A Memoir is Not a Voodoo Doll

  • helen-sedwickGuest Blogger, attorney Helen Sedwick, writes:

    Memoirists are the bravest of writers.

    In exploring the journeys of their lives, they delve into the private (and imperfect) lives of others. Can a memoirist write about surviving abuse without getting sued by her abuser? Can a soldier write about war crimes without risking a court-martial?

    Yes, but a cool head is key.

    Considering the thousands of memoirs published each year, there are relatively few lawsuits. Claims are difficult and expensive to prove. Most targets don’t want to call attention to a matter best forgotten.

    However, it’s important for memoir writers to be aware of the legal risks. You can’t avoid risk 100% of the time, but you can learn to take the ones that are important to your narrative arc and minimize those that are not.

    What is Safe Territory?

    You may write about a person in a positive or neutral light. For instance, you don’t need permission to thank someone by name in your acknowledgments or to mention non-controversial information, such as the name of your fifth-grade teacher.

    You may use historical names to establish context. If you are writing a memoir about the summer of 1969, you may mention Neil Armstrong and the moon landing and talk about your crush on Cat Stevens or Grace Slick.

    You may speak ill of the dead. Claims of defamation and privacy die with a person.

    When to Start Worrying?

    When you are publishing information about identifiable, living people and that information could be seriously embarrassing, damaging to their reputation, or subject them to public hatred and score, then you need to consider the risks of defamation and invasion of privacy. I am not talking about portraying your mother-in-law as bossy; I am talking about portraying your mother-in-law as a drug dealer.

    Here’s a quick summary of United States law. (The laws of other countries are more favorable to the targets.)

    Defamation

    To prove defamation, whether libel for written statements or slander for spoken ones, a plaintiff (target) must prove all of the following:

    False Statement of Fact:

    If a statement is true, then it is not defamatory no matter how offensive or embarrassing (although privacy issues must be considered, as I discuss below). Opinions are protected because they are not “facts.” If you post a restaurant review stating a meal was so bad you gagged, that is an opinion. But one restaurant critic was sued for saying a stringy steak tasted like horsemeat. The plaintiff claimed the reference to horsemeat was a statement of fact and not a colorfully stated opinion. Satire is not defamatory if the absurdity is so clear that a reasonable person would not think the statement is true.

    Of an Identifiable, Living Person, Group, or Company:

    A defamatory statement must contain sufficient information to lead a reasonable person (other than the target) to identify the target. Typically, the target must be a living person, but organizations have sued for defamation. Oprah Winfrey was sued by a group of Texas ranchers after saying she had sworn off hamburgers because of mad cow disease. (Oprah won the case.)

    That is Published:

    One person (other than the target) must read or hear the statement.

    Causes reputational harm:

    The statement must be more than offensive, insulting, or inflammatory. It must “tend to bring the subject into public hatred, ridicule, contempt, or negatively affect its business or occupation.” Statements involving crimes, loathsome diseases, professional incompetence, corruption, impotence, or promiscuity are automatically considered harmful.

    Made With Actual Malice or Negligence:

    If the target is a public figure, then the target must prove the statement was made with actual knowledge that it was false or with a reckless disregard for the truth. If the target is against a private individual, courts generally require some carelessness or fault by the writer.

    Invasion of Privacy Claims

    Even if you publish the truth, you may still be sued for unauthorized disclosure of private facts if you disclose private information that is embarrassing or unpleasant about an identifiable, living person and is offensive to ordinary sensibilities and not of overriding public interest.

    Private Information:

    The target must have a reasonable expectation of privacy. Any conduct in public is not protected, particularly today when everyone carries cameras in their pockets. Conversely, there may be issues your family doesn’t talk about, such as your uncle’s drinking problem, that are not private if your uncle has been convicted in public court of DUIs.

    That is Offensive:

    The disclosure must be more than embarrassing; it must be so offensive that it harms a person’s personal and professional reputation. Typically, these cases involve incest, rape, abuse, or a serious disease or impairment. Sex videos have triggered a number of suits.

