http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog 200 Essays and Interviews to Help You Read and Write Memoirs Fri, 12 Mar 2010 13:24:32 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 en hourly 1 2006-2007 jerrywaxler@yahoo.com (Jerry Waxler) jerrywaxler@yahoo.com (Jerry Waxler) Self-help 1440 memoir, writers, self-help, book-reviews, essays Reading and writing memoirs. Record the Stories of Your Life, tips, how-to, memoir book reviews, by Jerry Waxler Jerry Waxler Jerry Waxler jerrywaxler@yahoo.com No no http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/wp-content/plugins/podpress/images/LearnMemoirCoverFront-small.jpg http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog 144 144 http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/flawed-heroes-and-mechanical-body-parts-shaolin-memoir-part-2/ http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/flawed-heroes-and-mechanical-body-parts-shaolin-memoir-part-2/#comments Wed, 18 Nov 2009 13:46:44 +0000 jerrywaxler http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/?p=659 http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/flawed-heroes-and-mechanical-body-parts-shaolin-memoir-part-2/feed/ 2 http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/memoir-sexual-abuse/ http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/memoir-sexual-abuse/#comments Fri, 21 Aug 2009 11:18:34 +0000 jerrywaxler http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/?p=564 http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/memoir-sexual-abuse/feed/ 3 http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/sexuality-memoir-schaeffer/ http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/sexuality-memoir-schaeffer/#comments Wed, 27 May 2009 11:08:11 +0000 jerrywaxler http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/?p=505 http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/sexuality-memoir-schaeffer/feed/ 4 http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/orion-memoir-midlife-crisis/ http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/orion-memoir-midlife-crisis/#comments Wed, 27 Aug 2008 10:42:58 +0000 jerrywaxler http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/?p=193 http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/orion-memoir-midlife-crisis/feed/ 1 http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/escaping-prison-past/ http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/escaping-prison-past/#comments Fri, 25 Jul 2008 11:07:55 +0000 jerrywaxler http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/?p=144 http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/escaping-prison-past/feed/ 4 00:01:01 By Jerry Waxler (You can listen to the podcast version by clicking the player control at the bottom of this post or download it from iTunes.) Tony ... By Jerry Waxler (You can listen to the podcast version by clicking the player control at the bottom of this post or download it from iTunes.) Tony Cohan, author of the memoir "Native State" grew up listening to his father speak about popular musicians with the awe usually reserved for gods. Cohan's father, Phil, produced a variety show in the heyday of radio, and famous performers like Frank Sinatra and Jimmy Durante filled dad's heart with admiration and also put food on his table. It was natural for young Tony to want to grow up to be one of the performers his dad revered. At 13-years-old Tony played his first gig as a drum player at a high school dance. Then he moved "up" to bars and strip clubs. A few years later, his ambition took him to North Africa and Spain, where he played with the hippest jazz performers, but nothing satisfied him. No matter how far he progressed as a musician, his life remained stuck in dimly lit nightclubs, poverty, drugs, and danger. Flash forward a couple of decades. Cohan is earning his living as a successful writer, living in Mexico with his girl friend. This explains why he felt stuck all those years. Music was taking him in the wrong direction. He wasn't able to find satisfaction until he escaped his original goal. Empathizing with Cohan's frustration, I turn pages, wanting him to find his true dream. I have met many men and women whose lives started in one direction, say towards a profession, or marriage and babies, or the family business. Then they end up somewhere else. Often the change in direction leaves them or their parents confused, as if they have disrupted destiny or lost a crucial component of their own identity. Later in life, they look back and wonder about the discrepancy between the initial story and the later one. If they describe it as they originally felt it, it raises issues of disappointment and regret, or anger and rebellion. They feel echoes of the initial confusion. All these years later, something about the transition into adulthood still feels "wrong." And yet if they don't include it, the story feels incomplete, as if they are ignoring major events. I had such a fracture in my own Coming of Age. On the rare nights when dad could get away from the store to join the family for dinner, he told stories about his customers. His tone about most people was overly familiar, jocular, often condescending. But