The Power of Storytelling—Now Proven

  • Guest Blogger Frances Lefkowitz writes:

    The life of a freelance writer is full of the uncertain (“where will my next assignment come from?”) and the mundane (“did I spell that source’s name right?”), coupled with high deadline pressure and middling compensation. But every once in a while, I get to track down fascinating regular people and ask them to tell me stories. That’s what I did for a recent article for Good Housekeeping on the power of storytelling. The assignment was to write about the new evidence that storytelling has benefits for the health and wellness of individuals, families, and communities, and I had to read my fair share of academic research journals and talk to my fair share of M.D.s and Ph.Ds. But I also got to sit back, relax, and listen to tall tales.

    The best, most enduring stories, it turns out, are those that contain both hardship and humor. Like the one Evelyn Karozos, who comes from a large Greek family in the Midwest, told me about how the whole family used to eat dinner in the parents’ bedroom on sticky summer nights—because that was the only room with an air conditioner. Or the one a southern grandmother—and who can beat Southerners for storytelling—told me the one about her great grandpa, who once wooed a wealthy widow by wrapping the few dollar bills he had around a wad of newspaper, then casually letting it drop from his pocket, leaving the impression that he was rolling in money.

    And then there was the one from Emily Pickle, a young mother from Florida, who recounted a bittersweet story about the time her grandmother was going through a health crisis in which she suffered temporary dementia-like symptoms. “This was the year the Gators won the championship, and the quarterback was Danny Wuerffel,” she told me, adding, “Football is a very big deal where we come from.” When her mother and uncle went to visit Grannie in the hospital, they found her repeating, “Danny Wuerffel, Danny Wuerffel” over and over, as if she were reciting a prayer. When Pickle’s Uncle Jay shared the anecdote with the rest of the family, he mimicked Grannie’s reverence, rocking back and forth, repeating the beloved QB’s name, eliciting laughter and tears in his audience. “It was awful, but it was funny, too, the way he told us,” she pointed out. And beneath the laughter and the tears, Uncle Jay was sending an important message to the rest of the family, that “Grannie’s going to recover from this; she’s going to laugh, we’re going to laugh, and this will be one more family story — not a family tragedy.” And he was right.

    Psychologists call these “redemptive stories,” because they “redeem” a negative experience, finding some silver lining in a bad event. The point is NOT to be a pollyanna and sugarcoat the fear, danger, or difficulty. The point is to acknowledge the negativity, and also find some kind of lesson or benefit in it—even if that benefit is simply that the family came together to overcome a challenge. When people hear these stories, they get a laugh, a release of tension, a sense of belonging, and a signal that together, we can find ways to carry on.

    I tell you all this because, as writers, we deal in stories. We distill them and write them down and spruce them up and pass them on. And by doing so, we are not only making a livelihood; we are contributing to the health and well being of the people who read us.

    Click here to read the Good Housekeeping article.

    Frances LefkowitzFrances Lefkowitz is the former Senior Editor of Body+Soul (aka Martha Stewart’s Whole Living) and Book Reviewer for Good Housekeeping, as well as the author of the memoir To Have Not. She writes and edits fiction and nonfiction, and teaches for The Sun magazine’s writing workshops, the Omega Institute’s Memoir Festival (with Cheryl Strayed), Catamaran Literary Review’s August 2015 retreat, and other events.

    Frances blogs about writing, publishing and footwear at PaperInMyShoe.com
    Photo by Giacco Yanez

    Frances will join other editors at Writers Forum on May 21. 2015 in Petaluma . . . meet editors, chat with editors, find an editor to help polish your manuscript.

  • Prompt #32

    What games did you play?

    Today’s prompt is from To Have Not, a fascinating memoir by Frances Lefkowitz.

    When us kids used to walk down 16th Street to the schoolyard or across Sanchez to the corner store, we’d keep a lookout for cool cars. When one drove by – a red mustang convertible, a tiny MG, a black Jag with the silver cat ready to pounce off the hood – whoever saw it first would point and say, “That’s my car!” We could play this game anywhere, my brothers and their buddies and I, shouting the words loud and fast to drown out anyone else who might be thinking about claiming the same car.  You could even play it alone, whispering the three magic words while walking home from school or sitting in a window seat on the bus, leaning your drowsy head against the sun-warmed glass. Then the car would speed through traffic, carrying your dreams out of sight. You’d covet, grasp, and lose, all in a few quick seconds of shiny colored metal whizzing by.

    Frances blogs about writing, publishing, and footwear at PaperInMyShoe.com.

    Lefkowitz.To Have Not

    Prompt #32

    What game did you and your friends or siblings make up? What does this say about your childhood?

  • “Are your parents still speaking to you?” The Dangers of Memoir

    Guest Blogger:

    Frances Lefkowitz

    “Are your parents still speaking to you?”

    This question—a darn good one—comes up pretty much every time I do a Q&A. The short answer is “Yes.” My parents and siblings are all still talking to me; we still get together for holidays and birthdays and no blood gets shed. But this is not the case for other memoirists; I know several who are estranged from their families. Discussing family matters, revealing secrets, shining light on our most vulnerable and tragic moments including bad behavior or naive mistakes, and getting just our version into print, so it sounds like the official word on the subject: If this is what we do when we write memoir, then offending the people in our lives is one of our occupational hazards.

    The long answer is that this question is a great opportunity to discuss the distinction between the process of writing a memoir or personal essay and the process of publishing one. When writing, I don’t think about anyone, such as my parents, reading it, because I need to write freely and allow the thoughts, feelings, and images to emerge. Censorship in any form, including self-censorship emanating from a fear of hurting someone, hampers the creative process. But publishing–making this writing public–is a whole other story. When you get to the publishing stage, however, you have some decisions to make about what you are willing to reveal and risk in your life, for the sake of your art. When the memoir manuscript I’d been writing for ten or so years was finally about to become a book, I realized with a shudder that this was serious now, that the characters I’d been writing about were real people, with feelings and lives, that my looseness with words might accidentally hurt someone. So I gave it another close read, ignoring plot problems, repeated phrases, and awkward-sounding sentences to look solely at how I had portrayed the people in my life, especially the ones I wanted to remain in my life. Were there places where I tossed off a flip, and not really accurate, remark for the sake of humor or malice?  If so, was the result—a laugh, a cringe—worth the risk of insulting a real person? Sure enough, I found spots here and there throughout the book that felt rude, possibly hurtful, and most of them were not very entertaining or even very true. Many of these spots involved ex-boyfriends, some of whom I still love. Editing out insults turned out to be no sacrifice to the art of the work. What I nipped and tucked did not hurt the veracity of the memoir, and may even have improved it, because I applied an extra layer of empathy. And empathy is so crucial to a good memoir—and to good relationships, and to family Thanksgivings in which everyone comes out alive.

    Frances Lefkowitz is the author of TO HAVE NOT, a memoir about growing up poor in 1970s San Francisco which was named one of 5 Best Memoirs of 2010 by SheKnows.com. An award-winning and much published writer of fiction, personal essays, memoir, and flash fiction, Frances is also an editor, writing coach, and writing workshop leader. The former Senior Editor of Body+Soul magazine (aka Martha Stewart’s Whole Living), Frances is the book reviewer for Good Housekeeping and a manuscript reader for a leading literary agency. She blogs about writing, publishing, and footwear at PaperInMyShoe.com.    

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