Raise the Emotional Stakes: Strengthening Alchemy between Setting, Character, and Conflict

Morning: writing at my sunny desk.  Task:  revise a stubborn scene.  Advice from recent feedback:  bring more emotion into it.

Sunshine and spring in New England today is no help.   In my fictional scene, it's chilly October in the northern mountains of New York state.  I'm sitting comfortably in my chair, laptop in front of me, spicy tea and good music and sweet air at hand.  My character, in her scene, has just crashed her small plane--on purpose.  She's bleeding, shaken, and starving.

So our situations couldn't be more disparate.  How do I have the gall to attempt such writing--to capture the desperation of this person who only exists in my imagination?

Because I know such desperation.  I've never crashed a plane, but I know well the survival instinct that my character rides on in this moment of the story.  To access my own memory of this, I use the writing techniques of alchemy.

Alchemy simply means a combination of elements to create something magical.  In writing, these are three:  setting, action, and the character's physical state.  Combined in certain ways, they manufacture magic for the reader.  That magic that all good literature offers--where we readers can lose ourselves for a few hours in a different world. 

The Alchemy of Place
Place details are either wholly ignored by most writers--"too slow for me," one of my students once said--or used too much.  Some writers dump a lot of setting details in the beginning of each chapter, the start of each scene, as if "setting the stage."  Setting must be placed where the alchemy actually occurs.

Use of the senses is the first element to successful settings.  Especially smell and sound.  These access the reader's own memories of place, make your job almost effortless.  In my online class, Strange Alchemy, we begin by studying famous writers' work--how do they place the sense of place in each section of a story, chapter, scene?  George Saunders, Judy Blundell, Flannery O'Connor, and many more teachers help us learn that placement is everything!  When we give feedback each week on excerpts from writing by fellow students in the class, our eye is already tuned to whether the placement is strong.

Place is the backdrop used by professional writers to depict emotion.  Whatever the character notices--or doesn't notice--tells the reader about their emotional stage:  their distractions, their memories, their angst.  It's too good a tool to ignore.

The Alchemy of a Character's Physical State
Next is the character's external self--not what they are thinking or feeling, which could be unreliable, but how they present themselves in the world, consciously or unconsciously.  A twitch, a certain favorite piece of clothing, a way of moving their hands, an itchy ear, all reveal emotion. 

As with place, it's good to have enough but not too much.  In Judy Blundell's award-winning young-adult novel, What I Saw and How I Lied, she introduces the two main characters in the first page via certain physical details that completely show their future trajectories in the book:  the mother who smokes in the dark and whose lipstick-covered lips catch on the cigarette paper with every drag--a tiny but revealing sound heard by her not-sleeping daughter; the young girl who carries Baby Ruths in her bike basket to the foggy beach each morning to eat breakfast alone there.   

I make a list this morning of my downed pilot's physical state--what is she wearing, what is moving or held still in her body as she waits, what aches and itches, what she does with her hands. 

Combined with place, these physical elements of character create the first step of alchemy.

The Alchemy of Action
Place and physical attributes are only useful, though, if they are juxtaposed with action.  Dennis Lahane, author of Mystic River and other works, talked about this in an interview I read many years ago:  If a character is in the same room for more than one page, get them out of there.   Stillness is a pause, a valuable pause, but it doesn't move the writing forward.

So instead of my downed pilot being able to sit and starve silently, reflecting on the wilderness around her, she must be doing something within a page.  Action is the final element of alchemy.  It's only by seeing a person in action that we really know them. 

Put together, these three create magic. 

When I begin a scene, I often will work on each element separately, to make sure I've covered it, then combine them in paragraph or chapter in good proportion to each other.  Action usually takes the most space, then the physical state of the character, then the setting.  Each is crucial to alchemy, but they work in a hierarchy. 

Intrigued?  Consider studying the attributes of alchemy with me this summer in my online class which begins on Monday, June 9.  We spend four weeks on action (specifically, raising the stakes in your writing), four on character development, and four on place/setting.  Each week includes short readings in memoir and fiction by well-known writers, to study and learn from, as well as some very helpful writing exercises I've developed from my own work.  To learn more or register, click here.   

