to learn...

1) ...the definition of a scene
2) why scene is vital to writing memoir
3) how to check yourself against a scene writing recipe card
4) what is the difference between showing & telling
5) how to get to work and write a scene now

45 Minute Class (Video Download) & PDF Handout
Cost: $50.00

Writing Tip #13: Be Clear/Be Real/Connect

2011-12-12T18:15:00.000-08:00

Great writing is clear writing. Clear writing isn’t fancy or even that “smart” but the intelligence of well done writing becomes obvious when we read it and more obvious when we attempt to write that way ourselves. Writing in the clearest way possible is hard. When a writer nails that clarity, a direct and penetration connection is made with the reader.

Here are a few examples of clear writing that connects.

The girl next to me on the Portland city bus is bone thin and has mouse brown hair. Her crooked horned rimmed glasses—the temple on my side held together with oily Scotch tape—hang at the end of her nose. The coat she’s wearing is two sizes two big, three sizes, so she’s rolled the sleeves halfway up her arm’s and she’s using ragged fingernails to pick an exposed knob of wrist. I’m guessing she’s sixteen year old, give or take a year and I know she’s coming off a drunk. Either that or a bad high. She’s got sallow skin, half shut eyes, hunched shoulders—but mostly it’s her smell. When I lowered myself onto the vinyl seat next to her, I got the first whiff, the air around her so pungent it tasted of drugs and booze and smokes and daze. The dried-urine, state-ashtray stench of a binge.

I turn away and glance around the crowded bus. Is anyone else troubled, disgusted even, by this girl, this child, and her obvious downfall?

~ From the memoir Live Through This by Debra Gwartney

Do not set foot in my office. That’s Dad’s rule. But the phone’d run twenty-five times. Normal people give up after ten or eleven, unless it’s a matter of life or death. Don’t they? Dad’s got an answering machine like James Garner’s in the The Rockford Files with big reels of tape. But he’s stopped leaving it switched on recently. Thirty rings, the phone got to. Julia couldn’t hear it up in her converted attic ‘cause “Don’t You Want Me?” by Human League was thumping out dead loud. Forty rings. Mum couldn’t hear it ‘cause the washing machine was on berserk cycle and she was hoovering the living room. Fifty rings. That’s just not normal. S’pose Dad’d been mangled by a juggernaut on the M5 and the police only had this office number ‘cause all his other I.D.’d got incinerated? We could lose our final chance to see our charred father in the terminal ward.

~ From the novel Black Swan Green by David Mitchell

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my louse childhood was life, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t; feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have about two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them. They’re quite touchy about anything like that, especially my father. They’re nice and all—I’m not saying that—but they’re all touchy as hell.

~ From the novel Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

I was born with water on the brain.

Okay, so that’s not exactly true. I was actually born with too much cerebral spinal fluid inside my skill. But cerebral spinal fluid is just the doctors’ fancy way of saying brain grease. And brain grease works inside the lobes like car grease works inside an engine. It keeps things running smooth and fast. But weirdo me, I was born with too much grease inside my skill, and it got all thick and muddy and disgusting, and it only mucked up the works. My thinking and breathing and living engine slowed down and flooded.

My brain was drowning in grease.

But that makes the whole thing sound weirdo and funny, like my brain was a giant French fry, so it seems more serious and poetic and accurate to say, “I was born with water on the brain.”

~ From the novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part -Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

As I wrote these examples, I couldn’t help make note that three are novels and one memoir. "Why did I do that?” I wondered. The most obvious answer is that these were the books by my bed and what I grabbed on my way to write this post. But I also picked this collection of examples because they are good. Here we have, in each example, clear writing that makes a connection.

Alexie’s narrator is a young kid who went through brain surgery but lived to tell the tale and the reader is assured—right away—that there is one heck of a story being unfolded by the facts of this boys birth.

Gwartney, in her memoir, tells the story of being on the bus with a stranger—a young stranger—and we are being told that this is a story about her feelings, observations and situation in relationship to young people and abuse. She hasn’t told us—in this example—that two of her own daughters were this young girl and that she had to survive (as the mother) a stunning long run of blows as her girls fell into that world of drugs, drink and street living, but all this is coming soon enough. The concrete example of the girl on the bus, the stranger, lets us get close but remain distant in the way the narrator wants to be distanced as well. We feel her conflict in being next to the young girl, we are connected.

In Black Swan Green and Catcher, both books told from the perspective of a young male narrator who uses a good deal of slang and casual conversational tone, we are drawn into the way a kid thinks and talks. We are part of their world—right away—by the fact of their word choices. They are not pretending to be someone they are not. They are just being kids and they are also showing through the word choices and the focus on the adults in their life, that they are young. Both of these books are considered coming of age novels. In fact, Black Swan is called the modern Catcher in the Rye and we see why. This narrator in Black Swan has the same youth, the same slang and the same focus. But he also has that clear speak of a narrator who is going to take you somewhere and is fully in charge of the story.

And that’s another reason to write with total clarity. You, as the writer, initially have to surrender most of your control in order to follow the mystery of where the story wants to take you (memoir or fiction alike) but once you know what you are going to write about, once you have your beginning, middle, end in a drafted form—it’s time to let your craft take over and that’s when you polish, shine and work your writing to be this clear. Crystal clear.

WRITING PROMPT: Now you try. Talk to me. Write a paragraph that is clear but also casual. Work on a conversational tone—relaxed—but also moving forward toward a goal. Let your narrator take me somewhere.

Here is my example (this took me about two minutes to write)

So Jennifer Lauck, this fancy memoir writer who has this crazy blog called “Prolifically Raw,” says, “write me a clear and conversational paragraph. Go!”
It’s a Tuesday, early in the morning and I’m at my desk at Sell It Fast Reality. I’m supposed to be typing up a form that will sell the Johnson house but I’m not typing. I don’t type unless my boss—Mr. Crabby Pants—is on his way toward my desk. When that happens, I am a flurry of “get the job done” activity. Until Crabby Pants gets off the phone and comes my way, I surf the web and do my best to learn from fancy memoir writer Jennifer Lauck. It’s my Tuesday habit, my Tuesday routine, my Tuesday lifeline to something better than being a form-typer-upper here at Sell it Fast.

If you want to read reviews of books, CLICK HERE and you'll see some titles I highly recommend for memoir writers.

Listen in: 12/8 Teleseminar

2011-12-10T14:30:00.000-08:00

I set writing goals. Period. I would never had written and published four books without goals (and had two kids). I'm telling you, this works. Set goals now!

Jacob Gudger, my marketing guy, showed us how:

Go from having a dream to having a strategy.
Deal with fear: "Do it afraid."
Stop wasting time and HOW.

Listen in now:

If you are a subscriber to this site, send me an email and I'll get you your downloadable link! If not, Sign up now.

Annoucements

2011-12-09T18:46:00.000-08:00

First, and foremost, I want to thank all my students this year. I had a banner teaching year with some of the most lovely and talented people. It was a great year, with terrific students.

Second, I was delighted to learn that several (six) of the young people from my Writer's in the School Residency (part of Literary Arts) were placed in the 2011/12 anthology titled No One Carries an Umbrella Here. The title essay Twisted Flower was by my student, Marquisa Sapian and I couldn't have been more thrilled. Another young woman, Jin Mei McMahon won the Glimmer Train Prize for Prose for her essay titled Her Logic. Congratulations Jin Mai. And there were placements for Joel Hwee, Zola Walton, Hana Schiff, Sean Sele (brilliant writing by Sean). I hate to say it but I am a proud mother hen watching all these writers experience the joy of publication. Their essays are stellar too.

Third, the last teleseminar of the year was Thursday, Dec. 8 and it was a great conversation about setting goals. Look for that post on Sunday or go now to THIS LINK and listen in.

Fourth, the new classes are available for registration and it's going to be a great new year. There is a class called Sell It (on how to sell your memoir), a salon style critique circle, a beginner's level craft class and the ongoing and ever popular master class. I'm also teaching a new download class for the Attic Institute...don't miss that.

Finally, the upgraded and fabulous Phase I program is ready. What was a 25 page workbook is now 100+ pages and what was three hours of teaching has been expanded to be five hours. This is the most comprehensive downloading entry level teaching you would hope to get. I've tested this class in two live formats and provided you, the entry level memoirist, with what I think is the richest and most wonderful teaching available.

Listen in: 12/1 Teleseminar

2011-12-04T13:55:00.000-08:00

It's essential to have support and inspiration when writing a memoir. Our call today gave both. We discussed the emotions that arise when you write and how to distance yourself (or get closer) via the point of view you chose. We also touched on these points:

When do you know your done with your book?
Tips to reach the end of a draft.
How can we best cope while writing memoir?

Here's a sample from the call:

Want to hear the entire call? Please click here, sign up and I'll get you your downloadable link!

Announcements: A Survey

2011-12-02T13:57:00.000-08:00

Thank you for being part of my teaching site where it is my goal to provide you, the memoir writer, with inspiration, community and support.

I have enjoyed sharing everything I know about memoir and
now I would like your feedback. Please answer these questions
and either post below or send to me in the form of an email to
jennifer@jenniferlauck.com.

1) What is your biggest frustration in your writing process, right now?

2) In being here, at the site, what has been the most helpful to you?

3) What more can I do to help you on your journey?

Your answers to these questions are a true gift to me so thank you
in advance!

Happy Holiday, Jennifer

Book Talk: Live Through This by Debra Gwartney

2011-12-01T02:53:00.000-08:00

Book Talk is back and I'm happy to present Clover Cohen, who is a long time student in my Master Class and fine, fine writer. Cloie is one to watch! Enjoy her insights on memoir. She's a hard working writer who is paying her dues.

Being honest on the page is hard. Being honest with yourself and others is even harder. Our brains hide the truth, mask the memories, twist and re-construct our experiences to make it possible for us to live another day. If a writer, even when her work is non-fiction, knows where the story is going, then she does not leave her ears open to the boundless possibilities that hover between her brain matter and the universe. Knowing the destination blocks the channel that will guide her ideas and impressions down to her fingers where they will write or type them into existence.

I was drawn to Debra Gwartney’s memoir because of the title, Live Through This. Badass, feminist, punk rocker Courtney Love had titled her 1994 album the same. It was actually her band, with the vulgar and ironic name, Hole, who made the album. To me it was just she and her husband, Kurt Cobain, who I heard singing in those songs. The lyrics were raw and brutally honest and hit spot-on the way I felt in 1994 as 21-year-old girl. They articulated my cynicism and darkness, voiced my distrust and contempt, yet they also captured my deep-rooted hope and optimism.

Courtney and Kurt lived my version of the modern fairy tale. They were talented, rich, and passionate for each other. Their fairy tale was rooted in reality though, not the sticky sweet pink fluffy Disney version. Their tale was made imperfect by heroin addictions and mental instabilities. But these two were out there. They were unguarded. They told the truth.

When I picked up Live Through This: A Mother's Memoir of Runaway Daughters and Reclaimed Love, I was eager to find out what the author had “lived through”. For me, the title intimated survival. I was looking for an inspirational story to keep me company on my own journey through memoir.

I didn’t know I would read the words that sounded like my own mother's story of divorce and struggle with her adolescent daughters (my sister and I). Reading this book was like being inside Mom’s head. Both the author and Mom were foolish, brave, instinctive and terribly flawed. The author chose the wrong man and the wrong life, and as a result, her daughters suffered the consequences.

Debra showed us when she failed as a mother to her teenage daughter,

Stephanie reached out to me in small, calculated ways—and I reached out to her in small, calculated ways. But I couldn’t find enough strength in myself to make something big or important happen between us. Amanda was closer, and, stuck as she was with the ranchers, I was convinced she needed me more than her sister did—an opt-out that would haunt me for years.

When you have four daughters as the author does, it’s inevitable that one will take priority either while they are in infancy or addicted to heroin or need to get to their horseback-riding lesson.

Debra showed us her strength and resilience.

I couldn’t have her coming and going whenever she wanted from our house anymore. I couldn’t let her do that to Mary and Mollie. And though I’d given her a variation of this ultimatum many times before, this time I meant it. And this time she heard me.

Debra’s unconditional love for her daughter made it possible for them all to survive, and one day, come back together and heal,

Stephanie and I walked the streets of her town, hiked in her woods, swam in her river, cooked in her kitchen, drank cold beer in her favorite cafes, and somehow we found our way back to each other without the explanations I once thought would be required. I’ve not asked why and she’s not said why, and month after month, the why of our once–separation becomes less important.

Here, the resolution they have is not tidy or how the author had envisioned. A bond between mother and child can just do that sometimes, rebuild.

Live Through This makes me want to tell the story from the flip side. From the troubled teenage daughter’s point of view, who did not run away from her mother, but suffered and survived like Debra’s girls had. Live Through This reminds me to show the story, show Mom and myself in our full forms. Live Through This also inspires me to seek honesty and the truth and to welcome the surprises. By Clover Cohen

Sell It: The Phase III Workshop

2011-11-29T15:45:00.000-08:00

There is nothing like this moment in your life. Your book is in a bookstore and on the shelf. This is my fourth book and look at that smile!

Is it your turn? If yes, join me for this intensive, five week program that will give you the steps and framework necessary to get your book into the world.

Phase III: Marketing, Selling and Publishing
Learn how to create a market comparison & analysis survey
Discuss the publishing scene in the tech age
Discover how and when to approach literary agents
Learn how to build your platform
and more...

WHEN: January 8, 15, 22, 29, Feb. 4
TIME: 11:30-2:00 P.M.
WHERE: E. Burnside, Portland, OR
COST: $325.00 (15 spots available - spots will go fast)

Students leave with a Workbook & a CD of the class

Thanksgiving Writing Prompt

2011-11-24T09:32:00.000-08:00

Today is an essay in the making.

Don't miss the opportunity to write it down.

Here is your prompt:

1) Set the stage of your day, who is there with you, describe the room, the people, what everyone wears and says. Describe the smells.

2) How do you feel among these people, eating this food?

(Not how you are supposed to feel but how you really feel. Tell your truth in beautiful whispers).

3) Remember a Thanksgiving from the past and see how that one is different or the same as this.

4) Then come back to the room of your moment, see it all again, what detail stands out most for you?

If anyone asks, "what are you doing?" Tell them it's a writing assignment for a teacher and leave it at that.

Send it to me, or even do it in the comment box, and I'll post it here on the site (I might edit a few). The best essay will win a free signed copy of Found.

Writing Tip: Take a Good Class

2011-11-21T13:59:00.000-08:00

I am so happy to announce our School Page on the Teaching Site. Here you will find all the classes for the winter term and soon there will be classes for the spring, summer and even the fall term of 2012.

No matter your budget or your location, there is a program for you. Please check out the new page by clicking here and help spread the word about these wonderful, illuminating and insightful classes.

We are here to help you write a beautiful memoir.

Prompt: Write about a time you attended a writing class. Stay close. Arrive in the place, describe the other students, describe the teacher and write about taking your seat. Include how you felt. Stay close to the body....GO!

Listen In: 11/17 Teleseminar - Write a Beautiful Book

2011-11-20T12:41:00.000-08:00

God lives in the details. ~ Tom Spanbauer

This call was dedicated to conversation about writing a beautiful book. Just how is it done? Here are a few highlights:

1) Write - a lot.
2) Surround yourself with beauty--music, art, nature.
3) Immerse your writing in details of your senses.
4) Find beautiful teachings and teachers.
5) Read beautiful books.

Announcements & Check In

2011-11-18T04:00:00.000-08:00

A Little Moment:

Jo Jo and I stroll along a windy morning. Casual.

I hold her hand in a gentle way. Light. Her fingers are tampered and delicate and it is easy to feel the bones through the soft skin. I call her hands "artist" hands. They are graceful hands with slim fingers.

The sidewalks are wet and the leaves are slick. We kick along as we go and it's the best part of my day. A walk with Jo before school.

This morning, she is in a pair of pants the kids call "skinny jeans" and they make her long legs longer. Over this she wears a new pink parka that is bright pink, vivid pink, pink on top of pink. There is no pink pinker than this pink jacket. The only break in all the pink is a span of brown gray fluff that lines the hood.

Her face is framed in this fuzz and all that pink.

We stop at the corner and wait for the cars to get through the intersection. Across the street, alone, is a little boy who walks with his head down. His jacket is half on and half off. It slides off one shoulder to show a thin t-shirt. His hair--a light red color--is wet. Jo is skinny but this boy is skinny and small. Slight. He's just bare sliver of a child. Six?

"There's that kid," Jo says."He's all alone."
"I wonder where his brother is?"
"I don't know," Jo says. "You think he had to walk alone today?"
"I hope not."

The crosswalk has been cleared by kids who hold blue and white flags. The crossing guard. Jo and I continue towards the school. The little guy is ahead of us and he walks in a kind of sloppy S. He weaves more than walks.

Over the last year we've watched him, always in the company of a not-much-older brother, forge his way to school without an adult. We always talk about it too: Why are these kids alone? Where are the parents? Why do some kids have to walk alone while others have parents or guardians or someone to help?

No matter how many times I answer her questions, they come up.

"Why is it like that?" Jo asks. "Why do mom's let their kids go it alone?"

I shake my head and shrug my shoulder since I don't have a damn clue.

"Maybe his mom has to work or she's sick in bed."

We cover the distance from the corner to the path that leads to the school and around us there is a funnel of human beings--big, little, short, tall, old, young. The little guy has been absorbed by the crowd and is gone.

"You know I would never let you go it alone, Sweets."

"I know," she says. "You're a good mom."

I stretch my arm long to get over her head and around her shoulder.

"Well, thanks but I'm not perfect."

"No," Jo says. "You're not perfect. But you are good, like all people in the world."

We have a thing in our house called "line of the day," and that is when one of us says something so perfect--each word forming an ideal message that is simple and exact--it must be noted. Line of the day is a writer's past time, a study of language and word choice.

This week, Jo has been on a roll. Her line yesterday was, "don't yell at the teacher, he has powers you don't." And today, this is it. "You're not perfect. But you are good. Like all people in the world."

Instead of taking the handle of the door, I bend down and wrap my girl from the back, pressing my chin into her neck and kissing her ear. The faux fluff around her new jacket is in my face and up my nose. I don't care.

"You just won the line of the day."

~

On my way to Reno--where fires blaze and wind blows and we are stuck in Portland until things get better.

Tonight, a presentation at the Carson Library. Hopefully I'm there at six!
Tomorrow, a class on how to write a scene and if you are in Reno, we have room.
And below are new classes for the New Year. Do not miss them. Sign up. Hurry up now.