when he talked about doctors, the tone changed. As a pharmacist, he was simply fulfilling their orders. They were his gods. I didn't want to be one of the mortals, the everyday people who became the butt of dad's jokes. I wanted to be one he respected. To achieve that dream, I became increasingly tense about amassing knowledge. My intellectual drive constricted my view of myself and my role in the world. By the time I was 18, I had become hyper-focused on science, math, and medicine, and becoming a doctor was the only Truth worth living for. Then, something very strange and disturbing happened. I entered college during the sixties, when cultural and political upheaval stirred my world into a frenzy. I became interested in philosophy and literature. Shaken loose from my original obsession, I started rebelling against everything, and then dropped out to pursue some hippie utopian fantasy. I replay the events over and over. I was a hardworking and competent young man with a well-stocked arsenal of academic gifts already in place by the time I was 18. I wanted this one thing so badly. Then, like a clown stepping on a banana peel, I slipped and fell on my ass. For years, I thought my academic pratfall meant I was a failure. I didn't live up to my own or my father's expectations. Now as I review Tony Cohan's story, I see my life journey from a different point of view. When I threw myself into the social revolution and rejected everything my father and family stood for, it was not an accident. It was a choice. Math and science satisfied me mentally but c 60's,,Book,Review,,Lifelong,Learning,,My,own,life,,Storytelling,,Trauma,,Writing,Prompt Jerry Waxler no No http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/fact-fiction-chinese-cultural-revolution/ http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/fact-fiction-chinese-cultural-revolution/#comments Tue, 27 May 2008 12:19:51 +0000 jerrywaxler http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/?p=133 http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/fact-fiction-chinese-cultural-revolution/feed/ 3 00:01:01 by Jerry Waxler (You can listen to the podcast version by clicking the player control at the bottom of this post or download it from iTunes.) When ... by Jerry Waxler (You can listen to the podcast version by clicking the player control at the bottom of this post or download it from iTunes.) When I was in college in 1968, I grew long hair as a protest against my parents' generation. The old ways obviously hadn't worked, so it was up to me to unravel everything I knew and start over. I didn't realize that at the same time, on the other side of the world, a billion Chinese people were trying to do the same thing. Repeating slogans like "Smash the Four Olds: Old Customs, Old Culture, Old Habits, and Old Ideas," Chairman Mao had stirred up a frenzy against the wisdom of the past. Since education was traditionally held in high regard, smashing the "olds" included shutting down schools, mocking and denouncing teachers, and shipping students into the country to work in fields. This social movement was known as the Cultural Revolution. Xujun Eberlein was an educated girl, living in a small city in China during that period. Her father was the president of an educational institute and her mother was a school principal so the Cultural Revolution wreaked havoc on their family. Both parents lost their jobs, her beloved older sister died, and Xujun was taken from home and inserted into a rural village to live and work with peasants. After the fanaticism waned, she returned home, then moved to the U.S. and earned a doctorate from one of the most prestigious educational institutions in the world, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But the past kept calling to her, and in the fall of 2001, she began to write stories about growing up. After several years honing her English writing skills, she started winning awards and placing pieces in competitive literary magazines. Recently she published a book of short stories "Apologies Forthcoming" based on her experience. When I first picked up Xujun Eberlein's book of fiction, I hoped it would offer me deeper understanding of the task of turning life into story. My hope was richly rewarded. Like any good story, her tales lifted me out my own world and offered me a glimpse of hers. I read about a little girl seeing her father on his knees on a stage, being forced to denounce himself in front of his community. In another story, a young woman tried to adjust to her new life of poverty in a rural community. In still another, the protagonist reached out to men for friendship, and for the first time confronted the complexities of sexuality. In every story I felt two things: the pleasure of losing myself, and a sense that I was witnessing a period of history through the eyes of someone who was there. Surprisingly, my suspension of disbelief gave me the freedom to enter that world without picking it apart for historical accuracy. To learn more lessons about this connection between her stories and her history, I read one of Xujun's memoir essays, available online in the literary magazine, The Walrus. You can read it here. It's a wonderful and tragic story, and another