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Memoir Writing Workshops and your Creative Journey

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By the time you read these words, the “I” that wrote them will have forgotten
what it was, though the it lingers on, haunting the paper, unheard until you
happen across it and your energy field activates it. –Margaret Atwood

We write into the unknown, we launch ourselves onto tiny rafts of words so lacy and insubstantial that we wonder how it’s possible–how these black dots on paper hold the most important moments of our lives. Can words truly free us from some of the prisons we have been locked into? I have seen this happen countless times in my memoir writing workshops—the writer is surprised at how powerful her words are to unlock, to open, and to heal.

If you have been writing or journaling, you know that words can lead you out of darkness and help you to find the light. People in workshops talk about this all the time, but even though our identity and our tools for self-expression are words, at times we are at a loss to express how words can help us feel better. It seems like magic sometimes. We write into that unknown, especially when we are journaling, not knowing where we will end up. Story writing is a little different, though it too is open ended and magical.

Story as a Way of Knowledge

A story, in contrast to journaling, invites us to put events into a time frame and make choices. A story has a structure—a beginning, middle and an end that you choose and construct out of your fragments of dream and memory. Creative people—poets, painters, musicians, and writers enter into a kind of reflective dream, written about beautifully by John Gardner in The Art of Fiction. A story writer selects words that convey feeling, action, and reflection, bringing the lived moment alive to the reader. Writing creates a new experience with what had been chaotic. I like to say that story writing, including memoir, personal stories, and even fictional writing, is a “Way of Knowledge.”

Through story, you can learn about the self, about the narrator, the characters, the actions taken and the theme and outcome of the story. This creates a new world on the page and in the heart of the writer. What was perceived as “reality” before writing the story is changed by the act of writing.

Dr. James Pennebaker, who did the major research on writing as healing, points out that once we write a story, we no longer remember what “really” happened—we remember the story of what happened. The story inhabits us, and we are different as a result. Our imagination and the art of the story have created a new reality.

Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.
Thomas Merton

 

There are some openings in my online tele-workshops at the National Association of Memoir Writers for the spring session. Tuesday session begins March 27, 3 PM PDT. Monday begins April 2 at 1 PM PDT.

  • Think about one of your favorite family stories–would you like to develop it further?
  • What time frame have you covered in your early vignettes? Place them on the timeline to get a visual image of the quilt of your memoir.
  • Character sketches: Choose some of the people you have written about in your memoir, and create a more complete scene with them. Learning about scene writing is an ongoing challenge–but rewarding. Scenes are how you bring your world to life.
  • Do you struggle with writing your truths, the right to write your stories? Support and community can help you move forward with more confidence.
  • Learn about quilting your vignettes into a larger work.
  • Does your inner critic bother you? Learn new techniques to help silence the inner critic.
  • Write about the landscapes and places that are part of your soul.
  • Editing: We teach you gently how to become your own editor.
  • Revision—means “seeing again.” Writing means revision, an important skill as you grow as a writer.
  • Organization: we will discuss how to organize and keep track of your vignettes.

Praise:

… Linda Joy is an inspirational mentor who truly makes a difference and convinces you to believe in yourself and your story…..She always provides compassionate and meaningful support and expert guidance and direction.

Kathy Pooler

Re-membering through memoir writing patched together important pieces of myself long ago forgotten or abandoned. After several rounds of classes under Linda Joy Myers’ priceless guidance, all of me is finally snuggled well into my body, mind, and spirit. Prior to Linda Joy’s memoir classes, I never would have called myself a writer, Now, I can say with pride and certainty that I am indeed, a writer.

—-Author Dawn Novotny

 

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Are there Secrets in your Family?

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My beautiful grandmother in her 30's

 

 

 

No one ever saw how my grandmother looked when she was upset—hair frizzed, lips caked with coffee stained lipstick, rage pouring from her eyes as she ranted and raved. Sometimes I would stand in front of her for two hours, afraid to move. I wondered if the neighbors heard her ranting, I found out years later that they had heard the shouting and the crying, but in the fifties what went on behind closed doors was considered no one’s business.

 

Besides, when people act irrationally, we feel ashamed. Maybe we feel responsible—could we have prevented the outburst? I worried about what I did or could do differently to keep her from getting angry again, but some of the time it was not about me—since we lived alone together, there was no one else to scream at but me.

