Posts Tagged ‘creativity’

Harry Bernstein’s Second Memoir, Still Writing at 98!

Wednesday, November 19th, 2008

by Jerry Waxler

Harry Bernstein was 93 years-old when he published his first memoir “Invisible Wall” about his childhood in England before the first World War. His nonagenarian achievement changed the landscape for aspiring memoir writers who wonder if they are too old. Bernstein, now 98, is basking in the publication of his second memoir, “The Dream,” about immigrating to the United States.

Amazon Link: The Dream
My essay about The Invisible Wall

There have been lots of immigrant stories, so what makes this one worth reading? For one thing, he’s so old he offers a modern-day tale about Coming of Age during the 1920′s. That’s amazing. There are other twists. Chicago feels different than the more familiar New York setting. And since he grew up in England, his language is less of a barrier than for other immigrants, but at first no one understood his regional British accent.

The story comes alive when Harry describes characteristics of each member of his family. Harry’s own father is the villain, a selfish drunk, a menacing tyrant, cruel to everyone in the family; his brother is a humorless aspiring rabbi; his mother the victim of his vicious father; and his grandfather secretly earns his living as a beggar.

So here’s the tip. When you are afraid people will think your life was just like everyone else’s, focus on unique people and circumstances and find the dramatic tension that turns a “typical” story into a suspenseful, unique one.

I eagerly track the outcomes of his decisions
When they first land in the States, they are dirt poor. That starts to change when Harry lands a job in the U.S. post office. What could be more secure? But he doesn’t take it seriously, intending to go to college in a few months. Then, tension with his father escalates. To extricate his mom from this abusive relationship, he talks her into moving to New York, quitting his job just in time for the Depression, quickly sliding back into poverty. Then Harry meets the love of his life with whom he remains married for 67 years. In hindsight, perhaps it was the right move after all. When viewed through such a wide lens, the daily grind becomes a big story, and as I watch him careening through the events like a blindfolded driver through an obstacle course, I keep turning pages wondering where each situation will lead.

Writing Prompt
The outcome of your choices become part of your connection with readers. Focus on decisions that altered the course of your life. Sometimes the results weren’t what you wanted, leading to regrets and even shame. This is a good opportunity to revisit those regrets. Re-tell the embarrassing experience. Then go back further. What lead up to it? When you reach the fateful decision, stop and look around. What else was going on? What pressures and fears affected the decision? Keep going, past the bad memory and show how you moved and grew through the following years.

Parallel with Frank McCourt’s “Angela’s Ashes”
Harry Bernstein’s two memoirs resemble Frank McCourt’s, “Angela’s Ashes” and “Tis.” Both authors had drunken, neglectful fathers. Both first volumes tell of hardships in the mother country and both second volumes start with the immigrant experience in America. The similarities didn’t bother Harry Bernstein’s publishers, who apparently figured that if the public liked McCourt’s memoir, they might buy a similar one.

My Essay about Angela’s Ashes

As you plan your own memoir, read lots of published memoirs and consider the similarities between your story and other proven sellers. This is your chance to follow in the footsteps of success, taking advantage of similarities for your marketing material, while maintaining the integrity and authenticity of your own memories.

Reading is a pathway to writing
Harry, desperate for work during the Great Depression, eventually landed a job reading and critiquing stories. This is the second time I’ve read about someone earning a living during the Depression by reading. The first was in Sydney Sheldon’s memoir, “The Other Side of Me.” His experience as a professional script reader put food on the table, and at the same time provided insight into what makes stories work. His modest job provided a stepping stone towards a fabulously successful career as a novelist and screenwriter.

The Other Side of Me, by Sidney Sheldon, Amazon, my essay about The Other Side of Me

Both authors, Sheldon and Bernstein, learned that reading books can help you write them, and that turns out to be a perfect piece of advice for any writer. Read like a writer, picking apart books to see what works and what doesn’t. I am putting this method into practice myself. As I read memoirs and write reviews about them for this blog, I am gaining many of the benefits that these aspiring writers did.

Biggest lesson, how your own creative work can inspire hope
When my mother was in her 80′s she read the memoir, “Color of Water,” by James McBride, a black man with a Jewish mom. To share her thoughts with her peers, and to find out what they thought, she arranged a book review at a meeting room in her apartment building. About 40 people showed up to discuss the book. During that lively gathering something else was going on. They were seeing for themselves that an old lady doesn’t need to slow down. It was amazing to me how much confidence and love Mom’s activity inspired. For years after that event they came up to her in the lobby, asked her what she was reading and told her how much they admired her. She became a local hero.

Harry Bernstein is the oldest guy I know to have published a memoir, and so, in addition to the story he tells within the pages, the publication of the book creates a story about the story, offering a powerful message to hundreds of millions of people. “There’s still time. Start now. It’s never too late. You can do it! And as you create your own story, in addition to documenting your life events, under the surface your effort will offer your readers a larger lesson about inspiration and hope.”