Six Writers – Six Weeks – A Critique Circle:
This class is for the more advanced writer who is progress on a manuscript or essay length work (articles are acceptable too). You needs to hear yourself read and to get skilled critique. You will be part of a very small group, just six writers and are invited to bring 8-10 pages of your current work per week. You’ll read and discuss your work in the circle.

Requirement: You must have taken a class with Jennifer/have an interview to discuss your project.
DATES: Jan. 9-Feb.13 - Tuesday 10:30-12:30 p.m.
Cost: $40.00 per class/$240.00

Memoir Technique Class:
Lists, prompt, write, share. This is a class for the more beginning level student. You are the writer who is just getting going and don’t feel as confident as you would like in the craft area of your work. You’ll enjoy this relaxed, playful class that gives you more ideas and techniques for dealing with writer’s block and memory doubt.

DATES: Jan 3-31 - Wednesday 10:30-12:30 5 week course
Cost: $220.00

The Master Class Series:

Create beautiful well crafted writing. Develop your writing muscle in the areas of scene, point of view, arc, plot, dialogue, setting and detail infusion. You will also learn about the skillful navigation of reflective writing and how to explore memory without being confined or limited. While this is a class geared toward the memoir writer, fiction writers are welcome too. There is prompt based teaching, there are handouts and we workshop two writers each week. There are 18 slots to read so you will surely get your pages worked over!

COST: $375.00 ($100.00 deposit to hold your spot)

REQUIREMENTS: Contact Jennifer at jennifer@jenniferlauck.com for waiver, instructions & space availability.

DATES: Sunday's, 3-6:00 p.m. Jan. 8, 5, 22, 29, Feb. 12, 19, 26, Mar. 4 & 11

Subscriber Classes:

Each week, you get a video prompt with a handout of explanation and writing instruction. Also get a video teaching around a work shopped piece of work that will be discussed in a critique style format with an audience of students. You will receive a PDF of the pages discussed, so you can follow along with the teaching.

1 month - 1 class
3 month option - 3 classes
6 month option - 6 classes
1 year option - 12 classes

CLICK HERE to read more and sign up!

Mayan Interpretations

2011-11-16T06:45:00.000-08:00

Just when does the Maya calendar end? From one source, it has already happened--Oct. 18 of this year. Another source and one I consider highly reliable, has it all ending Dec. 21, 2011. And this information below has the calendar end Dec. 21, 2012. Personally, I could use another year to get my proverbial sh@# together so it's all good to go with the latter date.

What do you know? Share below please.

And enjoy the post below which came a therapist in Portland:

Carlos Barrios, Mayan elder and Ajq'ij (is a ceremonial priest and spiritual guide) of the Eagle Clan. Carlos initiated an investigation into the different Mayan calendars circulating. Carlos along with his brother Gerardo studied with many teachers and interviewed nearly 600 traditional Mayan elders to widen their scope of knowledge.

Carlos found out quickly there were several conflicting interpretations of Mayan hieroglyphs, petroglyphs, Sacred Books of 'Chilam Balam' and various ancient text. Carlos found some strong words for those who may have contributed to the confusion:

Carlos Barrios: "Anthropologists visit the temple sites and read the inscriptions and make up stories about the Maya, but they do not read the signs correctly. It's just their imagination. Other people write about prophecy in the name of the Maya. They say that the world will end in December 2012. The Mayan elders are angry with this. The world will not end. It will be transformed."

"We are no longer in the World of the Fourth Sun, but we are not yet in the World of the Fifth Sun. This is the time in-between, the time of transition. As we pass through transition there is a colossal, global convergence of environmental destruction, social chaos, war, and ongoing Earth Changes."

He continues: "Humanity will continue, but in a different way. Material structures will change. From this we will have the opportunity to be more human. We are living in the most important era of the Mayan calendars and prophecies. All the prophecies of the world, all the traditions are converging now. There is no time for games. The spiritual ideal of this era is action."

Carlos tells us: "The indigenous have the calendars and know how to accurately interpret it -- not others. The Mayan Calendars comprehension of time, seasons, and cycles has proven itself to be vast and sophisticated. The Maya understand 17 different calendars such as the Tzolk'in or Cholq'ij, some of them charting time accurately over a span of more than ten million years.

"All was predicted by the mathematical cycles of the Mayan calendars. -- It will change --everything will change. Mayan Day-keepers view the Dec. 21, 2012 date as a rebirth, the start of the World of the Fifth Sun. It will be the start of a new era resulting from and signified by the solar meridian crossing the galactic equator and the Earth aligning itself with the center of the galaxy."

At sunrise on December 21, 2012 for the first time in 26,000 years the Sun rises to conjunct the intersection of the Milky Way and the plane of the ecliptic. This cosmic cross is considered to be an embodiment of the Sacred Tree, The Tree of Life, a tree remembered in all the world's spiritual traditions.

Some observers say this alignment with the heart of the galaxy in 2012 will open a channel for cosmic energy to flow through the Earth, cleansing it and all that dwells upon it, raising all to a higher level of vibration. Carlos reminds us: "This process has already begun. Change is accelerating now and it will continue to accelerate.

If the people of the Earth can get to this 2012 date in good shape without having destroyed too much of the Earth, we will rise to a new, higher level. But to get there we must transform enormously powerful forces that seek to block the way."

The date specified in the calendar Winter Solstice in the year 2012 does not mark the end of the world. Many outside people writing about the Mayan calendar sensationalize this date, but they do not know. The ones who know are the indigenous elders who are entrusted with keeping the tradition.

Carlos tells us: "The economy now is a fiction. The first five-year stretch of transition from August 1987 to August 1992 was the beginning of the destruction of the material world. We have progressed ten years deeper into the transition phase by now, and many of the so-called sources of financial stability are in fact hollow. The banks are weak. This is a delicate moment for them. They could crash globally, if we don't pay attention. Now, people are paying attention."

The North and South Poles are both breaking up. The level of the water in the oceans is going to rise. But at the same time land in the ocean, especially near Cuba, is also going to rise. Carlos tells a story about the most recent Mayan New Year ceremonies in Guatemala. He said that one respected Mam elder, who lives all year in a solitary mountain cave, journeyed to Chichicastenango to speak with the people at the ceremony. The elder delivered a simple, direct message. He called for human beings to come together in support of life and light.

"Right now each person and group is going his or her own way. The elder of the mountains said there is hope if the people of the light can come together and unite in some way. We live in a world of polarity -- day and night, man and woman, positive and negative. Light and darkness need each other. They are a balance."

"Just now the dark side is very strong, and very clear about what they want. They have their vision and their priorities clearly held, and also their hierarchy. They are working in many ways so that we will be unable to connect with the spiral Fifth World in 2012."

"On the light side everyone thinks they are the most important, that their own understandings, or their group's understandings, are the key. There's a diversity of cultures and opinions, so there is competition, diffusion, and no single focus."

Carlos believes the dark side works to block unity through denial and materialism. It also works to destroy those who are working with the light to get the Earth to a higher level. They like the energy of the old, declining Fourth World, the materialism. They do not want it to change. They do not want unity. They want to stay at this level, and are afraid of the next level.

The dark power of the declining Fourth World cannot be destroyed or overpowered. It's too strong and clear for that, and that is the wrong strategy. The dark can only be transformed when confronted with simplicity and open-heartedness. This is what leads to unity, a key concept for the World of the Fifth Sun.

Carlos said the emerging era of the Fifth Sun will call attention to a much-overlooked element. Whereas the four traditional elements of Earth, Air, Fire and Water have dominated various epochs in the past, there will be a fifth element to reckon with in the time of the Fifth Sun --- that element is 'ETHER'.

The dictionary defines Ether as a "hypothetical substance supposed to occupy all space, postulated to account for the propagation of electromagnetic radiation through space." Perhaps it could be defined as the "space between space". I would suggest it could be manifest as the alignment of charged particles from our solar system (Sun), and our galaxy (Milky Way) surge. The Ether element represents spiritual energy.

"The element of the Fifth Sun is celestial. Within the context of Ether there can be a joining of the polarities. No more darkness or light in the people, but an uplifted unity. But right now the realm of darkness is not interested in this. They are organized to block it. They seek to unbalance the Earth and its environment so we will be unready for the alignment in 2012."

"We need to work together for peace, and balance with the other side. We need to take care of the Earth that feeds and shelters us. We need to put our entire mind and heart into pursuing unity and unity now, to confront the other side and preserve life."

"We are disturbed -- we can't play anymore. Our planet can be renewed or ravaged. Now is the time to awaken and take action. Everyone is needed. You are not here for no reason. Everyone who is here now has an important purpose. This is a hard but a special time. We have the opportunity for growth, but we must be ready for this moment in history."

Carlos says: "The prophesied changes are going to happen, but our attitude and actions determine how harsh or mild they are. We need to act, to make changes, and to elect people to represent us who understand and who will take political action to respect the Earth."

"Meditation and spiritual practice are good, but also action. It's very important to be clear about who you are, and also about your relation to the Earth. Develop yourself according to your own tradition and the call of your heart. But remember to respect differences, and strive for unity. Eat wisely --- a lot of food is corrupt in either subtle or gross ways. Pay attention to what you are taking into your body. Learn to preserve food, and to conserve energy. Learn some good breathing techniques, so you have mastery of your breath. Be clear. Follow a tradition with great roots. It is not important what tradition, your heart will tell you, but it must have great roots."

"We live in a world of energy. An important task at this time is to learn to sense or see the energy of everyone and everything -- people, plants, animals. This becomes increasingly important as we draw close to the World of the Fifth Sun, for it is associated with the element 'ether' -- the realm where energy lives and weaves. Go to the sacred places of the Earth to pray for peace, and have respect for the Earth which gives us our food, clothing, and shelter. We need to reactivate the energy of these sacred places. That is our work."

"One simple but effective prayer technique is to light white or baby-blue colored candles. Think of a moment in peace. Speak your intention to the flame and send the light of it on to the leaders who have the power to make war or peace."

Carlos reminds us this is a crucially important moment for humanity and for Earth. Each person is important.

He said the elders have opened the doors so that other races can come to the Mayan world to receive the tradition. "The Maya have long appreciated and respected that there are other colors, other races, and other spiritual systems. They know that the destiny of the Mayan world is related to the destiny of the whole world."

"The greatest wisdom is in simplicity. Love, respect, tolerance, sharing, gratitude, forgiveness. It's not complex or elaborate. The real knowledge is free. It's encoded in your DNA. All you need is within you. Great teachers have said that from the beginning. Find your heart, and you will find your way."

Writing Tip #12: Everyone Needs an Editor

2011-11-14T09:53:00.000-08:00

This is likely the shortest writing Tip you’ll get from me but likely the most helpful!

As my own literary agent told us on the call last Thursday, everyone, no matter how accomplished, needs a good editor.

William Stafford says it best, “an editor is a friend who helps keep a writer from publishing what should not be published.”

Since we all cannot afford an editor, especially in the early stages of our writing life, here is an affordable option: Autocrit.

This is a free editing program that will let you know, non-emotionally and efficiently, what you are doing on the page.

Using clichés? Autocrit will catch them.

Using the same word over and over again (unoriginal). Autocrit will let you know.

Have awkward construction—Autocrit is there for you.

As a writing teacher, I am begging you save yourself a ton of money. Invest in a subscription to this program and use it.

I hate to sound like an advertisement but I'm telling you, it works (and no, I don't get a kickback. I just love this program and you will too!)

They advertise this as "five minutes to a better novel." It's true. This program will help you be a better writer.

Listen In: 11/10 Teleseminar - Agent Advice

2011-11-13T04:33:00.000-08:00

"Write a beautiful book." ~ Anne Edelstein

I have had four literary agents and Anne has been with me since 2004. She is a keeper and has become a dear friend too. She was very generous and true on this call. She tells us about the publishing industry, how to submit work to an agent and if there is room in the market for fresh writing. Enjoy!

Listen In:

YOUR TURN: What made a difference to you? Did Anne give you insights and inspiration?

Announcements & Check In

2011-11-11T09:23:00.000-08:00

November is "no school" month and it's delightful to have the little ones around and also, a bit undoing as I am a working/single mom too.

I have a couple questions:When do we work again? How do I achieve balance between mothering and working?

Okay, that was my three seconds of complaint. Look at these beautiful faces! How blessed I am to have children who are healthy and who have good schools. My gratitude to teachers and to any free time I can get to get some work done!

~

Classes are filling up and if you are interested in a Craft Class--don't miss the Winter Craft Series--which you take right from your home and also have the benefit of getting feedback from me over the weekend. How this class works is that you tune in for two hours of teaching, then go write and send your work to me which I will read that night and discuss as part of the lesson the following morning.

Your commitment is to show up, two hours, each morning--on Sat & Sun and to go write. It's a self styled, in house, life/writing retreat with teachings, prompts, writing and feedback.

What a fabulous idea!

I can only accept ten students per class so please, sign up and don't miss this opportunity.

~

The January Master Class is filling up too. We have a virtual option for up to ten writers and we have 15 spots in Portland. Don't miss this fantastic 3.5 hour class where you learn how to be a better writer through instruction and through example. We workshop one body of writing per class and give you specific instruction as well as time to write.

~

I'm in Reno Nov. 18 & 19th. I appear for Adoption Awareness Month, at the Carson City Public Library where I will read from Found and discuss the impact of adoption.

On Nov. 19th, I will be teaching a Scene Writing Class in Reno. Please write to me directly for info on these appearances. Jennifer@jenniferlauck.com

I'd love to see you there.

~

Last, what in the world is Adoption Awareness Month? Well, it's just like it sounds. All month is dedicated to increasing awareness around issues about adoption. As a two time adoptee, I have created a public service campaign that includes a series of informative conversations with adoptees and healers. Please CLICK HERE to learn more. I've also done an indepth interview with a wonderful young man, Kevin Ost-Vollmers (pictured here with his adorable son) who created a site titled Land of a Gazillion Adoptees. It was a deep conversation about changing the way adoption is managed in this world--and my conclusion was--well--GO LISTEN!

Writing Tip #11: Dialogue

2011-11-07T21:07:00.000-08:00

Dialogue is basically one, two or more people in an exchange of conversation in your story. Dialogue is a tidy way to move a story forward without a lot of description. Characters can tell each other what is happening, describe locations, have judgments the narrator might not want to have and can move time along.

Here are four terrific dialogue insights to help you make good choices when approaching dialogue in your own storytelling:

1) Dialogue must characterize and capture the voice of the speaker…Everyone has a natural cadence and dialect to his or her speech. We nearly always speak in simple sentences, not complex compound ones. We might say, “When the rain comes, the grass grows,” which has one short dependent clause beginning the word with “when”; we aren’t likely to say, “Whenever it happens the rain comes, provided the fertilizer’s been applied, grass grows, unless it’s been masticated by cows grazing thereon”—a simple sentence or main clause (“the grass grows”) festooned with wordy subordinate clauses.

~ Brenda Miller & Suzanne Paola Tell it Slant:

2) The way you craft conversations between characters can effectively elevate the tension in subtle or overt ways. If your protagonist wants something from the other character but doesn't want that character to know, tension underlies the seemingly innocent conversation. Another character may want information from your protagonist, who sidesteps the issue. Or, the dialogue can be openly confrontational. In any case, the exchange pushes the story to the next plot point.

~ Laura Backes, Write4Kids.com

3) As with sentence length, avoid loose, baggy lines of dialogue. Cut to the chase.

~ Sue William’s Silverman from Fearless Confessions

4) My Rule is to not over-think dialogue and try to sound as natural as possible....Read your dialogue out loud and ask yourself--does this sound normal?

~ Paula Balzer from Writing & Selling Your Memoir:

Now let's take a look at a solid example of very effective dialogue from Faraway Places by Tom Spanbauer:

“This boy’s too old to give a licking to, but I’m going to,” my father said.

“The boy didn’t do nothing,” my mother said.

“He jumped in the river!” my father said, and stood up fast, kicking the chair back, “and I told him to stay clear of that river and those people. Now, just look at this mess!” my father said, moving his face right up against hers.

They stood like there like that, the two of them, my mother and my father, squared off, my father’s hands becoming fists.

“You’re going to lose that boy,” my mother said. “You can’t beat that boy for this.”

“Mary,” my father said. I had never heard my father call my mother that. “Leave us alone now. This is not a woman’s concern.”

These lines are clean and mood is so well established by these sparse lines of dialogue that are as harsh and as controlled as the characters themselves. The two are not talking to the narrator but the narrator is witness to the moment. The lines of dialogue are haunting and more so because the listener (the narrator) is the one who is going to get the beating.

Now you go write.

The Prompt:

1) Imagine two people in a setting, on a stage almost and they are having a disagreement. It could be a big fight or more subtle. Write dialogue between these two and make each argument convincing. The goal of this exercise is to see how dialogue reveals character and complexity in human relationships.

2) Go to a public place and just write out dialogue around you.

Do one or both and see what comes up for you. Enjoy listening in. Enjoy writing dialogue and if you have more say (and I hope you do), put it below in a comment.

Listen In: 11/3 Teleseminar - Uncertainty

2011-11-06T09:07:00.000-08:00

How do I know how I think until I see what I say? ~ E.M. Forester

We look at how a writer can exists in "not knowing" how the book is going to turn out and how a writer can cope with so much uncertainty and still create!

Listen In:

Do not miss next week: Anne Edelstein, my editor, agent and friend will be on the call to take your questions on how to submit to a literary agent!

Friday: Catching up & Announcements

2011-11-04T14:33:00.001-07:00

The best announcement is that this weblog is back on track! I have developed the new teaching site and that has been eating all my spare time and depriving this site of attention!

And there is a time when a writer has to wonder: "how many weblog's do I need anyway?"

The answer, for me, is that this page has been up and running since 2005. That's seven years of weblogging. My writing at this site dates back to a time when web-logging was just beginning and none of us knew what to do with this format of communication.

I am going to keep this site going and use this weblog for the less formal check in. This site is for "casual observations" and insights on writing. And it's a place to relax a little. That's the beauty of the weblog. It's personal.

Welcome and welcome back!

~

The photo up there was taken last week while I spent the day with my birth mother, birth sister and birth cousin. It's a lot of "birth" on the page but there you have it. I am an adoptee in reunion and we are in "the fun part" stage of reunion. The charge is gone and now it's the "get to know each other and relax phase." We had an all day spa treatment at a casino in Reno. That's something to love Reno for. You get an all-day pass to a spa for having just one treatment. We all had pedicures. I had a blast. And while I was here, I also did a live interview with Linda Joy Meyers who hosted her bi annual Memoir telesummit. Listen In.