window into her heart and into those times. Like the Rosetta Stone, I tried comparing these two different versions of the same events. My comparison of Xujun's multi-dimensional attempts to tell the story of her life gave me some of the clearest understandings I've had so far about how story and memoir intertwine. While fiction can freely break loose from actual historical fact, the story must give the reader an emotionally authentic compelling experience. One of the best ways fiction writers can tap into such authentic emotions is by drawing on the realities of the world around them, and especially the world they have experienced themselves. On the other hand, nonfiction writers must adhere to historical facts. Even though this seems to offer fewer choices, a nonfiction writer has an almost unlimited supply of raw material contained within tens of thousands of days of memories. To transform these historical facts into an engaging story we must draw on fiction te Book,Review,,Cultural,community,,Storytelling Jerry Waxler no No http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/collapsed-lives-into-memoirs/ http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/collapsed-lives-into-memoirs/#comments Wed, 21 May 2008 11:33:13 +0000 jerrywaxler http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/?p=131 http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/collapsed-lives-into-memoirs/feed/ 6 00:01:01 How to remember a life that fell apart Forgetting the past turns out to be a temporary state. As I try to explain my journey through life, those bad decisions and lost dreams keep coming back, fragmented, unkind, and confusing. Book,Review,,Coming,of,age,,Memoirs,,My,own,life,,Trauma,,Veteran Jerry Waxler no No http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/john-robisons-aspergers-gave-me-permission-to-write-about-myself/ http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/john-robisons-aspergers-gave-me-permission-to-write-about-myself/#comments Wed, 26 Mar 2008 10:57:54 +0000 jerrywaxler http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/john-robisons-aspergers-gave-me-permission-to-write-about-myself/ http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/john-robisons-aspergers-gave-me-permission-to-write-about-myself/feed/ 9 00:01:01 by Jerry Waxler (You can listen to the podcast version by clicking the player control at the bottom of this post or download it from iTunes.) When ... by Jerry Waxler (You can listen to the podcast version by clicking the player control at the bottom of this post or download it from iTunes.) When I first saw John Robison's memoir, "Look me in the eye" I had mixed feelings. On the one hand, the subtitle "My Life with Asperger's" provided a clue about the book's topic. On the other hand, I was afraid that the label would narrow the scope of the story to just one dimension. I eventually decided to read the book, and after finishing it I realize how far off the mark my first impressions were. John Robison uses the label Asperger's not to shrink his worldview but to expand it. And even better, his label has helped me understand some things about myself. What is Asperger's? People with Asperger's Syndrome are awkward in their relationships to people, and often are physically clumsy as well. The description of someone with this "disorder" sounds remarkably similar to me and my fellow nerds in the honors class at Central High School, the all-academic public school I attended in Philadelphia. We preferred books over people, and had little interest in sports. We had plenty to do within our own mind. Everything else came second, if at all. While many people diagnosed with Asperger's suffer symptoms far more severe than these, I was able to relate personally to the comparatively mild symptoms described in Robison's memoir. Permission to be "dull and introspective" I went to camp in the mountains of Maryland, one month each summer between the ages of 9 and 11. I remember lying on the scratchy wool blanket on my hard bunk. I feel the bang and bend as I pounded a shiny copper sheet into a wooden mold, forming a nubbly metal ashtray. I taste my first corn fritters swimming in maple syrup in a noisy mess hall. But I don't remember one single other person, child or adult, from those three months. Except for a few instances, I don't even clearly remember growing up with my brother and sister. I had figured out how to survive in my own world, preferring reading over sports or other games and on weekends working in my dad's drugstore. One of the most emotional moments I remember from my high school years happened when I walked into a bookstore and I felt overwhelmed by grief that there were too many books for me to ever read. I actually started to cry. My lack of awareness of other children makes my descriptions of those years sound like I was alone. How will I ever be able to explain my life, when so much of it was spent inside my own mind? Until I read John Robison's book, I assumed I had to hide my excessive introspection, ignore my high tech jobs and love for math, and the fact that it took until I was 35 to relate to a woman well enough to form a loving relationship. I thought to be worth reading, I had to