Memory Writers Network

by Jerry Waxler

A lot of people over 50 look down the road and spot what looks suspiciously like a finish line. We pause, ask a few questions and then shop for a sports car, an RV, or an affair. But after we pay for our fling we usually have more questions than when we started. For a more lasting solution, try writing your memoir. Yes, I know it doesn’t sound as glamorous as some of the more expensive responses to midlife but it turns out to be far more satisfying.

By finding the stories of our life we reclaim the adventure, the romance, and the mystery we’ve already lived through. When we put our youthful indiscretions on paper we gain insights not only about who we were then but who we are now. Rediscovering our youth, we see how our actions fit in the grander scheme of things. And we no longer take youth for granted. We savor it. This second look lets us endow youth with wisdom.

To understand how writing might work in your life, consider my mother. Starting from her 70’s, she woke early every morning and for the first hour or two of the day, she wrote. She wrote letters to old friends. She wrote notes about her past. She prepared talks to present to the clubs she belonged to. Occasionally she found a book she thought would interest her peers. The manager in her apartment campus posted a notice that Sylvia Waxler was giving a book review, and people showed up to listen. After staging a few such events, she became known as the book review lady. Strangers and acquaintances stopped her in the lobby to discuss her last review, and tell her about a book they were reading and why she might like it. They showered her with friendliness. She turned out to be one of the best liked 87 year old women I have ever had the privilege of knowing.

But it seems I have digressed. What does an 87 year old lady writing book reviews have to do with someone much younger trying to find a renewed sense of life? I think by writing every day Mom found the fountain of youth. And her audience knew it. They weren’t pouring admiration on her because she gave the best book review they ever heard. As she pried into the meaning of books, and then reached out to an audience to share her ideas, she was creating the story of an old woman who kept going. She wasn’t telling them what to do. She was showing them what one person could do. Her story gave them hope.

It turns out that stories are the only tool we humans have for understanding life’s trajectory. So if you want to enhance your experience of being you, haul your memories out of storage, line them up, and organize them. The mishmash of events falls into place. Armed with this organized view of your life, you begin to appreciate its form. By seeing where you’ve been, you open up to the possibilities of where you are going.

I can’t explain exactly how writing will help you feel better about your life journey, since you will approach it in your own unique way. But here’s how it has worked for me. After writing for a while, I realize I’m in the thick of my own vibrant story. Life becomes more engaging. Now, my curiosity propels me forward, and as I look down the road I see glimpses of the next chapter in this fascinating journey.

by Jerry Waxler

For most of the twentieth century, scientists believed we are stuck with the neurons we were born with. Well, it was actually worse than that. After birth our neurons started dieing, and it was all downhill from there. But then, in one of the great flip-flops of the last 100 years, neurologists now say we can grow neurons at any age. And it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out how. “Use them or lose them” is appropriate not only for muscles. It’s also true for brain cells. So in addition to exercising to my body, I also exercise my brain. By exercising that part of myself, I not only prevent it from dieing. I help it grow. (If you are interested in more information about the science of growing neurons, or “neuroplasticity” check out the blog at the end of this entry.)

Most people find working out boring, preferring to get their physical activity doing something enjoyable, like playing tennis or gardening. Similarly, you can find brain exercises that are fun and productive. If you want an activity that can keep your brain growing and vital, try writing a memoir. Writing about your life, in my opinion, is the mother of all brain exercises. It forces you to search for words, puzzle out phrases, and organize stories. So while you’re writing, you are developing neuronal connections in your frontal cortex. That’s the body part that enables you to plan and think. And while you’re exercising your brain, you are also shaping your ideas about who you are and where you fit in with the world. If you tell a good enough story, you can share it with others. And you might even be able to sell it and add money to the long list of benefits.

When I was in my forties, to gear up for the second half of my life, I started to read self-development literature. One of the best was Stephen Covey’s, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. It changed my life by pointing out that while most of my effort went into my employer’s success, I also needed to invest in my own skills and satisfaction. This magnificent concept put me through graduate school where I earned a Master’s degree in counseling when I was 52.

There were a couple of other concepts in Covey’s book that made a difference. One is his suggestion to write out a mission statement of what I want the future to look like. At the time, I was unenthusiastic about writing my values. I thought the exercise was too abstract. But later, when I became interested in memoir writing, I discovered the value of telling the story of life, and I recognized that a mission statement is simply a story that leads towards the future. So my self-help idea of writing memoirs made Covey’s idea of a mission statement more meaningful. Here’s how it works. Write about my life. See that life is a story. Write about the next chapter in the story. A self-help strategy is born.