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Aging, Immigration Experience | 1 Comment »

What does Dani Shapiro, or any of us, really want?

Wednesday, June 25th, 2008

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.)

Dani Shapiro’s memoir “Slow Motion” is a study in desire. When she enters Sarah Lawrence, one of the top liberal arts schools in the U.S., she is young, beautiful, and rich. Then, a man 20 years older swoops into her life, picks her up in his limousine and showers her with flowers. At first she is disgusted. Then she gives in, and starts taking more and more of his gifts. The problem is he’s the step-dad of her best friend, he’s married, and he’s a liar. Every time he pulls another creepy stunt, I want to scream, “Run!”

I’ve heard plenty of real-life stories of people’s lives being destroyed by love affairs and addiction. Now this book puts me inside the head of someone choosing a self-destructive track, and I find her desires almost incomprehensible. How can a person want something that is going to hurt them? This book gives me a chance to peer into one such person’s path. If I can understand how desire works for Dani Shapiro, I hope to learn more about desire in other memoirs, and in my own life.

For more insight, I turn to one of the great explainers of human nature, the psychologist Abraham Maslow. In the 1940′s, Maslow wanted to push psychology beyond illness, so he studied highly motivated, challenged, and satisfied people. Based on his research, he developed an explanation known as Maslow’s Hierarchy. This famous model says that people satisfy basic needs first and then move up to more sublime ones. I tried to apply the hierarchy to Dani Shapiro’s memoir.

Dani Shapiro on food and drink.
At the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy are the biological needs. You would think hunger and thirst would be the first things that a person with money would satisfy. But when you look closer, you see how Dani distorts these needs. She accompanies her lover to the finest restaurants, orders any food she wants, and then either doesn’t eat it, or eats it and goes to the bathroom to throw it up. She is starving.

Similarly Shapiro’s relationship with drink is far more complex than simply satisfying a biological need. In one restaurant, Lenny, her lover, is disappointed that they don’t stock vintage wine from 1959, so he reluctantly settles for 1961. As he raises his glass, he says to Dani, “This wine is older than you are.” He is using drink as a tool of power and sexuality. As she becomes more dependent on alcohol, she drinks to fog her mind. Over and over, her biological needs are distorted by power and self-destruction.

Dani Shapiro on safety.
After the biological needs are met, Maslow says we try to achieve safety. Dani perverts this need, too. Even though she doesn’t see it, the reader can see that she is consciously moving out of safety and into danger.

Dani Shapiro on social needs.
The next rung up the ladder are social needs, such as friendship, intimacy, and family. Dani’s family, many of them highly successful, ought to be a major source of support. Except for the fact that they hate each other so venomously they had no room in their hearts for Dani. When she seeks satisfaction from her lover, he drains her like a vampire, sucking so much of her energy she doesn’t even have friends. What’s a reader to do? I want her to get this guy out of her life. And yet if she removes him, she might fall for another shallow, powerful man. To satisfy me, she must gain a clearer understanding of her own social needs.

During high school, instead of pursuing drama or writing, her extra-curricular activity is cheer leading. During college she models, seeking to be paid for her beauty. Her goal is to maximize the amount of praise and power she can earn from her looks. From this point of view, her affair with Lenny seems ideal. He shower her with wealth, his perfect trophy mistress. Unfortunately, Dani’s approach to social needs keeps her trapped in the bottom three rungs.

Dani Shapiro on esteem and actualization.
According to Maslow, once the basics are taken care of, people look for esteem, from others as well as from themselves. At the pinnacle are expressions of creativity, excellence, service, and sacrifice. I want Dani to reach the top two rungs of Maslow’s Hierarchy, where life starts getting really interesting. These goals turn out to be Dani Shapiro’s saving grace.

When she first enters Sarah Lawrence as a young woman right out of high school, her path seems assured. Then she drops out, throwing away an opportunity. After much suffering, she stops her downward spiral, by rejecting her parasitic lover and overcoming her substance addictions. Ready to reclaim her life, she makes a call to the dean at Sarah Lawrence. “I want to come back.”

In the end, this desire for creative expression sets her back on track. She finds her strength, enters a community of supportive students and teachers, and moves towards safety, social rewards, and esteem. Her memoir provides a beautiful example that despite the many twists and turns of life the desire to create a story leads towards the triumph of the human spirit.

—

Writing Prompts:
Look for an experience that will help you understand each of Maslow’s five levels in your life. As you look at these needs in your life, look for anecdotes that will illustrate them:

Did you ever starve, or ever look at food as the enemy?

Did you ever feel undermined by your lack of safety, or so safe you felt compelled to find adventure?

Did you ever feel so lonely you reached out to people you would typically avoid, or so glutted with people you wanted to escape?

List some of the ways you have searched for esteem. Write a paragraph or story about how each one succeeded or failed.

What was the most sublime goal you ever reached for? What is the most sublime goal you are reaching for now?