restrict my memoir to "normal" behaviors, and had to transform my experience into picturesque portrayals like other authors I admire. Instead of hating my condition or trying to hide it, I can now look at it more appropriately. People in my "condition" behave this way normally! The facts are the same but now, armed with Robison's insights, I am able to look more closely at a wider variety of memories, and explore how to find the dramatic tension in the person I really was, rather than trying to force myself to sound like someone I wanted to be. Robison even makes the case that looking inward is a valuable skill. After all, engineers, scientists, and writers must go inside their mind to do their work. And everyone benefits from carefully weighing options in order to make the most effective decisions. After reading "Look Me in the Eye" I realize there is room in the world for a variety of memoirs, and that someone with a mind like mine can write an acceptable, even fascinating story about their lives. He turned coping with his own flaws into an opportunity to serve others Robison started in life feeling limited and confused. Through this journey, he has discovered Book,Review,,Lifelong,Learning Jerry Waxler no No http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/celebrity-interviewer-turns-the-camera-on-herself/ http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/celebrity-interviewer-turns-the-camera-on-herself/#comments Wed, 05 Mar 2008 13:09:59 +0000 jerrywaxler http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/celebrity-interviewer-turns-the-camera-on-herself/ http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/celebrity-interviewer-turns-the-camera-on-herself/feed/ 4 00:01:01 By Jerry Waxler (You can also listen to the podcast. Click the player control at the bottom of this post or download it from iTunes.) Jancee Dunn ... By Jerry Waxler (You can also listen to the podcast. Click the player control at the bottom of this post or download it from iTunes.) Jancee Dunn was an ordinary girl from the suburbs of north New Jersey who dropped out of college, became a cub reporter for Rolling Stone magazine, and stayed there for 18 years. At her zenith she told the world about celebrities on MTV and Good Morning America. In the memoir "Enough About Me, How a Small-town Girl Went from Shag Carpet to the Red Carpet" she became the object of her own reporting. Thanks to her reporting skills, I empathized with her as she started her career, a nobody waiting at the doors of some of the most famous people in the world. "Oh my God, what must it feel like meeting a famous girl band, or rock and roll star?" Naturally her knees turned weak, but she went in anyway, and I kept turning pages. For example, she interviewed singer Barry White, who gave her a big wet kiss at the door and treated her to a romantic dinner for two. Then she closed the door behind her. When she emerged a couple of hours later I don't know what happened, in a virtuoso example of informing without revealing. Her discretion could provide a good model for other aspiring memoir writers who wonder how to explain awkward situations without getting into trouble. During an interview with an unnamed celebrity who recently completed a month at rehab, he suggested that drugs were only a phone call away and asked if she would like to get high. She politely declined, and then went to the bathroom where she called her sister to explain the situation. Her sister said, "Are you crazy? Get out of there." Jancee said, "But he's so persuasive." When she arrived home later, feeling shaken, she phoned her father, who talked to her about the routine details of his afternoon plans. His patter about gardening and errands soothed her and reminded her of all that was stable in her life. Turned to the reader and offered interviewing tips Walking with Jancee into interviews made me curious about how she worked her magic, getting the stars to say things they hadn't said a thousand times. How did she work her way into their confidence? Occasionally she turned towards me and offered an insider tip. For example, in one of her more elaborate strategies, she started a celebrity interview by sharing a tidbit of gossip she heard about the star on the radio that very morning. Excited by this news, the star called over her publicity manager and they had a good laugh. By then, everyone was loose, and treated Jancee as a fine, generous person. The anecdote showed me Jancee was smart, and gave me some insights into the mind of a celebrity. But I kept thinking about her interviewing tips long after I closed the book. In retrospect I see she was doing the same thing with me that she was doing with her stars. She was taking me into her confidence, making me feel like an insider. I felt her generosity and opened up to her. By turning towards the reader, she connected with me. I'm going to file this strategy away. Perhaps I can offer my own readers insider insights that will make them feel open with me. Memoir of an ordinary girl in extraordinary circumstances While I enjoyed learning about her interviews, this is a memoir, and I wanted to know more about her as a person. Rather than trying to be a star herself, she explored her