The reunion with my mom is going as well as it can go. We are happy together. Forgiveness has taken place. I am blessed! My sister and I are on an even keel and I get to make friends with my cousin too. How can I wish for more than that?

This brings me to my first Announcement:

Every month, I am in Reno to teach a class hosted by the fabulous, inspiring and generous Carol Purroy. I will be there, Nov. 18th & 19th. On November 18th, I appear at the Carson City Library to read from Found and will teach a Scene Writing Class on Nov. 19th, in Reno. Write me for details! Jennifer(at)Jenniferlauck.com

Being in Reno each month gives me a chance to see my mom, build relationship and go home. It's fabulous. I'm over the "reunion hump."

Announcement #2: Adoption Awareness Month. I'm hosting several free conversations about adoption and healing. I talk with professionals and adoptees and birth mothers, all about this issue of getting through our adoption wounds. Please sign up, please spread the word, please sign up! It's free.

~
Those who are closest to me know that I was in a pretty nasty car wreck on September 11. This was following a reading at Powell's on Hawthorne, where I had read a very upbeat story titled Let it Be which is featured in this month's Shambala Sun. I am so honored to be included in Shambala Sun, which is an important publication. My essay was also tagged and placed in a collection on relationships titled Right Here with You: Bringing Mindfulness into our Relationships. Please go out, read these wonderful essay's and spread the word.

And, I'm okay. My beloved friend and co-teacher, Anne, was with me at the time of the accident. We were both badly hurt and shaken, of course. We are healing and have the best medical attention we could hope to get. Physical therapy from a remarkable German woman I am coming to adore, acupuncture from one of the authentic healers I have encountered in my journey thus far and energy work from a long time healer I also love. Anne and I will mend and we both agree, as we hike through the trees and replay the event again and again, we are better for the experience. Keep your eye out for the essay!!!

Final Announcement: Two Winter Classes worth taking. Please read about these on the other site and send me your questions. These classes are available now through streaming. You can participate! Join us.

Holiday Craft Series

Winter Master Class

See you on the site this week and please, leave your comments! Tell me how you are faring in this crazy world!

Writing Tip #10: Go Vertical

2011-10-31T01:40:00.000-07:00

Grow from writing “Dick & Jane” style sentences, created for early readers and be a complex story teller. Do this by going vertical.

To "go vertical" means go deep and to also go high. You are invited to infuse aspects of your story with detail which could range from sensory (taste, touch, smell, hearing, sight) to observational.

EXAMPLE:

You could write: The little boy pulled a wagon down the street. The wagon was full of sticks.

Or you could go vertical and write: Henry, four years old and not more than three feet tall, used two hands to tug his one Radio Flyer—candy apple red—down Skidmore Street. A pile of twigs, perhaps thirty in all, were stacked Lincoln Log style in a crisscross pattern that was stable but also unstable evidenced by the way the pile teetered right to left and left to right. Henry sported a pair of khaki shorts, the kind with so many pockets upon pockets upon pockets—big, small, deep, shallow—and each of these pockets bulged heavy with secreted chestnuts, feathers, rocks and bits of rubber collected from the road. Only the twigs, on display for all to see, were evidence of his obsessive collecting habit.

The first sentence is easier to write, and certainly faster, but it is also flat language. Memorable stories are built on the images we create with our word choices and when we unpack our sentences, we dip down into the deep well of description.

A simple way to think of this tip is that every time a significant noun (ie: a person such as Henry or a thing like the twigs or his wagon) presents itself in your story, stop and consider adding at least three levels of detail/description that can actually draw the noun into an image that another can see in their own mind. (IE: A pile of twigs, (1) perhaps thirty in all, (2) were stacked Lincoln Log style in a (3) crisscross pattern that was (4) stable but also unstable evidenced by the way (5) the pile teetered right to left and left to right. In this example, I use five additional details to describe the twigs).

Going vertical is also an opportunity for the writer to enter the story via their own memory or interpretation of what they are describing. This phenomenon is beautifully described in Tell it Slant by Brenda Miller, where she writes (pg. 30) about people who write about nature and then pushes on to talk about how important it is to go beyond just weighty description and infuse work with "human consciousness." IE: "While fine description is dandy, it tends to wear thin after a while. Even if your prose about the soft rosy beauty of the alpenglow is first rate, if you don't move beyond that, readers are likely to want to put down your writing and go see for themselves. What holds readers...is the sense of a human consciousness moving through...."

….(let’s pick up with the Henry tale)….

As I watched the little boy from my front window, I thought of myself so long ago. Had I ever been that young? Had I ever been that small? Had I ever been that strong? What had happened to the boy in me who collected everything—pennies, bugs, dried leaves. My goodness, I even collected moss from trees and bits of shells from our trips to the sea when even a small fragment of a sand dollar or a conch seemed as rare and as valuable as silver and gold.

Going vertical mean, quite literally, to be perpendicular to the surface. The vertical line goes up and down verses side to side. When you go vertical, there is the opportunity to expand your writing to add dimension and perspective.

NOW YOU TRY THIS:

PROMPT. Go outside and sit still for a bit. Look around. Look up, down, right, left and so on. Feel the wind, the cool, the sun. Listen to the birds, the traffic and the dog that barks across the street. Be for a while.

Now write, 20 minutes at the most and try to infuse your writing with both details and your own consciousness. Submit here, in the comment section and I'll make some suggestions and give feedback! Good luck.

Listen In: 10/27 Teleseminar

2011-10-30T02:23:00.000-07:00

This call about downloading, which is the essential and too often passed over first step to memoir writing. Listen in on the call and take notes. This was a helpful conversation that will help you become a better memoir writer!

Learn more about how to download: Click Here

Announcing: Adoption Awareness Month

2011-10-28T12:54:00.000-07:00

Did you know that every November a Presidential Proclamation launches activities and celebrations nationwide to increase awareness around adoption?

It's true.

Adoption is a huge deal in the U.S. with 125,000 children adopted annually according to the Evan B. Donaldson Institute.

As a two time adoptee, I join this national conversation to offer a unique forum of conversation--the live teleseminar--to discuss HEALING & THE ADOPTEE. Adoptees are too often shoved into a corner, most often a place we put ourselves. We are the silent sufferers and we are the adaptors.

Can we speak up?
Can we share our stories?
Can we transcend our adoptions?

Each conversation this month will take on these questions and more!

Schedule

Wed, Nov. 2 & 9 @ 1:15 p.m. PST to 2:45 p.m. PST
Featuring: Jeanette Yoffe, Trish Lay & Brian Stanton

Jeanette Yoffe, M.A., M.F.T., earned her Masters in Clinical Psychology, specializing in children, from Antioch University in June of 2002. She treats children with serious psychological problems secondary to histories of abuse, neglect, and /or multiple placements. She has specialized for the past 10 years in the treatment of children who manifest serious deficits in their emotional, cognitive, and behavioral development.

Trish Lay coaches & motivates people to make positive life change. As an adoptee, she has asked herself: "Who am I?" As she got older it turned to "What is life’s purpose for me?" Trish asks these questions of herself and poses them to others. She has been a force of motivation and inspiration for twenty years.

Brian Stanton wrote about his reunion and issues around identity in his original solo play BLANK, performed in L.A., NY, Kansas City, Dallas, and Orlando. BLANK has also been seen at national adoption conferences for the Concerned United Birth-parents & The American Adoption Congress. In March of 2012, Brian will bring BLANK to the Alliance for the Study of Adoption and Culture 4th International Conference in Claremont, CA.

Watch an except from BLANK:

Sunday, Nov. 13 @ 11:00 a.m PST
Featuring: Nancy Verrier, Speaker, Author & Therapist

As a licensed MFT (marriage and family therapist) Nancy Verrier has been practicing psychotherapy and counseling in Lafayette, California, for over 20 years. Her specialty is working with people affected by relinquishment and adoption. Her books include the groundbreaking Primal Wound & Coming Home to Self.

Sunday, Nov. 20 @ 11 a.m. PST

Featuring: John Sobraske, MA Adoption Attachment Counseling
DETAILS TO COME

Do not miss these incredible conversations which will also be recorded and provided to those who sign up! CLICK ON THIS LINK, scroll down to the registration form, sign up and I will send a confirmation of your registration for these events and details on how to join in the calls.

Book Talk: Firebird by Mark Doty

2011-10-26T11:55:00.000-07:00

Posted by Anne Gudger: writer, mother, teacher & all around STH (super terrific human).

Poet, memoirist, deep thinker, amazing observer: Mark Doty is all this and more. Firebird—a gay coming-of-age story--is an incredible testament to his remarkable talent. Here we meet young Doty: a ten-year-old in a top hat, cane, and red chiffon scarf, interrupted while belting out Judy Garland’s “Get Happy” by his shocked mother who declares, “Son, you’re a boy!”

Doty’s memoir is lyrical and heartbreaking. Doty navigates his twisted family—where alcoholism, sorrow and repression rein and continues to seek beauty even as his life is swamped in ugly. In the first chapter Doty rifles through his sister’s drawer of precious trinkets:

it’s like a pirate chest opened in a movie, little glimmers brilliant on the faceted surfaces of the treasures, little musical chimes sounding as if these were audible jewels. . chiffon. . . tulle. . . Glittery ribbons, carnations made from Kleenex clipped with a bobby pin and fringed, just so, then unfolded into a burst of imitation blossom, one drop of cologne at the center. Scents, powders, delicious nail colors. . .

Doty uses these objects to dive into his story, into his memory. The objects are a way in, an opening for rumination. I love the richness of Doty’s world. The scenes he creates from his childhood show the poet he is in their depth and breadth. Equally I love how he steps back and looks at memory: how it functions, how we use it as writers

Memoir is memory. It’s a rendering of experiences, the feel of the experiences more than verifiable facts. In an interview in “The Atlantic Online” (November 10, 1999) Doty says: “I like the formal elasticity of memoirs very much. They alternately behave like novels, like essays, like travel writing, like poems—and that sort of synthesis lends itself to making discoveries. I’m especially drawn to those memoirs that place the act of remembering in the foreground—those that take memory itself as part of their subject and examine the action of making a story out of what is remembered.”

Doty does this beautifully in Firebird. I return again and again to a passage that’s near the end of the book when I need a reminder, inspiration to infuse my writing:

“What we remember,” wrote the poet who was my first teacher of the art, “can be changed. What we forget we are always.” Dick was right: We live the stories we tell; the stories we don’t tell live us. What you don’t allow yourself to know controls and determines; whatever’s held to the light “can be changed”—not the facts, of course, but how we understand them, how we live with them. Everyone will be filled by grief, distorted by sorrow; that’s the nature of being a daughter or a son, as our parents are also. What matters is what we learn to make of what happens to us.

Listen In: 10/20 Teleseminar

2011-10-23T14:21:00.000-07:00

Michelle O'Neil, author of The Daughter of the Drunk at the Bar , graced us with her presence and her perspective about self publishing in today's market.

You will be surprised and delighted by the opportunities available to writers today. There are lots of options for you and your art.

Listen and please, leave your comment. Tell me your publishing story below and share this recording.

Writing Tip #9: To Self Publish or Not?

2011-10-17T13:30:00.000-07:00

Michelle O'Neil and I have known each other for at least eight years. She was my first student, in my first workshop, high in the mountains of Colorado. My first writing workshop was eclectic and terrifying. Michelle and I became fast friends and I've followed her writing path ever since. She has gone on to create a wonderful weblog and to form writing collectives in her world (all while raising to kids and sustaining her marriage to Hot-Toddy). Michelle is a dynamo and I am so happy to feature her this week in my teleseminar series. Michelle will tell us about her decision to go the route of independent publishing. I hope you enjoy her insights and are inspired to think about your own project in a new light.

Do not miss this free teleseminar, Thurs, Oct. 20th at 11:30 a.m. Send your questions to me at Jennifer@jenniferlauck.com.

Register Here Now!

I decided to publish Daughter of the Drunk at the Bar independently because I value my work and wanted to make it available for people to read. The traditional publishing industry is quite unhealthy right now, and it seemed like a good idea to take another mode of transportation, rather than beg for admission on a sinking ship.

Literary agents kept telling me, "The writing is beautiful, but I don't think I can sell your book." I am not a celebrity. I've no big platform to stand on. With less money to throw around these days, it's my belief that most traditional publishers want ready made superstars and are not as interested in finding talented new authors to cultivate. While I felt I'd eventually land an agent, I also worried my sweet little book would get lost in that world. I believe some books need time.

Indie publishing allows me to publish and build a readership through word of mouth. I don't have to worry about earning out an advance. I don't have to worry about being dropped (yet locked into a contract) if my book doesn't sell like gangbusters right out of the gate. I can keep fanning the flame, and I am learning so much through this process about book publishing and about myself.

Many traditionally published authors give up a lot of money and creative control in exchange for someone else who handles the details. While I'd rather be writing than learning all about royalties, formatting and cover making, I accept that all this effort and research will serve me down the road, especially with the rising emergence of e-books. We all love a book in hand but the ease of e-readers is changing everything. Savvy authors are reluctant to give publishing houses huge cuts for the electronic versions of their books, since it costs practically nothing to distribute them. Below are some tips for those interested in indie publishing:

1) Hire professional editors! Shop around. SheWrites has an "Experts for Hire" section with many resources.

2) Hire professional formatters to fit your MS into the different e-reader device formats. While you can do this yourself, there is a learning curve and it is cheap to hire out. Smashwords has their own list of people willing to do this for about $35.00, and their format fits most e-reader devices. I also had success with a company called Kindle Conversion getting my book formatted for Amazon's Kindle Store, for $75.00.

3) Make your book available in as many formats as possible. Daughter of the Drunk at the Bar is available in paperback on Amazon, in e-book form on Smashwords, (where it can be downloaded for reading on your computer screen or virtually any e-reader, and Amazon's Kindle Store. I am also looking into making an audio version, for Podiobooks, which would be available on a good faith donation basis. It is important to provide readers ease of access to your to your work.

With e-books and print-on-demand options, it costs very little to self-publish these days. Would you consider taking this route to get your writing out there? Why or why not?

Some links of interest for those considering self-publishing:

JAFO

Several goodies from JA Konrath here, here, and here.

Bob Mayer on David Gaughran

Women on Writing

Publisher's Weekly

Write a Vivid Scene in Seven Steps

2011-10-12T09:51:00.000-07:00

Phase II: Craft Your Memoir
Write a Vivid Scene in Seven Easy Steps
MP3 Download & PDF Handouts

$125.00 value for just $7.50

You will learn:
1. how to place your narrator in the moment.
2. how make your writing alive and vivid.
3. how to notice nature and bring into your writing.
4. the definition of a scene.
5. why scene matters and what are the key elements.

Download and Go

Take Yourself on the Hero's Journey

2011-10-10T09:53:00.000-07:00

This suggestion came from a student who studied Pathways to Bliss by Joseph Campbell.

INSTRUCTION: The basic story of the hero journey involves giving up where you are, going into the realm of adventure, coming to some kind of symbolically rendered realization, and then returning to the field of normal life.

PROMPT QUESTIONS:

1) Where am I?
2) Where am I going?
3) What’s my threshold?
4) Who are my teachers?
5) What tokens, images, mantras am I carrying to keep me on the path?
6) What am I giving up?
7) What am I finding?
8) Darkness and danger along the way? That’s where the gold is.
9) How am I going to return to normal life?

EXAMPLE ESSAY: I am at the edge, where grass meets concrete. The dried canes of wild blackberry bushes arc and tangle together. They send shadows against a gray wood fence that looks like bad cursive writing. It’s hot out. Summer hot. I’m wearing a tank top and a light skirt, July clothes at the end of September. Every year, Indian summer catches me by surprise. It’s like one last roar of a lion before the autumn show begins.

I have an inflated plastic bag that holds two hundred medium sized crickets. I didn’t count them but the guy who bagged them did.

They are not quite brown, they are more like beige with long filament tentacles and slippery legs. They cluster in the bottom of the bag and in the wells of a section of cardboard egg crate.

The crickets are intended to be lizard food. They live their lives, until they are sold, in these glass tanks at the pet store. I can get one hundred for five bucks. Two hundred cost ten.

~

My son forgot his exercise pants and P.E. is sixth period. If he doesn’t suit up, he gets a lower grade and this is upsetting. He wants to do well. He’s shooting for straight A’s.

I discovered the pants as I sorted the darks from the whites. As soon as I saw them under a t-shirt and did the math about his day, I tossed back my own plans to get into the office early.

I washed the pants, threw them in the dryer and while I waited, that’s when I decided to get some minutia from the store, pick up the gold name sliders that have been waiting a week now and will be affixed to my man’s office door and since the sliders were next to the pet store and I had ten extra dollars in cash, that’s when I ordered up the crickets.

~

I have been alive for forty-six years, almost forty seven and nearly every day I have eaten some kind of animal—chicken, oyster, cow, tuna, cod, salmon, pig. I never really thought about it until one day I did. I thought: my body is made up animals who once were alive and now they are not.

And then there are the spiders I’ve killed—willfully. I just sucked one up in the vacuum cleaner yesterday and I squished five others the day before. They were just babies, spilling in a panic, over the hardwood floor. I couldn’t have all those spiders going everywhere. We were having a birthday party that night.

And the mosquitoes I’ve slapped and the bugs I’ve stepped on while not paying attention.

I figure I need to free at least twenty two thousand crickets before I undo the bad karma of all the life I’ve taken while living my own life. I’ve freed about a three thousand.

~

My man got a letter from his ex. It arrived on his birthday. Certified mail. She sent it to his work.

He opened it. He read it. Over and over again. She wrote how their son—the one who doesn’t talk to him anymore—is doing just great. She was making a point about how the boy doesn’t need his father in his life. It’s a sword she jabs over and over again and has been jabbing since the boy was old enough to walk.

She’s pissed that her own father left when she was a little girl only she forgot that part of her own story and keeps taking her rage out on this gentle, quiet man who won’t defend himself. She’s not very sporting that way.

~

When my man gets upset, he becomes like a turtle in hibernation. His head sinks lower on his neck or maybe his neck contracts toward his spine. I’m not quite sure what happens but six foot four becomes six foot two and then he’s like a tired old man who has no neck at all. He slumps and hangs his head. His eyes are rimmed red and he weeps. He goes so deep into himself, diving into his personal ocean of regret that I can’t reach him. He seems to forget my name and where we live and what we are doing together. He slips away.

