The Most Interesting Man on the Plane

By Pamela

I'm not a frequent flier by most people's standards, but I do love to travel. After one trip, I told my husband about a conversation I had with my seatmate. His response was: "People don't like to talk on the plane. That's why I wear my headphones and pretend to fall asleep--because I don't like people to talk to me."

U.S. Air Force dog Venice and her handler. 

Humbug, says I, but from then on I applied the "do not speak unless spoken to" rule when flying. Usually. Last year on a flight, I was seated next to an Air Force soldier and his bomb-sniffing dog Venice. So, of course, I had to talk to him--and he allowed me to take a photo. On a flight this time last year, after leaving my gravely ill mother's bedside, I was grateful for a lighthearted conversation with my seatmate. I can't remember what we talked about, but he was exceedingly kind for not mentioning that I looked like an emotional wreck.

Then earlier this month, I traveled to Denver to visit my niece. On the way there, the guy next to me completely ignored me and I returned the favor, catching up on some reading and attempting to complete the Mensa challenge in American Way magazine. On the return flight, my new seatmate had his headphones in, so I took that as code for "don't talk to me" and I didn't. Then as I unwrapped a sandwich I knew I'd only eat half of, I noticed he was headphone-free and so I offered him the other half. Over the next 45 minutes, we talked over our shared sandwich.

After the perfunctory "why are you headed to Dallas?" exchange, he started telling me about his recent discovery: At the age of 45, he found out he's adopted. I won't share all the details about his story because I'm hoping to see it in print one day, but what I took from our conversation seems pretty profound. Along with "everyone has a story to tell" being a generality, the circumstances surrounding his adoption, upbringing, revelation, reunion and reconciliation were nothing short of amazing and made me appreciate how real life is often more compelling than any novel.

Our encounter made me excited about storytelling. Years ago after a trip to meet his mother's extended family in India, he returned with photos. His wife said then, "You're adopted. You look nothing like these people." It would take a health scare and subsequent blood test to reveal a genetic condition that led him to ask his father if he was adopted. His father held fast and denied it, even when my seatmate said he threatened to submit a DNA sample for testing. When the results confirmed he wasn't even the same race as his parents (his mother was now deceased), his father finally acquiesced with "I guess the cat's out of the bag now." Apparently his adopted mother made his father swear to take the news to the grave.

Having discovered his birth-family only within the past few weeks, his enthusiasm was palpable, and it reignited in me the notion that you can have extraordinary circumstances in a story as long as you can tell it so others believe it could happen. I'm a huge fan of a well-told memoir. This time, I got to hear someone tell theirs to me in person. The next time someone has a story to share, will you be a good listener? The next time you have a story to share, will you be a good writer?

Bittersweet Memoirs

By Susan

All That Is Bitter and Sweet, the new memoir by Ashley Judd, was released last week. I'd pre-ordered the hardback online (after a few moments of debate: Did I want it on my iPad, or the real, old-fashioned paper version?) and it arrived on Wednesday, one day after its debut in stores. I began reading it immediately.

I feel a great kinship with her because we are about the same age, with Eastern Kentucky roots, are both UK basketball fans, and both consider relief work in Africa (and for her, around the world) our calling. But the book isn't really about Ashley Judd/Movie Star. And it is not about abuse and neglect, even though her childhood was splattered with both. Her memoir is about the women and children she's met around the world who do not have a voice. Riding tandem to their story, is hers. It's about bridging the decisions others made to shape your childhood across to your adult actions, and shaping your present existence by your choices, and not your circumstances. Ashley Judd has choices as an adult, regardless of her childhood. The women and children she meets around the world do not have that same choice.

The media has taken Ashley Judd's story and made the headlines about abuse. Yet, if you read it, you see that it is about grace and faith. It's about compassion for people whom the world has thrown away. Her own journey shaped what landed her in the brothels of Cambodia and the AIDS-ridden streets of Nairobi. The memoir transcends her childhood and tells the story of a woman she became, and is becoming today.

Ashley Judd's childhood was unconventional at the least, and full of neglect and dysfunction at the most. But the arc of the story is based on the choices she made: to pursue a career in Hollywood, to leave it for a farmhouse in Tennessee, and to grow branches that would reach people in dire situations around the world, hopefully leaving this planet a better place because she was here.