Emotional Gateways--How They Help You Write and Revise Your Book

On June 2, next Monday, I begin teaching my summer online classes.  In both the beginning and intermediate level classes, we examine how scenes, chapters, and whole books are built to deliver the exact meaning the writer wants. 

Katherine Dering, a writer in past classes, just had her first memoir published.  She wrote me this week: 

Your classes were very helpful to me finishing and getting Shot in the Head, a Sister's Memoir, a Brother's Struggle published:  where to start, what to cut or add, finding central images, rising and falling tensions, inner and outer story, inviting the reader into the room...it all helped.   People tell me they couldn't put it down.  Mary, you must have gotten through to me.

Not an easy process.  But intensely rewarding when your book is finished and published, as Katherine now knows.  Those readers who can't put her book down are engaged because of the story's drama, of course, but also because of the emotional gateways this writer has crafted so expertly.   

What Are Emotional Gateways?
Most good books offer a series of gateways where the reader's own past, thoughts and feelings, memories and values, can connect with the story on the page.  Imagine them like entrances into the secret world of the book.  Emotional gateways are responsible for that blissful experience of getting lost in a story, thinking about it for days afterward, feeling rage or sorrow or joy as you read about someone you'll never meet but whose world is entirely real to you.

Emotional gateways are openings into a book's meaning.  They are more powerful that intellectual delivery of ideas and concepts; they hook into more primal centers in the brain.  They depend on images and senses.  There is no effort to retrieve the memory, unlike the work it can take intellectually.

Crafting strong emotional gateways is a skill every writer can learn, and I'm fierce about its importance in creating strong writing.  In my classes, we work on first expanding use of the five senses.  Involuntary memory evokers, the senses are the simplest way to open emotional gateways for readers.  (Remember Marcel Proust and his rhapsody on the tiny French cake called a madeleine in Remembrance of Things Past?)

After expanding use of the senses, what's next?  Practice relaxing the linear side of the brain and engaging the image-based mind. 

I use many exercises in my online classes to help writers learn this.  I offer the excellent resources of Robert Olen Butler's From Where You Dream (see below for blog post on this book) and Robert Boswell's The Half-Known World--two writing books that clear the way to image-work.  I also recommend daily freewrites based on images and collage work (Sue Monk Kidd, author of The Secret Life of Bees, and many other writers use cut-out pictures to prompt the image brain). 

Most vital:  train yourself to not censor the images that come onto the page, even if you have no clue how they connect to your chapter or scene.

A writer from Canada emailed me recently.  She asked how I approached my own writing after learning about emotional gateways.  What changed?  Everything. 

I still write and revise with my lists, my charts, my character timelines and other linear tools.  But I give equal time to image work.  When my writing feels stalled out, I freewrite--just for 20 minutes--on a random image.  I know that "stalled out" feeling is just the linear brain becoming too active, critical, and disengaged from emotional gateway work. 

Truthfully, for most of us, it takes re-awakening the part of ourselves that is so little used in daily life.  Once we do, it makes a tremendous difference in our writing.  

For more information on my online book-structuring classes, where you can learn and practice emotional gateways, click here. 

Cheryl Strayed on Jealousy, How to Keep Writing, Getting Famous, and Other Great Stuff--Interviewed by Elissa Bassist

 I loved this flippant, educational article by a favorite writer, Cheryl Strayed.  She's reached fame and fortune lately, since her memoir, Wild, became a movie.  Well worth reading, a solid reality check on the writing life.  Originally published in Creative Nonfiction magazine, the link is here. 

Enjoy--and get inspired--as this week's writing post.

Resources for Writing a Potent "Inner Story" in Your Book

{This post also appeared earlier this week as a guest blog on Grub Street Daily.}

Vivian Gornick talks about “the situation and the story”—the two elements of good prose.  What happens and why it happens.  Because of her simplicity in describing this complex idea, The Situation and the Story became one of the first truly influential writing books in my life.  Carol Bly’s The Passionate, Accurate Writer came next, teaching me about writing of consequence and how to stay unembittered while working with difficult material.  Finally, I found Kenneth Atchity’s innovative A Writer’s Time, which transformed the last five manuscripts I completed and published. 