All my life, it’s been hard to trust people. I’m always on the lookout for their flaw. No matter how hard I will myself to change, my brain has been formed by losses in my own life. I want to be here, remembering that everything is okay but then this becomes a turtle in hibernation and snap. I’m gone.

I curse and accuse and blame, talking a mile a minute—pure trash—and while I talk, actually yell and rage, I rearrange furniture and vacuum corners and kill spiders. I don’t think about what I’m eating and yes, I end up having a tuna sandwich or some other form of meat.

~

There is only enough oxygen for the crickets to live for about thirty minutes.

I step into the ragged remains of the blackberry bushes and over to a corner were there are layers of dead and rotting leaves. As I go, I loosen the rubber band around the top of the bag and the crickets wriggle as if they know something is going to happen.

In the distance is my son’s school and it’s only third period. I’ve got plenty of time. I can hear a teacher lead a tap dance class in one of the outer buildings. She counts beats for the students and in response comes the sound metal shoes on the wood floor. It’s a crazy, busy, powerful sound of youthful energy being focused and released.

In one quick move, I turn the bag over and the bugs pour out. They land on the leaves in a cluster and are quick to flee in a small circle that gets wider and wider. I am creeped out by their pure ugliness and am fascinated by their lack of hesitation. They know what to do with this opportunity.

I step back and back and finally get back to the sidewalk. In my wake, the bugs scatter in an even wider circle. They run, they scurry and then they are gone.

I love them for wanting to be free. I am happy to know they aren’t going to be lizard food. And I want freedom as badly as they do. I wish I could just get it right.

I've heard spiritual teachers say liberation is easy but it doesn’t seem easy. Sometimes I feel as trapped as bug, just waiting for my own funeral.

When all the bug are gone, I go up the sidewalk to my son’s school, past leggy rose bushes of red and pink and yellow flowers in their final bloom. I think of my man, at work where he teaches the healing arts and helps other people feel better. I hope he’s happier today.

In the school office, I pass the clean pants to a lady who sits at a chuncky dark wood desk and has a nice smile.

“I’ll get these to him, right away,” she says and I imagine my son, called out of class and how happy he'll be to know that his mother showed up for him. She's paying attention. She's a hero--at least to him.

EXAMPLE ANSWERS TO INITIAL PROMPT:

1) I am standing at the edge of the sidewalk. I am facing a bramble of spiky bushes.
2) I'm going to step off the concrete and into the wild land.
3) The threshold is, practically speaking, the sidewalk (domesticity) and the wild land. And it is the spontaneous flow of a day verses my previous plans to be in the office.
4) Freeing living creatures, doomed to peril of human (or other animal consumption) is a traditional Tibetan practice of monks who traditionally freed live fish from open markets (after purchasing them of course). This practice is considered a way to increase a practitioners merit.
5) Images to stay on path are the images from my own childhood trauma, that of the ex-wife and the turtle going into shell.
6) Money, time, my plan for the day.
7) My owe desire to be liberated.
8) I am scared of bugs! And of being a bad mother like my mother was to me. And of being abandoned again.
9) I return by seeing myself as a hero--to my son but also, better yet, to myself.

DID YOU ENJOY THIS PROMPT?

HUNGRY FOR MORE INSTRUCTION, INSIGHT, ADVICE?

Phase II: Craft Your Memoir
The Hero's Journey: On Reflection
MP3 Download & PDF Handouts

$125.00 value for just $7.50

You will learn:
1. what the hero's journey is and how to put this into your memoir work.
2. how to answer a series of questions that will lead to an essay.
3. what it takes to dive more deeply into your own story.

Download & Go

Writing Tip #8: Your Journey Into Memoir Land

2011-10-04T12:43:00.000-07:00

This is a guest post by Linda Joy Myers who is the founder of the National Association of Memoir Writers out of Berkeley. Linda is a therapist and a writing teacher, so she brings a very holistic view of the process. Enjoy her post and share your comments below. I want to hear what you think.

When we write a memoir, we embark upon a journey—to the land of memory, to the heart of who we are and were, to the past, to discovery. We honor those we loved, we name things that were never named. The memoir also becomes like an archeological dig. We discover new aspects of ourselves we didn't know. We discover memories, insights, and knowledge—or they seem to discover us!

Writing a memoir is so much more about an exploratory adventure toward self-knowledge than most people imagine it will. At first, we start off excited about our writing, our book, but somewhere along the way—in the middle is where it happens for most people—we find ourselves doubting our memories and our writing, and we find ourselves sinking into a morass of questions and doubts.

Should I be writing this—what will the family say? I didn't realize that I would write about abuse—I didn't plan that but now that’s what keeps coming out. I find so many layers of the story, I’m overwhelmed. I want to stop writing—why did I start this anyway, it’s harder than I expected. I find myself crying, I want to put aside the feelings that are coming up. After all, didn't I talk about this enough in therapy? I just want to write the happy stuff. Can’t I just do that? I decided to leave out the things that the family doesn’t want me to write. But if I do, there won’t be much left.

While writing is not therapy, nor is the writing group a therapy group, the truth is that writing a memoir is healing and can be therapeutic—the root of therapeutic means “healing.” Another word for it is transformation. Another word: change.

Writing a memoir will change you—for the better, but you have to go through the process, you have to write and keep writing deeper and deeper into the layers of your life to find the other side, to discover the gifts that writing a memoir will give you. Your story will teach you, it’s a path of knowledge, according to Dr. James Pennebaker, the psychologist who researched the power of writing to heal.

You need to take care of yourself, your soul, your heart, and your body as you continue to write, dig, learn, and return for more.

1. Accept that writing your memoir will take longer to complete than you want it to.

2. You need to stock up supplies for this project: Kleenex, writing pals, support, quiet time, and lots of permission. Oh, and tea. Lots of tea. It has chemicals that calm you down. The English have something there!

3. Allow the writing process to guide you toward the unwanted stories, images, and memories. They will be your teacher. Tune in and listen to them.

4. Be open to the stories that want to come through you. Listen to your body.

5. Alternate “dark” and “light” stories—take care of your emotional balance.

6. Invite your unconscious to help you write and remember. Write before bed, as soon as you wake up. Journal questions you want to dream about.

7. Treat your writing with respect. File it so you can find it. Back up your files. Print out your work and put it in a notebook. Act like a “real” writer!

8. Find a mentor who has been on the journey. After all, Cinderella had the fairy godmother and Frodo had Gandalf.

QUESTION: How is your memoir writing process unfolding?

Don't forget the Oct. 21st Telesummit hosted by Linda, it's going to be a fabulous conversation with a wide variety of memoir experts including myself. See you there.

Listen in now on the
Oct. 6th Teleseminar
with Linda Joy Myers
and Jennifer Lauck

Book Talk: Peter Pan by T.S. Barrie

2011-10-03T09:00:00.000-07:00

Sublime Character Development

I was reading this classic to the kids and found that I couldn’t put it down. Peter Pan, written by Sir James Mathew Barrie in the 1800’s is a solid model for character development.

Barrie was the son of a motherless daughter. His mother, Margaret, lost her own mother when she was eight years old. Margaret became fully responsible for her household at that time.

Barrie was born in Scotland and was the ninth child of ten. When he was six years old, his older brother died in an ice skating accident. The death was devastating to Margaret Barrie and to help compensate for her grief (and because he was the one home with her), Barrie would wear his dead brothers clothing. Eventually Barrie and his mother entertained each other with stories from her childhood and the sharing of adventure books like Robinson Caruso. Barrie learned to be a vivid storyteller—as a way to offer consolation to his mother. His mother took comfort in the fact that her dead son would remain a boy forever and this was the birth of the character of Peter Pan.

Educated at the University of Edinburgh, Barrie wrote drama reviews for a newspaper. Eventually he turned to the theater and wrote plays.

When Barrie wrote Peter Pan, it was a stage production and therein lays the “ah-ha” for me. The character development on the pages is so deep and complete, it boggles the mind but when I consider how much an actors character must be created in advance in order for actors to fully enter the role—I understand.

For me, Barrie’s brilliance is in the way he places each person on the page as a personality verses a physical being. Barrie goes beyond hair color and height and into persona. Barrie gives his characters spectrum.

Mrs. Darling is written about thus: “She was a lovely lady, with a romantic mind and such a sweet mocking mouth. Her romantic mind was like the tiny boxes, one within the other, that comes from the puzzling East, however many you discover there is always one more; and her sweet mocking mouth had one kiss on it that Wendy could never get, thought there it was, perfectly conspicuous in the right-hand corner.”

Mr. Darling: “Mr. Darling used to boast to Wendy that her mother not only loved him but respected him. He was one of those deep ones who know about stocks and shares. Of course no one really knows, but he quite seemed to know, and he often said stocks were up and shares were down in a way that would have made women respect him.”

The two of them described: “Mrs. Darling loved to have everything just so, and Mr. Darling had a passion for being exactly like his neighbors; so of course, they had a nurse.”

Peter Pan: “It is humiliating to have to confess that this conceit of Peter’s was one of his most fascinating qualities. To put it with brutal frankness, there was never a cockier boy.”

And one more. Hook! “In the midst of them, the blackest and largest jewel in that dark setting, reclined James Cook…In person he was cadaverous and blackavized, and his hair was dressed in long curls, which at a little distance looked like black candles, and gave a singularly threatening expression to his handsome countenance.”

I’m sorry to write so many examples but the character sketches are enthralling. Consider that the book is only 143 pages long and yet Barrie keeps describing his characters all the way to his ending—so the reader continues to have the depth of each person’s being-ness throughout.

Why did I spend so much time looking at Barrie’s beginnings? Well, as I look at his work critically, I felt his childhood was crucial. I don’t want to analyze him but rather wanted to get at the depths of what makes him such a fine storyteller and character creator. He lived a soulful life—in a soulful connection to his mother as healer (or attempted healer) of her deep grief over the death of her son (his brother) which likely triggered her early pain from the death of her own mother and thus the death of her own childhood. It’s the old adage: great depth comes from great heartbreak or what doesn’t kill you makes you…a better storyteller.

Barrie pays attention to personality and even soul and to me, that is the basis of great story telling.

Writing Tip #7: Keep Your Words Simple

2011-09-27T14:46:00.000-07:00

Simplicity isn't just for Zen Buddhist Monk or for nature. Simple language actually makes you more believable. Back when I was a TV reporter, we were taught to write to a sixth grade mind--not because viewers lack intelligence but because people who feel "left out" of a conversation will turn the channel. Nothing alienates faster than a lot of high falutin' fancy talk!

This article, from the web, is one of my class handouts because I love the information and totally agree. I've highlighted some of the text to help you get the point. Read on!

Speak and write using unambiguous language and people will believe you.
I've just deleted a rather abstract introduction I wrote to this article about truth. The reason? I noticed I wasn't taking the excellent advice offered in a recent article published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. That advice is simple: if you want people to believe you, speak and write concrete.

There are all sorts of ways language can communicate truth. Here are some solid facts for you:

1) People usually judge that more details mean someone is telling us the truth,
2) We find stories that are more vivid to be more true,
3) More raw facts make unlikely events more likely.

But all these involve adding extra details or color. What if we don't have any more details? What if we want to bump up the believability without adding to the fact-count?

Just going more concrete can be enough according to a recent study by Hansen and Wanke (2010).
Compare these two sentences:

Hamburg is the European record holder concerning the number of bridges.
In Hamburg, one can count the highest number of bridges in Europe.
Although these two sentences seem to have exactly the same meaning, people rate the second as more true than the first. It's not because there's more detail in the second—there isn't. It's because it doesn't beat around the bush, it conjures a simple, unambiguous and compelling image: you counting bridges.

Abstract words are handy for talking conceptually but they leave a lot of wiggle-room. Concrete words refer to something in the real world and they refer to it precisely. Vanilla ice-cream is specific while dessert could refer to anything sweet eaten after a main meal.

Verbs as well as nouns can be more or less abstract. Verbs like 'count' and 'write' are solid, concrete and unambiguous, while verbs like 'help' and 'insult' are open to some interpretation. Right at the far abstract end of the spectrum are verbs like 'love' and 'hate'; they leave a lot of room for interpretation.

Even a verb's tense can affect its perceived concreteness. The passive tense is usually thought more abstract, because it doesn't refer to the actor by name. Perhaps that's partly why fledgling writers are often told to write in the active tense: to the reader it will seem more true.

Hansen and Wanke give three reasons why concreteness suggests truth:

Our minds process concrete statements more quickly, and we automatically associate quick and easy with true (check out these studies on the power of simplicity). We can create mental pictures of concrete statements more easily. When something is easier to picture, it's easier to recall, so seems more true. Also, when something is more easily pictured it seems more plausible, so it's more readily believed.

So, speak and write solidly and unambiguously and people will think it's more true. I can't say it any clearer than that.

From: PSYBlog

Fall Classes

2011-09-13T23:56:00.000-07:00

Memoir is the hottest genre in publishing today. Why? People love to read life stories--especially life stories that are thoughtful and well rendered.

The Master Class Series inspires you to create writing that is both. In Portland, we meet Monday nights, beginning Sept. 19 & ending on Nov. 14, from 5:30 - 9:00.

The Master Class is devoted to the development of skill in the area of scene, point of view, arc, plot, dialogue, setting and detail infusion. You will also learn about the skillful navigation of reflective writing and how to explore memory without being confined or limited. While this is a class geared toward the memoir writer, fiction writers are welcome too.

How Does Class Work?
The first 90 minutes of each class will be dedicated to straight forward teaching on craft and I will make use of prompts so that you will be writing--in class--and at home.

Six readers have their writing (20-25 pages in length) work-shopped twice during the course of the term. This portion of the Master Class--which will be the second 90 minutes--is a teaching for the entire class. We learn from each other in this class. Experience is the best teacher. When you see a skilled writer have work examined, with close attention paid to structure, composition and scene, you will learn more than you can imagine.

Cost: $350.00 for the non-reader (space available, advance conversation required)

$500.00 for the work-shopped student (standby spots are being taken).

Email me at Jclauck@gmail.com

A Zero-Circle by Rumi

2011-09-03T12:28:00.000-07:00

Be helpless and dumbfounded,
unable to say yes or no.

Then a stretcher will come
from grace to gather us up.

We are too dulleyed to see the beauty.
If we say "Yes we can," we'll be lying.

If we say "No, we don't see it,"
that "No" will behead us
and shut tight our window into spirit.

So let us not be sure of anything,
besides ourselves, and only that, so
miraculous beings come running to help.

Crazed, lying in a zero-circle, mute,
we will be saying finally,
with tremendous eloquence, "Lead us."

When we¹ve totally surrendered to that beauty,
we'll become a mighty kindness.

- Jellaludin Rumi
( Mathnawi IV, 3748-3754
translated by Coleman Barks)

Fresh Writing: Memoir & Time Travel

2011-07-31T04:13:00.000-07:00

When we write memoir, what we are actually doing is taking a journey—with story as our vehicle—into the lost, hidden and/or protected parts of our earlier “selves.” IE: I’m going to tell you about my still born baby, An Exact Replica of a Figment of my Imagination by Elizabeth McCracken, or the nervous breakdown my mother had when I was little, The Liar’s Club by Mary Karr, or the year I admitted myself to an mental institution, Girl Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen, or the years my father molested me and my sisters, Driving with Dead People by Monica Holloway.

Each of these writers, and I would suggest all memoirists, go on a mission into the shadows and indeed relive experiences of the past—it could be the recent past or the far distant past but no matter, unless you are writing about this moment NOW, you are writing about the past and that is a form of time travel.

Equipped with our computers, our courage, pots of tea or coffee and a few hours on the clock each day, we lower ourselves down into the past, sit ourselves down somewhere on the time line and start looking around with a flashlight, or a lamp or perhaps a hearty fire we’ve built at the hearth. We then pull out story telling tools and start describing what we see via written description. EG: what’s in front of you, behind you, over your head, under your feet, what city are you in, what state, what country, what’s going on with nature, what is moving around you (cars, people, butterflies), who are the other people in this place, what are they wearing, carrying, saying, suggesting, what are you wearing, carrying, feeling, tasting, touching, smelling, seeing and saying.

What comes next in our observation is the obvious response to what you are describing or remembering. EG: What the heck do you feel about all that’s going on and what you do, as the observer of all that is going on feel about it now? What is surprising, amazing, stunning, remarkable, revelatory and inspiring? What is scary about what is going on? What is different that what you expected? What is important?

It all sounds simple enough, when written about in this way but memoir writing is hardly simple. In fact, it is one of the hardest things I know because a writer isn’t going back and lowering herself into any old past and sitting on any old timeline with a flashlight, she is going back to her own past and her timeline and as a result reliving an event that was so hard, so heartbreaking, so frightening and/or so challenging, it had to be shut away into the shadows in order that she could carry on with her life.

On her journey back, a writer can forget that she is here, now, telling the story and be caught in the past like one is caught in a terrible dream. The brain, its messages wired into primal places of limbic region will send all manner of signals about how the body should respond because the brain doesn’t know the difference between what has happened and what is happening. A writer will find herself crying, laughing, sweating, frozen with shock and even scared to death as if that rapist is at her back again and about to throw her down to the ground (Lucky by Alice Seabold).

Blink, stand up, shake your arms and your legs and take a walk around the block, but still the writer is likely shaken to the core by what she’s relived in that dark place. As Mary Karr says of writing memoir: “it takes endurance.”

What is most interesting to me in this process of writing about the past, especially about our childhood, is that we will also meet our selves as we were all those years ago. And when this happens, when we come to our former self face to face, we have a surprising, unexpected and glorious opportunity to be quiet and to listen. In fact, I would suggest that this “meeting” is ultimately the goal of what we are doing and the way to find voice in our memoir narrative. The part of ourselves, that lost part in many cases, I believe has been waiting for our return and is eager to reintegrate with the current self. I see this phenomenon a lot like one might think of a split hair.

Imagine, as life happens to us, at age three, four, seven, ten and so on, we have sharp, intense, scary, even life threatening events take place. At each of these junctures, the hair—that is the life energy—splits a little from the central core. A lifetime of these events leaves us with a heedful of split ends. In going back, interacting and learning from our past experience, we smooth the ends back into the central line and bring ourselves to wholeness in a way—gathering up the energy of those split off parts.