I'm reading a friend's memoir-in-progress right now and urging her to both tell the truth and to clearly show the character arc from wounded child to triumphant warrior. What I mean by that is this: how does the main character expand? How does her empathy, compassion and world-view change as she moves through her own pain to find peace? And why, overall, will the reader care?

If you are writing memoir, the reader must not only connect to the brokenness of who you were, but celebrate who you have become. Perhaps readers won't agree with your choices or methods, but they must understand them and, as they close the pages of the book (or close the application of their e-reader), they need to see the world a little differently because you told your story.

Everyone has a story, and you don't have to be famous to write a great memoir. You just need a lovable lead character, a story to tell and courage to tell it.

Memoir and Real Life

By Susan

This post is not about writing as much as it is about real life.

I've always been a fan of great memoir. Last weekend I devoured two great tales of life stories- Mishna Wolff's I'm Down while flying east and Mary Karr's lit while flying west on my quick trip to and from Kentucky for my grandmother's 90th birthday.

Now, I will tell the truth about my Mama, my grandmother. Her past few years have not been easy. Her body has crumpled into itself, bones shattering and nerves misfiring. Her ears are shot. Her memory may be worse off than her hearing. Yet we had a huge party with over 100 people in attendance, and she showed up at The First Baptist Church's reception hall in a dainty corsage and a fuchsia blazer and was the belle of the ball. It was a celebration of a life well-lived.

"Let's not have such a big party for my 95th," she said to my mother as we exited the church.

I thought about Mama's life story all weekend as I read the memoirs of others. She eloped with my grandfather right before WWII because of my great grandfather's disapproval--my grandfather, even at 21, had already been married before. She had my mother in '42, my aunt in '51, and my uncle in '58, well-spaced babies that each represent their own generation. She was the first woman on the school board in my hometown, she led polio drives after her pregnant sister died from the disease, and she traveled extensively--from Mexico City for the '68 Olympics to London in the 1980s to attend the theatre. When my Uncle Mark moved to New York City, she made regular trips to see plays with him on Broadway.

When I returned from Kentucky, I took a day to drive to Austin to see a friend of mine recently diagnosed with brain cancer--a grade 2 astrocytoma in the left temporal lobe, to be exact. He's 30 years old and we went to Juan In A Million to scarf down some Mexican food.

We talked about the tumor as several of the wait staff would politely interrupt us in Spanish to ask about the stitches lined up behind his left ear. He would answer them, simply, el cancer, el cerebro. We talked about his daughter, who is turning four next month, and about his beautiful wife, whose birthday is today. We talked about quality of life versus quantity of life. We talked about regrets and travel and the upcoming decisions he will have to make about his treatment options. We talked about insurance and money and the marathon--yes, the marathon--that he is training for.

I told him about my grandmother, about the party and the visitors and the funny things she would say. For a moment, we looked at each other, thinking about time and life and what we do with it all.

Now, I will tell you a little about this friend of mine. He is brilliant and athletic and snarky and kind. He's traveled to umpteen countries and continents in the last decade--including tours of India, Europe and South America. He runs a 5:30 mile. He helps others for a living and volunteers his time working with troubled youth and the homeless population in Austin. And he'd rather die young than live forever without his mind intact. His only regret is that he's not yet gotten that tattoo he's been thinking about. I told him if he found the right tattoo artist, I would pay for it.

I finished the memoirs this week and thought about us all, spinning quietly in our own lives, not thinking about death, not thinking about consequences and choices and our actions--just moving forward. I respect the writers like Wolff and Karr who write their stories--not just so they can learn from them, but so that we can too. We each have a story. Maybe like my grandmother, you will live to celebrate your 90th birthday surrounded by family and friends and neighbors who love you. Maybe like my friend in Austin, your body will rebel and scare the hell out of you well before your time--and you will be surrounded by friends and family and neighbors who love you.

Make it count, I guess is my point to all of this. Make it count even when you don't feel like it. Live your story and live it without regrets. Finish that novel, lose the 10 pounds. Complete a 5K for those that can't. Help others and donate to worthy causes. Travel. Go to the theatre. Love God, your family, and your friends. Make sure they know you love them too.

Take care.

My Very Private Memoir

By Pamela

A few weeks ago I lamented here about my lackluster life and how nothing ever exciting happens to me, therefore, a memoir is certainly not in my future.

But for some reason I’ve been drawn to reading them lately—memoirs and biographies…fascinating stories about the lives of others.

