Five things a writer needs to be able to do a lot of

Last week, I visited Minden Elementary School near Reno, Nevada as part of the sixth grade lecture series. The series is organized and run by a hard-working student committee that assembled a list of questions ahead of time, prepared an introduction, set up the tables and chairs in the library, and best of all, provided the treats for the occasion. Last year the series featured scientists. This year it’s writers, and I was the first. So I decided to go with the basics: How do you become a writer? What do you have to do?

I made a list for the whiteboard (which was, by the way, electronic – yikes! – luckily the committee trained me up in no time):

1. Read

What inspires you to write? the students asked. The answer: What I read. From Laura Ingalls Wilder when I was a kid to Zadie Smith last week.

2. Sit in a chair

As anyone who writes seriously can attest, this is a lot harder than it sounds. How long does it take to write a book? the students asked. Well, my first book, the novel I wrote sitting in a bean bag in second grade, The English Girl from Canada, took 10 days. Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus took five years. That’s a lot of sitting.

3. Find something you love to write about

For me, the lifelong urge to write turned to desperate compulsion when I landed in Canyonlands National Park in Utah just out of college, then later when I stumbled into Stehekin. I loved being outdoors, immersed in such beauty, loved the people I met and the adventures I had, and I wanted to write about all of it. So I did. Over and over and over again.

4. Work with other writers

After I left Minden, I headed up to Lake Tahoe to teach a private workshop on the bridge between essay and memoir writing. Six devoted writers offered each other support, encouragement, and much needed direction. All of them – all of us, I should say – marveled at how much gets accomplished when we’re around other writers rather than in our own little cubby holes.

5. Accept rejection

Back at the elementary school, this offered a great chance for guessing game. I told the students that I have, as of now, about seventy published short pieces. To get to that point, I asked, how many rejections did they think I’ve received? Hands shot up. Ten? Nope. Twenty? Nope. A hundred? Up and up and up the numbers went. (When I described this to my mother on the telephone, she said: just like The Price is Right.)

Five hundred, I said at last. I keep track. Five hundred rejections. And counting.

Of course the one obvious thing a writer must do a lot of that does not appear on the list is – duh! – write, so we spent some time on three short writing prompts that maybe the students can work into something in the days and weeks to come.

Then it was over. Time for refreshments. The only caveat was that, in order to partake of the cookies and Rice Krispie treats, the students would have to be talking about the presentation either with me or with each other. (Not, their teacher Ms. Bertolone-Smith noted, merely hanging out with their “stalemates.”) So they gathered around and asked some great questions: how to write a climax scene, whether you can work on more than one book at once, what’s different about writing fiction vs. nonfiction.

Looking back, I realize I did skip over one thing writers have to do a lot of: give readings and presentations and visit with readers. I’ve been doing plenty of that in the past year, and I have to say, the morning at Minden Elementary was one of the most enjoyable.

On Mortenson, memoir, victims, whiners, and the sometimes sickening truth

The undeserving casualties of the recent fracas over Greg Mortenson’s exaggerations in his bestselling memoirs are many: the people that donated money to his schools in Afghanistan and the schools themselves – guaranteed now to be shorter on funds than before – and the girls who attend them. Then there are readers, even the non-donators, and attendees of Mortenson’s speaking engagements who believed a story and now feel duped. But not least among them are memoirists everywhere who have taken yet another blow to their credibility.

Credibility that has long been suspect. The root of the accusations is familiar: how can any writer remember all the details? Memoirists, the naysayers point out, compress time and make-up dialogue and details. True enough. But most readers are cool with that. The truth is, often enough, the eye-rolling exasperation has less to do with how the story is told – how true exactly – than with what kind of story it is. Memoir is the genre of victimization, say the eye-rollers. The realm of whiners.

I should know. I taught memoir writing online for several years to hundreds of writers – new writers, experienced writers, rich writers and poor, good writers and bad, women and, occasionally, men – and among the shocks I had to face was exactly how widespread childhood trauma, especially family trauma, is. Not verbal abuse, but horrid physical and sexual abuse. I recoiled. I didn’t want to read it, not once and certainly not dozens of times a day, but I was awed and humbled by the guts it took for writers to relive the trauma, and it did not take me long to realize that these stories must be told. The sheer number of them makes them impossible to ignore. Victimization is not an attitude that’s gone viral. It’s a reality that’s been shoved under the carpet. Because we want it there. We want to change the subject.

