Writing Your Life

Lou W. Stanek, PhD

• Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780062267696
• Topic: Sprachen & Linguistik
• Subtopic: Verlagswesen

We all have stories to tell -- of a rapturous first kiss, a life-altering moment of choice, or the shocking revelation of a long-guarded secret. And these stories are often as distinctive, fascinating, exciting and entertaining as those found in the memoirs and autobiographies that currently top the nation's bestseller lists. We just need to know how to tell them best.

Veteran, writing teacher, lecturer, and author of So You Want to Write a Novel, Lou Willet Stanek can help you translate your joys and ordeals, thoughts and triumphs into superbly crafted nonfiction -- taking you step-by-step through the writing process with care, encouragement, and expert advice. She shows you how to unlock your memories, create settings and scenes, protray major characters and dramatic events. And she offers the key to finding your own unique voice, and to presenting your greatest charcter -- yourself -- without boring your reader or sounding egotistical.

Complete with invaluable exercises, nuts-and-bolts techniques, and motivational tools, Writing Your Life is indispensible for every aspiring writer who wishes to mine the rich lode of his or her past for all the gems hidden there.

BREAKING THE ICE

FOLLOWING THE RULES OF THE WRITER’S ROAD

Chapter 1

You Learn to Write by Writing

The magic words for fiction writers are “what if…”; for memoir writers, “I remember…” breaks the ice.

Without memory, time has no meaning.

You have had an interesting, distinctive life, but who will know? Think about your heirs. Family history ranks high as a legacy. My intention in Writing Your Life is to help you sort out the jumble of pain, pleasure, accomplishments, and regrets you have accumulated. You know what happened. The book will encourage you to write to explore what it means, to tell others, and to enjoy this adventure-some and mysterious journey into your past.

If you were to write an autobiography, you would have to spend a lot of time at the courthouse, looking up the date your great-grandfather was born, what year your father bought the house on Elm Street. The research for a memoir can be done in an easy chair. Close your eyes and try to recapture the moment you bought your first car, learned you were pregnant, met the president, or wobbled down the street on a two-wheeler. I am sure you can recall initiation night, the first time you spoke in public, or the first time you said, “I love you.”

You do not have to have been a young man in Paris to have had a life that is a “moveable feast.”

Remember the first time you lied to your father and he knew, or how silly you felt when she took that photograph of you riding a sulky elephant in India? Who but you knows how hellish it was to please a son of a gun with that much power? Your first kiss, of course, you will never forget, but don’t you wonder if he has? Was there ever a home with as many places to hide and pout as that house you moved into the summer you were eight? Everyone knows his account, but unless you write your version, who will know there was another side to the family squabble or office feud? Today you might even be brave enough to expose that pit bull of a kid who made first grade hideous. He never left Omaha, so he can’t get you, can he? And your daughter’s garden wedding when it rained; now, that was a day to be recorded.

All of us know we are different from anyone else, and if others only knew what we see, how we feel and think, they would understand and appreciate us more, for pity sakes. But until we find the language to express our view, we don’t always understand ourselves or the world we inhabit. For me writing is a necessity. I get twitchy and cranky until I wrestle those sensations into an image I can see, an idea that makes sense. I write to learn what I know and how I feel about it.

A fine artist and friend in Maine believes some responses defy spoken language and becomes impatient when I search for words to express how I feel about her work. So I wait until I leave the studio to begin my probe. The experience hasn’t happened, the gift she has given isn’t mine, until I can express it. Our ability to be moved by music, art, language, brings balance to a world crammed with crime, noise, bills, bureaucratic bother. I can’t bear to leave behind a sensation that offers a feeling of peace and brings order, no matter how briefly, to tumbling, stumbling, trials, and troubles.

Do you remember your reaction to the piece of sculpture you discovered, quite by accident, one foggy evening in a tiny Venice courtyard? You probably said, I’ll never forget this moment, I’ll never be the same. Yet, unless you put some phrases on paper, no matter how hard it is finding fresh words for your feelings, the passion probably escaped, leaving no trace. Practice will make it easier.

When something happens I want to share and remember, like the morning a bull moose strolled into my backyard on Bailey Island, the first version is usually a letter. Since my pen pal list would stretch from here to Peoria, I recycle the news, altering it only to fit the receiver. My noncritical sister and my friend Lucy Ann are most apt to receive a purple prose account drowning in adjectives, slashed with exclamation points. The next interpretation usually goes to Illinois to Jane, a dream of a friend for a writer and her publisher. She bought nineteen copies of my last book. I do a translation trying understatement, irony, for Jane, who wants to be remembered for what she didn’t say. By the time I report to an editor, a gentleman caller I’m trying to impress, writers in my workshop, or my former husband (who writes like a pro), I’ve hopefully tamed the beast — in this case the bull moose and the prose. I sold the strolling moose tale to a newspaper sans even one exclamation point, but that critter is still in my notebook and settling into my storehouse of tales. Don’t be surprised if he charges into another story.

Eventually the moose tale will move into memory and change, of course. The letters and the news story telling who, what, where, and why were immediate reactions. Even though the islanders said there was something wrong with me and the moose when I tried to touch him and he let me, I haven’t yet learned much from the experience. In a few years, the incident will linger somewhere between myth and reality. The moose will probably become bigger, I braver. Reconstructing the past is allowed, even natural. We will pursue this phenomenon of reinventing reality further in another chapter.

Of course, we will never hear the beast’s view. In the newspaper story I suggested he might have a penchant for tall women in white nightgowns, but I made that up. What separates you, me, and the moose with the mournful face is our need to be heard, to be visible, to make sense of our lives. Writing grants a means of self-discovery, a way to break through to the fortitude, the idiosyncrasies, that make us unique. You and your husband might have looked out the same kitchen window for...