Last month I reread The Glass Castle and enjoyed it just as much as the first time. (I’d read it several years before and even went with Joan to hear Jeannette Walls speak in Richardson.) I still found myself turning to Jeannette's photo on the book jacket, marveling that she lived to tell her story.

Then this week I finished Little Girl Blue: The Life of Karen Carpenter by Randy L. Schmidt. I grew up a fan of The Carpenters’ music and admired how Karen was a drummer-chick. How cool! Like Schmidt, years ago I watched the biopic of Karen’s life on a made-for-TV movie and sat enthralled by how her seemingly fairytale life tragically ended. Schmidt was so taken by Karen that, even though he was just a young boy when she died in 1983, he set about learning all he could of her life and now has a book of his research. It’s a wonderful read that I highly recommend.

Now I’m reading a much different memoir by Russell Brand: My Booky Wook. Brand is a popular British comic-turned-actor. (You might have seen him in Forgetting Sarah Marshall or Get Him to the Greek.) My son and I are fans so he bought the book for me. If the photo captions are any indication of the story’s tone, I’m expecting it to be loads of fun.

Next in my stack to be read is Mary Karr’s Lit. Karr has led such an interesting life that Lit is her third memoir. Wow! Also in my stack are some sports-related memoirs that I’m reading as research: The Blind Side by Michael Lewis, Standing Tall by C. Vivian Stringer (head coach of the Rutgers University Scarlet Knights) and coach Tony Dungy’s Uncommon.

Even though I don’t think anyone else will ever be interested in my life story, the other day I was reminded by my daughter that she cares. She climbed up on my lap and asked me about my mother. And then my mother’s parents. She wanted to know how her Great Great Grandma and Grandpa Hamming made it across the ocean on a boat from Holland. So, I pulled out the photo album I have of my mother’s family. There were the family members she never got to meet, smiling back at her through black and white images. (We realized that her face is strikingly similar in shape to my Great Aunt Anna’s.)

We put away the album then pulled out the journal I keep near me in my office, a recording of the funny things my kids say and do—touching memories I’d surely have forgotten had I not written them down. Carefully tucked away in my bedroom bureau are more journals. One from high school that is a sad testament to my immaturity. A second that contains my poetry. Another a collection of creative writing from my high school class. Those she can read years from now.

I need to find another blank journal and begin writing for her and her brothers—telling the story of my life in case one of them cares to know more about me. Because maybe it matters to them. In fact, the other day while I was with my daughter at her horse-riding lesson, I told her and her trainer about the time I was riding a horse and someone didn’t properly tighten the girth on the saddle. When I tried to keep the horse from stopping to eat every five minutes by pulling back on the reigns, the saddle slipped over the horse’s head, tossing me to the ground and knocking the wind out of me. My daughter started laughing and looked down at me from her mount. “Mom!” she said. “I never knew that happened to you!”

Did I ever tell her about the time I ran into a tree on my motorcycle? Or snagged my grandpa’s nose with a fishhook when we were fishing together in his rowboat? Or the times we slid down Barbara Ridley’s laundry chute and the neighbor’s haymow…or…

Dani Shapiro on her newest memoir

Dani Shapiro’s thought-provoking books -- from the bestselling memoir Slow Motion to stirring domestic dramas like my favorite Black and White—illuminate the complexities of everyday family life. Her short stories and essays have appeared in the New Yorker, Granta, Tin House, Elle, Vogue, Ploughshares, and O, The Oprah Magazine, among other publications. Publisher’s Weekly just gave her new book, Devotion, a starred rave:

Shapiro’s newest memoir, a mid-life exploration of spirituality begins with her son’s difficult questions—about God, mortality and the afterlife—and Shapiro’s realization that her answers are lacking, long-avoided in favor of everyday concerns. Determined to find a more satisfying set of answers, Shapiro seeks out the help of a yogi, a Buddhist and a rabbi, and comes away with, if not the answers to life and what comes after, an insightful and penetrating memoir that readers will instantly identify with. Shapiro’s ambivalent relationship with her family, her Jewish heritage and her secularity are as universal as they are personal, and she exposes familiar but hard-to-discuss doubts to real effect: she’s neither showboating nor seeking pat answers, but using honest self-reflection to provoke herself and her readers into taking stock of their own spiritual inventory. Absorbing, intimate, direct and profound, Shapiro’s memoir is a satisfying journey that will touch fans and win her plenty of new ones.