    And Not of Public Interest:

    Even if the information is highly offensive, courts often decide there is no legal liability if the information is of public interest. Public interest does not mean high-brow or intellectual. Gossip, smut, and just about anything about celebrities is of public interest. Frequently, courts find stories of abuse and incest to be of public interest if they are disclosed by the victims. Judges and juries are not sympathetic when the perpetrator makes a privacy claim.

    And Unauthorized.

    You can avoid these issues by getting permission from people appearing in your memoir. An email will do. But avoid giving someone the right to approve your manuscript. It’s your story. If your sister remembers the past differently, she should write her own memoir.

    Other Privacy Limitations

    Ask yourself whether you are subject to other limitations.

    • Does your profession impose a duty of privacy? As an attorney, I cannot use confidential information about a client even if I mask the identity. Same for therapists, doctors, medical care givers, accountants, and other professionals.
    • Are you are a trustee/guardian for a third party or a minor? Then you have a duty not to cause harm to that person by disclosing private information.
    • Would your memoir disclose trade secrets or classified information?
    • Have you signed a confidentiality agreement? If you were a party to a dispute settled out of court (including a divorce settlement), your settlement agreement probably contains nondisclosure and non-disparagement clauses.

    If any of these apply to you, consult with an attorney about your options.

    How to Reduce Your Risks

    • Memories are subjective and evolve over time. Verify your memory with research and interviews. Retain records to support your statements.
    • Don’t say someone is criminal, sexually deviant, diseased, or professionally incompetent or use labels such as crook, pervert, or corrupt. Instead, stick to verifiable facts and your personal, emotional responses. Show, don’t tell. Let your readers come to their own conclusions.
    • Ask yourself how important the information is to your narrative arc. Judges and juries can be moralistic and will punish someone who discloses private information gratuitously or maliciously.
    • Rely on publicly-disclosed information, such as court documents and news reports wherever possible.
    • Consider changing names, physical characteristics, and settings so targets are not identifiable to the average reader. Using a pen name will also help.
    • Wait until your targets have passed away. (Okay, most of us don’t want to wait.)
    • Add disclaimers. I give some samples in Book Disclaimers Don’t Have to be Boring.
    • Get written consents and releases.
    • If accused of a defamatory statement, consider publishing a retraction.
    • Engage an attorney to review your manuscript.
    • Always reach for the truth when writing—it’s the best defense.

    And most importantly, keep a check on your motives. Publishing a memoir is not a chance to get even with somebody by skewering them like a voodoo doll. A memoir is about you, the writer. It’s an opportunity to explore your heart, your character, and your truth.

    To learn more about minimizing the legal risks of memoir writing, download my presentation at Fall 2016 Telesummit: The Heart and Soul of Memoir Audio Downloads.

    Helen Sedwick is an author and California attorney with thirty years of experience representing businesses and entrepreneurs. Publisher’s Weekly lists her Self-Publisher’s Legal Handbook as one of the top five resource books for independent authors.

    Helen’s blog coaches writers on everything from saving on taxes to avoiding scams.

    Disclaimer: Helen Sedwick is an attorney licensed to practice in California only. This information is general in nature and should not be used as a substitute for the advice of an attorney authorized to practice in your jurisdiction.

  • Suzanne MurrayGuest Blogger Suzanne Murray writes:

    Amid what seems like a world gone mad, can you relax, take a deep breath and consider the possibility that all that is happening around us, that seems so disturbing, is really an opportunity for so many to awaken to the divine spark within each of us? The place that holds the light and the creative solutions our world so very much needs.

    This, I suspect, is what Albert Einstein meant when he said that the problems we face won’t be solved by the same level of thinking that created them. We need instead to approach the monumental challenges we face in our lives and the world from the level of our heart, soul and spirit. We need to work with our creative imagination which is really our hotline to the divine. From here we can respond to situations from a place of love that we are rather than the grip of fear that events can trigger.

    The start of a new year fully invites us to consider new possibilities. Like the blank slate, the blank page, the blank canvas of our lives we can ask what do we want to create for ourselves and the world. We have the opportunity to let go of the idea that what has happened yesterday determines our today. We can break out of our habit patterns that feel safe, if not satisfying, and open to a sense of wonder at what we could choose to create. One way to get started is to practice being more present in each moment. Release regrets that keep us stuck in the past and let go of our worries that launch us into a future that doesn’t exist. The Now moment is really the place of creation where miracles can occur. It is also a place of real peace. To spend time in the present we have to let go of relying on our minds and the urge to try and figure everything out.

