Blogs We Love: Memoir Writer’s Journey
How and when did you decide to become a writer?
For years, like many others, I have felt I have had a book inside me. I have enjoyed writing since I was about ten years old when I wrote plays for my maternal grandmother, Nan and all her little Italian lady friends. I can still see them gathered in the living room sipping coffee and chattering on in Italian. I never understood a word but I can still feel their fascination and loving attention as they hushed each other when I stood at the archway to announce the play would begin.
As I grew older and began facing life with all its complications, I found myself journaling my way through the heartaches of relationship failures, the searing pain of divorce, the exhaustion of being a single-parent, the terror of loving and living with an alcoholic son, the heart wrenching losses of my maternal grandmother, Nan, my best friend, Judy and the recent death of my beloved father as well as my own diagnosis of cancer. Journaling became my pathway to healing, capturing my moments of need, longing, passion, creativity, my life.
I started taking writing courses in 2002 while working as a nurse. In 2009, I became serious about learning the art and craft of writing, taking ongoing memoir writing workshops, author platform building courses and attending national writing conferences.
When I retired from my beloved nursing career in 2011 after forty-four years as a registered nurse and family nurse practitioner, the foundation for my writing career was established. I called myself a writer.
Tell us a bit about your blog, Memoir Writer’s Journey.
I started blogging in December of 2009 on response to agents consistently asking about what my author platform was. I have been blogging once-twice a week since on memoir writing, publishing and social media tips gleaned from writing my own memoir and sequel. I feature other memoir writers in guest posts. In January, 2013 I started a series called A Memoir Moment where, once a month I post either an excerpt from my memoir or a story. The working titles of my memoirs are: Choice and Chances: My Jagged Journey to Self and the sequel: Hope Matters: A Memoir of Faith
How does blogging help your own writing?
Blogging guarantees that I stay on track with a message that will resonate with my readers. It forces me to write clearly and concisely. The world wide web is a noisy place and I want to give my readers something valuable when they stop by “around my kitchen table” so they’ll want to come back and participate in the conversation. I have been able to make many meaningful connections with like-minded people who have helped me on my journey. I get immediate feedback on what I’ve written and also gain ideas from my readers.
Describe yourself in three words.
persistent, grateful, facilitator
What’s the greatest obstacle you’ve had to overcome being a memoirist?
It’s difficult to narrow it down to one but I can address the obstacles I have encountered in various stages of writing my memoir:
#1 Facing the pain: .When I first started writing out my stories, facing painful memories was difficult. As I kept writing, new insights revealed themselves to me just through the process of facing them and writing about them. I experienced healing through reading my own words and began to feel I was on the other side of the pain. I learned that emotional distance from the pain is necessary to be able to convey a story to the reader in an objective, clear way.
#2. Dealing with my “inner critic”: Once I finally figured out a way to get by my inner critic—which took a fair amount of time and effort—- who insisted “nobody cares about your story, you can’t write, you don’t know what you are doing”…
#3 Time management: I think the biggest obstacle I am facing now is dealing effectively with social media distractions and balancing author platform responsibilities with the actual writing. Knowing that the only way I will finish my memoir(s) is by writing on a schedule keeps me motivated to keep at it. I am a work-in-progress trying to move forward.
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Kathleen Pooler is a writer and a retired Family Nurse Practitioner who is working on a memoir and a sequel about how the power of hope through her faith in God has helped her to transform, heal and transcend life’s obstacles and disappointments: domestic abuse, divorce, single parenting, loving and letting go of an alcoholic son, cancer and heart failure to live a life of joy and contentment. She believes that hope matters and that we are all strengthened and enlightened when we share our stories.
Women on Wednesday—Alissa Johnson
Alissa Johnson
1. What was the impetus or inspiration to write your story?
I tried very hard not to write my story. In 2008, I started graduate school at the University of Western Connecticut MFA program. I was determined to become a witty travel writer—a David Sedaris meets Barbara Kingsolver out on the open road, if such a thing is possible! I swore I would never write about relationships or marriage.
Yet every time I sat down to write, my marriage—and my disillusionment and unhappiness—crept in. For my very first assignment I tried to write about a trip my husband and I took to Mexico. I wrote 30 pages to arrive at the 15 I turned in, and the piece was a mess. Luckily, my mentor, author Mark Sundeen, took the time to read carefully and discern that it was not really an essay about a trip to Mexico. It was an essay about a 30-year-old woman trying to figure out if she could reconnect to her husband and the life they’d built together over the previous 10 years.