Joan: Congratulations on the release of Devotion. Can you tell us a little about it? (Readers, check out Dani's gorgeous book trailer here.)

Dani: Devotion is a memoir about my search for something to believe. I grew up in a very religious family and fled all organized religion as early as I possibly could. For many years I felt no need to replace it with any other kind of spiritual belief. Which was fine, for a long time—but then I found myself in my forties, with a young son who started asking me questions about what I believed, and I really wanted to be able to answer that question. What do I believe? I had no idea. And as is true with much of my work, I had to write a book in order to find out—in order to even give myself permission to find out.

Joan: How did you decide to return to memoir after fiction?

Dani: My books tend to present themselves to me in the form in which they belong. I suppose I could have written a novel in which a character goes on a spiritual search, but when Devotion flew into my head one morning as I was practicing yoga, it was very much as a memoir. I wanted to use my own self, my own life, as a laboratory, using both my history and my present to ask myself some of the deepest questions I could. For instance, in Devotion I explore my troubled relationship with my own mother, to ask the question: is it possible, truly possible, to ever give up on someone? I write about my son’s life-threatening illness as an infant in order to think about prayer. I mean, I prayed at the time. I prayed like crazy. But if you had asked me to whom or what I was praying, I wouldn’t have had an answer. I just knew I had to cover my bases.

Joan: In addition to your books, you write meaningful essays, which seem very personal, yet universal to many writers (I’m always astounded how much you ‘get’ me, without knowing me). Recently you wrote about betrayal, how we use moments from our life in our writing, in this case about a relative featured in your memoir. Every time I write anything remotely pulled from my own life, I edit it out, unwilling to analyze and present truths. How does one allow for such brutal honesty?

Dani: I think it’s possible to be honest without being brutal. At least I hope it is. I save the brutal part of honesty for my own self in my writing, but not others. When my mother was still living, I took great care not to hurt her. And though she may not have liked some of what I wrote, I was always aware of the ways in which I protected her. When I am writing very personal non-fiction, I always ask myself the question why. Am I writing this piece out of revenge? Because I want so-and-so to read it? Out of anger? Resentment? Good personal non-fiction may read as confessional, at times, but it isn’t a diary entry, and I think a reader can smell a vendetta from a mile away. For the past ten years, I have kept this quote from Edward Albee in my date book: “For the anger and rage to work aesthetically, the writer’s got to distance himself from it and write from what Frank O’Hara referred to in one of his poems as ‘the memory of my feelings’. Rage is incoherent. Observed rage can be coherent.”

God I love that quote. Both because it’s a reminder that good writing considers what works aesthetically, and because it comes from powers of observation and recollection—not from the heat of the moment.

Joan: And did you send the copy of Devotion to your relative? If so, what was her reaction?

Dani: I waited to send a copy of Devotion to my relative until I had finished books, because all the way along, I wanted to be sure to soften or remove any bit of language, any description that might inadvertently cause her pain. I should say here that my portrayal of her in my book is incredibly loving and she is absolutely a hero of the story. But our lives are very different, and I wanted to take great care. In the end, she called me while reading the book, in tears, to tell me how beautiful she thought it is, and described it as “a form of Kaddish,” the Jewish prayer for mourning. It was a profound compliment.

Joan: Another of your recent posts cites this Colette quote: “The writer who loses her self-doubt, who gives way as she grows old to a sudden euphoria, to prolixity, should stop writing immediately: the time has come for her to lay aside her pen.” There is a fine balance then, isn’t there, between self-doubt and having the confidence to put your manuscript out there?

Dani: I don’t know any confident writers. I really don’t. That’s one of the most illuminating things about having been around for a while—the realization that it doesn’t get easier, that no writer gets up in the morning and looks at herself in the mirror while brushing her teeth, thinking: you’re published in The New Yorker, or You’ve won the Pulitzer, or whatever. We’re always doing that day’s work. Putting a manuscript out there is the result of a long string of days at the end of which, there is hopefully something to show for it, something that feels like maybe, just maybe, other people will respond. But confidence? I don’t trust confidence in writers. Now, if I were going to a surgeon, I’d want confidence.

Joan: Whether in memoir or fiction, you write about the painful and surprising acts we sometimes inflict on one another, survival of the soul and forgiveness. Coming from such emotionally charged writing sessions, how do you disconnect from your writing to join your everyday life? What makes you laugh?