For years, I wholeheartedly recommended these three books to my writing buddies, coaching clients, and students.  I know there are many very good writing books available—and shelves of them line my office—but only a few, such as these, have really taught me how to grow as a writer. 

A friend’s discovery recently added another transformative writing book to my small collection.  From Where You Dream, by Robert Olen Butler (Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 2005), is a series of lectures to his graduate fiction students, transcribed and edited by Janet Burroway (of Writing Fiction fame).  Although geared toward fiction writers, From Where You Dream answered my question on how to bring out the deeper meaning of any piece of writing, especially when writing a book.

I teach online classes and workshops on how to structure your book in any genre.  In the workshops, writers learn about and explore the two levels of story that Gornick describes:  (1) the situation presented in outer events (“outer story”) and (2) the real story, or the inner changes that come from these events (“inner story”).  For most, a successful outer story is the easiest to write; it does not require opening a vein, being as vulnerable on the page, staying at risk. 

A successful inner story requires all of this.  It asks the writer to be present, vulnerable, delve into her own life for emotional truth, and bring it all back to her book.

(By the way, “inner story” also applies to any small anecdote illustrating change or growth or new understanding in essays, informational books, travel books, and biographies.)

Butler gave me good clues to writing inner story.  He proposes that to write successful emotional moments, a writer must dwell in the sensory elements of that moment.  It requires a full immersion into the senses. 

I tried this idea first on my own work and then in my workshops.  I worked for weeks with the techniques in Butler’s From Where You Dream.  Slowly, I discovered what Butler was suggesting:  that by fully dwelling in a sensory moment, space is created that the reader can enter.  Emotion emerges, almost organically.

Most writers believe the reader needs some interpretation (the “telling” that often precedes “showing”) but Butler warms against this.  He counsels the writer to just stay in the sensory moment—a very difficult task, especially in early drafts of a book.  The rational mind loves interpretation.  We want to make meaning of everything.  Few readers need that in their literature—it actually can be an irritant.  Readers want to be drawn into the “dream” of the experience, as John Gardner wrote about.  Interpretation may be needed later, once the emotion is transmitted, but rarely is it needed early on.  An inner story (meaning) must evolve organically to be believed. 

Most valuable to me were Butler’s five main ways to transmit emotion to the reader.  I used these within the sensory experience, each became true gateways for my book’s inner story.  I began using them whenever I wanted to enhance a chapter, a scene, whenever I came across a moment in my story that needed enlivening. 

I recommend adding From Where You Dream to your writerly reading list this spring.  And try this simple exercise whenever you want to enliven your own inner story. 

1. You’ll be describing an event during your childhood, one that evoked strong emotion.  Write about this event, using the sense of sound as much as possible.  Your writing may encompass the other senses, but really focus on how things sounded, as much as you can recall. 
2. Add the sense of smell.  Continue writing about the event, keeping the emphasis on these two senses.  The writing may feel artificial or forced, but don’t let that critic stop you.  Try not to interpret, just create as strong a sensory experience as possible.
3. Now ask yourself, How is my body feeling as I write this?  Close your eyes and perceive your breathing, heart rate, tightness of muscles, any fatigue.  Do you feel irritated, bored with your writing, sad, angry?  Write about your inner state and your physical sensations—add this information to the writing you’re doing, as you remember this past event.
4. Next ask yourself, What don’t I remember hearing during this event I am writing about?  Asking yourself this question often brings back memories you may have forgotten—or wanted to forget. 
5. Then ask yourself, What was I afraid of smelling during this event I am writing about?
6. Finish the exercise by writing how you feel now, looking back on this event. 

What has changed in your perception?     

This exercise often brings out a theme, emotional resonance, or inner story that can be used in your book writing.     

And if you'd like to explore your book's inner story (and outer story) further, join me in Boston on Saturday, May 31, 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. at Grub Street.  This class often sells out, so click on the link above (Grub Street school) to find out more or register.

How to Keep Your Writing in Your Over-the-Top Busy Life: Helpful Techniques from the Experts

A particular exchange exists between the writer and her writing.  One feeds the other.  If you write, you write more.  If you stop writing, it's intensely difficult to get started again.

Not only that, your sense of your writing's quality and potential changes. 

