http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog 200 Essays and Interviews to Help You Read and Write Memoirs Fri, 03 Sep 2010 14:38:44 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 2006-2007 jerrywaxler@yahoo.com (Jerry Waxler) jerrywaxler@yahoo.com (Jerry Waxler) Self-help 1440 http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/wp-content/plugins/podpress/images/LearnMemoirCoverFront-small.jpg http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog 144 144 Reading and writing memoirs. Record the Stories of Your Life, tips, how-to, memoir book reviews, by Jerry Waxler memoir, writers, self-help, book-reviews, essays Jerry Waxler Jerry Waxler jerrywaxler@yahoo.com no no http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/courage-walk-review/ http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/courage-walk-review/#comments Tue, 15 Jun 2010 11:50:51 +0000 jerrywaxler http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/?p=817 http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/courage-walk-review/feed/ 1 http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/interview-academic-popular-writing/ http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/interview-academic-popular-writing/#comments Thu, 10 Jun 2010 10:53:17 +0000 jerrywaxler http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/?p=812 http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/interview-academic-popular-writing/feed/ 2 http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/memoir-mourning-son/ http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/memoir-mourning-son/#comments Mon, 17 May 2010 10:27:37 +0000 jerrywaxler http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/?p=786 http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/memoir-mourning-son/feed/ 2 http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/grief-brother-grow/ http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/grief-brother-grow/#comments Mon, 30 Nov 2009 11:13:15 +0000 jerrywaxler http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/?p=665 http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/grief-brother-grow/feed/ 5 http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/alex-parrot-memoir/ http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/alex-parrot-memoir/#comments Tue, 28 Apr 2009 12:19:34 +0000 jerrywaxler http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/?p=477 http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/alex-parrot-memoir/feed/ 3 7:23 by Jerry Waxler I first learned about Alex while I was on a spiritual retreat in the mountains of eastern Pennsylvania. Our host played a video ... by Jerry Waxler I first learned about Alex while I was on a spiritual retreat in the mountains of eastern Pennsylvania. Our host played a video of a talking African Gray parrot named Alex. Alex's trainer, Dr. Irene Pepperberg held a tray of objects and asked questions. For example, she asked "which square?" and the parrot answered, "green," because the square object was colored green. She asked "which same?" and Alex correctly said "key" because the keys were all made of cork. He even concocted his own words, for example describing an almond as a "cork-nut," a word he was never taught. Tell me more about that parrot Alex was cute, zany and unpredictable, and while Pepperberg watched him learn, he was teaching her about the mind of a bird. His bobbing head, hyper-alert eyes, and clever voice mesmerized me, making me an instant fan. I was not alone. Everyone who saw Alex fell in love with him. A few years later I heard that the parrot died, a loss that surprised and saddened me. Then I saw the memoir "Alex and Me" by Irene Pepperberg, and thought, "Hey, I know that bird!" The book starts with Alex's sudden, unexpected death in 2007, followed by the outpouring of sympathy from around the world. Pepperberg read a sampling of the letters and obituaries from Alex's many admirers. As each one played upon my heart, I was amazed at how much compassion they stirred. Like a group hug, Alex's well wishers were drawing me in to Pepperberg's pain. Outpouring of compassion creates secondary compassion I looked for a similar effect in my own life and remembered my mother's memorial service. Her old friends came up to me and said "You were lucky to have such a great mom" and "I admired her so much," and "We miss her." Later, I turned their comments over in my mind, and was awed at the complexity of emotions. How much were they seeking to support me, and how much were they hoping that somehow my presence could help them relieve their own grief? These moments showed me how intertwined we all are. During our communal grieving, we were each trying to make sense of what just happened, while supporting each other as we moved forward. Writing Prompt When in your life did empathy flow towards you? Was it related to the death or illness of a loved one? Or did others reach out to comfort you when you were in the hospital yourself? Describe the scene, keeping in mind that it will give the reader an opening through which they too can feel connected. Emotional Bonds to Our Companion Animals Dr. Pepperberg and Alex were close companions and so the book turned out to be a buddy story between human and bird. Sharing genuine emotions with animals has become widely respected, as evidenced by the runaway success of "Marley and Me," by John Grogan, a memoir about the author's relationship with a dog. To make the relationship even deeper, Dr. Pepperberg showed how it evolved over