    When we focus on the moment we more readily find ourselves in the flow of the universe. As we relax and allow the answers and solutions will come in wondrous ways. A flash of inspiration, an unexpected gift or a chance meeting with someone who can help us. We learn to tap the deep intelligence of our heart that speaks to us in the form of intuition, that felt sense of what to do now, now and now. We follow it like a breadcrumb trail home to our true selves and the inspired life that helps heal our world.

    We may need to heal the repressed feelings and emotions that we hold in our bodies and energy fields that can cloud our clarity and keep us from easily accessing these deeper ways of knowing. Yet the development over the past twenty years of many different energy psychologies like EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques), that I have had such wonderful success with, make this emotional housecleaning so much easier and graceful, allowing us to open to more of who we really are and step out of our comfort zone to create the new.

    Everywhere I go I meet people tapping into their creative impulses and their spiritual spark, in small and large ways, to help build a new world from this inspired place. This is the great possibility of 2017. What if as you live more from your heart and knowing and use your creative imagination this new year can be your best year ever?  What new life and world are you ready to create?

    Suzanne Murray is a gifted creativity and writing coach, soul-based life coach, writer, poet, EFT practitioner and intuitive healer committed to empowering others to find the freedom to ignite their creative fire, unleash their imagination and engage their creative expression in every area of their lives.

    As a Creativity Coach she helps others explore and support their creative self in whatever form it takes and to discover ways to live a more creative life. Offering The Heart of Writing Coaching and Classes since 1991, she brings to her work with writers a passion for words and an ability to inspire others to write and experience the writing process.. As an EFT Practitioner she enjoys working with these simple, powerful technique to help others shift out of limiting patterns and embrace a life they love.

    Committed to the power of Sacred Travel she leads small groups to Ireland, a place that offer a strong sense of the magnificent and mystical.

  • stop-treat-to-do-list-as

    This past year has been difficult for me (Marlene), not just during the long month of November.

    I have been playing catch up all year, trying to whittle down my never-ending to-do list. Susan Bono’s guest blog post reminds me to stop, notice, and savor the moment.

    Susan writes:

    Even those of us who start the day with a list know what it’s like when unplanned-for events start coming our way. In spite of our intentions, we start tackling the unscheduled instead of working on what we had planned. Emergencies come up, of course; we can’t control everything. No one can plan for bad news or times we are suddenly needed. But the list of unanticipated tasks is endless, and after a while, we just start doing what comes to us, instead of what we had intended.

    You should have days when you follow your bliss. In fact, have them as often as you like, but the trick is in telling yourself right from the start, “Today I’m going to do whatever I feel like.” But a plan that’s been ignored is a sign of defeat, and most of us have long range goals—I  mean, who doesn’t? So whenever you miss an opportunity to complete an intended task, you are altering the look of your Big Picture.

    Whether you regularly schedule too much for yourself or sell yourself short, you’ll benefit from the TL list. TL stands for “Tough Luck,” because that’s what you say to anything that’s not on it. If you can complete your assigned tasks, then let the spirit of que sera, sera take over.

    So tomorrow, do whatever is in your power to follow your list. The more in control you become in this area of your life, the fewer details your list will need to contain, but for tomorrow, make a schedule of what you think will cover every hour of your day. Include meals, personal care, regular errands, like carpooling, time sinks like phone calls, TV, or email. Now fit your to-do list into that existing framework. How much time do you really have?

    Once you’ve made your list, do your best to stick to it. Each time you say, “Tough luck” to extraneous chores, you are giving yourself a big helping of Tough Love. You are proving to yourself and the world that the work you set out to do is important, and so are you.

    See if you can love yourself enough to use the TL list until you discover what your true desires and capabilities are. As you plan your list for each tomorrow, note any substitutions you made earlier that day. Did you trade a trip to the grocery store for a surprise phone call from an old friend? Did you not get the ironing done because you couldn’t  put down that exciting book you were reading at lunchtime? Were your “failures” or trade-offs satisfying, or did they leave you wishing you could have a do-over?