Here is where the work gets tricky. When a writer goes back in time, dropping into the past, she sometimes forgets that she is both part and separate from that person of the past. It is also very important to make note that the future person—that time traveling writer—is without the wisdom of that past part of herself and so the writer/future being/time traveler has to do some hard work in order to step down and let the person from the past have some room to speak in her native tongue. It’s a bit like meeting an old friend in the coffee shop and catching up on how things are going.

The reason we split off from ourselves though is because it was too scary to stay and so when we left, we actually abandoned a part of ourselves and that self has a view that is very different than the one who got away.

An example I would supply is from my own writing in Blackbird where I went back on the timeline to my earliest memory of about five years of age. I dropped down on the time line and very quickly met little Jenny—age five—full of vitality, energy, story and sadness. My goodness could that child talk and I had forgotten that part of my lost self. Talk, talk, chat, chat, so much to say. Like most children. God love them.

Little Jenny, like a child would be, was also busy. She was nervous. She darted around and changed the subject quite a bit. Jenny of 1968 was like a moth that didn’t want to be caught, all beating wings and dust. And I, in meeting this little one, was thirty-four years old with a baby napping for just two hours. I was, I hate to say, a taskmaster on a mission to “write a book, sell that book, earn a living and prove to my husband I’m was a dead beat.” In short, I was not much for indulging little Jenny and her evasive ways. Once I found this remarkable little being, I wanted the girl to talk and talk NOW.

In response to my demands, Jenny didn’t settle down. No. She just vanished. Poof. Child gone.

Intially, furious that I had found her and then lost her, I shrugged Jenny off. What did I care? I told myself, as a former reporter I was smart and knew how to tell a story. I didn’t need her, I reasoned and preceded to write about my life (and my memory) as a detached, smart, know-it-all adult who was busy and full of herself.

My writing teacher (and all writers of this kind of craft need a teacher along the way) told me that I was very smart and knew how to tell a story but that was simply not good enough. “Get closer,” he insisted. “Show me your heart.”

That hurt.

My teacher was telling me that I had no heart and eventually I realized that my truest heart was in that chest of Jenny, that worried, frightened, wide eyed, busy little dear.

This was a brutal but important lesson. I could not bully my smaller self, not without becoming the very thing that Jenny feared the most—another untrustworthy adult. I had to become humble, deeply humble and offer myself as her servant. I brought Jenny what she craved—M&M’s and my typewriter. She talked and I typed. That’s how it worked.

Little Jenny spoke to me, oh yes, she spoke plenty, but it wasn’t my on my terms, it was on hers.

She taught me what was important to a child, what was really important and this was a lesson that served me well in mothering my children too. For children really do have a magical perspective and a point of view that is often tossed to the side by the more cynical and jaded adult.

In paying attention to Jenny (and this took a good deal of time and re-learning and patience on my part) I discovered the power of present tense writing and heavy attention to detail and the senses. Children live in the moment, they are wrapped up in their senses of taste, touch, smell, sound and sight and they are entranced by the smallest details that most adults would barely notice.

If you don’t know what children are like, because you don’t have them or don’t spend time with them, go watch kids. Go talk to them. Go ask them what is important and soon, they will tell you. A child’s parents are very important, her room, her stuffed animals, her toys, her siblings and her favorite (and least favorite) foods. All very important.

In writing Blackbird from the voice of Jenny, I asked her questions and talked to her about what mattered. From my questions came the stories of cats winding around each other in the hallway, warm banana nut bread dripping with melted pats of butter, That Man cologne, snarling big brothers, wide warm shafts of sunlight over shag carpet and the fast slap of an embrace as I ran to greet my cousin Tracy in her big house.

I relived my past with Jenny as my guide and for eighteen months walked through the dark halls and deep losses and worrisome nights. When she cried, I cried. When she worried, I worried. When she asked questions, I asked questions. When she needed to rest, I rested. When she needed a cookie, I needed a cookie. And when she was done, I was done.

I gathered little Jenny up into my arms to took her forward in time so that she could live with me and continue to inform my life with her unique and important perspective.

So often I work with writers who are furious about their inability to capture the right “voice” in their story. I have worked with writers, for years, who cannot seem to nail down the sound of their story teller and it is always the case that this writer has not surrendered to herself at the age that the story took place. That is a shame. Many writers will actually attempt to abuse the child they want to learn about abuse from. They will be filled with fear and outrage and make demands and not listen as well as they should.

A writer is not serving her life energy in this way and she is not paying attention to what needs to be seen. This kind of writer is hungry for the meat of the story, in hopes she’ll return with some great body of writing but in the process she is doing the same harm to herself that was done long ago. It’s a kind crazy cannibalism.

I can only tell a writer this. Be careful with yourself when you are in that past. Speak the language of your former self. Listen closely and write down every damn detail that former part of your self offers up. Become the secretary. Only in the most humble of place, as the writer who nods and types and keeps her mouth sealed in the process, can we get the story we search for and nail the “voice.”

I’ve often suggested writers even perform rituals with the former parts of themselves, taking themselves out to a meal or for a sundae or writing a letter. It’s always good to get out photos of that former self, perhaps make a little alter to your former self that is close to where you write so you can look, with a revert and sacred eye, at your self as you were so long ago. It all helps

Memoir is simple task but also a complexity. It is time travel and it is voice driven. If you cannot find the voice, you cannot tell the tale in a way that holds any kind of real interest or attention.

When you cannot find your voice, you know it in your gut. It’s this twisting, panicked feeling of “not rightness” and your words are stiff and whiny and hard to hear. Your teacher will tell you this, in more gentle terms, but she will (or should tell you) and that is the time for the writer to go back down into the past, once again, sit down on the time line and look with even more care.

Manuscript Review Service

2011-07-19T15:58:00.000-07:00

A writer needs help! It's hard to go at your art alone. But who do you trust? Who can you count on? Where will you get the best advice on your writing?

I am here to help you write the best book you can write. Part of what I offer is a manuscript review service that helps give you a sense of where your writing is at and if I can help escort you to an agent who can take you to the next step. Here is how this service works.

Phase I: Contact me at jennifer@jenniferlauck.com, send a note of interest and include an overview of the book as well as a personal bio.

I'll let you know my availability and will provide a contract which lays out what I will do in my initial read, including my fee and the deadline that I will meet to get back to you. (I usually take about thirty days to review a manuscript. The reading fee is $500 plus printing costs if I print myself.) After signing our contract, sending me a check or a payment via PayPal, you send your manuscript, with a SASE to my offices in Portland. You can alternatively send a PDF and a .doc of your book which I will print the PDF and that cost will be added to the reading fee.

If your book needs attention, I will submit a report about why and what I suggest. If it is good to go, I'll tell you where to send it with my blessing (and a $250.00 refund).

Phase II: If I can help you refocus, reframe and revise your book, I will propose an expanded reading with my team who will also read your book. Together we will create a full report, 8-10 pages long, which assesses the strengths of your book and gives advice on how to bring those strengths out. We'll also provide you with a questionnaire that gives us deeper insights into your process and your goals.

This expanded service is an additional $1000-$2000.00. If I include extensive line edits, the fee will move to the higher end of the range. Rest assured, you and I always agree on all costs prior to any being incurred.

Phase II takes about three weeks and is followed up with a meeting where you can ask questions that arise after you have read the report and looked through the edits.

Final Thoughts: There are a lot of people out there who offer to read your manuscript and who make a lot of promises. I put my word in writing and give you 150% of my attention--my best attention--to help you create the best book possible. I provide the highest quality review and service and to assure this, will provide you with a list of recommendations. Your money is important. Your book is important. I am here to take you and your writing seriously and give you a high quality response.

What the Hell Happened to Jennifer?

2011-07-14T11:08:00.000-07:00

According to experts in the field of "weblog" study, if you do not post, on your site, at least four days a week--your blog is "dead."

Is it true? Is there some all knowing "blog-God" who comes along to state the time of death and put the final stats of your blog demise in a record book?

Well, I'm here to testify (if it's true), there has been a miracle. This blog is alive, resuscitated and full of breath.

Now for the debrief.

Where have I been?

Over at the new teaching site. That is where I have been. Do you note there are now "two" weblogs. Can you imagine? Two? Talk about pressure.

Suffice to say I have been busy, busy, busy with obligations/teachings/speaking and working up to my eyeballs and I have a house and I am a wife and I am the Go-To Point Girl for Mr. 14 and Ms. 9 and their summer break is in full swing hot hot go go whew.

Here is a little good news. I perused the web and bring you--writer you--this amazing advice on your craft. Read carefully, apply advice, send me your pages and let's make your writing shine that much brighter.

Here's how to work together.
Here is where you go to listen to those fantastic free teleseminars.
And click right here for a link to get you all set up in the Beach Intensive.
Want to take a Master Class this fall? Well, click here.

And if you are eager to learn more about your craft as a writer, read on. This is a post well worth your time. HEY...do be a huge favor and leave me a comment so I know this site still has a pulse.

Writerisms and other Sins: A Writer’s Shortcut to Stronger Writing
Copyright © 1995 by C.J. Cherryh

Writerisms: overused and misused language. In more direct words: find ‘em, root ‘em out, and look at your prose without the underbrush.

1. am, is, are, was, were, being, be, been … combined with “by” or with “by … someone” implied but not stated. Such structures are passives. In general, limit passive verb use to one or two per book. The word “by” followed by a person is an easy flag for passives.

2. am, is, are, was, were, being, be, been … combined with an adjective. “He was sad as he walked about the apartment.” “He moped about the apartment.” A single colorful verb is stronger than any was + adjective; but don’t slide to the polar opposite and overuse colorful verbs. There are writers that vastly overuse the “be” verb; if you are one, fix it. If you aren’t one—don’t, because overfixing it will commit the next error.

3. florid verbs. “The car grumbled its way to the curb” is on the verge of being so colorful it’s distracting. {Florid fr. Lat. floreo, to flower.}If a manuscript looks as if it’s sprouted leaves and branches, if every verb is “unusual,” if the vocabulary is more interesting than the story … fix it by going to more ordinary verbs. There are vocabulary-addicts who will praise your prose for this but not many who can simultaneously admire your verbs as verbs and follow your story, especially if it has content. The car is not a main actor and not one you necessarily need to make into a character. If its action should be more ordinary and transparent, don’t use an odd expression. This is prose.This statement also goes for unusual descriptions and odd adjectives, nouns, and adverbs.

4. odd connectives. Some writers overuse “as” and “then” in an attempt to avoid “and” or “but,” which themselves can become a tic. But “as” is only for truly simultaneous action. The common deck of conjunctions available is:

* when (temporal)
* if (conditional)
* since (ambiguous between temporal and causal)
* although (concessive)
* because (causal)
* and (connective)
* but (contrasting)
* as (contemporaneous action or sub for “because”) while (roughly equal to “as”)

These are the ones I can think of. If you use some too much and others practically never, be more even-handed. Then, BTW, is originally more of an adverb than a proper conjunction, although it seems to be drifting toward use as a conjunction. However is really a peculiar conjunction, demanding in most finicky usage to be placed *after* the subject of the clause.

Don’t forget the correlatives, either … or, neither … nor, and “not only … but also.”

And “so that,” “in order that,” and the far shorter and occasionally merciful infinitive: “to … {verb}something.”

5. Descriptive writerisms. Things that have become “conventions of prose” that personally stop me cold in text.

* “framed by” followed by hair, tresses, curls, or most anything cute.
* “swelling bosom”
* “heart-shaped face”
* “set off by”: see “framed by”
* “revealed” or “revealed by”: see “framed by.” Too precious for words when followed by a fashion statement.
* Mirrors … avoid mirrors, as a basic rule of your life. You get to use them once during your writing career. Save them for more experience. But it doesn’t count if they don’t reflect … by which I mean see the list above. If you haven’t read enough unpublished fiction to have met the infamous mirror scenes in which Our Hero admires his steely blue eyes and manly chin, you can scarcely imagine how bad they can get.

* limpid pools and farm ponds: I don’t care what it is, if it reflects your hero and occasions a description of his manly dimple, it’s a mirror.As a general rule … your viewpoint characters should have less, rather than more, description than anyone else: a reader of different skin or hair color ought to be able to sink into this persona without being continually jolted by contrary information.Stick to what your observer can observe. One’s own blushes can be felt, but not seen, unless one is facing … .a mirror. See above.

* “as he turned, then stepped aside from the descending blow … ” First of all, it takes longer to read than to happen: pacing fault. Second, the “then” places action #2 sequentially after #1, which makes the whole evasion sequence a 1-2 which won’t work. This guy is dead or the opponent was telegraphing his moves in a panel-by-panel comic book style which won’t do for regular prose. Clunky. Slow. Fatally slow.

* “Again” or worse “once again.” Established writers don’t tend to overuse this one: it seems like a neo fault, possibly a mental writerly stammer—lacking a next thing to do, our hero does it “again” or “once again” or “even yet.” Toss “still” and “yet” onto the pile and use them sparingly.

6. Dead verbs. Colorless verbs.
* walked
* turned
* crossed
* run, ran
* go, went, gone
* leave, left
* have, had
* get, got

You can add your own often used colorless verbs: these are verbs that convey an action but don’t add any other information. A verb you’ve had to modify (change) with an adverb is likely inadequate to the job you assigned it to do.

7. Colorless verb with inadequate adverb: “He walked slowly across the room.”More informative verb with no adverb: “He trudged across the room,” “He paced across the room,” “He stalked across the room,” each one a different meaning, different situation. But please see problem 3, above, and don’t go overboard.

8. Themely English With apologies to hard-working English teachers, school English is not fiction English.Understand that the meticulous English style you labored over in school, including the use of complete sentences and the structure of classic theme-sentence paragraphs, was directed toward the production of non-fiction reports, resumes, and other non-fiction applications.The first thing you have to do to write fiction? Suspect all the English style you learned in school and violate rules at need. Many of those rules will turn out to apply; many won’t.{Be ready to defend your choices. If you are lucky, you will be copyedited. Occasionally the copyeditor will be technically right but fictionally wrong and you will have to tell your editor why you want that particular expression left alone.}

9. Scaffolding and spaghetti. Words the sole function of which is to hold up other words. For application only if you are floundering in too many “which” clauses. Do not carry this or any other advice to extremes.”What it was upon close examination was a mass the center of which was suffused with a glow which appeared rubescent to the observers who were amazed and confounded by this untoward manifestation.” Flowery and overstructured. “What they found was a mass, the center of which glowed faintly red. They’d never seen anything like it.” The second isn’t great lit, but it gets the job done: the first drowns in “which” and “who” clauses.In other words—be suspicious any time you have to support one needed word (rubescent) with a creaking framework of “which” and “what” and “who.” Dump the “which-what-who” and take the single descriptive word. Plant it as an adjective in the main sentence.

10. A short cut to “who” and “whom.”
* Nominative: who
* Possessive: whose
* Objective: whom

The rule:

1. treat the “who-clause” as a mini-sentence.If you could substitute “he” for the who-whom, it’s a “who.” If you could substitute “him” for the who-whom it’s a “whom.”The trick is where ellipsis has occurred … or where parentheticals have been inserted … and the number of people in important and memorable places who get it wrong. “Who … do I see?” Wrong: I see he? No. I see “him.” Whom do I see?

2. “Who” never changes case to match an antecedent. (word to which it refers)

* I blame them who made the unjust law. CORRECT.
* It is she whom they blame. CORRECT: The who-clause is WHOM THEY BLAME.
* They blame HER=him, =whom.
* I am the one WHO is at fault. CORRECT.
* I am the one WHOM they blame. CORRECT.
* They took him WHOM they blamed. CORRECT—but not because WHOM matches
HIM: that doesn’t matter: correct because “they” is the subject of “blamed” and “whom” is the object.
* I am he WHOM THEY BLAME. CORRECT. Whom is the “object” of “they blame.”

Back to rule one: “who” clauses are completely independent in case from the rest of the sentence. The case of “who” in its clause changes by the internal logic of the clause and by NO influence outside the clause. Repeat to yourself: there is no connection, there is no connection 3 x and you will never mistake for whom the bell tolls.

The examples above probably grate over your nerves. That’s why “that” is gaining in popularity in the vernacular and why a lot of copyeditors will correct you incorrectly on this point. I’m beginning to believe that nine tenths of the English-speaking universe can’t handle these little clauses.

11. -ing.

“Shouldering his pack and setting forth, he crossed the river … “

No, he didn’t. Not unless his pack was in the river. Implies simultaneity. The participles are just like any other verbal form. They aren’t a substitute legal everywhere, or a quick fix for a complex sequence of motions. Write them on the fly if you like, but once imbedded in text they’re hard to search out when you want to get rid of their repetitive cadence, because -ing is part of so many fully constructed verbs {am going, etc.}

12. -ness A substitute for thinking of the right word. “Darkness,” “unhappiness,” and such come of tacking -ness (or occasionally – ion) onto words. There’s often a better answer. Use it as needed.As a general rule, use a major or stand-out vocabulary word only once a paragraph, maybe twice a page, and if truly outre, only once per book. Parallels are clear and proper exceptions to this, and don’t vary your word choice to the point of silliness: see error 3.

Wed: Writing Tip #4 Character Matters

2011-07-06T05:30:00.000-07:00

This from the site Terrible Minds and I highly recommend you go read the whole post. It's fantastic!

The author, Chuck Wendig writes: Without character, you have nothing. Great plot? Robust storyworld? Potent themes? Elegant font? Matters little if your character is a dud. The punch might be delicious, but not if someone threw up in it. The character is why we come to the table. The character is our way through all those other things. We engage with stories because we relate to them: they are mirrors. Characters are the mirror-side version of “us” staring back. Twisted, warped, uncertain — but still us through and through.

This is a fantastic tip, for fiction writers and for all writers and certianly, without exception, the memoir writer. I will say it to writers again and again, "you must make your narrator someone we want to take a journey with." And yet writers are more concerned with telling the truth or backfilling a ton of tragic details or telling everything but the story of the narrator (ie: THEMSELVES). And here were go! It's not what happens to you (or your character, if you write fiction). What matters is that you write your well developed take of what happened. Your insight, as a questing, lost and even cynical soul--this is what makes you human on the page and what will have us travel with you through the complexity of your journey.

Enjoy Wendig's tips. He's a bright bulb-even if he swears a lot!