After three days, some experts say, you essentially need to start over--the flow is gone and it's necessary to completely reacquaint yourself with the project and your vision for it.  Any momentum dies.  Regaining it can be hard work.  That's why many writers, once they stop writing, lose the rhythm of their practice. 

The Inner Critic steps up to the plate:  The writing begins to look much worse than it actually is.  I believe the IC protects us from creative risks, and writing a book is certainly that.  Sometimes, to add more fun to the mix, a crisis appears just at that very moment that drains all creative energy.  Days go by, then weeks, then months.  The writing languishes.

It's still there, of course.  But our attitude and guilt make it hard to approach again.  I've witnessed it countless times in my classes as well as with my own books.

We miss it.  Writing brings something to our life that nothing else can.  So we begin to ask--very quietly, or loud and desperate:  What can I change?  What can I get rid of?  What new habits can I start, to keep writing in my over-the-top busy life?

It doesn't take much, but it does take something.  I love the jumpstart techniques below.  They all work; they're all simple.  Which might work for you? 

Elizabeth Gilbert's Timer Technique
Gilbert is the well-known author of many books, most notably her memoir Eat, Pray, Love.  She wrote a wonderful Facebook post last week about using a kitchen timer to get writing. 

I love the timer technique.  I bought four of them to keep my wayward attention on track (when I am writing, I forget everything else; when I am not writing, I often need a timer to prompt me to get started).  To read Gilbert's suggestions, go to www.facebook.com and search for Elizabeth Gilbert (scroll down; the relevant post is the one with the kitchen timer illustration).

Anne Lamott's Picture-Frame Technique
Long ago I bought a 2-inch square empty photo frame for my desk.  Lamott, author of the wonderful writing book, Bird by Bird, suggests it as a jumpstart for writing sessions.  She tells herself (and now I do too) that she only has to write enough words to fit in the frame.  It comes to about 25 words, I've learned.

Once you get over the 25-word hump, it's often easier to keep writing--and enjoy the flow again.

Eric Maisel's First-Thing-in-the-Morning Technique
My writing buddy Nancy McMillan recently attended a writing workshop at Kripalu with creativity expert Eric Maisel.  Maisel is known for his books on the creative process, including Fearless Creating.  Nancy brought back an effective and simple idea from Maisel:  Give time to your writing first thing each day, before anything else.  Even 20 minutes, captured before the day's pressures begin, allows you to keep writing.

Nancy's blog post is full of great ideas from the workshop.  Check it out here.

Jerry Seinfeld's Calendar Technique
Seinfeld used a big wall calendar to keep writing--he marked off each writing day with a red X and was loathe to break the chain.  It works for me too.  Read more about it here.

My Take-a-Class Technique
Exhausted from family crises these past months, as well as an intense teaching schedule, I had a hard time making room for my writing.  The thing that did it:  taking a class.  I signed up for two short online courses, which required writing each day, and I found myself engaged again.

The support of other writers, the joy of learning new skills, and the encouragement to show up and share all provide the accountability I personally need as a writer to keep going.  Many of my students say the same thing.

What keeps you writing?  Which of these techniques--or other ideas--get you to the page each day or several times a week?  

Wisdom from Janet Burroway, Author of Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft

I came across Janet Burroway's superb text on writing fiction during my MFA program.  Writing Fiction:  A Guide to Narrative Craft is the most widely used textbook for fiction MFAW programs; clearly, Burroway knows her craft and knows how to teach it.

This week, check out this interview with Burroway about her new memoir, and the intricacies of her writing process--the how, where, when of writing books.

Finding the Edges: The Art of Theme and Voice in Fiction and Memoir

Novelists and memoir writers know the agony and ecstasy of voice and theme.  Two make-or-break aspects of a book, they arrive last-minute, often at final revision.  Neither can be planned or manipulated by the author.  Most successful thematic writers, when asked, come up clueless about how their work finds its voice and theme.

Most writing teachers say theme and voice are impossible to teach.  The art of them (for it is more art than craft, with these two) must be caught.     

I agree--and disagree. 