For further work along these lines, look for the intertwining of desires. For example, Dani wanted love, so she starved herself to look thin. She wanted esteem, so she reached towards a guy who treated her like dirt. A high school grad who wants esteem might sign up for the military, putting himself in harm’s way in order to achieve a higher goal. After college, to “find myself” I pushed away from my family, diminishing my social network.

Notes:
Here’s a Wikipedia article about Maslow’s Hierarchy if you would like to know more.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow’s_hierarchy_of_needs

Here is a well maintained commercial site which explains Abraham Maslow’s ideas in order to promote management and organizational strategies.
http://www.abraham-maslow.com/m_motivation/Hierarchy_of_Needs.asp

To listen to the podcast version click the player control below:

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (456)

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Addiction, Book Review, Writing Prompt | 3 Comments »

Your character evolves through time – a memoir prompt

Monday, December 10th, 2007

By Jerry Waxler

Look at the sky. Then look again. Nothing changed, and yet everything changed. Ticks of the clock add up and after enough of them, the earth turns again. Day by day, you brush your teeth, wash dishes, watch the news. As the days gather into years, kids grow, you learn skills, achieve goals, and your character evolves. To discover the richness of detail within these moments, look back at the landscape as the years rolled by. To bring the features into focus, ask questions.

For example, I ask myself, “How did creativity enter my life?” On my computer file, I list the decades and then peer into my life journey by answering this question for each decade.

Age: 0-19
I sewed costumes in cub scouts for a dress up performance. Sometimes we dressed up as Indians but this time we were Robin Hood’s Merry Men. I still can sew the saddle stitch.

In junior high, I assembled models of warships. In the fifties, the armaments of World War II were an important part of my fantasy life. I wished I had the knack to paint the trim more realistically, but didn’t feel confident about my color sense. (Ah-ha! An old regret lurking in an innocent childhood activity.)

In high school biology, our teacher showed us how to embed objects in clear, solid acrylic. I ordered the kit and went to work like an aspiring chemist, pouring half the concoction into a mold, and letting it harden. Then I placed a shiny penny on top and poured in the rest of the goo. My bedroom reeked but I didn’t mind. I was creating!

Age: 20-29
In college I was a dancing maniac. I practiced moves in my room in front of the mirror, and then showed them off at parties. It felt like magic. As the music flowed through my body I converted it into motion. I also loved to sit and listen. I felt lifted by The Beatles, Joan Baez, John Coltrane. Classical music sent me to the stars, from Beethoven’s symphonies, to Bach’s choirs. I drank in operas, quartets, and soloists. Many of my friends in college were jazz musicians. I know spectating is different than creating, but my appreciation for other people’s music touches such a deep chord I consider it to be part of my own relationship with creativity.

Age: 30-39
Two decades after I wanted to paint those model battleship, I finally tried my hand at painting, in oils and acrylics on canvas. I had never learned to artistically represent objects, so I stuck with abstractions. My passion was exploring the colors on the palette and on the canvas. That encounter with painting amplified my understanding of color by a hundred fold. I still have the paintings, and I love them.

My computer programming jobs involved graphics and images. I instructed the computer to create and analyze pictures one pixel at a time. I wasn’t an artist, but my work brought me inside the technology of images. And the actual coding was a creative challenge in its own right.

I took singing lessons, first in a little neighborhood music school, and then at my voice teacher’s home. I knew from her compulsive yawning how bored she was with me. She was a frustrated opera singer, and my puny attempts must have seemed so insignificant in comparison. But she gave me enough confidence and skill to join my first choir, where I’ve been singing ever since.

Age: 50 and beyond
Many music teachers thought if you didn’t know a musical instrument by the time you were five years old, it was too late. Fortunately in the 1990′s scientists discovered that neurons can grow at any age. So I started taking piano lessons. Unlike my singing teacher, my piano teacher was interested in my adult learning. I could see in her eyes an admiration for my growing neurons.

I started to write a memoir, a process which is teaching me how writing can organize life. And the best teaching tools I can find are the stories everyone else tells. Using the lessons I learn from all other writers, I create my own story. Culture begets culture. I joined writing classes, and gathered together decades of miscellaneous writing experience into a form that will let me share my life with strangers.

Writing Prompt
On a sheet of paper or computer file list the decades of your life. Then write notes about how creativity entered your life during that period. Brainstorm connections with the arts, crafts, music, hobbies, activities with kids, or the creativity you expressed in your career.

This writing prompt reveals a broad overview. After you’ve gone through the list a few times, you may find entry points into specific scenes. For example, I could write the scene of standing at the piano next to my voice teacher, then another one in my car singing scales along with my audio taped lesson on my way to work. The scenes of creativity could be sprinkled throughout other events in my life to offer readers a connection with my inner world. Just as important as looking back, I see the tenacious place creativity has held in my life and look forward to decades of satisfaction ahead.

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in My own life, Writing Prompt | 3 Comments »