    It’s important not to beat yourself up, because maybe what you really need is to make room for more fun. You can start scheduling that in, too, as you transfer whatever’s undone from the day’s list onto tomorrow’s. And if you’ve really missed the boat on some assignment you’ve given yourself, give it a decent burial. If what you failed to accomplish alters the Big Picture, accept this change with grace and trust that you were meant to change course anyway. As you learn to work with the TL list, you will internalize its rhythms and you won’t need to write everything down. But when you feel yourself getting out of control, you can always use this method to get yourself on track again.

    We can’t control what life does to mess up our plans. But we can eliminate our own tendencies to sabotage  ourselves. You’ll know when the TL list is working when you stop being so mad at yourself and start building a list of your accomplishments. That’s when Tough Luck goes beyond Tough Love and becomes True Love.

    susan-bonoSusan Bono, author of What Have We Here: Essays about Keeping House and Finding Home, was once a high school English teacher, is now a freelance editor, and has been facilitating workshops, critique groups and free-writing classes for more than 25 years. She was the editor and publisher of Tiny Lights: A Journal of Personal Narrative from 1995—2014.

     

  • Guest  Blogger Suzanne Murray writes:

    What if the chaos we experience in the world today and in our lives is actually an invitation to let go of the old ways and create something new. What if in letting go in the face of fear of the unknown we actually make room for the new to enter. Often when we give up trying we find a sort of magic that can bring unexpected opportunities beyond what we thought possible.

    We tend to resist chaos. We associate it with war or natural disasters or with the unraveling of the structures that we have always thought of as solid. We cling to what feels comfortable. Chaos can rattle our bodies and emotions leaving us feeling overwhelmed. It can trigger a reaction of fight or flight which puts us in our reptilian brain which is incapable of creative problem solving.

    What we call chaos can actually be part of the process of creativity and renewal. Look at nature. Fire recycles nutrients and restores certain species of trees like the Lodgepole Pine that require heat to release seeds from their cones. Immediately after a fire, nature gets to work restoring a new kind of order.

    In her book Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature, Janine Benyus explains, “The new sciences of chaos and complexity tell us that a system that is far from stable is a system ripe for change. Evolution itself is believed to have occurred in fits and starts, plateauing for millions of years and then leaping to a whole new level of creativity after crisis.”

    Then there is the chaos in our individual lives. We lose our job, a relationship ends, we are diagnosed with an illness or a loved one dies. Such changes can leave us feeling disappointed or sometimes even devastated. Yet often out of such chaos it’s possible that we get a better job, we met the love of our life, we develop increased kindness and compassion or we deepen our spiritual life.

    Allowing for chaos can open up new doors. I know a woman whose house burned down. At the time she didn’t see it as a gift. Yet a year later she is living in the house of her dreams paid for by her insurance. She is laughing as she tells me it’s the best thing that ever happened to her. In my own life it was the disturbing loss of job that prompted me to become self employed combining my love of teaching, writing, creativity and nature.

    Chaos is at the heart of being creative. Creativity begins from a place of swirling possibilities. It can be messy. On the creative journey we often feel like we don’t know what we’re doing or where exactly it’s going. Yet as we take it step by step following the threads of intuition and inspiration, and showing up for the work we are guided to do, we discover the process itself to be deeply rewarding and satisfying.

    We find that we are okay when something doesn’t work out the way we want. We let go of wanting to control everything and learn to let ourselves be surprised by what unfolds. We let ourselves be like a child with finger paints, who isn’t the least bit concerned about the mess. We learn to trust something greater than ourselves is working on our behalf.

    By bringing creativity into every area of our lives it can help us transcend the chaos by reordering the world and our lives in new and inspired ways. Take a minute consider a place in your life that feel chaotic and ask “what newness wants to be born in my life?” Don’t think about it, just allow an idea to pop in, follow your heart. Then see what one small act that you can take to start creating from this inspiration. What if we could help change and evolve the world that way?

    Suzanne Murray

    Join Suzanne Murray for a one day workshop in Point Reyes, CA. October 15, 10 am to 4 pm.

