Tag Archives: Beth Kephart

Memoir Summit at the Birthplace of the Revolution

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by Jerry Waxler

I grew up surrounded by icons of the American Revolution: the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, and Valley Forge National Park. Even in elementary school I felt proud of the role my region played in the birth of the nation. Now that I’ve grown up, I feel another surge of pride, this time about the contribution our region is making to the Memoir Revolution. With our substantial infrastructure of writing programs and groups of every variety, it’s a wonderful place for writers. However, in most cases, we life writers have had to tag along with the more numerous fiction writers. Now, I’m thrilled to announce an event that celebrates the growing movement toward writing stories about real people.

At the free Memoir Summit on the beautiful campus of Rosemont College on Philadelphia’s Main Line, four authors and teachers share their passion for the genre. The goal is to inspire writers and aspiring writers to come together for an afternoon, deepen their understanding of the genre, and gain insights into how to turn their own lives into stories.

The first speaker, Beth Kephart offers her awesomely enriched point of view, as a writer of both memoir and fiction. She has published 16 books, five of which are memoirs. She writes prodigiously about memoir on her own blog, and recently published a book for memoir writers called Handling the Truth.  The book has been mentioned in Oprah’s magazine O.  Beth teaches memoir writing at the University of Pennsylvania and was recently honored as one of the 50 most influential Philadelphia Writers. Come and be influenced!

Linda Joy Myers will be joining us from Berkeley, California. She is the founder of National Association of Memoir Writers, and a passionate proponent of the healing and sharing that comes from writing your story. As a therapist, teacher and memoir writer, she steers readers and students toward the elegant solution of applying storytelling to the puzzles of life. Her books include her own memoir, Don’t Call Me Mother: A Daughter’s Journey from Abandonment to Forgiveness and a handbook for memoir writers called Power of Memoir: How to Write Your Healing Story. She hosts an online Memoir Telesummit, and so it is fitting that she is an honored guest at this first Philadelphia Memoir Summit. Come and learn about the healing power of writing your memoir.

Robert Waxler is a professor of literature at University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth. He teaches his college students how to use literature to gain insights into their own lives. When he himself encountered difficulties in the lives of his two sons, he turned to the written word to help him make sense of the profound emotions. He recorded his journey of grieving and healing in his two memoirs, Losing Jonathan and Courage to Walk. Robert Waxler co-founded an organization called Changing Lives through Literature that partners with the judicial system to offer selected convicts an alternative sentence. Instead of going to jail they read and discuss novels. The method leverages the power of the written word to help people grow. Come and let Bob Waxler share his views with you about how turning your life into literature can help you, as well.

I have been following and writing about these three speakers for years. The essays on my blog go deep into the experiences of Beth Kephart in Slant of Sun, Linda Joy Myers in Don’t Call Me Mother, and Robert Waxler in Losing Jonathan and Courage to Heal. And I’ve interviewed all three. I love what they are saying and doing. In their books about reading and writing, they are as passionate as I am about promoting literature by helping and encouraging you to write your life.

When I first became intrigued by memoirs in my fifties, I realized that until then, I had immersed myself in fiction stories. Memoirs gave me an opportunity to apply the principles of literature to the process of living. Once I began to do so, I gained an exciting way to look at myself and others. After I read each memoir, I ponder its meaning and share my findings on my blog.

After doing this hundreds of times, I published Memoir Revolution, which chronicles the birth of the life-into-story movement of the twenty-first century. As the fourth speaker at the Philadelphia Memoir Summit, I’ll share perspectives on the Memoir Revolution and offer six steps to help you get started and keep going on your own memoir. Come and join the revolution!

This fascinating interplay between life and literature is also the subject of Robert Waxler’s book in progress called Linguistic Beings: How Literature Helps us To Understand Ourselves and the World. From his manuscript, I learned there is a name for the process of carefully thinking about what you read. Waxler quotes Sven Birkerts who said, “[Deep Reading means] we don’t just read the words, we dream our lives in their vicinity.*” The term Deep Reading perfectly describes how memoir reading and writing help us become “more human.” By writing your own memoir, you can dream your life in the vicinity of your words, and offer others the opportunity to do the same.

Whether you’ve already written about your life, or are only considering it, come join these speakers and an audience of other aspiring memoir writers. Together, we can spend an afternoon dreaming about writing in the vicinity of each other.

Notes
Here is a longer quote about Deep Reading from Robert Waxler’s manuscript, reprinted with permission: “Deep reading is a risky but rewarding encounter with our rhythms and needs, our own feelings and emotions, and it offers a way of making sense of that encounter. Through such reading, we discover how we are all connected to others and to our own evolving stories. We experience our own plots and stories unfolding through the imaginative language and voice of others, and we desire to move on.” Robert Waxler

For more information about the Memoir Summit click here.

For more information about Philadelphia’s annual writer’s conference, click here.