She could not. I could not. Over the next two years, I found myself writing a memoir about my divorce as every aspect of my life unraveled. Time and again, I tried to write something else, but I was always drawn back to my own story. I learned that sometimes we have a specific story that needs to be told and there can be great power in heeding that. I know now that writing that story helped me save my own life and create a new one better aligned with my true dreams and values.
2. What were some of the struggles that you faced in the writing process? How were you able to overcome them?
Most of my struggles were emotional. I wrote as a way to find answers in my own life, often tackling questions and issues I hadn’t admitted out loud to myself or to my husband. This made writing an extremely emotional process layered with intense guilt—my ex-husband was not an evil man; I was the one hurting him by asking for a divorce. I was also writing about things still ongoing in my own life. I didn’t know how things were going to turn out, much less how to end chapters. Some chapters had to sit for months before I could give them a proper resolution. I also worried a great deal about writing a story that not only exposed my secrets and flaws, but also exposed my ex-husband and my family.
Three things helped me get through the process. First, I learned to focus only on the writing before me. I could worry about sharing it (and hence, the reactions of others) after I had a manuscript to show for my efforts. Secondly, I found a lot of freedom in the Artist’s Way, a book by Natalie Cameron that taught me to foster my own creativity and introduced me to morning pages—essentially, three pages of handwritten brain dumping to get ride of mental clutter and closer to my own truth. I learned to let the act of writing be a safe and creative space in my life and not something to fear.
I also had tremendous mentors who didn’t judge me. They provided a fair sounding board for my writing, and also cared about my well-being. They taught me that it was okay to let a story rest while I lived my life—that just like my life had it’s own timing and rhythm, the life of a story did, too.
3. Is there a place, routine, or ritual that you have when writing? Is there an environment that allows you to be the most creative?
For creative writing, I write best in the early morning hours. I like to wake up, let the dog out, get a cup of coffee and climb back into bed to start with morning pages. It’s best when it’s still dark out and I’m writing only by the glow of a bedside lamp. It creates the sensation that I’m in a safe cocoon, and it’s a signal to my inner censor that this draft doesn’t have to be good. It just needs to uncover the story. (I should add that I write all rough drafts by hand for the same reasons!)
Now that I’m in a new relationship, it doesn’t always work to take over the bed for writing. I’ve trained myself to write during the light of day now, in 90-minute increments (with the timer actually going). That’s long enough to get something done but short enough that it doesn’t feel like an overwhelming amount of time. I’ve also had great success writing first drafts on airplanes or waiting for airplanes—there’s no place to go and nothing else to do.
4. If you had to describe yourself in three words only, what would they be?
Determined. Adventurous. Homebody.
(I like to think the latter two can coexist).
5. If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would that be and why?
Rock climbing in Thailand. I moved from Minneapolis to Colorado after my divorce, and I now live 9,000 feet above sea level. I crave tropical forests and humidity! Not long after moving here, I met my boyfriend of two-plus years and he introduced me to rock climbing. It’s a physically and mentally demanding sport that in many ways parallels the writing process—you make progress by taking small steps and learning that you can move forward even when you’re afraid. That’s a life lesson I always need to be reminded of, and I would love to explore it in Thailand.
6. What can we look forward to seeing from you in the future? Do you have any exciting plans or projects coming up?
I’ve begun my first novel about a young girl in Northern Minnesota—the place of my roots—coming to terms with a newly created wolf hunt. I’ll admit, I love fiction after pouring my heart and soul into a memoir! I’m also launching a new business as a writing coach, and as part of that, a website called WritingStrides (www.writingstrides.com) dedicated to helping writers navigate the writing process. Not just the nuts and bolts of writing, but the emotional hurdles that come with it.
Women on Wednesday—Elisabeth Kinsey
Elisabeth Kinsey
1. At what age did you begin writing? Is writing your sole career or do you have other jobs in addition to being an author?
I wrote my first story called “How California Got Its Name” about a Calif who was sad and travelled to a magical land called Ornia. That won me the Young Author’s Award in sixth grade. The rest is history. If you get praised for writing at a young age, you’ll do anything to keep going.
Writing is not my sole career but I would love to earn more with my writing. I teach writing online through Regis University and feel it is my calling besides writing. I learn a lot from my students. I also teach writing workshops. My plan is to convert these into an online forum.
2. Is there a place, routine, or ritual that you have when writing? Is there
an environment that allows you to be the most creative?