  • and not with “my name is.”  So . . . how could you, how should you begin your novel?

    bryn-donovanGuest Blogger, Bryn Donovan, writes about: What Happens on Page One: 30 Ways to Start a Novel.

    Note: This post contains spoilers for Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

    Note from Marlene:  Edited for brevity. Scroll down for link to original post.

    Bryn writes:

    Even when you have a basic idea of your story, sometimes it’s hard to know where to begin it.

    One of the best things you can do with your first five or ten pages is to get readers to care about what happens to your main character (or one of them.)

    In my opinion, and in the opinion of most editors, a prologue that only serves as backstory is generally a bad idea. It makes a novel feel like it’s taking too long to really get started. You can weave the backstory into the present-day action. Build some mystery and anticipation about past events.

    Many of us begin the story too soon in the first draft, with too much backstory.

    Ask yourself what happens in the story to jog your character out of her usual rut and take her in a different direction. A lot of people refer to that thing, that event that changes everything, as the “inciting incident.”

    (Something I have yet to do in my own stories is make the character’s own action lead to the change, rather than having her react to something. For instance, in my favorite movie of all time, Mad Max: Fury Road, Imperator Furiosa changes everything by deciding to rescue the sex slaves of a horrible dictator. And in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Finn rewrites his own destiny and everyone else’s as well by having a crisis of conscience. This leads him to make a daring escape with an imprisoned Resistance fighter.)

    In Blake Snyder’s screenwriting book, Save the Cat (a terrific resource for fiction writers), he lays out an outline that establishes a baseline for the main character: Here’s what his life is like, here are some of his issues, and oh, in case you were wondering, here’s the theme, stated by some character or other. The inciting incident (or what he calls “the catalyst”) happens a little ways in.

    It’s also possible to have the inciting incident on the first few pages, or even in the first sentence. That’s really up to you. But you don’t want to go too long before that first big thing happens.

    As my friend Trish tells her improv students, Start on the Day Everything Changes.

    [Bryn lists ways not to start a novel. Please go to her blog for this list.]

    Here are 30 ideas of places to start… maybe one of them will work with your story! For some of them, I’ve given examples of novels that begin in that way.

    As with the plot lists in my Master Lists for Writers book, you’re not cheating by using one, because these are all really broad! Each one of them could go a bunch of different ways.

    The arrival of a letter, email, or package. The Thirteenth Tale, Diane Setterfield

    A main character in a frustrating situation.

    A main character in an awkward or embarrassing situation.

    The discovery of a dead body. Thief of Shadows, Elizabeth Hoyt

    The death of somebody in the family or the community. All The Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy; The Known World, Edward P. Jones

    ~This is a popular one, and understandably so, because an ending is a new beginning.

    The beginning or the middle of a disaster. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, kind of.

    ~It could be a bombing, a plane crash, or a tornado.

    The aftermath of a disaster.(Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston

    A kiss.

    A performance, or the conclusion of one. Bel Canto, Ann Patchett

    A main character in the hospital. Kindred, Octavia Butler

    A main character declaring that he is in big trouble. The Martian, Andy Weir

    A main character who’s clearly in big trouble. What Is the What, Dave Eggers

    ~She might be getting mugged or running from Nazi soldiers. Readers will start caring about her immediately.

    The arrival of a plane, ship, or train. The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexander Dumas

    ~The character might be on board, or she might be watching it come in.

    A scene at a party, a bar, or a nightclub. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy; The Name of the Wind, Patrick Rothfuss

    A fight. The Warrior, Zoë Archer

    The character may be part of the fight, or just witnessing it.

    A character moving in to a new place.

    It could be a neighborhood or a dorm room.

    A broad statement about one’s life. One For the Money, Janet Evanovich

    ~One For the Money begins, “There are some men who enter a woman’s life and screw it up forever. Joseph Morelli did this to me — not forever, but periodically.” That’s a great hook.

    A dramatic moment in the middle or end of the story. The Secret History,Donna Tartt.

    ~You can begin in the moment and then backtrack to explain how they got there. For instance, the prologue of The Secret History begins, “The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation.”

    A trial in a courtroom.  Snow Falling on Cedars, David Guterson

    A job interview.