As a writing teacher since the early eighties, I've practiced techniques to bring out meaning (theme) and allow natural strengths and uniqueness (voice) to emerge on the page.  Techniques train the creative self to sink into receptive, listening mode.  Techniques can alert you to what makes good meaning, how to ask for insight from others who may see it more clearly, and how to make room in your writing process to listen.  Voice is what comes as you become more of yourself on the page, reveal more, embrace vulnerability. 

Both are all about letting go rather than pushing ahead.  What allows you to let go the easiest?  And still keep writing . . .

When I was asked to teach a one-day workshop on "The Art of Voice and Theme in Fiction and Memoir" for the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis this summer, I began researching more fervently--how do other writers do this?  My workshop will be on Saturday, July 19 (click here for more information), and I have some time to develop it.  But as luck would have it, insights began coming across my desk.

Finding theme, or meaning, means limiting focus.  It sounds contradictory, but once you figure out what your book is about--which may connect with a place, an era, a relationship, or an event--you have something to write against.  As you write against this edge, you learn what is and what is not your story.  This seems, in my experience, to be the great doorway to theme and voice.

It feels counter-intuitive, yes.  We imagine that theme is about stretching wide and opening up, that more meaning comes from letting in greater ideas.  There is an aspect of expansion in theme development, but it's when we figure out what the story is really about, that theme begins to emerge.

Theme is meaning.  One of the exercises I give to my advanced online book-structuring classes is to write about what their book means to them.  What does it really mean to you, the writer?  Then write about the possible take-away for the reader.  Somewhere between these, theme or meaning often lies.

A great insight came from reading Dani Shapiro's new book, Still Writing.  Dani has a chapter called "Edges," where she cites a writer named Joshua Cody, author of the memoir, Sic.  Cody says, "the key to any composition, it occurs to me, is to write against an edge, a frame."  Cody is a cancer patient, and for him, cancer is the frame he works with.  "Put a frame around something, anything--the frame of cancer, say, around a life, and you've already gotten somewhere without willing it."  Shapiro adds, "writing against an edge . . . can be enormously helpful in giving you clarity about your particular corner of the crazy-quilt.  Your patch of land.  Your precise and unique bit of geography.  Your world." 

Your Weekly Writing Exercise
1.  Ask yourself about the edges or frame of your book-in-progress.  Is your frame, or edge, nature or the wilderness, a certain relationship, coming of age or childhood, mental illness, cancer, disfigurement, rape or abuse, a serious illness such as AIDS or MS, the workings of tall clocks, sailing, a thru-hike?  What's the frame "through which you can see you story" and what edges or boundaries does it provide?

2.  Freewrite about this frame.  Decide, if you find more than one edge or frame, which is the most vital to you, to your story, if you had to choose just one.

Organizing Your Book: Great Tips on What to Save, How to File It to Find It, and More!

Sharon, a blog reader, emailed me last week with a question about her book--not a writing craft question, but the all important organization SOS all book writers hit:

"Help!" she wrote,  "I'm swimming in paper and computer files.  How do I organize this mess, know what to keep and what to toss, and navigate the rest?"

In my book-structuring classes, we mostly deal with the art and craft of writing, but this question always comes up.  Writing a book is a long-term relationship between a writer and a lot of words.  It's not like one piece of paper, or even one notebook.  More like a marriage than a one-night fling.  It pays to be prepared for the onslaught.

I use a couple of tried-and-true techniques for keeping track of my book as it moves from idea to chapters to first draft to multiple revision.  I've also gathered good tips from other published writers.  Here's the ten top tips--in no particular order of importance. 

Maybe one or two will help Sharon--and you--keep afloat.   

1.  Work with both a writer's notebook (for ideas, jottings, images, and freewrites) as well as a computer.  Some writers I interviewed used the computer for initial ideas, but many used a notebook.  The notebook kept them from over-editing in the early stages.  Tips:  Number and date your notebooks.  Plan time to transfer longhand writing into the computer (one writer started each writing session with 10-15 minutes of this; she said it got her motor going). 

2.  In early drafts especially, work with a software that helps keep track of versions.  Scrivener was hands-down the favorite recommendation.  It's cheap ($45) and very intuitive.  You can create chapters-to-be as placeholders with ideas listed on the sidebar memo, play with character and place images to inspire you, add research in a split screen, rearrange your chapters' order in a click, and so much more.  Buying Scrivener was the best organization decision I ever made.