I meet so many writers who want to get together to write. I can’t do that. I need my coffee, silence or something quiet going in the background like Rachmaninoff, and my office with all my Yay-team writing snippets above my computer. It’s also nice if I have my full library to access other writers for inspiration. I write every morning for at least three hours. But, sometimes I’ll only get a page out of that if I’m editing.
3. How and when did you decide to become a writer?
I actually wanted to be an actress, even though I’ve written since I was 8. When I realized how “in my face” my acting colleagues were, I dropped out. I needed space. I went full force, taking writing classes in my twenties.
4. How do you see writing as an empowering experience for yourself and other women?
Women need to voice their every day lives! Through writing we create community. Through our stories, we are heard. I particularly believe that if we continue to tell our stories, all women will be able to have a voice: the down trodden, abused, nearly dead in Africa. This will take the normalization away from violence and belittlement of women.
5. If you had to describe yourself in three words only, what would they be?
Mercurial. Outsider. Tenacious.
6. If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would that be and why?
Right now, it would be Altopascio, Italy to look up my Grandmother’s cousins and finish her line in the family tree. I’ve started a fiction work based on her life and would be able to gather stories that I could convert.
Look for my memoir - hopefully I’ll obtain an agent soon: The Holy Ghost Goes to Bed at Midnight: Half a Mormon Life.
Elisabeth Kinsey received her BA in Writing at Metropolitan State College of Denver and her Masters in Creative Writing at Regis University. She has published poetry in Wazee Journal, Metrosphere, Apogee, Emergency Online Journal, and creative non-fiction in The Rambler, YourHub.com, The Metropolitan, and Ask Me About My Divorce (Seal Press, 2009). She is working on three novels concurrently while fostering a hobby for birding. She lives on the road with her husband’s job, and totes a menagerie of pets with her.
Women on Wednesday—Jennie Nash
Jennie Nash is the author of three memoirs and four novels. Her most recent novel is the historical novel Perfect Red, a story about a young writer in McCarthy-era New York who goes after the story of the perfect red lipstick. Visit her at www.jennienash.com to order a copy of her most recent non-fiction work, a guide for writers called Blueprint for a Book.
1. At what age did you begin writing? Is writing your sole career or do you have other jobs in addition to being an author?
I got started as a writer when I was in fourth grade. We published a book of poetry at our elementary school. It had mimeographed pages and a cardboard cover, and students could submit as much poetry as they wanted for the book. I thought this was an amazing opportunity, and submitted pages and pages of poems. I can still remember the thrill of seeing my name in that purple ink, reproduced dozens of times, above the words I had written.
I am an author, a writing instructor (I teach at the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program), and a private writing coach, so I spend all my time with writing and with writers – just in different ways. Sometimes I am alone in my office working on my own projects; at other times, I am in that same space, but I am immersed in the details of another writer’s story, engaged in helping them develop a marketing plan, or helping them through the ups and downs of the writing life. Several times a year, I am in a classroom helping new writers learn the ropes.
2. Is there a place, ritual, or routine that you have when writing? Is there an environment that allows you to be the most creative?
I work in a pumpkin-colored office at the prow of my house. I look out on the neighborhood – an elementary school, a park, a street where there is always someone walking a dog. I am very happy here. My routine varies, but I always have tea in a giant mug, so I suppose I could call that a ritual. I find that if I am in the chair at my desk, the work gets done.
3. How do you see writing as an empowering experience for yourself and other women?
The power of telling your own story has been a major theme in of all my work, including my memoir, The Victoria’s Secret Catalog Never Stops Coming and Other Lessons I Learned From Breast Cancer, and my four novels, so this question is right in my wheelhouse! I think our society tends to shut down women’s creativity. When we are young, we dance and sing and paint and write stories and make little clay animal kingdoms and bake elaborate cupcakes and spend hours frosting them, but when we grow up we stop almost all of it – well, except the cupcakes! To me this is an enormous loss, both on a personal level and a community level. We are creative beings! We are made to create. Writing is a wonderful choice to taking back this power. You can do it privately, at first, in journals, or in files on your computer that nobody sees. Gradually, you can begin sharing your work with the world – which is a way of respecting your voice, your observations, your whole way of being.