    ~ I really like this idea because you could get a lot of information across about your character naturally. She might be giving appropriate answers while her internal monologue tells you the rest of the story. Also, an applicant at a job interview is in a vulnerable position, which I think would create empathy for your heroine right away.

    A main character meets someone new. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë

    A street scene. Perdido Street Station, China Miéville

    ~Your character could be getting an errand done or going to visit somebody. For a novel that takes place in an historical, futuristic, or fantasy setting, this can be a good way to establish a sense of place as well as establish your character’s normal life and priorities.

    A main character in a triumphant situation.

    A character or characters getting dressed, shaving, putting makeup on, or doing their hair. The Makioka Sisters, Junichiro Tanizaki

    A big, happy occasion such as a wedding or a graduation.

    ~Of course, it might or might not be happy for your main character, who may be a participant or someone in the audience.

    One character teaching another how to do something.

    A visitor showing up at the door. The Big Sleep,Raymond Chandler.

    A main character coming across a significant object.

    A character committing a crime.

    A character or characters completing a task. Our Mutual Friend, Charles Dickens

    Originally posted on Bryn Donovan’s Blog, ” tell your stories ~ love your life.”

    For the complete blog post, please click on: “What Happens on Page One: 30 Ways to Start a Novel.”

    Bryn’s goal for her blog: “Share as many writing resources as possible, encourage people to remember how amazing they really are, and inspire myself and others to get as much out of life as we can. Hope you like it!”

     

  • Suzanne MurrayGuest Blogger Suzanne Murray writes about: Connecting to Nature and Creativity as a Gift for Ourselves and the World.

    Nature and creativity are doorways to the sacred. They can help us connect to the deeper parts of ourselves, the knowing of our hearts and souls. They can assist us in being more present in the moment and give us access to expanded capacities of intuition, inspiration and imagination. Connecting to the natural world, which is inherently creative, opens us to our own creative gifts, which allows us to bring forth new possibilities and solutions for our own lives and our troubled world.

    The ongoing tragedies in the world combined with instant access to these events through the news and social media can leave us feeling helpless and hopeless. Our psyches and nervous systems overwhelmed.

    Spending time in nature as well as creative play can be a balm for heart and soul and help us ground our lives in an expanded sense of self. Spending time in nature and creative play relaxes us, bringing us more into the moment where we can breathe more deeply and release our worry about the future. They can increase our sense of well being allowing us to connect to a sense of peace.

    I’ve been connecting to nature and creativity for most of my life and know the joy, satisfaction and comfort that both offer.

    Excerpt from Suzanne Murray’s August 17  Blog Post.

    Suzanne Murray shares her knowledge of connecting to nature and creativity in a one-day workshop, “Connecting to Nature and Creativity,” in Point Reyes on September 17.

    “We will explore a very special place I have known since I was a teenager to deepen our connection to nature and our creative capacities.”

  • What would you write if you knew you would die soon?

    Today’s Guest Blogger, Rebecca Lawton, took the plunge and explored what it means for our work to be “so essential that we must complete it before we leave this earth.”

    Becca’s Cool Writing Tips during the month of August were such a success, she’s repeating the series in September. So, if you missed out in August, you have another chance to be inspired by Becca Lawton’s Cool Writing Tips.

    Becca opened the second week of Cool Writing Tips with this provocative quote from Annie Dillard:

    Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. That is, after all, the case. What would you write if you knew you would die soon?

    Becca responds as if she were having an intimate conversation with Annie:

    Ms. Dillard, I’m so glad you asked that question. Now if I could only answer it.

    “What would you write if you knew you would die soon?” is a good question, but it’s one I find myself turning from, wanting to say, “Next!”

    Because to answer the question of what we’d write if we knew we’d die soon acknowledges that we will, in fact, die.

    And, the truth of the matter is, we will. Someday. Die. Hopefully not today or anytime soon, but sometime. And, given that fact, what should we write today?

    When I was writing my first novel I was also raising a child and working for a consulting firm that took the biggest part of my days. I’d rise early to steal a few hours before changing hats to care for my daughter and then go off to work. As I drove to the office, my characters still spoke to me, making their case that they needed my attention, and now.

    I’d promise to get back to them and then immerse myself in my consulting work. I’d only begin tuning into the novel again on my way home.