What does Covey have to do with growing neurons? For one thing, according to neural science, self-improvement develops the brain. Follow good habits and your neurons will grow. But Covey also advocates a more direct approach. His habit called “sharpening the saw” is based on the observation that when you cut wood with a dull blade, your task takes longer. To work more effectively improve the blade. He’s talking about the things we do to take care of our physical and mental health, staying active, staying balanced, building skills. I suggest adding “growing neurons” to the list. What better investment could you make in your own future than daily exercise to maintain your brain? And my favorite exercise, with the most direct effect is to write your memoir.

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For more about the science of brain development at any age check out the blog Brains on Purpose The author of the blog is Stephanie West-Allen, a lawyer who is interested in the way brain science can help reduce conflict. She has teamed up with Jeffrey M. Schwartz, MD, a leading researcher and author in neuroplasticity. The blog is loaded with references to neuroplasticity, and is a good starting point for learning about the general issues of exercising (and changing!) your brain.

by Jerry Waxler

The tiny town of Bethlehem in Southeastern Pennsylvania has a lot going on. It was the birthplace of Bethlehem Steel, it sports an 81 foot high Christmas star, hosts the annual regional music bash called Musikfest, is home of Lehigh University and Moravian College, and has its own public radio station, WDIY where I’m being interviewed today. It also happens to be the home of Lehigh Valley Storytelling Guild. Storytelling interests me, not because I’m an expert but because I’m human, which is the chief prerequisite for interest in stories. We start learning stories from the time we’re babies, and we become attuned to them through a life time of exposure. In fact, they are everywhere, and form the basis for the way we look at the world, learn about people, and let people learn about us.

When I started to explore life-writing, I realized that while I’m an expert story listener, I have a lot to learn about story telling. Since stories are everywhere, you would think that learning about telling them should be simple. Many successful writers recommend that you learn the art of writing stories by emulating the books you enjoy reading. My problem with this method is that once I dive into the story I stop thinking about writing. In a trance, I turn the key on the door of his apartment, put my briefcase on the table by the door, and recoil in fear at the sound I heard in the other room. It’s hard for me to break out of this trance and analyze the writer’s technique.

It’s easier for me to draw lessons from memoirs. When I read a memoir, a significant proportion of my attention is already focused on learning lessons from the protagonist’s life. I want to understand what makes his or her world work, what’s special about it, what I can see that will help me live in my world. So since I’m already learning, it turns out to be natural for me to learn lessons about storytelling. And I can learn from first time authors, as well as from the masters. I find many lessons about storytellers from beginners, such as Margaret George’s Never Use your Dim Lights, or George Brummell’s Shades of Darkness or Harry Bernstein’s Invisible Wall.

Another place I learn about story telling is from people who teach writing. One comprehensive book for storytellers is a 400 page classic called simply Story: Substance, Structure, Style and The Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee. Since good screenwriting is good storytelling, don’t worry about the fact that your life may not be made into a movie. If you’re serious about representing your life as a story, I recommend you dig into such material, and learn more about how stories are told. Not only will you be learning to tell your own story. You’ll learn to see more perceptively into the stories you read, watch, or hear.

I love trying to understand what makes a story tick, so it was with great delight that I spoke with storyteller Charles Kiernan, from Bethlehem’s Storytelling Guild. If you want to learn how to tell stories, it makes sense to ask a storyteller. All you have to do is find one. Since I knew about Kiernan’s guild, I turned to him to ask him his ideas about stories. It turns out he was just getting ready to teach a workshop he’ll be presenting at the Augusta Heritage Folkarts Festival in West Virginia. July 8-13, 2007. This was a perfect time to have that conversation, because he told me about the lesson he is preparing to give at the Folkarts Festival. It is one of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever heard for turning life into story.

So what was the simple powerful advice Charles Kiernan offered? The gist is, “Break down the code, and spell it out.” Stories are like space ships and time travel machines. So even though I learned about this storytelling trick in a tiny town, I can use it to tell stories that transport me around the world.

I’m going to explain it in more detail in my next blog entry.

Terrorism! Melting ice caps! Another traffic jam! When is someone going to do something about this mess? While I am waiting for “them” to change the world, “they” are waiting for me. It’s time to break this impasse by taking action. But how? I already tried to bring about world peace by disrupting a campus when I was in college in 1968. It was scary confronting a mob of police, and I don’t believe the world has become more peaceful as a result of those actions. Now that I’m older, I’m looking for better methods. I recently became inspired by a talk hosted by the “Coming of Age” organization in Philadelphia. The main speaker was the CEO of AARP, Bill Novelli, who echoed the sentiment of his book, 50+: Igniting a Revolution to Reinvent America in which he claimed that I can join an army of new oldsters to help move the world in a positive direction. A week later I went to another Coming of Age event and heard similar ideas eloquently delivered by Marc Freedman, author of Prime Time: How Baby Boomers Will Revolutionize Retirement and Transform America.