3.  Work in islands, not outlines.  I teach the "island" method of developing a book, promoted by writer and teacher Ken Atchity.  Basically, you keep a list of possible scene or section topics in your notebook, update it every writing session with a few more ideas, and choose one at random to write about that day.  Write anywhere in the book.  Great for the right brain, as well as the linear left.

4.  Organize your islands by key words.  Title each island or scene or section and save it in Scrivener or Word.  "Clare--New York museum"  "Big flood" "Jonathan--Finding the gold necklace"  Key words help you search and locate the scene as your manuscript grows--and helps you avoid duplicating.
Regularly print a list of your islands, a directory of your file folders, or the binder contents in Scrivener, so you can keep track of what you have. 

5.  Use an image board.  Sue Monk Kidd began The Secret Life of Bees with a single image that grew to a board full.  I start an image board when I begin a new book.  Take an hour and from 2-3 magazines, tear images that appeal to you--no need to wonder why.  Arrange and glue them onto a poster or foamcore board and hang in your writing space.  Use an image each time you need a freewrite prompt--write about what it means to you.  You may find these inform your story much more than you could imagine!

6.  Start a dictionary of words you use a lot.  Even if you have a manuscript in process, start one now.  Do a global search to find your favorites.  Mine are deep, twisted, and sparkling--and I use them way too often, as I discovered when my dictionary began to build.  Vary your prose.

7.  I know I'm going against the digital revolution when I suggest this:  Print each complete (bad to great) draft and put it into a binder.  Label the binders.  Store them where you can find them.  Most editors know that it's impossible to really see a manuscript only on the computer screen.  Hard copy rocks.  Print single-spaced, narrow margins, on scrap paper--most writers have tons of that--to save paper.    When your book is published, get rid of them.

8.  Use different colored file folders for:  (1) unused chapter ideas, (2) research notes and photocopies of research sources, (3) blog posts--if your book is based on your blog, as many are, (4) feedback and critiques.

9.  Keep a log of submissions and rejections.  An experienced writing buddy helped me create my first log when I began submitting short stories many years ago.  Simple, it had five columns:  title of piece, date sent, sent to (editor's contact info), sent via (email or snail mail) and answer received.  At first, this was all I needed.  When I began publishing, I added a sixth column:  date of publication.  And eventually a seventh:  payment received.

10.  Many writers use Evernote to gather info from the web, store ideas, and cut down on paper.  I love it too, but I still need to physically handle my notes, see my handwriting or typing, read off screen.  But do check out Evernote if you haven't heard of it--very worthwhile.      

Writing about Tough Topics: When It Gets Personal in Your Story, How Do You Keep Going?

Michael, a writer from the New England area, took my workshop on book-structuring techniques last year.  He recently emailed me about his memoir-in-progress and asked a very good question. 

Did I have any tips on writing about very serious topics?  Such as abuse, combat, or any subject that makes the writer go back to memories of past pain and trauma.

Memoir writers face this question head-on.  But novelists may also draw from real-life experiences, processed into fictional scenes as they draft their manuscript:  one student in my classes is writing about a drowning in her novel that pulls memories and senses from her brother's death at a young age.  Another has crafted an excellent main character based on her mother's difficult life.

What about nonfiction writers?  Because nonfiction now includes stories--most nonfiction books today are humanized by illustrations of the theories and methods--most deal with this question as well. 

If the body is somatic, translating emotion into cellular experiences, we will process trauma as we write.  Writing about a business bankruptcy during the 1980s recession made me literally ill.  But the writing was wonderful catharsis, bringing deep healing, as well as being an unexpected gift to readers who felt shame at their own financial failures.

Nevertheless, it can be tough going. 

A sincere writer like Michael, who wants to bring both light and dark into his or her work, must deal with this tangle of emotions and memories.  But how?

Writing Two Kinds of Truth
As we write, two kinds of truth emerge.  Each will have a different effect on our psyche.  Each of us may tend to include or ignore one of these kinds of truth whenever trauma is connected with it.