    Often—almost every day —I worried that I wouldn’t live long enough to see my novel finished. The thought that I might not finish this important life’s work terrified me. Not even when I was running the biggest rapids in the United States every day had I so considered death a possibility. Not even when I realized how quickly my daughter was growing did I feel immortal. No—it was the writing.

    That we find our work so essential that we must complete it before we leave this earth strikes me as a positive sort of feeling, if paranoid.

    Because, if we can’t really face the question as posed in Anne Dillard’s quote, maybe we can at least check  in with ourselves about how we’re spending our time. We can ask ourselves, “Would I keep slaving away at this thing if I knew it was the last thing I’d ever write (or paint or design or photograph?) If no, then why don’t I regroup?”

    We’re all terminal—but that’s okay. As Annie Dillard says, let’s assume that’s who our audience is. Because that is also who we are. And if we let that simple fact keep us honest and on track, I believe it will.

    Becca LawtonRebecca Lawton is the award-winning author (and co-author) of seven books. Her  path as a writer and fluvial geologist started with her first career, rowing rafts on the Colorado in Grand Canyon and other Western rivers.

    Some of her writing stems from observations in the field as a guide and researcher. Her essays and stories have been published in Aeon, Brevity, Hakai, More, Orion, The San Francisco Chronicle Magazine, Shenandoah, Sierra, Thema, Undark, and many other journals and anthologies.

  • Aladdins Lamp

    “The past,” Phillip Lopate says, “is an Aladdin’s lamp we never tire of rubbing.”

    Guest Blogger Norma Watkins studied with Phillip Lopate. The following is what she gleaned working with the master of the personal essay.

    The hallmark of personal essay and memoir is its intimacy. [Links below on memoir writing.]

    In a personal essay, the writer seems to be speaking directly into the reader’s ear, confiding everything from gossip to wisdom: thoughts, memories, desires, complaints, whimsies.

    The core of this kind of writing is the understanding that there is a certain unity to human experience. As Montaigne put it, “Every man has within himself the entire human condition.”

    This kind of informal writing, whether a short piece or a book of memoir, is characterized by:

    • self-revelation
    • individual tastes and experiences
    • a confidential manner
    • humor
    • a graceful style
    • rambling structure
    • unconventionality
    • novelty of theme
    • freshness of form
    • freedom from stiffness and affectation

    The informal writing of the personal essay and memoir offers an opportunity toward candor and self-disclosure. Compared with the formal essay, it depends less on airtight reasoning and more on style and personality. We want to hear the writer’s voice.

    How do we achieve this?

    Use a conversational tone. Instead of seeing our memoirs as collections of facts we are leaving to the future, strive to write as if this were a letter to a friend.

    We have a contract to the reader to be as honest as possible.

    Humans are incorrigibly self-deceiving, rationalizing animals. Few of us are honest for long. Often, in shorter personal essays, the “plot,” its drama and suspense, consists in watching how far the essayist can drop past her psychic defenses toward deeper levels of honesty. You want to awaken in the reader that shiver of self-recognition.

    Remove the mask. Vulnerability is essential.

    The reader will forgive the memoirist’s self-absorption in return for the warmth of his candor.

    The writer must be a reliable narrator. We must trust that the homework of introspection has been done. Part of this trust comes, paradoxically, from the writer’s exposure of her own betrayals, uncertainties, and self-mistrust. This does not mean relentlessly exposing dark secrets about ourselves, so much as having the courage to cringe in retrospect at our insensitivity that wounded another, a lack of empathy, or the callowness of youth. As readers, we want to see how the world comes at another person, the irritations, jubilations, aches and pains, humorous flashes. These are your building blocks.

    Ask yourself questions and follow the clues. Interrogate your ignorance. Be intrigued by limitations, physical and mental, what you don’t understand or didn’t do.

    Develop a taste for littleness, including self-belittlement. Learn to look closely at the small, humble matters of life. Develop the ability to turn anything close at hand into a grand meditational adventure. Make a small room loom large by finding the borders, limits, defects and disabilities of the particular. Start with the human package you own. Point out these limitations, which will give you a degree of detachment.