the years. At first, she tried to maintain distance in order to create an objective, scientific perspective. She worked with him closely for years. Then after Alex died, Irene cried and cried, making her and her readers realize how deeply emotionally involved she had become.. Writing prompt List your pets, and other encounters with critters. When you remember a scene, stop listing and start writing. See if you can string a few scenes together to show how the relationship changed over time. Structure of a story, beginning, middle, and end Every memoir writer seeks excellent story structure. Pepperberg's memoir offers a couple of insights. For one thing, she grabs our attention with a bang, shocking the reader into the midst of the action, a technique the Greeks called "in medias res." Then the story returns to the beginning, and moves forward through the long middle, towards an ending that resolves the dramatic tension. I love this structure. Writing Prompt What powerful event can you start your book with, to grab readers and yank them into the action. Worry Grief/Loss, Interspecies, Science Jerry Waxler no no http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/kate-braestrups-memoir-transforms-grief-into-love/ http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/kate-braestrups-memoir-transforms-grief-into-love/#comments Tue, 06 May 2008 11:20:07 +0000 jerrywaxler http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/?p=128 http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/kate-braestrups-memoir-transforms-grief-into-love/feed/ 1 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.) At ... 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.) At the beginning of the memoir, "Here If You Need Me," Kate Braestrup takes us into her home, sharing her romantic, mutually respectful marriage to a state trooper, their love for their children, and their plans for the future. It seems like an ideal relationship. And then bam! In an instant, her partnership is torn asunder by an auto accident. The cereal bowl from which Drew had eaten an hour earlier sits in the sink while his body lies across the front seat of his police cruiser, the life crushed out of it by a broadside collision. Now that Drew is dead, Braestrup continues to let us into her heart, this time to cry with her, while she learns the ancient lessons of grief. In order to raise her young children and get her life back on track, she enrolls in school to become a minister in the Unitarian Universalist Church. After graduating, she works as a chaplain for the State Game Warden Service in Maine. Traipsing around the countryside, she comforts loved ones while the wardens searched for lost children, potential suicides, and accident victims. If the search ends with a death, she offers the survivors condolences, embraces, and support. On her journey from grief back into full connection with the living, Braestrup sets her sights beyond her personal experience. Through her study to be a minister and her work with the public, she raises huge questions, and then through the magic of storytelling makes me feel that together we can understand it all. As a result, this memoir turns out to be one of the most intelligent, loving, and compassionate books about life and death that I have ever read. It is one of those rare books I feel pulled to read again, and in fact, it was only after my third time that I began to tease it apart to see how such a simple story could carry me so far. Her job with the game wardens takes her through the woods and across streams. With them she flies through the air, drives across ice, awaits the recovery of swimmers who had fallen 70 feet over a waterfall, stands in frigid silence as divers search for a body beneath the solid surface of a river, holds a mother's hand as the wardens search the woods for a missing child. Through Braestrup's eyes, nature becomes a backdrop for life, and also a backdrop for death. A tree grows through the skeleton of a dead body. A bear plays with a skull as if it's a toy. After the death of her husband, Kate Braestrup dresses his corpse with her own hands, certainly the most affection directed towards a dead body that I have ever considered. Her relationship to his earthly remains expands my notion of death, by embedding it lovingly within the natural order. Despite her religious training, or perhaps because of it, she treats people with equal tenderness no matter what their affiliation, or even if they have no interest in religion at all. To her, religion is simply one of the ways humans have chosen to explain love. Take for example this incident in which she consoles the brother of a woman who killed herself. The brother asks Braestrup if she thinks a suicide victim can receive a Christian burial. Here's what she says. "The game wardens have been walking in the rain all day, walking through the woods in the freezing rain trying to find your sister. They would have walked all day tomorrow, walked in the cold rain the rest of the week, searching for Betsy, so they could bring her home to you. And if there is one thing I am sure of, one thing I am very, very sure of, Dan, it is that God is not less kind, less committed, or less merciful than a Maine game warden." At the center of the book lies the great theological question, "How can an all powerful compassionate God allow evil in the world?" Attempting to answer this question is known as "theodicy" and whether we know it has a name or not, many of us grapple Book Review, Hero's Journey, Spirituality/Transcendence Jerry Waxler no no