As a newspaper writer for years, I was comfortable with factual truth.  The who, what, when, where of any situation seemed easy to write.  Emotional truth, or the meaning behind the facts, was harder.  Luckily, journalists weren't required to go there.  But when I began writing books, this "inner story" formed a base for the facts, and I had to learn to include it. 

Memory will contain both, but we may not access both.  And we wonder what's really truth, perhaps, since memory of facts vary from person to person, as does emotional take-away.

We may recall the facts of a situation and block the emotional meaning for many years; or the reverse.  It really depends on our wiring.  And how much processing is needed.  A great discussion of this duality is in Patricia Hampl's I Could Tell You Stories, one of my favorite books on the process of writing memories, whether true or fictionalized. 

For me, the emotional effect of my business failure, the shame and fear and anger of it, was very easy to recall.  The facts were harder.  Others may write baldly about the loss of a parent, but take months or longer to get to the meaning, how this loss changed them. 

Which are you? 

Inner story writers are comfortable processing the feelings and inner workings of a trauma; they may have gone through years of therapy and forgiven those who harmed them, or themselves if they caused harm.  Their writing will often emerge more ethereal or conceptual.  Talking "about" the past experience, and its effects now, is easier than actually describing what happened.  Readers may not track the details of the event with this kind of writing.   

Outer story writers have good reporter skills:  they know the facts.  They write dramatically, almost like a news report, but while readers can follow the specifics, they often note a feeling of emotional distance, as if the writer is not present in the room.  

Merging the Two Stories
An effective next step is to merge the two stories, the two kinds of truth, to provide both healing for the writer and a full experience for the reader.  But how exactly is this done?

We're fortunate that writing as a healing element has been studied for decades.  Researchers on the therapeutic effect of writing include James Pennebaker, author of Writing to Heal and many other books, and Louise DeSalvo, author of Writing as a Way of Healing.

DeSalvo states that three elements, when included in the process of writing about trauma, create a kind of alchemy that transforms both writer and reader:

1.  the outer facts--including sensory details--of what happened
2.  how you felt or thought about it when it happened
3.  how you feel or think about it now, and what difference you notice in yourself

In classes, I've taught these three elements as stepping-stones into safely writing about trauma.  Writers choose one stepping-stone to enter their story.  Maybe they write first about how different they are now, then ease into telling the details of what happened in the past.  Another might start with the facts then learn to expand into meaning--how am I different?  what did I feel then?  how can I show that on the page?

When prompted to include all three elements, the writing takes a leap up in quality and effectiveness. 

Pennebaker and other researchers have documented this:  improvement in physical symptoms, including immune system function, is not uncommon.

However Long It Takes--Cultivating Compassion for Self
This synergy on the page takes time.   I've been working with one writer for three years; he suffered terrible abuse as a child and has used the "facts" approach until the past few months, when he began to write about the trauma's effect on his life.  I took longer--almost seven years--to move from writing just the meaning to including the facts about my business failure. 

Compassion comes when we realize there is no rush. 

I leaned on good therapists, good friends.  I got help.  I began letting myself write "outside the story" on days when I had no stomach for writing the tough stuff. I wrote about what happened a year later or a month prior.  I wrote about the main colors in my office, the foods I loved to eat back then, my good times.  It helped take the pressure off, helped me keep writing. 

I used morning pages, a technique from Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way  to pour forth stream-of-consciousness writing every day and peel back the layers of resistance to my own story. 

Bless this resistance, if you can.  Recognize it as a natural inner gatekeeper that is protecting you from the harm of detoxing too quickly.  Allow yourself the time you need, and get the help you need.  The story will wait for you. 

How a Food Journalist Becomes a Book Writer: The Award-Winning Journey of Steve Hoffman

Food writer Steve Hoffman can actually name the date, time and location when he got started:  It happened on June 27, 2012, at 12:30 PM, at Vincent, a French restaurant in downtown Minneapolis. 

His family was about to go back to France for an extended stay in the Languedoc region, and at the encouragement of his wife, Mary Jo, they invited Lee Dean, the Taste Editor at the Minneapolis Star Tribune, out for lunch. The Hoffmans were testing a new theory they called, "Do good work and put it where people can see it." 