When I was a kid, I thought that older people were the problem. They seemed so invested in the status quo. Now that I’m one of them, I find old people aren’t so bad after all. In fact, I feel just as passionate about changing the world as when I was 20. While Novelli and Freedman spoke of a variety of ways that others have chosen to pitch in and move their own little corner of the world, I have a grand idea. It seems to me that the missing element in modern civilization is that we don’t seem to be doing a good job of learning from our mistakes. And in my opinion, that’s where the army of us oldsters can help significantly. We’ve seen the world go by for more years than others have, and have gained an appreciation for what matters in the long run, and what fizzles out.

It’s not that I have all the answers. But if there is any wisdom at all to be gained from experience, and my experience tells me there is, then I’d say we need to communicate more of our life story. And we’ve been born at the perfect time. Just as boomers are reaching “that certain age” technology has provided new opportunities for us to collaborate. The printing press brought ideas from individual minds out into the public, broke us free from a layer of oppression, and opened the way for the Renaissance. The internet makes the printing press look like an old relic. We’re ready to take this thing global, and who knows what rebirths we can bring about?

By developing a community of thinking people who talk about life in an inquiring way, we can learn from each other. Your wisdom is contained in your life experience. Share it with the world! Even if you don’t know how writing could change your world, start writing anyway. Your experience turns into stories that are authentic, in a voice that is authentically yours. That’s all that matters now. Find the authentic voice and share the authentic experience. As you go, you’ll discover the sense you’ve made of your past, and then discover the impact your experience has on others. By writing and organizing your story, without even knowing how, you are already beginning to serve. And like any service to others, you’ll be the first to reap the rewards.

Writing about life will give you more energy. Even if you already have plenty of energy, writing will give you more. And if you are too tired to write, writing will wake you up.

Writing will make you more knowledgeable about how to write and how to tell stories. You can press these enhanced skills into service as you discover things you want to share with the world.

By writing about your own life experience, you open up parts of yourself to others. This makes the world a friendlier, more intimate place to live.

Write for a cause, write for a community, write for posterity, write to share yourself. Write to change the world.

 by Jerry Waxler

Many people intend to write more after they retire, because they will have more time. I agree that you will have more time when you are no longer working a day job, but I’m not so sure that it’s free time you need more of. In my experience, more free time does not necessarily lead to more writing. It’s what you do with your free time that matters.

If you look at your free time as time to relax, then more free time will just mean more relaxing. Writing requires a shift in your attitude towards free time, and you can start making that shift right now. The trick is to realize that once you start writing, even if you only last for ten minutes, you will have energy than when you started. Once you develop the habit of creating during your free time, it will stick with you, and carry you towards your goals whether you are working, or after you retire.

When you go to work, you’re on a schedule. Your actions are well-defined, driven by the needs of the business. The people who work together expect each other to do their share. Writing lacks these pressures, and on the surface, this lack of pressure seems glamorous. Be your own boss. Work when you want. But when you actually try to produce readable, or even publishable material, independence loses its glamor.

Now instead of having someone tell you what to do next, you have to tell yourself. There’s no one to sort priorities, give you direction, or warn you of the consequences of slacking off. There are many other things calling for attention: television, the grandkids, or the tennis court. And in the back of your mind, or perhaps right there in plain view, is your belief that free time is down time. “Why should I work in my free time?”

My answer to that question is “Because creativity makes me feel better than anything else I could be doing with my time.” Through experimenting, I’ve found that by writing, I invest energy, but then get back more than I put in. This experimentation has opened a new chapter in my life. I found that by persistently writing, I have nurtured the sort of enthusiasm typically expected only in entrepreneurs or pioneers.

Once you see writing as a contribution to your life, you’ll cherish your free time as a time to create. You’ll find ways to get yourself to the desk. You’ll start habits to help you organize your material. You’ll set goals, even modest ones, that turn your free time into the luxurious glamorous opportunity to create something you can enjoy and share. It’s an awakening, not a retreat.