Oddly enough, it’s rarely the (mostly female) victims of horrific crimes who exaggerate or lie in memoir – I’ve never heard of a documented case – but the (mostly male) perpetrators of minor ones. James Frey lied about his the extent of his drug dealing. Ditto Malcolm X according to a new biography. Greg Mortenson apparently not only exaggerated his commitment to the village schools, but also the extent of his trespass into enemy territory and his subsequent kidnapping. Let’s face it: bad guy dramas, packed with danger and daring, tend toward excess. Whether and how to punish or prevent such excess is, I suppose, a discussion worth having.

But let’s not change the subject.

Let’s not allow courageous writers who were once victims become victims (again) by letting “Did this really happen?” morph into “Are these stories really worth telling (again)?” They are. And the most important ones may not be packed with misdeeds-turned-bravado – the street thug turned civil rights hero, the climber turned philanthropist – but with pathos and cold hard, sometimes sickening, truth.

Teaching, Writing, Publishing

So the three are supposed to be in eternal conflict, I realize. How much time do I spending writing (duh - as much as I can), trying to publish (crucial, right?), and teaching (my passion/my paycheck)? Last semester the three dovetailed nicely and I have my nonfiction workshop at Whidbey Writers Workshop to thank. Sort of. I was afraid, as all writing teachers are secretly afraid, that teaching would sap all my energy. I was simultaneously afraid that I had demanded too much of the students - a complete draft or revision every week of the semester. So I decided I had to keep up. I had to submit a complete draft or revision of an essay to myself and/or to an editor every single week. The rule worked well because it kept me writing, and also because it kept me from fretting over creating a masterpiece every time I sat down to write. The results: 8 essays in 16 weeks. Seven of which have been published or accepted for publication. Here's one from the current issue of Mountain Gazette:

http://www.mountaingazette.com/mountain-notebook/re-entry/

Books, books, books

For the past few weeks, as I've been planning ahead for the courses I get to teach in the Whidbey Writers Workshop MFA program next Spring, I've felt the same anxiety I've felt since I was a kid whenever someone gave me a gift certificate to a book or record store, my favorite gift bar none. I obsess over the options and worry that I will make a poor choice. I wring my hands. I wander the aisles or keep updating my cart online. Finally I click to buy and hope for the best.


So now I get to choose not one or two books, but several. Not just for myself but for my students. Two courses: Craft of Nonfiction and Directed Readings in Contemporary Memoir. It's like the ultimate gift certificate. Should I choose forty books or eighty? The lists beside my desk on scrap paper kept accumulating. I emailed friends for advice, and then promptly ignored it. I honed the list over and over until it occurred to me, yesterday, that I had other work that probably needed doing, most notably firewood splitting and putting the garden to bed, but also teaching my current classes.

Anyway here's the final list for The Contemporary Memoir. Now that it's finalized, please let me know what you think so that I can start the inevitable regretting.

Two craft books for reference:

The Art of Time in Memoir: Then, Again by Sven Birkerts
Fearless Confessions by Sue William Silverman

Ten fine books:

Brother I’m Dying Edwidge Danticat
Another Bullshit Night in Suck City Nick Flynn
Lit Mary Karr
Autobiography of a Face Lucy Grealy
Somehow Form a Family Tony Earley
Boyhood J.M Coetzee
The Tender Land Kathleen Finneran
I’ve Heard the Vultures Singing Lucia Perillo
Jarhead Anthony Swofford
Gringa: A Contradictory Girlhood Melissa Hart

With apologies to the many also-rans: Mark Doty, Alexandra Fuller, Judith Barrington, Michael Ondaatje, Danielle Trussoni, Frank McCourt, Maxine Hong Kingston, Thomas Merton. I don't suspect it bothers them to have missed the cut. But good lord does it bother me. Next time. Next time.

PS - For my most recent CD purchase, in spring, I was stuck between Clem Snide and Fruit Bats, nearly paralyzed for weeks. Finally, I bought both. Big splurge. No regrets. I'll take this as an omen.