Book Talk: Me Talk Pretty by David Sedaris

2011-07-01T17:03:00.000-07:00

By Anne Gudger

Sun, heat and my garden which bursts with cherry tomatoes and herbs. Summer! My favorite time of year. Just like I store my sweaters during BBQ season, I also tend to tuck away my heavier reading which means Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way (a novel in 7 volumes) will have to wait for cooler, shorter days and shorter books take the stage.

Another joy of summer is that my my daughter is home from college and as soon as she was unpacked, we had a chance to swapped good summer books. As part of this exchange, she excavated Me Talk Pretty One Day from her room and handed it over. We both love David Sedaris for his wit, his sadness and his honesty. I love him so much, I've carried him on family vacations and read him out loud to my husband and kids. At Christmas one year my daughter read Holidays on Ice out loud and we laughed the whole way through. Something about Sedaris and his writing captures "family" for us. He tells the sad, funny and wicked truth.

If you are not familiar with him, Sedaris’ books are collections of essays and some short stories. And, they’re little glimpses into his life which ooze self-deprecation. He writes about his middle class upbringing, his Greek Heritage, his jobs, his education, his drug use, his homosexuality and all about life in France and London with his partner.

The man is damn funny. Not your Family Circus kind of ha-ha but the kind of humor you have to laugh with so you don’t cry.

In Me Talk Pretty he writes:

For the first twenty years of my life, I rocked myself to sleep. It was a harmless enough hobby, but eventually, I had to give it up. Throughout the next twenty-two years I lay still and discovered that after a few minutes I could drop off with no problem. Follow seven beers with a couple of scotches and a thimble of good marijuana, and it’s funny how sleep just sort of comes on its own. Often I never even made it to the bed. I’d squat down to pet the cat and wake up on the floor eight hours later, having lost a perfectly good excuse to change my clothes. I’m now told that this is not called ‘going to sleep’ but rather ‘passing out,’ a phrase that carries a distinct hint of judgment.

Or later he writes about learning French and via his honesty, I feel the reader gets a real person who messes around our with real language. It’s easy to picture him asking the butcher for lamb chops:

On my fifth trip to France I limited myself to the words and phrases that people actually use. From the dog owners I learned ‘Lie down,’ ‘Shut up,’ and ‘Who shit on this carpet?’ The couple across the road taught me to ask questions correctly, and the grocer taught me to count. Things began to come together, and I went from speaking like an evil baby to speaking like a hillbilly. ‘Is thems the thoughts of cows?’ I’d ask the butcher, pointing to the calves’ brains displayed in the front window. ‘I want me some lamb chop with handles on ‘em.’

Besides his humor, Sedaris is a fabulous storyteller. Read him for a laugh. Read him to see how he moves a piece along with strong dialogue. Read him to be reminded that if you survived your childhood, you have a ton of material to write about.

Wed: Writing Tip # 3 Mistakes I've Made

2011-06-29T17:18:00.000-07:00

This list was compiled based on my own experience of the last 18 years as a memoir writer and as a writer seeking publication. Of course you won't make any of these mistakes! But perhaps you know a writer or two who will. Pass it on.

• Overestimate their writing ability—don’t work hard enough on craft
• Look for the easy way out
• Trust the opinions of friends/family/spouses/kids
• Do not seek professional advice
• Do not invest in learning.
ie: will not part w/money for good teachers, workshops, books & advice.
• Only think about being finished
• Give up too early
• Worry about “not getting published”
• Don’t read enough
• Procrastinate

This list and an expanded list of 27 ways to procrastinate are over on the teaching site! Go visit and leave your comment.

Fresh Writing: Summer Break

2011-06-27T15:32:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's true! I am not writing because I am teaching up a storm and when I'm not teaching up a storm, I'm taking care of kids who are loose ends and if I'm not taking care of kids at loose ends, I'm working on this! The New Hard Copy Edition of The Writing Life Audio Series which arrived today! YAY!

Check it out and if you want a hard copy, which means a lovely four CD set, let me know and I'll ship one your way now.

If you are happy with digital download, which will save you money (and time)...that's cool too: Click here.

Book Talk: On Holiday!

2011-06-24T16:55:00.000-07:00

Anne is devoted but like most of us, she is also busy and her Book Talk contribution will be coming next week. I've got the tip that it's going to feature David Sedaris. Stay tuned and if you are looking for some fun, go down and read the post on writing and how to make your writing more active!

Writing Tip #2: "ing" & "ly" words

2011-06-22T12:20:00.000-07:00

Today's post is a combination of the Fresh Writing of Monday and The Writing Tip of each Wednesday.

I tell writers that in the early stages, they need to take a very close look at their word choices. Watch out for "ly" words and "ing" words.

Every time I give this very specific instruction, I get this quizzical look like, "why??"

Most are too polite to ask because this seems like a grammar lesson of some sort and they missed the lesson in school.

No, it's not true. You did not miss this lesson in school. This is my own personal "TIP." I press it out there as a way for you, as writers, to think more about your word choices and I often find that when a new writer tosses an "ly" or an "ing" word on the page it means they are being a bit lazy in word choices and a closer look reveals the writer is degenerating into "telling verses showing." These are not fatal mistakes but they are bad habits that adds a lot of time to your learning curve. Like you cut fat out of your diet when you want to get lean, cut these "ly" and "ing" words of your sentences and go for more active language.

Let me show you an example from my own writing. I pulled this scene from a memoir I wrote, five drafts back. This whole scene and character ended up on the cutting room floor. And look, I'm "ly" - ing and "ing" ing all over the place. See what I did here and come back next week to see my revision and my choices.

~

It’s early morning and I blink my eyes open to the gray cool light that is Portland in June. Heavy clouded skies hold our sun hostage until July, sometimes August. I like the cool seasons but others complain about the gray days. Portland is home to a lot of depressed people who fantasize about California, Hawaii, Mexico

Quince is inches from my face. He watches me as if this has been the case for hours. When he notices I am awake, he rolls his head on the pillow and looks up at the ceiling. It’s a purposeful move that begs for me to do our morning ritual called “the face.”

As I watch him, I flashback to last night, midnight and my arrival at the Portland International Airport. Quince was waiting just past the security area and had one rose in his long thin fingers. He was so happy to see me, almost relieved, as if I were his oxygen and his food. As we hugged, he was like a vine, cloying and suffocating.

All my thoughts, during my retreat and even before, circled around how I couldn’t take Quince and his over the top romance anymore but when I came home, alone, to the empty airport—I was happy to see him and happier to be wanted by someone.

We dropped my bags at my apartment, went to his place—firelight, music and his hungry hands that took my body to places beyond imagination.

In the dark of last night, it was perfect again and I told myself I was in love with Quince. We made whispered promises of our unending love and even a few plans about a future together as we drifted into a love-drugged sleep.

And now, here he is, waiting for me to do “the face.” It was a ritual I created at the beginning of our romance, when we’d spend all day in bed. I’d say, “I love this face,” and trace from his chin to his nose to his forehead.

As he waits, the light cutting away all fantasies, I cannot bring myself to do “the face.” I actually despise “the face.” I even hate that Quince expects “the face” treatment every morning. I hate how it’s enough for him, that perfect beginning to each day, only made more perfect by how, every night, he has another ritual I call “the neck,” where he presses his face into my neck, kisses my hairline and says, “I’m right here, all night, in your dreams—just a kiss away.”

Quince continues to wait. Patience is his thing but he can wait until the moon turns to cheese. I won’t do the face. Instead, I lean on my elbow and look around the apartment as if seeing everything for the first time. There are empty wine glasses by the dead fire. The one rose is on the carpet, wilted. The bed is surrounded, on all sides, by electric guitars, acoustic guitars, viola’s, a piano, an electric key board, goat hooves that you can shake to get a specific sound, flutes, recorders and other instruments with names I don’t know.

What am I doing here?
What have I done?
I’ve made a huge mistake.

“Shit,” I say, “look at the time.” I roll out of bed and hit the floor.

“Are you okay?” Quince calls.

The jolt hurts all my bones, even my jaw but I say, “yes, I’m fine. I’m perfect, I have to get the kids, I forgot.” I pat around for my underwear, my pants and my tank top. I’m scattered all over the place.

Quince is out of bed as fast as I am. “I thought Steve had them until this afternoon?” he whines.

“He does,” I say, “I mean, no, he doesn’t, I actually promised to take my son on a date, I forgot.” I’m tug on my panties and yank the bullshit story out of thin air. My heart beats so hard, I might faint.

In the bright light of this morning, Quince looks about a hundred years old. His body is a rickety bag of bones and the years of no-exercise have not been kind to his sagging belly and behind.

I used to tell myself his physique and looks didn’t matter. My ex husband had been drop dead gorgeous and look how well that worked out. No, I told myself, I loved Quince for his gentle kindness, his talent for making beautiful music from as little as a stick of wood and a nail, and for the praise and poetry that dripped like honey from his lips. I rationalized how Quince was a grown up, he was artistic, he was a genius but no matter how hard I try to get back to those old thoughts, I cannot find one good reason to stay here with this overgrown adolescent who is happy whiling away his days playing music and having me trace the outline of his nose.

I get into my shorts and yank my top over my head. Quince holds my bra on the end of one of his long fingers and his wilted penis is deflated in a nest of gray hair.

“So, I’ll see you later?” he asks.

“I’ll call you.”

I snap the bit of lace from his hand and thrust it into my purse. At the door, I shove my feet into my sandal.

Before he can get himself into his clothes and follow me to the car, I give him a quick kiss, clatter down two flights of stairs and dive into my car.

~

Anne, help me out here. Give me your two cents on "the grammar lesson."

Wed. Writing Prompt

2011-06-15T13:41:00.000-07:00

This is a recording of the free teleseminar from June 16, 2011 @ 11 a.m. PST. It was a wonderful call with more than 150 signed up!

Jason, from Vancouver, asked a fabulous question about his writing and when to submit for publication. Annette, from Seattle, was so brave and talks about her struggle over accepting deal from a small press. Great questions, deep thoughtful answers.

Listen and tell me what you think of this unique call.

To Listen Click Here

THE WRITING PROMPT FROM THE CALL:

1) Write down how you woke up and what you did this morning up the point you sit down to have breakfast. Write if you had a dream, all your early morning thoughts, fears, the weather, the people you spoke to and what you did.

2) On a second page, a morning when you were a small child and what you did that morning. It could have been a special morning or a terrible morning. Just one of your memories and if you can’t remember, imagine yourself on a morning.

3) Now, on a third page, write down a morning in the future, something you imagine, the perfect morning when you have your perfect life. Wake up from the perfect dream, living in the perfect place, having the perfect time in what you imagine in your perfect life.

This entire exercise should take no more than a hour. Write fast. To tell you the truth, this is really three writing exercises in one and the purpose of it is to have you travel through your mind for what was, what is and what you hope will be--in settings that are identical in order to see what arises.

Fresh Writing: Reason 556

2011-06-13T15:10:00.000-07:00

She's on the phone, my friend Anne, and she tells me about her dog who is on anti-depressants. The prescription costs a fortune.

"See, that's another reason not to have a dog," I quip.

We laugh.

"It's true," she agrees.

When we hang up, I pat myself on the back for being firm and not allowing a dog into my life. This is not easy. The kids are always on the look out. They have wanted one for years. But I will not relent. I have my list. I have great reason why not. It's not going to happen. Period.

~

And then it's another day. The same conversation with the same friend only now it's some other issue with her dog. The critter has fleas.

"Reason 422 not to get a dog," I joke.

We laugh again and when we hang up, I give myself a cramp patting myself on the back for not getting a dog.

~

Yet another day. My friend is just back from taking her dog to the vet because he won't stop licking himself and now his paw is raw from all that dog saliva.

"I know, I know," she says, "reason 556 not to get a dog."

Hysterical laughter follows. This becomes our inside joke.

~

She was known as my "only successful long term relationship." Her name was Carmel and she was a buff Cocker Spaniel--the runt of the litter--who cost me fifty bucks when I bought her at The Spokane Pet Center. I got her the year my brother, Bryan, killed himself. I was twenty years old.

I remember, near the end, how she wheezed and coughed with a tired heart. Carmel and I had weathered my depression over Bryan's suicide, my entry and exit into college and then in and out of being an investigative reporter. Together we had lived in a dozen apartments in Montana, Washington and Oregon. I snuck her in and out of "no dogs allowed" apartments and had traveled thousands of miles together in my car. She had been a silent witness as I went from a lonely solo act to a married-to-the-wrong guy bride, a divorcee, and then back-to-the-bride again when I married Steve. Carmel had escorted me through pregnancy and the early stages of motherhood. She had even--somewhat gracefully--endured a toddler who pulled her ears and sat on her a few times.

And then, finally, she was done. We both knew it. The light faded from her dark brown eyes and her body gave way.

In the bathroom, as she sat on the counter where I combed out her long blond fur, I buried my face into her side. "If you are going, sweet girl, please just go," I begged. "Please don't make me put you down."

Carmel licked my face while I asked her for this impossible obedience, die the way I want you to.

Two days later, she died in the night.

~

Reason #1 not to get a dog: You are not ready yet.

It's been twelve years since I lost my girl who became a reason to live at a time in my life when I had no reason to go on. My whole family--my adoptive family--had died and my young life felt unmoored, confused and without purpose. When Carmel arrived, it was 1983. I was just a child.

I guess I'll get a dog when the time is right, when my heart is ready again or maybe I won't. Sometimes there's only one dog for one life and when that dog is gone, that time has past.

What about you? Which pet did you lose and was he or she the love of your life??

Book Talk: A Review to Read

2011-06-10T12:50:00.000-07:00

Below is an excerpt of a review of Found which I found smart, deep and true:

Seeking a Mother’s Touch

by: Lindsay Champion

...A bit of research will uncover that Lauck’s adopted brother and stepmother spoke out against Lauck and her first book, Blackbird, suggesting that the memoir was fabricated. In the 2001 Salon article “Family Feud,” the evil stepmother, who is known as “Deb” in both books, e--mails the website: “I want a sort of mental taser [sic] or aqueous foam to immobilize the bitch, hoping to sober [Lauck] up and make her think twice before going after other people with her dolorous tales of misery.” It’s certainly possible that Lauck could have misremembered details or used poetic license to make her tale seem more “dolorous” than it really was, but Deb’s statement is at odds with Lauck’s language. In Found, Lauck’s bare-bones account of her childhood is haunting and understated. It’s not the work of a person who is trying to get attention, but a woman who is trying to work with the life she’s been given.

In Found, Lauck handles the media attention with poise and grace—she doesn’t mention it. She calmly explains her estrangement from Deb and her adopted brother, but she doesn’t point fingers or fuel the he-said-she-said fire. Instead, the author bravely focuses on her own feelings and emotions, rising far above the name-calling. Had Found contained a rebuttal against the slanderous Salon.com article, it would have taken away from the tenderhearted story that Lauck so gracefully tells. She takes the high road, and touched readers will thank her for it...

...to read more go to this link and I'd love your comments on this review.

Writing Tip #1

2011-06-08T21:27:00.000-07:00

This is an idea for writing a scene and the scene, in my opinion, is the hardest aspect of writing to teach and to understand. But once you get the elements of a scene down and frame your writing in this way, you'll be a master.

Write a scene where you sit down to eat breakfast, alone and as you sit down--munching on that bagel or chewing that cereal--recall your earliest memory.

Remember, frame the memory within the confines of the scene of a person eating a meal and that means flood the beginning with the immediate details of what is going on at the most practical level.

EXAMPLE: It's a Sunday morning in June and the sky is heavy with dark clouds that won't give up rain. The kids are gone and it's just me, in the kitchen with the teapot on the back burner of the stove. The water warms over the blue flame and the sound is a low rumble, perhaps minerals that make the water dense. I don't know.

Granola, yogurt, strawberries. A over-sized coffee cup, a knife and a spoon. I have everything I need for a quiet meal--alone--how often am I alone in my house? I don't even know the last time such a thing took place but I am resolved to be here, really be here and enjoy every quiet second of this precious quiet time to myself.

I sit at the table which offers a view of the garden and spoon yogurt into the cup. One, two, three dollops and I don't know how or why but I remember when I was a child--before memory was supposed to set in....

So you can see where this is going, from the example. I am setting the scene and then taking a trip back in time...now you try it. End your scene with your either beginning to eat or standing up to wash the dishes or whatever. Just stay in real time as you also go back and see where this prompt takes you.

Submit your example and I will pick one to feature to give some writing advice to next week!

Good luck

Fresh Writing: How to Dominate a Chicken (2nd Draft)

2011-06-06T15:41:00.000-07:00

Thank you for reading this story! Leave your comment below:

“Whose in charge?” Joy asks. “You or the chicken?”

“Definitely the chicken,” I say. “Hands down, I’m scared to death of that bird.”

Joy cocks her head to one side, not unlike a chicken and her pupils, ink stains within the jewel aquamarine of her eyes, retract to become dots.

The Buddha, on the eve of his enlightenment, is said to have had a view back, back, back to all of the lives he lived before that one under the Bohdi Tree. A cosmic flashback. The Buddha saw himself as an ox and witnessed another ox being beaten. He felt a wave of pity for the beast. It was called his first moment of compassion which then flowered over the course of many lifetimes.

As Joy looks at me, her wide hipped solid body that screams “farm girl,” her faded jeans covered in stains of chicken shit, her oversized gray cable knit cardigan that drags down her sloped shoulders, her curly blond hair whispered gray which is all tucked and pinched and twisted under her sun visor cap and I have a flash back too. I bet a million bucks Joy was a chicken in a past life and I was a slug she ate without thinking twice. I don’t think my compassion was born that life, not at all. I’m no Buddha but I do have a damn good memory.

“No,” Joy explains. “You are in charge of your coop.” She nods as if I am supposed to nod along and so I do it.

“I am in charge,” I repeat.

"That's right," she says. "You are in charge."

Joy leans over a crate that holds at least seven chickens and hauls one up by its chicken feet.

“Let me show you how it’s done.”

Joy and I have been chatting it up for a while now, about ten minutes and I have explained how my girl, a black hen named Shadow, up and died a few days ago. “I came down to clean the coop and she was in a hole…” I lamented.

Before she could get a word in, I said the same thing happened to our other hen, a white Brahma called Diamond, a few months earlier.

“What am I doing wrong?” I asked, tears in my eyes. “I keep the coop clean, I feed them in a special feeder, I change the water…”

Across the graveled grounds of the nursery--where it is Buy Your Pullet Day, meaning farmers are in town from all over the rural countryside to sell grown up hens to city folks like me--my children, Jo and Spencer, hold grown chickens in their arms. I have not agreed to get new chickens today. I am not sure I can handle more death but the kids--they are hopeful.