Start as soon as possible, like after you finish reading this. Take ten minutes and write about the last time you saw your childhood home, or describe your best friend in high school, or list five things you did that pleased your parents, and five things that displeased them. If you feel better, invigorated, satisfied in some sublime way, you have used your free time wisely.

by Jerry Waxler

I drove down to attend a Town Meeting in Philadelphia. The meeting was called “Coming of Age, Ignite the Revolution” for the over 50 crowd. I loved the meeting’s slogan, so appropriate here a few blocks from Independence Hall. Igniting revolution seems the right thing to do, in these times when the status quo seems to be sliding in the wrong direction. I wanted to be reminded that people really do change the world. The meeting was hosted by Philadelphia community organizer Dick Goldberg, a Director of Coming of Age. His guest was the CEO of AARP, Bill Novelli, author of “50+ Igniting a Revolution to Reinvent America.”

I found Novelli to be charismatic, speaking with enthusiasm and conviction about how AARP was founded 49 years ago by Ethel Percy Andrus, an individual who wanted to help older people, and at the same time saw them as an army of social activists, using their experience to make the world a better place. He had my attention, because I’m hoping that I can direct my own energy towards changing the world, and looking for ways to join with others to do it. Even in this time when it’s so much easier to meet people online, it was great to be face to face with people who are interested in making the most of life after 50.

The meeting was held at the public television station, WHYY, and was being recorded for televising in the fall. I’ve never been to a televised meeting before, so that was a new experience. And when it came time to ask questions, I walked over to the microphone, an amazing feat for me, considering I would have been too shy to ask a question in public before I went through the Toastmasters program. So I really am getting better as I grow older. Thank God for Toastmasters, and the life long development of new skills.

I said to a room full of strangers, “I just celebrated my 60th birthday last week.” This was funny because in that room being 60 was a credential, and so I was actually bragging about it. I continued, “But when I think about what defines me as a boomer, I donâ’t think about my age now. I think about trying to stop a war in 1967 by sitting in a university building. I’m not interested now in protest, but am interested more than ever in making the world a better place. I came here tonight looking for institutions that can help. I always thought of AARP as an instrument of social self-defense. It sounds like you’re saying that AARP can also be an institution of social development. Is that true?”

In Novelli’s opening remarks he had talked about AARP as such an institution, but he kept coming back to individuals doing it on their own. I want institutions that can pull people together and create change, and wasn’t sure how much he was assigning to me alone, and how much his institution can help people work collectively. At least now I know the intention is there, and want to learn more about how it is helping.

After the meeting I met a couple of people involved in the Center for Intergenerational Learning, based at Temple University, and learned about their programs. Robert Tietze, Executive Director of Experience Corps, a program in which senior volunteers mentor school kids, including a branch at my old elementary school, Pennypacker, in West Oak Lane. And Aviva Perlo, Peer Counseling Coordinator of Intercommunity Action, Inc, a program in which seniors coach other seniors

My original goal was to learn something that I could write about in my blog about memoirs, and I thought the evening was wrapping up a little skimpy in that area. Then a woman asked me what school I had been protesting at in 1967. I told her it was at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. She said, “I was there, too.” I studied her face, trying to imagine if I ever saw her pass me on the campus. Every once in while, the wind blows and the veil of time flutters. Forty years ago, 1,000 miles away, I was hoping to change the world, and now, here in Philadelphia is a woman from that same time and place, trying to work towards social change, at Temple Univerity’s Center for Intergenerational Learning. Ahh.. There was the lesson I was looking for. This coincidence reminded me that life is one unified flow. But I don’t need to passively wait for coincidences. I can do it myself. Memoir writing is a form of personal activism, that links together the past and present, and makes the journey of life more whole.

by Jerry Waxler

Entire epochs of my life, like the decade after I got out of college for example, have disappeared into the haze of the past. And I’m not sure that decade made much sense when I was living through it the first time. The past is strewn behind me in a jumble of memories that won’t go away, but won’t come clear either.

So instead of leaving that pile just sit there and bother me in its messiness, it’s more fun to search through the piles, and turn them into something beautiful and sensible. This exercise of finding the stories in life might seem daunting at first - so many memories, so little structure. But like cleaning up any messy pile, the starting point doesn-t really matter. I could start anywhere.

For example I could take out a photo album and when I feel an emotion stirring, jump into the scene and write about it as if I was there. Or compile a timetable of my life, including dates and short descriptions of major events and transitions. “I was born in 1947. When I was five I went to Pennypacker Elementary School. I walked three blocks to school and then walked home for lunch, everyday for six years.”

Ask yourself questions about the past. You’ll discover remarkable material lurking within your mind. Describe the furniture in your living room. What year did you move? What did you plan to do for a living, and what changed as you grew? Describe your aunts and uncles.