life as an ordinary person. Her refusal to claim stardom for herself became a story element, providing a dramatic contrast between her own life and the lives of her interviewees. Her father was a manager at J.C. Penney's, so loyal he named his daughter "Jancee" as a tribute to his employer's initials. As children, when she and her sisters visited the department store, they were treated like royalty by the other employees. It was like being the fairy princess of suburbia. In other memoirs, the exotic tastes and smells of food demonstrate the author's ethnic life. Jancee uses food to show Book,Review,,Celebrity,,How-to,,Writing,Prompt Jerry Waxler no No http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/memoir-writing-lessons-from-the-heart/ http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/memoir-writing-lessons-from-the-heart/#comments Wed, 16 Jan 2008 12:43:55 +0000 jerrywaxler http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/memoir-writing-lessons-from-the-heart/ http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/memoir-writing-lessons-from-the-heart/feed/ 9 00:01:01 by Jerry Waxler (This blog is also available as an audio file. See the Podcast player control at the end of this post.) Perry Foster was an ... by Jerry Waxler (This blog is also available as an audio file. See the Podcast player control at the end of this post.) Perry Foster was an ordinary business man until he found himself on the wrong end of a cardiology exam. Now he bears a scar on his torso that looks like it was zipped shut, which makes him a member of the zipper club. When he chose to record his experience he was not drawing upon years of training as a writer. He simply wanted to tell his story and his memoir "Hands Upon My Heart: My Journey Through Heart Disease and Into Life" is the result. Whenever I read a memoir, I look for lessons. How did the author put it together? How did his words create the emotions as I was reading? I have found that new authors, in their passion to explain what happened, often provide lessons every bit as good as the ones I learn from the pros. Memoir like a novel One of the most basic lessons in this book is Foster's knack of telling a story like a novel ndash; that is, he lets me see events for myself. His descriptions are so quintessentially "show don't tell" that reading the book is like attending a "show don't tell" seminar. Take for example a stressful scene in a doctor's office when Foster's wife pulls out a bottle and takes two aspirin, showing the headache rather than telling it. And precisely because the example is so basic, its lesson is easy to learn. If he had written, "she had a headache," he would be reporting a fact that was inside her head, not his. A slightly improvement would be dialog. If she had said "I have a headache" at least he would not be reading her mind. But now she becomes the one who is telling. When he shows her taking the two aspirin, readers can see the evidence for themselves. Foster also does a good job staying within a time frame. He immerses himself within each scene, providing sensations that let me lose myself in his world. Since the book starts around the time he learns his heart is failing, I know little about his history until he is sedated for a surgical procedure. In his drug altered state, he describes a picture perfect flashback from his childhood. This ploy supplies background about his family, and the flashback also provides pacing, letting me linger there with him while surgeons are poking at his body. His observations include his own thoughts, feelings, and body reactions. These internally directed observations take me inside his experience. "Does anyone ever wake during surgery?" he asks his surgeon. He notices the taste of perspiration dripping from his upper lip. After this frightening meeting he becomes furious with his wife for trying to relax while she was waiting. "You're buying a romance novel," he asked in a restrained voice. "How could she?" he thinks. Edgy characters make me turn pages From the beginning Perry Foster showed me his messy emotions. He was afraid for his heart, angry at the doctors, and edgy with his wife. His thoughts are often judgmental, and paranoid, and I think, "No wonder this guy's heart is a wreck." I also wonder how he could be so honest about these feelings. This is a big issue for me, because my instinct is to hide my imperfections. "Hands Upon my Heart" shows me that disclosing authentic feelings, even if edgy and flawed, creates human warmth so palpable I want to pick up the phone and ask him about his health. Perry Foster's nervous tension serves another purpose. It increases dramatic tension. Consider Shakespeare's characters Hamlet, and Ophelia, or Romeo, and Juliet. Their edginess creates suspense because you're never sure what they'll do next. Foster achieves the same effect. I kept turning the pages to see how he will juggle the pressure of his disturbing emotions. Will he grow? I love character development in a book. By the time I reach the end I'm hoping some lesson has been learned. Because this is such a satisfying payoff for me, as soon as I recognize the character flaw I start anticipating how the ... Book,Review,,How-to Jerry Waxler no No