Under a wide blue sky filled with puffy white clouds, the place is packed with crates of clucky birds and chatty farmers and urbanites like me who don’t-have-a-clue. Everything smells bitter.

Joy explained that chickens, when they are in a hole and looking peaked, have been sick for a while. “Parasites or bacteria,” she said. “It happens.” She suggested a sulfur remedy to add to the water which will keep the other birds healthy and this how we arrived at the conversation about the one survivor in our coop: Sunny, a white Brahma also known as The-Angry-Chicken-From-Hell.

Joy palms a white and black hen she calls a Sex-Link and snugs it under her abundant boobs.

“So what you do is get the bird against you like this and if she struggles, you put your hand over her head.”

My heart races with fear. Sunny would take my hand off without question. I’ll have to use gloves. And a rain coat, because I am sure she’ll crap and pee all over me too.

Joy lifts her hand off the hand of the chicken and then does the maneuver again.

“See?” she asks.

I nod like it all makes sense but the truth of the matter is that I am not much for domination. I’m an Alpha dog until another Alpha dog arrives and then I go all Beta. I don’t know why or how. It's just the way it is.

I remember being at an “Express Your Rage” workshop with a small but power packed woman named Ruth King. She had us do this exercise where we picked sides as perpetrator or victim—meaning which side were we usually on in life. I stood in the line with the other victims and felt right at home. Ruth had us switch sides and pretend to be the one doing harm instead. She had us pick up pretend swords and chase people around the room in a mock battle. I couldn’t even pick up the sword without breaking down in tears. The idea of hurting another person, even in fun, was against everything I could imagine. Or was it that I had been so well conditioned to defeat and domination? I don’t know but I learned something about my character that day. I identified with helplessness.

“I’ll try,” I tell Joy.

“Try?” she says and laughs with a snort out her nose. “Honey, it’s a chicken. You gotta take charge.”

I nod like yes, okay, I’ll get in there and take charge not even seeing that Joy dominates me at this very moment. And the kids are dominating me too. They are urging me towards taking on more chickens--taking on more responsibility--that I don't really want. I don't want to be in charge of more life that is going to die for no reason and with no warning. I don't want to put sulfur in the water and guess if my hens have a parasite or come out to see one in the hole and watch her die in front of me again! Dang, I can barely handle being in charge of myself and my kids and now it's chickens and gerbils and if they wear me down--perhaps a dog.

How much can one woman handle anyway? And when, when, when will I finally learn how to say "NO"?

Joy shoves her demo chicken back into the bin and she's got that look on her face, expectant, as if it's time to close the deal.

“Do you have any Buff Orpington’s?” I ask.

Joy nods and saunters off to another crate to scare up a couple birds and I wave at Spencer and Jo to come over and see their new birds.

(Leave your comment! And watch this story change this week in the redraft!)

Book Talk

2011-06-03T14:11:00.000-07:00

The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell

Submitted by: Anne Gudger

Yes! She is back! Anne, my fantastic and wonderful co-teacher, has gifted us with a great write up on a new book. Book Talk is our gift to you, about what's out there and what's great about reading it.

The Hero With a Thousand Faces balances on the top of my stack of books—the pile that mirrors a game of Jenga meaning it's ready to topple over with one false pull. The Hero moves between the top, second and third spot on my pile. I’ve been reading it for almost a year and sometimes it feels like a thousand hours—in miniature bites—and I’m still not done. Weird for someone like me who’s been aptly accused of eating books. It’s SLOW. Or is it me who is slow?

For years I’ve heard writers say it’s the storyteller’s guide, the map they unfold and study again and again. This is where story telling starts—with myths and heroes. George Lucas credits Campbell for the shape of Star Wars. Wally Lamb (one of my favorite authors) said when he was stuck, he went back to read Campbell, back to the well for ideas. If you’ve read The Hour I First Believed, you know mythology and the hero’s journey are huge.

LOVE Lamb’s book, but that’s for another Book Talk.

For me, that message of “Read this book” is also layered with my parents’ fascination with Joseph Campbell. They read him, talked about him, loved him. When I was a teenager and trying to write meaningful poetry about my angst (awful stuff no one read—thank goodness.) I first tried to read Campbell but put him down just as fast. The man was too much for a sullen me at 14.

But now, as I struggle to write my own memoir (and suffering with so much self-doubt, which I believe Jennifer talked about during the last teleseminar...and PS do not miss the one on June 9th for more insight...), I see myself on my own hero’s journey and thus Campbell beckons me back. In The Hero, Campbell chronicles the history of myth, centered around the hero’s journey--across antiquity, across cultures. He lays out the hero’s path and flushes it out, drawing from his vast smarts. He defines the call to adventure, the initiation and the return. Each stage has multiple steps and requires specific actions of the hero.

The book is still super slow going but at 52, it's fascinating to read. Admitting this is, well, hard since I was a good student and a decent teacher. I like academics. I should feel right at home with Campbell. But then I think, hey, the guy understood James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake which puts him in a different universe from me. Of course I struggle with some of his writing.

Campbell’s writing is dense, academic, masculine. He writes to a group who get it, who get the code. I’m not in that group. And it’s okay. I hang out on the sidelines enough to get the bullet points.

I’m on my hero’s journey. So are you. I’m writing about it like crazy. I like to imagine that one of the things I carry in my backpack is Campbell’s book, so that when I get stuck I can find a good tree root to curl up next to and read the stage I’m in or the one coming up. He defines the stages of the journey beautifully and that is the gold for me.

If you read this story teller’s guide here’s what I suggest: Don’t read it when you’re comfy in bed with your favorite pillows and comforter or you just might wake up cradling the book and wondering what to make of your dream about centaurs.

And now tell me...does this book make you feel a bit intimidated? And what other books have you attempted to read and given up on because they were just too darn smart?

End Note Which is a Fresh Note to The Shadow

2011-05-31T11:30:00.000-07:00

Two new girls are with Sunny now. They are Buff Orpington's, pullets. The kids and I went to "pullet days" over at Pistil's Nursery here in Portland. Fantastic place. They ooh'ed and ah'ed over the girls who were available for sale and I grilled a chicken farmer named Joy with all my questions. Why did my girl die? What can I do next time? What can I do about my crazy angry girl Sunny who scares me to death?

In the time it took for the kids to pick two new chickens, Joy gave me the inside story on how to dominate Sunny (rather than being dominated by her) and how to add vinegar to the water, as well as a sulfur type antibiotic and to accept that this a fact of life--chickens die and when they are in a hole, they have been sick for a while. Nothing we can do. It happens.

Fair enough.

My next post will be: How to Dominate Your Chicken.

Fresh Writing: The Shadow

2011-05-30T06:22:00.000-07:00

Re-draft - I love your comments so please, leave one and/or share this:

My Shadow died Thursday morning at eight A.M. Pacific Standard Time. But that's not how to tell a proper story, is it?

Let's start again.

It's Thursday morning, another day of the same thing: I'm up at five, watch the sun lift in the sky, say my prayers, drink some tea, eat a bit of lavender chocolate (okay, more like half a bar) and then it's seven a.m. and Spencer comes into my room first--a big lug of a man-boy--who bends down to give me a big bear hug.

"Are you enlightened yet?" he asks.

"Afraid not," I confess.

Ten minutes later it's Jo Jo on my lap for a cuddle and she breathes morning breath on my face as she tells me about a dream. "It was weird," she says, in her light bright voice, "it was Christmas and Daddy was coming to give me a present but then my tooth fell out."

"Do you have a loose tooth?" I ask.

"Sort of but not really," she says. She moves her finger on her front canine. Mr. Wiggly, we call it.

The sky is blue and the sun is bright. Wind blows and it's cold like March. June is just a few days away.

I re-adjust Jo so the bone of her butt doesn't rub so much on the bone of my shin. I try to be careful though because too much jostling around and she'll be gone in a flash and I'll miss a moment more of holding her tight. How much longer will I be able to hold this girl on my lap? That's what I think and then more thoughts rush in: before we leave for school, will I have time to take a shower and clean the chicken coop?

"Sweets," I ask. "What do you want for breakfast? Bagel and cream cheese or cereal?"

"Cereal!" she declares. She tugs down her pajama top--pink with a poodle sewn on. The poodle is black fabric. It's a shadow of a poodle. Dog in profile.

One more hug and she's off.

I blow out the candles at my alter and go down to take a shower, pull on jeans, dry my hair and check the time.

In the midst of all this, Spencer and I get into a fight--what is it about? He's on the computer, I think, and that bugs me or maybe he didn't clean his dishes. I don't even know but it's not good. We're both pissed off and I think he yells or I yell and that's how it is with my teenager these days. We're both fast to fire and that's no good with a teenager. We're doing therapy to catch this tiger by the tail.

"Let's just table this until we meet with the therapist," I say.

"FINE!" he yells and storms out of the house, his pack over his shoulder.

I follow him down the steps, bare feet on cold concrete--overgrown ferns in the front yard, a sea of lush brilliant green. Past the pot of strawberries and the stand of lavender, I call out how he better come back and hug me because if something happens to either one of us before we see each other again--well, that would suck.

Spencer stops on the sidewalk, just past the thick trunk of the cedar tree and pauses for a second. His head his down, chin tucked and then, after a moment of thought--he slouches back--PISSED. He hates when I play the "this might be last time I see you" card but I can't help it. Death is real. The Buddhists remind us how life is a party on death row.

Spencer hugs me but it's a bullshit hug--this fast grip and squeeze with us belly to belly since he's that tall--and as I watch him go, I get all in my head about what a bad mother I am and how I'm blowing it with him in 15,000 different ways and then I check the clock. 15 minutes before Jo needs to leave for school.

Jo is on the floor in the living room, red wool carpet under her knees and she makes a world for a small rock she calls Rockie. It's her way to avoid the conflict that fires between Spencer and me. Jo disappears into fantasy.

She has this thing where she collects brown cardboard boxes and makes houses for all kinds of things--rocks, shells, pine cones. Rockie has a three box house. "Remember to pack your snack, sweets," I say.

"I will, Mommy," she says.

"And comb your hair," I add.

"Ok," she says.

Out back, there is a deck, a hot tub with a green lid, two huge horses sculpted out of rusted metal and a chicken coop that we built snug against the side of the garage. There is only gravel out here which makes a zen kind thing to deal with the fact that very little sun shines here. As I jog down the steps, the sun that does come through today is wicked bright. I have to squint against the intensity of the light.

In the coop there is one Brahma named Sunny (Jo's girl) and my girl named Shadow. Sunny is all aggressive and pesky at the door of the coop--LET ME OUT--the way she is with her strong neck and wide chest. That damn chicken scares me to death. But Shadow, a quiet Jersey Giant, sits in a self made hole.

I know before I know.

A quiet chicken in a self made hole is a sick chicken.

In January, it was our other Brahma, Diamond. She was Spencer's girl. She was in a hole in the morning and 24 hours later, she was dead.

I scoop Shadow into my arms and feel around her behind. Is an egg bound up there? Is she hot? Is it bacterial? She is limp and non-responsive.

This is a girl I raised from a tiny little chick. When she first arrived, she was just a palm of beak and fuzz.

Chickens are supposed to live to be 11 or 12. That's what the damn urban chicken book told us but now--her she is. Sick.

Shit!

At two years old, Shadow is a big girl, ten pounds at least and she's all black feathers that shimmer green when you hold her in the sunlight. Her dark brown eyes blink in a slow, tired expression of surrender.

Denial throws up a wall and I tell myself she's not going to die. I'll think of something but first, first, I have to clean the coop right away. I ease Shadow into the top shelf of the coop, scoot Sunny into the run and rake the sand clear of poo, vegi droppings and greens. I make a pile and lift it all into a recycling bin.

That's what happens when I'm scared. I move fast and clean everything in sight. I'm scared a lot--even when things aren't scary. My house is spotless.

Add more food to the feeder, change the water and then I remember an old prescription for antibiotics I have in the house. I'll break one up, yeah, that's what I'll do but then again, I don't know. Those were for Spencer and what if it's too much?

Once the coop is clean, I decide I'll carry Shadow into the run to get a better look at her. I ease her to the ground, thinking maybe she'll just pop up and it will be okay but as soon as she is down, she rolls on her side and jerks a few times and that's it. Her dark eyes roll back and she convulses, kicking her feet. She's dying as I kneel next to her and there is nothing--not a damn thing I can do.

I call over my shoulder to Jo and ask her please, please to bring me the phone and while I wait, I stroke Shadow and tell her how sorry I am as if she blames me for being a lame chicken farmer (which I am).

In no time, Jo is behind me with the phone in her hand. Her blue eyes are wide. Her tangled hair tumbles over her shoulders.

"It's Shadow, she's dying I think," I say and try to suck it up but I can't. I start to cry.

Jo drops to her knees but she doesn't really have an emotional response. She's not a huge fans of the chickens. When her bunny died, she wailed but the chickens are big and stinky and lizard like. Jo's more of a gerbil girl.

I dial my husband but then mis-dial and then re-dial again and I wonder why in the world am I calling him? He knows less about these birds than I do. What's he going to do?

Sunny paces in this half circle pattern and she's all puffed out--her feathers lifted and full to make her twice the size. She is mix of bright white and black. She keeps her distance but makes this weird squawk sound. It's like a cluck but more primal.

I drop the phone on the ground and Jo touches Shadow's soft dark neck feathers.

"She's still warm," Jo says.

I sob, uncontrollable now and another part, the part of me watching this whole thing from the sidelines--that inner critic who is no friend--says I shouldn't be losing my shit in front of my little girl. My critic says I'm supposed to be the strong one, didn't I know? But I can't be strong right now. I can't listen to the mean-assed-inner-critic-bitch who is scarier, by far, than Sunny. I'm overcome with total helplessness, regret and skill-less-ness in the face of whatever has taken this chicken away.

Jo puts her slim arm around my shoulders. Doesn't even hesitate and I think about how solid she feels.

"I'm so sorry, Mom," Jo says.

She is the mother to me, the strong one and I am lost in how I failed, I failed, I failed.

Isn't it something the way we are--the stories we tell ourselves--and isn't this the story I tell myself every time death and I meet at this threshold? I think about deaths that have come before now. The death of my last marriage--yes, it was all my fault. When my old dog Carmel died, yes, that was my fault too--I let her down. And then when my brother killed himself, my father had his heart attack and my mother died of pneumonia--all my fault. I could have done something but I didn't and they are gone.

Why stop there? Why not go further back in time to the day I was born and my mother was so upset because if it wasn't for me, she could have had her innocence back.

Someone had to be blamed. Why not? Why not let it be me?

In Buddhism, death is called an opportunity. You can make a massive leap in consciousness just by being fully present and that is what I try to do. I try to be wholly present to all that I feel--the sadness, the regret, the story and the origin of the story. The emotion is the amazing thing. It's so powerful.

And what the hell? It's just a chicken, right?

I know.

I know.

Later in the day, I will be told, "chicken's die. It happens. It's not your fault. You're going to have to get a tougher skin if you are going to be a chicken farmer."

And I guess it's true but right now--I don't have a tough skin. I'm raw the way you get when death comes to call. My Shadow is gone and now Jo is late to school--something she hates more than anything.

"Honey," I say as I swipe my nose with the sleeve of my shirt. "I need to get you to school. You're late."

"It's okay, Mom," Jo says. "It doesn't matter, I can be late one day."

Sunny pecks at the phone, like she wants to make a call and I realize I have to reach Spencer. He'll be home for lunch to check the chickens and when he sees Shadow gone, that won't go well.

I shoo Sunny away from phone and dial up the school. "We should do something with her body we can't just leave her out here," I whisper to Jo while the number rings through.

"I have a box," she offers.

"Good, good," I say.

Jo runs into the house, full of purpose.

Ten minutes later, Spencer is home again and we all stand over Shadow, who has been wrapped in silk and placed in small box. Jo has added a plastic chicken and a few a shiny rocks. I covered her with rose petals. Spencer put in some leaves from a fragrant bush.

"It's like you said," Spencer finally says, "you never know."

"I know," I say.

We all stand there and stare stupid into the box. We hold our arms around each other, survivors who look at death--really look at it--and find there is nothing any of us can say. That's the way it is. Death is quiet.

Finally, it's Spencer who suggests we put Shadow over by the statue of the Buddha in order to let her body rest like the Tibetan's teach. It's believed the consciousness of a being, all beings, resides in the body for up to three days. Call me crazy but I believe in that kind of thing.

"Maybe she'll be reborn in a better place," Spencer adds.

"Maybe she's already in chicken heaven," Jo says, taking the more Christian approach.

I carry the box over to the Buddha and we all say a few mantra: Om Mani Padme Hung, the universal prayer of compassion.

On the way back to the house, I hold Jo's hand and Spencer and I hug, a real one this time, and he says he's sorry he yelled.

"Me too," I say. "Let's forget it and start over."

"Fair enough," he agrees.

Sunny, alone now--the last chicken left in the coop--pecks at the ground but that's not going to do. Chickens need other chicken's and I'm going to have to get rid of her or get more girls to re-fill the coop and start over again.

For now, I've got to get Jo Jo to school. I'll figure out the rest later.

Willamette Writers May Meeting Pt. 4

2011-05-27T14:32:00.000-07:00

If You Knew By Ellen Bass

2011-05-24T12:04:00.000-07:00

Stunning poem by Ellen Bass

What if you knew you’d be the last
to touch someone?
If you were taking tickets, for example,
at the theater, tearing them,
giving back the ragged stubs,
you might take care to touch that palm,
brush your fingertips
along the life line’s crease.

When a man pulls his wheeled suitcase
too slowly through the airport, when
the car in front of me doesn’t signal,
when the clerk at the pharmacy
won’t say Thank you, I don’t remember
they’re going to die.

A friend told me she’d been with her aunt.
They’d just had lunch and the waiter,
a young gay man with plum black eyes,
joked as he served the coffee, kissed
her aunt’s powdered cheek when they left.
Then they walked half a block and her aunt
dropped dead on the sidewalk.

How close does the dragon’s spume
have to come? How wide does the crack
in heaven have to split?
What would people look like
if we could see them as they are,
soaked in honey, stung and swollen,
reckless, pinned against time?