    You confess and, like Houdini, you escape the reader’s censure by claiming: I am more than the perpetrator of that shameful act; I am the knower and commentator as well. If tragedy ennobles people and comedy cuts them down, personal writing with its ironic deflations and its insistence on human frailty tilts toward the comic. We end by showing a humanity enlarged by complexity.

    We drop one mask only to put on another but if in memoir we continue to unmask ourselves, the result may be a genuine unmasking. In the meantime, the writer tries to make his many partial selves dance to the same beat: to unite through force of voice and style these discordant, fragmentary parts of ourselves. A harvesting of self-contradiction is an intrinsic part of the memoir. Our goal is not to win the audience’s unqualified love but to present the complex portrait of a human being.

    A memoirist is entitled to move in a linear direction, accruing extra points of psychological or social shading as time and events pass. The enemy is always self-righteousness, not just because it is tiresome, but because it slows down the self-questioning. The writer is always examining his prejudices, his potential culpability, if only through mental temptation.

    Some people find a memoir egotistical, all that I, I, I, but there are distinctions between pleasurable and irritating egotism. Writing about oneself is not offensive if it is modest, truthful, without boastfulness, self-sufficiency, or vanity. If a man is worth knowing, he is worth knowing well. It’s a tricky balance: a person can write about herself from angles that are charmed, fond, delightfully nervy; alter the lens a little and she crosses into gloating, pettiness, defensiveness, score-settling (which includes self-hate), or whining about victimization. The trick is to realize we are not important except as an example that can serve to make readers feel a little less lonely and freakish.

    The Past, as we said in the beginning, is a lamp we never tire of rubbing. We are writing the tiny snail track we made ourselves. Such writing is the fruit of ripened experience. It is difficult to write from the middle of confusion. We need enough distance to look back at the choices made, the roads not taken, the limiting family and historic circumstances, and what might be called the catastrophe of personality.

    Finally, the memoirist must be a good storyteller. We hear, “Show, don’t tell,” but the memoirist is free to tell as much as she likes, while dropping into storytelling devices whenever she likes: descriptions of character and place, incident, dialogue and conflict. A good memoirist is like a cook who learns, through trial and error, just when to add another spice to the stew.

    The Art of the Personal Essay, Phillip Lopate, Doubleday, 1994.

    Note from Marlene:  For more suggestions about how to write a personal essay, please see Write Spot Blog posts:

    How to Write A Memoir-Part One

    How to Write A Memoir-Part Two

    Norma Watkins will be the Writers Forum Presenter on August 18, 2016: “Writing Memoir and How To Turn Your Stories Into Fiction.”

    Norma grew up in Mississippi and left in the midst of the 1960s civil rights struggles. Her award-winning memoir, The Last Resort: Taking the Mississippi Cure, tells the story of those years. When asked what the memoir is about, Watkins says: “Civil rights, women wronged, good food and bad sex.”

    Watkins has a Ph.D. in English and an MFA in Creative Writing.  She teaches Creative Writing for Mendocino College and  serves on the Board of the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference, and the Coast branch of the California’s Writers Club.

  • Do you feel guilty when you re-read a book (on purpose, not because you forgot you previously read it)?

    Juan Vidal wrote a thoughtful essay about the joys and discoveries one makes when re-reading.

    “Returning to a book you’ve read multiple times can feel like drinks with an old friend. There’s a welcome familiarity — but also sometimes a slight suspicion that time has changed you both, and thus the relationship. But books don’t change, people do. And that’s what makes the act of rereading so rich and transformative.

    The beauty of rereading lies in the idea that our engagement with the work is based on our current mental, emotional, and even spiritual register. It’s true, the older I get, the more I feel time has wings. But with reading, it’s all about the present. It’s about the now and what one contributes to the now, because reading is a give and take between author and reader.”

    Excerpted from: “You Can Go Home Again:  The Transformative Joy Of Rereading,” by Juan Vidal, NPR, April  17, 2016 NPR. KQED Public Radio.

    Bono.What Have We Here

    What books have you re-read?

    Note from Marlene:

    I have re-read so many favorites, it would be a long list.

    One of my all-time favorites to re-read is What Have We Here,  by Susan Bono.