Steve says he spent years keeping extensive journals during the family's travels abroad, sharing them with a select few friends and family members. This, he felt, was good work, but talking to Lee was the first step toward putting this writing where people could see it.

By the end of their lunch, Lee had invited Steve to submit a series of "Letters from France" to the Taste Section while they were in the Languedoc.

Suddenly Steve was not just a tax preparer, landlord, and real estate broker who hoped, someday, to write.  He was a writer with an assignment, a suggested word count, and three very specific deadlines. "I was a food writer," he says, "almost in spite of myself."

Eventually Steve's "Letters from France" won an AFJ (Association of Food Journalists) Award, and, most recently, the coveted Bert Greene Award from the International Association of Culinary Professionals.   

 

Now Steve has embarked on an even bigger project--writing a book about his experiences living with his family in this remote area of southern France.   

From Journalist to Author

Steve says his book idea came from his wife Mary Jo.  They were sitting in front of the fire, in the midst of the busiest part of Steve's tax season, when he was "least prepared to think about anything other than how to get through the next day."  On Lee Dean's recommendation, they had submitted "Letters from France" for a James Beard Journalism award (which he did not win in the end), and Mary Jo pointed out that if Steve did somehow end up as a finalist or a winner, he should really have a book proposal ready to present to the muckety-mucks in New York they'd meet while accepting the award.  

A book proposal, of course, presumed that there would be a book.  

"The logic was irrefutable," Steve says, "but it took me several days to ease into the idea that I might actually be someone who could write a book. I had just barely begun accepting that I was someone you could call a food writer."    

Working as a team, Mary Jo spent a weekend at my book-writing workshop at the Loft Literary Center, learning the art of storyboarding and helping Steve place his journalism pieces and essays on Languedoc into a possible structure.  They discovered it took more than food journalism to make a book, and along the way, a more personal story emerged--the challenges a family encounters when becoming part of a new culture.   

The time in France changed them, Steve says, and they experienced a wonderful and somewhat unusual welcome into the heart of the small wine-growing community where they lived--even helping with the vendage, or grape harvest, toward the end of their stay.  

As the book grew, Steve built the "inner story" thread of his growth and realizations about this community, what it meant to him and his family, and how it changed their lives.   

Writing a book isn't easy--much harder than short articles for a newspaper.  Winning the Bert Greene Award became "a huge source of encouragement and validation," Steve says.  "I wrote the winning article in a single day at the end of last summer, after months of daily writing practice while trying to complete my first draft of the book about France. Although the piece was not written for the book and may not appear in the book, it was written while I was in that late summer writing groove. It was an offshoot of good, daily writing practice, in my opinion, and an example of what abundance a creative habit can produce."  

Writing Routine--Getting in the Groove
Steve's year is divided into seasons. There is tax preparation season from January through April, "when all I do is eat, sleep, and prepare tax returns," he says. "Through the rest of the year, because I am self-employed, I can block off writing time from about 8:00 am to 12:00 noon, and schedule work around that daily time slot."

Steve describes his best working days as "Big Ship" days.  "Like an oceanliner, I am slow to start, slow to gather momentum, but then difficult to slow down once I get going. I like to get physically comfortable so I can sit for a long time if necessary."

He has done his best writing on the sunny terrace of the family's rented house in Languedoc "on the most comfortable chaise longue I've ever sat in."  He tried to recreate that atmosphere last summer while writing the first draft of the book. "I would sit on our deck or in the corner of our living room by the fire," he told me, "in a big comfortable chair."

His most productive days tend to be long days of writing, when there are no work appointments in the afternoon.

"I often struggle through the morning to find the right tone for a piece or a chapter," Steve says, "but then ease into my own voice with growing excitement and confidence. Often on these days, I am writing furiously to get it all down at the very end of an eight or ten hour session, with my laptop keyboard still clicking while I listen to dinner being prepped in the kitchen behind me."

"At the end of the best days," he says, "there's an ottoman under my feet and a side table to hold a glass of wine while I read the days' work to Mary Jo--and the kids if they are interested." 

To read Steve Hoffman's award-winning article, click here. To see more of his work and visit his website, click here.  To view Mary Jo's amazing photographs, which accompany all of Steve's work, click here.