- Ellen Bass

Part Three of Willamette Writer Meeting

2011-05-23T22:22:00.000-07:00

On the Road: Coming Home to Teaching & Website Launch

2011-05-19T12:08:00.000-07:00

Last night, pre-summer heat, there were bare arms, sundresses and Bermuda shorts. People lounged at sidewalk cafes, before them were glasses of wine and plates of food.

And still others were packed, shoulder to shoulder, elbow to elbow, knee to knee at The Press Club for the monthly reading at The Mountain Writer's Series. Smiling, shining faces. Lover's of poetry and prose.

I stood at the podium, after the lovely Cindy Stewart-Rinier and read from Found. Again. Since the release on March 1 of this year, I have been reading and reading and reading a little more, from that story of stories, that summation of my long Hero's Quest to the home I lost at my birth.

Oh Lord my journey home to my mother and her original love has been a bumpy one indeed. And this is how it is. Some days, I am too often like Dresden after being bombed at the end of the war. My first experience is of brutal separation and emotional stifling. My mind has been nursed on fear. The Buddha called it Maya. Where there is mind, there is Maya. Suffering and more so when the body and brain are ravaged from the moment of birth.

And I am like a brilliant lotus flower emerged from that mud. I am bright, impossible colors and beauty--not because another tells me so but because it is true. We are all this and more--not the mud, not the bloom, not not the mud, not not the bloom. We are gorgeous and perfect and Buddha and, as sweet as all that sounds, our brief life is also a party on death row. I read that phrase in a book on Buddhist teachings last week and it's true. Death is coming and with that in mind--what matters? What really matters?

Well, of course, healing the soul is what matters...healing the self and becoming whole! That is what matters above all else.

And so, as I come home for the summer and look at my schedule for what is ahead, I am thrilled to announce our new Teaching Site has launched. A Free Teleseminar on Memoir writer's is coming May 26th and you are invited to listen in. Come sign up and make your reservation. Learn how to tell yourself the story of your own great suffering and transcendence, learn to set your priorities and love yourself as you find your way back to that original wholeness and love that is there--just past all the mess of Maya.

On the Road: The Gift of Memoir

2011-05-10T21:57:00.000-07:00

This is the continuation of a talk given at the monthly meeting of the Willamette Writers.

Great conversation about memoir and the transformational promise of the genre.

Fresh Writing: Mother's Day

2011-05-09T12:25:00.000-07:00

They explode through the door, my children. "Moooooom," they cry, her voice high, his voice low. A dozen roses from him, a box of chocolates from her and behind my children, there on the porch with his hands in the pockets of his jeans, is their father. Steve. I call him the Dorse-man.

How long have we known each other now? I'm forty seven, he's forty nine, we met on his twenty seventh birthday at an auction where he was celebrating another year gone. All those years ago, like it was yesterday, Steve sat at the table with a group of guys who wore dark gray suits and white shirts. Ties were loose and drinks were in front of the men--whiskey on the rocks, tequila straight up and of course, bottles of beer. Steve had the flush of a man who was a couple of drinks gone.

Handsome? My goodness, he was so handsome to me back then.

The mystery of attraction.

It wasn't his looks which were fine--better than fine--it was the energy that snapped off him and fired from his eyes.

Snap.
Crackle.
Pop.

All these years later and his dark hair has gone to streaks of gray but his eyes--a metallic blue--still snap the way they did. Steve has the sharp look of a man who makes plans deep inside himself. He is on a singular path. We raise the kids together but he goes his own way the rest of the time.

"This is the day that changed my life," Steve booms in his big auctioneer voice and he steps across the threshold of my house, offering me one of those wine bags from Fred Meyer. It's decorated with a thousand corks. Inside is a bottle of wine.

"That's right," I say. "I went into labor with Spencer on Mother's Day."

Spencer--dark hair and darker eyes--looks from his father to me and back to his dad again. Steve pulls his son into an embrace. "Those were some long nights, Buddy," Steve says. "Man did you take your time getting here."

Roses, chocolates and now a bottle of wine are in my arms and I set everything down on the table in the entry way. Jo has run up the stairs to her room, she says she'll be right back and it's true. Spencer took four days to arrive. My water broke on Mother's Day and finally he arrived on the fifteenth.

"And things have never been the same," Steve adds.

Spencer bear hugs his dad back and lifts him off his feet. My son, our son, is now strong enough to carry the man who gave him his life. Amazing.

Jo tromps down the steps and then makes a leap to clear the bottom three steps. She has shoulder length wavy blond hair, which she hates to comb, and filly long legs that make her the tallest girl in her class. She rattles an envelope between us.

"I made you a card. I made you lots of cards," she announces. The front of the envelope reads, "MOM!"

I get down on my knees to look inside and there are three cards to be exact. Jo overflows when it comes to art and messages of love.

"And this one was conceived on Mother's Day too," I say, a tilt of the head over to Jo as I fish out her beautiful art--hearts, drawings of the two of us holding hands and little poems that detail her love: "You are so nice to me, Mom." "I love you, Mommy." "You are a nice Mommy."

Steve shakes his head like he remembers that part too, how three years after Spencer was born and we had finally figured a tiny bit of parenting out--surprise. We were pregnant again!

"That's a lot of water under the bridge," Steve says.

"It sure is," I agree.

In the foyer of my house on spring day in May--we are all here--together and it's funny how there are four humans where there used to be just two. We are intertwined by the mystery of attraction and DNA and time. We were once strangers to each other--me to Steve and Steve to me and when Spencer was born, wasn't he a stranger too? Wasn't Jo? Haven't I been getting to know these people--these little mysteries--more and more each day as they grow into the fullness of themselves? Aren't they getting to know me? And what of Steve? Isn't he a still stranger in so many ways? Aren't we still a confusion to each other even though we are together in this adventure of raising two human beings to adulthood as we turn the other way and head towards the end of our own lives?

It's my 14th year of being a mother--my 14th official Mother's Day. It's hard to believe, me, the motherless one has children, celebration, good health, safety, happiness and a little more time. I have time to celebrate being a mother and being alive and watching everything as this mystery of being continues.

The kids give me big hugs and are back out the door with their dad. He's taking them to school today and I'll be the one to pick them up. The routine of raising children. It's a few days a his house, a few days at mine, school and homework and taking baths. That's what we do. Everyday. Until we stop for a moment and celebrate and remember and give each other hugs and cards and roses and chocolate and wine.

Next stop Spencer's birthday, then Steve's and another holiday where it will all go the other way--Father's Day.

On the Road: Portland Events all Month Long

2011-05-04T08:53:00.000-07:00

First, last night was a FAN TAB ULOUS event at The Willamette Writer's Monthly meeting and I want to thank everyone for coming up to me after, offering your stories and having me sign your books! I hope everyone WRITES A MEMOIR.

And here is an even BIGGER thanks! If you were at the Willamette Writer's Event please write to me with Willamette Writer's in the Subject Heading and I will get you a FREE copy of The Writing Life audio book on Memoir Writing. I ask only that you listen and answer three questions to help me fine tune the teaching! Deal? Send me your emails today and I'll get you details.

Second, the Oregon Colony House beach retreat still has an opening! This is a steal of a deal. Writers get lodging, two nights at the beach and a couple prime time hours with me to talk about their project. An hour with me in Portland--no overnight at the beach and writing time--is $125.00 an hour. So book this, if you can.

Third, here comes the summer Master Class Schedule via Skype and in Portland on E Burnside.

The Portland class will be held Monday evenings 5:30-9: June 6, 13, 20 & 27 and July 13 & 20. This is a six week Master Series Class with eight readers/space for observation too. Readers pay $350.00 and observers pay $175.00 -- EVERYONE LEARNS!

The Skype Master Class, on line, will be held Sunday mornings 10-1 : June 19 & 26, July 10, 17, 24 & 31! This is for six readers, no observers and the cost is $350.00. Contact me, via this site to reserve a spot!

I cannot wait to help YOU write your memoir!

Fourth, the free Webinar on Memoir is coming. SAVE THE DATE of May 26th @ 11 a.m. and send me an email saying you'd like to join in. Write in the Subject Heading: Reserve Webinar and I'll make your reservation. I'll be giving a live presentation on the power of memoir, teaching you a few tricks and offering up as much inspiration as I can in one wonderful hour of conversation! More details coming soon!

Book Talk: The Tender Land by Kathleen Finneran

2011-04-29T12:23:00.000-07:00

by Anne Gudger

Anne teaches the Spring Craft class with me,
has thirty years of teaching & writing experience,
and is just a fabulous human!

Families are complicated.

Family is our first introduction to ourselves and others and the intricate dance that follows. Family is the mini-cosmos where, if we’re lucky, we anchor roots and sprout wings but often times the roots are shallow; the wings stay baby down. From wimpy roots and crooked wings sometimes writers are born! Especially memoirists.

The Tender Land is a beautiful memoir by Kathleen Finneran, who creates a tribute to her beloved brother who killed himself when he was fifteen. Her story is about how a family survives such a loss but it is also about the family ties that bind, sometimes too tight and sometimes not tight enough.

There’s a ton to love about this book: the gorgeous use of language, the smoothness of the narrative, the way the story moves forward and backward while holding the reader in the center. Plus Finneran’s use of literary tension. We know the tragedy from the start when the book opens with, “My mother believes she gave birth to an angel . . . . ‘I think there was a reason he was only here for a short time,’ she said. ‘I think he was an angel sent to save someone.’”

Finneran shows her family from kid bikes to snow angels to home movies with humor and love. We see family eccentricities as babies join the large Catholic clan during the 60’s and 70’s in middle suburbia. By seeing Finneran’s family, we of course see our own. Finneran masters the truth that by being specific, you touch on the universal: love, mystery, faith, guilt, regret and loss. She renders ordinary family moments into poetry. One evening young Kathleen and her mom--who’s pregnant with another child--talk before the kids all go to a movie with their dad:

“What movie are you going to see” she asked when she finished coloring her lips.

“Kiss me now,” I said.

“Who’s in that?”

“No. Kiss me now, before you blot your lips.”

I was sitting on the side of the tub, and she bent toward me to kiss my cheek.

“No. On my knee,” I said, “so I can see it.”

“How about your hand?” she suggested, taking it in hers and kissing it. “I can’t bend down that far anymore.”

“My hand and my knee,” I said. I stood up and lifted my leg to the sink, and she pressed her lips against the middle of my knee, exaggerating the sound and time a simple kiss required.

In another passage, Finneran writes,

There was the time before he was born and the time after. Ordinary time. A time when we woke up every day, our souls still within us. And now there was this time. The time being. A time for which my father said he was sorry, one for which we were all too young. It would be a time—this time—unlike any that had passed before. A long time. A time presided over by angels perhaps, messengers in slow motion.

Our hearts break with Finneran as she wrestles with the death of her brother. Like families, grief is complicated. Finneran openly writes about how broken she is. More than ten years after her brother’s death she’s traveling by train and a young boy is collecting signatures from all the passengers. She signs her name “Sean,” rather than Kathleen without thinking about how she’s not Sean, how they are separate.

Finneran writes the final chapter as her adult self writing to her dead brother, telling him some of what he’s missed and struggling to make sense of her loss and her grief. She concludes with:

Sean, time passes, it’s true. Hours, days, and decades. And grief goes by its own measure. Now, before this day of angels ends again, before the sky changes color and the moon follows in its phase from full to new, I want to call out your name and tell you, across the tender land, that we have gone on living. We are all, every one of us, alive.

It must be said, for me, that this book falls short in the category of total honesty.

Wait.

Didn’t I already say Finneran is open and lets us see in? Isn’t that being honest? Yes and no. On many levels she is so honest, so open, so vulnerable. But where I have trouble with her book is around Sean’s death. I think there’s a family secret, an elephant in the living room that Finneran tiptoes around.

Having studied with Jennifer for a few years now, she’s in my head as I write and read. One of her lessons is that you have to address your neurosis on the page or the reader will do it for you. If you don’t say, “yeah, this was messed up.” . . . but you try to dress up the ugly with glitter and clear-coat, the reader will question how reliable you are as a narrator, how honest. So, here with The Tender Land, I’m left wondering about Sean and their family. Yes, Finneran touches on her own depression and her mom’s too but it’s in hindsight. The family we meet while Sean is alive is loving and caring and close. We’re not privy to Sean’s likely depression or how growing up with a depressed parent effected the family. There’s more to Sean’s suicide than Finneran cops to.

Annoucements: Mantra Count, L.A. Reading & Mother's Day

2011-04-24T05:35:00.000-07:00

Happy Easter

Lent is over.

The tulips bloom.

Amen.

At our house, we did two dozen eggs, white, which is funny because the chickens (Sunny and Shadow) lay brown eggs and the refrigerator overflows. OVERFLOWS! Oh well. White eggs are required, says my nine year old Artist-in-Residence.

On this sacred day of renewal--here are a few announcements:

1) The Heart Sutra count to 100,000 is at 55,000 with 45,000 to go. Elizabeth, Kate, Kristin and me. There are others who want to join in but get busy. I know. We know. Intention counts.

When I do my mantra, I visualize the power plants in Japan and all that ocean all around the island. I offer mantra from my heart to pacify the water and to bring calm to the radiation. It certainly cannot hurt. It's not too late to join us.

2) If you are in L.A., or know fans in L.A., come to Diesel Books for a lovely panel with Hope Edelman (Motherless Daughters), Dinah Lenney (Bigger than Life) and myself! We will be talking about writing and writing about family. Eat a piece of cheesecake, drink a bit of champagne and ask a question or two. It should be a terrific evening.

3) Summer Classes are open for registration! Surprise. We have a Master Class in Portland and an online Skype class. Please let me know if you are interested, via this site and I'll send you details.

4) Future Class Offerings:

The Journal: Dreams, witnessing and synchronicity. This six week class will teach you how to get a writing practice started and how to most effectively journal.

The Story Mandala Group. This class will be for people who have a story--of intensity and impact and even trauma--from their lives, that needs to be witnessed in a ritual circle of healing. This will be a powerful place to testify your great life sorrow, be heard and to release the energy in order to move new energy in.

Fall Craft Class: Create, be inspired and look at your writing from a fresh perspective. These teachings are designed to show writers how to draw exciting, memorable scenes, compelling summary passages and stirring ruminations. In eight weeks, you will learn all the vital elements necessary and when we are done, you will have a final focused sample that will act as inspiration for your longer projects. This class is required for those who take the Master Class.

Fall Master Series: Eight readers and four observers will be part of this weekly workshop based teaching. Classes begin in Sept.

The Beach Teach: This is a nine-month intensive set on the Oregon Coast where I will bring six master level memoir writers together to write three full drafts of a completed memoir!

5) May is Portland month! I will be reading all over town. At the Willamette Writer's on May 3rd and at Mountain Writer's May 18th. I'll be at the Oregon Colony of Writer's retreat--where four lucky writers and I will commune, write, eat, talk and just hang out. It's fantastic and CHEAP! Check it out and I hope to see you at one (or all) of these events!

Book Talk: Magnetic North by Linda Gregerson

2011-04-22T06:51:00.000-07:00

Contributed by Cindy Stewart-Rinier

So much of the difficulty I experience when trying to focus in on a writing subject arises from the dissonance between my personal experience and the larger context of the world. How to position oneself? What do you do with the relative comfort of American existence when you know that comfort is dependent on the suffering it has created elsewhere? I remember feeling this most acutely shortly after America began bombing Afghanistan and Iraq. I’d be sitting in my back yard, breathing in the night air, the smell of honeysuckle and scented clematis lacing it, looking into the deepening blue of the sky, feeling this sense of pleasure and wonder and then this heaviness would overtake me: that my pleasure, to some very real degree, was predicated on the suffering of others in the world. That there was a direct line between my comfort and those whose homes and cities were being bombed, whose mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers and children were being shot or killed by fire, flying shrapnel. The horror of it moved me to gather a group of women to protest in the style of the women in black at Lloyd Center, Portland’s oldest and largest shopping mall. For a solid year, every Saturday morning, we silently stood at the main entrance of the mall with blown up photos on signs that depicted what we were not being shown on the news. The idea was to make visible the reality of what we were doing, to resist the complicity of silence.

Linda Gregerson’s Magnetic North probes this quality of consciousness, the places where it, like the possum’s foot in her first poem, breaks through the thin crust of ice on the snow. Through a variety of subjects that range from her mother’s reaction to 9/11, to various artists and scientists and the implications of their work, to the young woman sitting at her breakfast table one morning whose inner arm is a hieroglyphics of scars from cutting, there is an engagement with the question raised in her first poem about self-correction.

The phenomenon Magnetic North, with its bifurcation between “the north we can steer by and the north we call the true” becomes the overarching metaphor for the narratives by which we navigate our lives, our choices, how self-correction is often the only way to ensure safe landings. The collection exhibits its own form of magnetism in its construction, with the poem “De Magnete” like a lodestone at its center and the other poems that comprise her deep and nuanced argument bound around it.

The opening poem, “Sweet”, sets up a tension between two ways of positioning oneself to the world. The first voice is that of the mother: “We cannot/ continue to live in a world where we/ have so much/ and other people have so little.” Its assertion is quiet, introspective, passionate, compassionate. It sees how the pieces relate to one another. It takes responsibility. The second is of an undisclosed “he.” Its refutation is louder, self-satisfied, dismissive. It sees the world “as we have made it” as true and immutable. Its judgment that, “Your mother’s wrong but sweet, the world/ has never self-corrected,” overmarks the mother’s recognition of the urgent need for social justice with the premise that historic precedent is inevitability. It denies responsibility.

These two positions constitute the polarity that Gregerson negotiates as she treats each subject in the subsequent poems. “Bicameral” picks up the thread of social inequity, unravels it and weaves it together with the story and art of Magdalena Abakonowicz. The poem itself becomes a mimesis of that artist’s weaving's, her sensibility and its obsessions with biology, politics and metaphysical mystery. Both the poet and the artist she treats are tough-minded, rigorous in their knowledge of the biology in which they find the metaphors that support their socio-political stances. The cleft palate, cell division, cell accretion all resonate with the political implications that the title sets as a frame.

The power of this collection is that it proffers this possibility: that the world as we’ve made it “is wholly premise, rather like the crusted snow.” If it is simply a narrative, then a different narrative is possible. Even in Darwin’s work were two competing narratives: survival of the fittest and mutual aid. Magnetic North gives us the sense that if there is a world as we’ve made it, there is also a world as we would make it.

Cindy and I will be reading together at the Mountain Writer's Series, May 18th! We look forward to seeing you there. And thank you Cindy, for your smart and depth filled contribution to Book Talk!