Then add emotion. What frightened you? (Recurring dreams of being chased by dinosaurs.) What did your parents want from you that you could never do right? (Be perfect.) How did it feel when you visited your grandparents? (It felt good when grandmom pulled out her piano music and started playing. It felt bad when she lectured me.) How did you feel at summer camp, or during a big argument? As you gather the information, and turn memories into scenes and time-lines, take a step back and think about how you would pull these disparate elements into a story that would make sense to someone who doesn’t know you.

By seeing it through the lens of a story, you regain so much of who you are. Out of the pile of vague memories emerge a sensibility that can help you organize who you are today. And if you strive to make it a good read, you’ll be taking the next step of your journey, turning yourself into a craftsperson, a storyteller of life.

 by Jerry Waxler

After finishing the memoir, Shades of Darkness, I felt I had learned a lot about the author, George Brummell, as a person, his cultural experience growing up in the segregated south. His ticket out to the larger world was the United States Army. I could feel him growing up in Korea. It was a nicely told coming of age story, and then, just when it looked like he was turning into a real adult, his life exploded in a landmine in Vietnam. He was blinded and maimed, and then when he returned, he had to invent himself again. Through the magic of memoir he took me on his journey, as he kept growing. He graduated from college, became director of the Blinded Veterans Association, and wrote this memoir.

I knew he was lecturing and outreach to encourage others to tell their story. To find out more about his experience writing the memoir I set up an interview. He has a melodic voice, and as he was speaking each sentence, I could almost hear him lining up the next, so his thoughts flowed together in a lovely, somewhat unusual sort of continuum. Here is what he said when I asked him to tell me about writing his memoir.

GB: “When I came back from Vietnam I wasn’t doing too well, and writing the memoir helped me organize my thoughts. Putting my thoughts on paper was elevating for me. It was quite therapeutic. I needed it at the time, especially those times that were not the best for me. When I began to write it had a tendency to take away my thoughts, and I could drift back to my childhood days and think of things that I could probably have done a little bit better. It was just exciting to be able to see what I have accomplished in writing.

When I first started writing I often thought how difficult it would be to organize my thoughts and not repeat myself. I thought that would be a real challenge. I like challenges, and that was a challenge to me to do that. I was in college at the time, I felt it was a way to improve my life. Writing is like driving or a lot of other things that we do. In most cases, the more you do it, the better you get at it. Writing the book prepared me for the career that I had with the Blinded veterans association which required me to do a lot of writing.

After so much practice I found myself in a position to be able to write a little bit better than a lot of my peers. It also helped me in terms of promotion, because a couple of times they asked the applicants to write what they could do for the organization, and I was able to express myself fairly well.

I knew as a blind person a lot of what I was going to do in my life would require me to speak, because as a blind person a lot of things you cannot do with your hands, other than a lot of manual labor, and I wasn’t interested in that. I found that in order for me to improve my speech, I had to read. And of course writing was an adjunct to that. The more I wrote, the more I was able to organize my thoughts and to be able to speak.

JW: “Did you get much training in story writing?”

GB: Not really. As a youngster, living with my grandmother, she was illiterate, and I wrote letters to her daughter and sisters. They were in Philadelphia and she didn’t have a telephone. Otherwise, my only writing class was a remedial writing course, which I took because I was a high school dropout and then in college I took English 101 and 102.

When I took the remedial writing course, I was recording my memoirs at the time, and I asked the instructor to let me use those recordings as my English assignment. My instructor thought my writing was quite interesting. Then in English 101 and 102, the instructor let me use recordings as well.

After that, I took a non-credit course in creative writing. Again, I was able to submit papers for that class from my own material. By that time I was hooked. And as a social work major, I had to do a lot of writing, and a lot of editing. I really enjoyed editing. I worked with my writing person to get my coursework on paper. I went through it with her, and she retyped it, and I edited and she retyped it. So I had a lot of editing experience while I was in school.

And again while I was at work, we did a brochure. And I went along with the person who was writing the brochure, and she would read and ask the directors what changes we wanted to make, and I saw that I stood a little bit taller than my peers in terms of editing. All of them had more education than I did, their vocabulary was greater, but once it was put on paper, I could make it sound better.

JW: And that skill shows in your book.

GB: That’s the only training I had, other than what I got from my own experience. I thought I could write a book better than the ones I had read, such as, “If you can see what I hear” - hell, I could write my own experiences. Why not do it from the point of view of an African American?

See www.georgebrummell.com for more information and excerpts from his book.