Forty years later I realized that my grandmother must have had something wrong with her, and it would be on my mother’s deathbed that a diagnosis came forward—for her and my mother, who ranted and behaved irrationally too—“Bi-Polar.” Naming this monster that made these beautiful women in my life so angry and sad, that made them ugly and distorted was a huge relief. It helped me to forgive them and to have compassion for them—this naming. I wondered if they had been diagnosed earlier and had some medical help, if our lives could have been different.

 

My mother Josephine--mid-1950s

 

Many of you know about the research by Dr. James Pennebaker that carrying secrets puts a huge burden on the mind and the body.  We can release this burden and come to greater health through writing. I write about this in my book The Power of Memoir, and Victoria Costello, author of A Lethal Inheritance, is going to talk about it this Friday at our National Association of Memoir Writer’s member teleseminar.

Victoria combines her research and her own family experiences with mental illness in her book, and shares the stories with us—a very brave thing to do!

Here’s a link to the book review I wrote where you can read more about her book and her story. We are going to talk about the value of finding out about your family history as you write your memoir. I have done a lot of genealogical research both in dusty courthouses and at Ancestry.com to try to unearth layers of secrets, chipping away at the burden I used to carry.

Do you have secrets that scare you? Have you tried writing them down—just for you?

How about family history research—have you done it, and has it helped you with your story?

Join me and Victoria:

March 16, 2012
11AM PDT; 12 MDT; 1 PM CDT; 2 PM EDT

Memoir Writing: Finding Your Way through Your Family History

Victoria Costello, Author of A Lethal Inheritance

 

 

 

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Healing through Creative Writing (It helps to get inspired by writing in Paris)

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Tips for Finding the Creative Spark Within

As a memoir coach, I’m blessed to meet so many people with a passion for creativity and writing. But to live that passion, we often have to conquer a fierce adversary: the inner critic! It demands perfect grammar and eloquent language. If we were “real” writers and if we were really creative, we think it should be easy to write, that things would just flow.

In my workshops, I ask what people think a “real” writer is:
• A real writer is already published.
• A real writer effortlessly sits down every day to write for hours.
• A real writer is published by a large New York publisher.
• A real writer is someone super-confident who writes 20 pages a day without confronting any obstacles.

You can see how these beliefs will slow you down. Pick up your pen and write, or take out your computer. In the photo above, I was writing at the cafe where Hemingway used to write in Paris–Deux Magots.

The Inner Critic

All writers and creative people struggle with the inner critic. That voice intrudes into the mind, and too often we believe it. Some typical critic voices writers and artists talk about:
• You’re boring.
• Why bother?
• Who cares?
• Who do you think you are (to try to be a writer)?
• How dare you write our story!
• Quit being such a navel gazer.

Writing can feel like being on a battleground, so of course it seems easier to garden, or clean the house. We need to feed our creativity and we need to learn how to cope with these problem messages banging around in our head. We need to unleash our authentic voice and speak our own truths, despite family members telling us to keep secrets.

In my workshops I see amazing breakthroughs. Perhaps the safety and support of the group bypasses the pesky inner critic. Or the intense passion of the writer is ignited by the group process, which invites  stories to burst out.

I talk about how to heal the inner critic in my book The Power of Memoir – write down what the critic says, and then answer it back with positive affirmations. It’s important to argue with it, to take a more positive stance. If you do this for all those inner voices, you create a tool that manages them, even if they are not silenced. Just know that all writers and all creative people have these voices and they have to learn not to listen to them or believe them.

Quick, Powerful Writing

Freewriting or writing quickly blows us on by the critic. It’s often a surprise how a really wonderful vignette can be written in just twenty minutes. These snapshots of authentic life astonish us because they are fresh and real. In one of my groups, a woman wrote about her young son, a golden boy of eight—how important he is, having come into her life after she thought couldn’t have children, and about the joy he’s given her after years of grief about possibly never having children. The group held her in respectful, embracing silence while Kleenex was passed silently from hand to hand, the room filled with compassion. She finally looked at us and wiped her eyes.
“Wow. I guess I took up a lot of time. I’m sorry.”
Everyone began telling her how deeply the story had affected them. As she was witnessed by the group, she smiled. “I’ve never told anyone this, I’ve never had the space to do this before.”
This woman felt the healing power of writing, and the power of a group witnessing her with compassion. She wrote: “Attending this workshop gave me the opportunity to reach deep inside and draw a circle of words around my heart. I shared my deepest feelings with a group who received me and held me with compassion and acceptance. I left the workshop feeling fuller and more whole.”