4. What was the publishing process like for you? How were you able to bring your book to life?
I was lucky as a young writer and fell into having an agent, and fell into my first book deal. I had wonderful editors and agents all along the way, and morphed from writing non-fiction to fiction. Recently, however, being a midlist writer at a big publisher house started to feel like purgatory, and so I tried to find as new publishing home where I could make the leap up the ladder. It didn’t work. I ended up publishing my seventh book, the novel Perfect Red. It is still early days so it’s hard to say how that will turn out or if I’ll do it again. Regardless, it was very fun to learn something new and know what the whole self pub world is all about!
5. If you had to describe yourself in three words only, what would they be?
Wife, mom, writer.
6. If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would that be and why?
Greece and Istanbul, because my teenage daughter is going on a school trip to that part of the world and I am wildly jealous. I would follow their exact itinerary!
Source: jennienash.com
What is Traumatic Brain Injury?
What is Traumatic Brain Injury? According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, “Traumatic brain injury (TBI), a form of acquired brain injury, occurs when a sudden trauma causes damage to the brain. TBI can result when the head suddenly and violently hits an object, or when an object pierces the skull and enters brain tissue. Symptoms of a TBI can be mild, moderate, or severe, depending on the extent of the damage to the brain.”
According to Janna Leyde, the daughter of a TBI victim, TBI is less technical, and more something like this: “You’re 14 and your world gets turned upside down and its really shitty and it’s really scary and its really lonely and there isn’t a guide and there isn’t a lot of other people who can tell you what exactly to do and how to react when someone that you love and that you think is going to grow up in a certain way in your life…changes. That person sort of dies and I say sort of, I mean that person does die.”
I have spoken with Janna many times, and she does knows all that technical stuff, too. And she wants to share her experiences–the technical and scary jargon, the emotional roller coaster, the difficulties of having a parent essentially die, while still being alive–with the rest of the world through her memoir He Never Liked Cake.
Prior to Janna posting her memoir on Pubslush, I was personally very unfamiliar with the term TBI–what it means, who it affects. I knew nothing about this traumatic injury that affects over 1 million people every year. Janna is helping to shed light on what used to be an elusive subject: What is TBI? There’s no other book like this available and not only will He Never Liked Cake be an invaluable resource for the children and family members of TBI victims, but also for the rest of the world, like me, who were unaware and uneducated about the matter.
Janna recently hosted an event in NYC to raise support for her memoir so it can be published. Take the time to listen to a reading from her memoir and hear her discuss why she wanted to write He Never Liked Cake: Janna’s NYC Reading
Also, visit Pubslush to provide support so her memoir can be published and her story (and, really, the story of so many others) can be told.
“What’s the point of having a dysfunctional family if it doesn’t give you something to laugh about, or at least a party anecdote? My life has never been ordinary. Biracial, raised bicoastal between two bitterly divorced parents, with a bipolar sister and plausibly a bipolar mother as well, my life covers just about all the bi’s with the exception of bisexual (sorry to disappoint fellows). When you’re born into a family such as mine, having a sense of humor is not so much an asset as a necessary tool for survival. Until 19, arrogant asshole that I am, I believed myself immune to life’s hardships. I had already seen life’s worst and it didn’t scare me. How quickly that all changed once my ex boyfriend died, delivering the first of what would be many reminders that life can be challenging. Eventually, I hit my breaking point, probably when I decided to break up with my celebrity ex-boyfriend, and divorce my mother. Usually, when a girl is heartbroken she gets a terrible haircut, buys a new dress, tries some new diet fad, or a combination of all three. I however, quit my job, moved to Spain, and wrote a book. Allow me to allay your fears; this is not another Eat, Pray, Love. I am not here to spoon feed you another self righteous story about how I traveled to a distant land where I ate a lot, found myself and happiness. Though truthfully, that did all happen. Rather, allow me to tell you the much more interesting back-story of how I came to Spain and the madness that drove me here. A beautiful Mess is a compilation of short stories about life experiences but more importantly relationships. Though the stories are told through my life experiences, the relationships within the book are relationships we all know, have shared and in some cases, have lost. Like everyone else, I am but a product of my relationships. While my life is a mess, it’s a beautiful one, and the only mess I know. I’d be a fool not to love it.”
“My father was in a car accident in 1996. He has a severe frontal lobe TBI caused by a subarachnoid hemorrhage with multiple punctuate left frontal and occipital region diffuse bleeding. He scored a 5 on the Glasgow Coma scale. Layman’s terms? These were not favorable conditions to survive.” Janna Leyde, Author of He Never Liked Cake (via National Brain Injury Awareness Day Interview w/ Janna Leyde | PUBSLUSH Community)
Source: blog.pubslush.com