Dani: Oh, that’s such a good question. Balancing a contented and joyous family life with the places I go internally to do my work – that’s one of the greatest challenges of all. I try to leave some space in between the time I finish work, and the time I pick my son up from school at the end of the day. And I don’t tend to write on weekends. And I don’t check email in the morning until he’s left for the day. These self-imposed rules do help. But it isn’t easy. Obviously, my inner life has some darkness to it, and some pain. I feel enormously lucky have a happy family, a wonderful soul-mate husband and a delicious ten year old boy who is the light of my life. As for what makes me laugh, lots of things make me laugh—my husband and son, my friends, my dogs… but I always have to remind myself to keep that space open and light and unoccluded. In fact, that’s very much what Devotion is about. I didn’t want to wake up one day and realize that this time in my life had zoomed by without my taking it in.

Joan: Which authors have influenced your writing? What are you reading now?

Dani: Virginia Woolf is my primary influence, both as a writer and as a thinker. There is a lucidity to her prose that I admire enormously. Contemporary writers I love include a couple of friends of mine—Amy Bloom and Jennifer Egan—as well as Ian McEwan, Richard Ford, the stories of Lorrie Moore. I just finished Rebecca Goldstein’s new novel, 36 Arguments for the Existence of God, which I loved. I read a great deal of religious and spiritual thinkers while writing Devotion and wish I could still spend all day, every day, reading them: Buddhists like Sylvia Boorstein, Sharon Salzberg, Jack Kornfield. Thomas Merton, the great Catholic Monk. A brilliant book called Yoga and the Quest for the True Self by Stephen Cope.

Joan: You’ve been involved with Sirenland Writers’ Conference in Positano, Italy, which I hope to one day attend. How did you pick that location? How much writing really gets done?

Dani: The location picked us! My husband and I were having dinner at a friend’s house in the country one evening, and the other guests were owners of a magnificent five star hotel in Positano. They asked if we’d like to bring some writers over, and it began from there. This March will be Sirenland’s fourth conference, and to answer your question, a huge amount of writing gets done. It’s truly all about the writing. We invite phenomenal writers and teachers like Jim Shepard, John Burnham Schwartz, Peter Cameron, Ron Carlson, and our partner-in-crime is Hannah Tinti, a wonderful novelist and editor of One Story Magazine. Students leave Positano in a daze of literary joy. I’m not kidding.

Joan: In this age of Facebook and Twitter, through which avenues do you feel most comfortable promoting your book?

Dani: I’ve been learning how very important social media is, and have grown more comfortable being a part of it. But one of the main things I’ve discovered is that people can’t just appear on Facebook and Twitter to promote their stuff. These are communities, and it’s important to be a real part of the community. I’m also going to be doing a lot of appearances around the country, readings and talks and panels, to promote Devotion. The travel and time away from home is a bit daunting, but the opportunity to connect with readers, particularly for this book which seems to create such an intense dialogue, is very exciting.

Joan: Many of our readers (and my fellow blog writers) have at least one book in the drawer. You didn’t come up against quite so much rejection when you were originally published. Can you share your story and perhaps offer some advice to aspiring authors?

Dani: I always tell my students that my story isn’t an instructive one – but lately I’ve been changing my tune about that. My first manuscript, which I finished while in the MFA Program at Sarah Lawrence, was sold while I was still in graduate school. So certainly that appeared to be a very good beginning—and in lots of ways it was, but looking back now, I don’t think I was ready. Certainly my manuscript wasn’t ready. I wouldn’t change a thing because it all led me to where I am today, and I’m pretty pleased with where I am today—but my first two books really were about learning to write in public. They’re both out of print and I’m happy for them to remain that way. It wasn’t until my third novel, Picturing the Wreck, that I started having a true feel for how to write a novel. Slow Motion, my memoir, was my fourth book – though many people think of it as my first because it was a bestseller and got a lot of media attention. Since then, my career has very much moved in a good direction. My books are beautifully published. If all that had happened in today’s publishing world, I probably wouldn’t have had that third chance, or fourth, or fifth. I’ve been lucky in that I truly know that I have grown as a writer with each book, and I’ve been able to do that.

Thank you so much for joining us today, Dani. My copy of Devotion will arrive on my porch this week. Readers, stop by my other blog for my thoughts sometime soon.