Write from Love, From Your Creative Spirit

If you write, you are a writer. Invite yourself to dip into the flow of words in your head and write them down. You’ll be amazed at the wisdom that resides within you just waiting to be tapped. Brenda Ueland, in her wonderful classic If You Want to Write, says that everyone is talented and original. All of us need to share our ideas with the world; it is part of our right as human beings to express ourselves. Ueland says that criticism destroys creativity, and that so-called helpful criticism is often the worst kind.

I read Ueland’s book over and over to get inspired through the years. It’s full of wisdom and a lively positive spirit about our unique creativity. She says we must write freely, as if to friends who appreciate us and find us interesting. We should write as if they are saying, “Tell me more, tell me all you can. I want to understand more about everything you feel and know and all the changes inside and out of you. Let more come out.” It’s an invitation to be ourselves, be authentic and write our truths.

If you want to write, create space for writing in your life. Set a time and a place to nurture this spark into a roaring blaze. Focus inward and listen to stories that whisper to you—capture your grandmothers’ kitchen, your mother’s face, or your father’s love of golf. The days of your life that give you meaning and joy. The creative spark is alive. Feed the flame! Read Ueland’s book and be inspired!

Writing Invitations
1. Write about what being a “real” writer means to you.
3. List the critic voices. Get them out of your head. Write your affirmations.
4. Keep listing the stories that you always wanted to tell. Write for 15 minutes a day.
5. Write about the happiest day of your life. Be sure to use sensual details of smell, sounds, feelings in your body, and colorful descriptions.

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Jaycee Lee Dugard—Her Memoir as Survival Testimony

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Video of Diane Sawyer and Jaycee Dugard
Millions watched as Jaycee Lee Dugard told her story to Diane Sawyer on national television. Diane, and perhaps most of the audience, seemed amazed and impressed at her composure, honesty and wisdom.

It seems clear that the eleven year old who had to endure isolation, imprisonment, and rape found some strong coping mechanisms that enabled her to survive—for eighteen years. To have children and raise them in captivity. She mentions a spider, kittens, and a journal that connected her to the small but important things she could find that gave her hope. When she gave birth at age 14, she finally had someone with her. “I wasn’t alone,” she said.

While we can watch the video version of Jaycee’s story, the real behind-the-scenes story is in her memoir A Stolen Life. Through her account, she wanted to support other victims and to give hope to others who have suffered abuse. Too often in the news we see children victimized by adults who use them for their own selfish needs.

Drawing upon my years of working with people who are healing trauma, in my book The Power of Memoir I discuss the importance for a victim of abuse and trauma to write down what really happened as a testimony to the injustices suffered. I quote Alice Miller’s work on how important it is to be witnessed with compassion and understanding for the injuries suffered. When we are witnessed, we are no longer alone. Writing offers us witnessing—as we tell the story of how we suffered and coped. As a writer-narrator, we are witnessing ourselves and healing the past.

The studies on writing as healing by psychologists and brain experts all underscore the need to write your stories, to search for and tell the truth. How healing it is to hear your own authentic voice! And when you’re ready, you can share your story so others can learn from your experiences.

One of the things that happened to Jaycee is that the Garridos took away her name—something most of us take for granted. It’s fitting that she begins the book with claiming her name once again, writing the book herself and naming all the things that were done to her, all the wrongs that were committed in nearly two decades of her life. Yet Jaycee is not bitter. Her face is full of light, and her goal is to live fully from now on. She is full of love—and is an amazing inspiration for everyone who’s trying to heal their past. Forgiveness, when we’re ready for it, opens up the pathways to the heart. People who’ve been abused need to find their way to themselves, to reclaim the parts that were lost in the past, and in so doing, they reclaim their lives.
I’m moved by her words, the video, and the calm authenticity she demonstrates. No doubt there is much more healing to do as she continues to discover freedom and the joys of living, but Jaycee shows us how it’s possible to live a new life in freedom and light. Through her story, we may find slivers of our own, and learn new pathways to our own healing.

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