Links to Articles about these speakers

Interview and seven part blog about Beth Kephart’s “Slant of Sun”
Use this memoir as a study guide: lessons 1 to 3
Lessons 4-5 from Beth Kephart’s Memoir, Slant of Sun
Four More Writing Lessons from Reading a Memoir
Memoir Lessons: Mysteries of emerging consciousness
Memoir Lessons: Moms, Quirks, Choices
Lessons from Kephart: Labels, Definitions, Language
Memoir Lessons: Buddies, Endings, and Beyond
Interview with Beth Kephart

Interview with Linda Joy Myers: A leader of memoir writers tells her own story
Link to Linda Joy Myers’ Blog

Blog about another talk I gave with Robert Waxler: Revealing Death and Other Courageous Acts of Life
Essay about Robert Waxler’s Courage to Walk
My Interview with Robert Waxler, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

For brief descriptions and links to all the posts on Memory Writers Network, click here.

To order Memoir Revolution about the powerful trend to create, connect, and learn, see the Amazon page for eBook or Paperback.

To order my how-to-get-started guide to write your memoir, click here.

Interview with Memoir and YA Author Author Beth Kephart

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By Jerry Waxler

A couple of years ago, I heard Beth Kephart deliver the keynote speech at the Philadelphia Stories “Push to Publish” conference. She offered an interesting perspective on memoir, having written more than one, including an unusual first person account of a river. After the talk, I went up to meet her, and that was the last I thought about her until I picked her memoir “Slant of Sun” out of my ever-deepening pile and started to read. The book impressed me as a lovely, deep, impeccable memoir and I stopped and stayed with it for quite a while. The longer I lingered the more I saw and appreciated. Within the pages, I identified twenty lessons for memoir writers, which I shared in previous posts. In this entry, I interview Beth Kephart about her experience as a writer.

Jerry Waxler: Considering the authentic feel of your dialog, I’m guessing you kept a journal. So did you?

Beth Kephart: The truth is that essay writing and, now, blogging is my form of keeping a diary or a journal.  The chapters that ultimately became A Slant of Sun were often written in the near wake of the events they record.  “Waiting for the Red Baron,” for example, was written the evening and next morning following an experience I’d had on the playground with my son. Dialogue in memoir is, indeed, very tricky.  It, above all else, can lead to doubt in the reader’s mind.  I tried to record only that that was fresh in memory or that which had remained there, indelible, for good reason.

Jerry: When did you decide to write a book about this period in your life?

Beth: I never planned on writing a book per se.  I was simply writing down the stories as they happened and reading them to my son–a way of memorializing the days we had together.  It all came together as a book after Jayne Anne Phillips and Rosellen Brown and others saw the pieces and suggested that they may make a meaningful whole.  I spent a long time considering whether or not to follow that suggestion.

Jerry: Do you keep a writer’s notebook now?

Beth: My blog serves, in many ways, as my notebook.  And my last many books have been fiction, and so I scrawl things to myself in strange places and hope I can find them later.  But mostly, when I write fiction, I am writing sentence to the next sentence.  Each new sentence unlocks an unforeseen door.

Jerry: When I read the memoir a month ago, it didn’t matter to me that you had written it years earlier. Your experience moved me just as much as if it happened yesterday. As a reader, that seems kind of obvious. But what does it feel like as a writer? Do you love your old books or are they hard to relate to?

Beth: I don’t, by and large, go back and read anything I’ve written once it is published–it’s even difficult for me to do readings from books I’ve just recently put out into the world.  I imagine that that has to do with a certain kind of fear that the book isn’t all I might have wanted it to be, or all I would do now, and that there simply is no way to change things.  Memoirs are particularly difficult to return to.  When I do–when I must–I am left raw with surges of emotion.  A sense of loss.  A sense of what if?  A sense of if only.  But mostly a sense of time passing.  The people we write of in memoirs grow up.  We grow up, too.  Nothing is permanent, save for those words on the page.

Jerry: I imagine most memoir writers don’t think (or can’t even guess) how this memoir will feel to them ten years later. What have you learned about memoirs and the passage of time that you wish you could have told yourself when you wrote it, or that you would tell other memoir writers as they aspire to publish their stories?

Beth: You are absolutely right:  We are incapable of imagining ourselves ten years on, our books beside us.  Incapable.  I have written five memoirs.  In each, I was working and writing toward universal messages and themes, and not toward a simple chronicling of my own small life.  With each I thought I was speaking for all of time.  I wasn’t.  I’m still learning about those themes.  I’m still making decisions or changing my mind.  I’m still emerging, despite my age.  My advice to writers of memoir is to be aware, always, that a memoir is not an absolute, not a black and white, not a he said, she said.  It is a grappling toward understanding, and that grappling will continue long after the book is out.

Jerry: To the reader, a memoir looks like a complete book that starts on page one and proceeds to the end. But the author has to do a lot of work to decide where to start and how to focus the book. Can you tell us about that process for you, how did you make those decisions?

Beth: It all comes back to those themes.  I have done all my shaping–all my deciding about what goes in and what stays out, about how much emphasis to put on one thing or another–by standing back and asking myself:  Does this scene advance your themes? Often some of the very best stories must be set aside.  But memoir is not autobiography.  The point is to leave the reader understanding more not just about you, but about him or herself.  It’s up to the writer to help the reader in that process.

Jerry: How did writing the memoir fit into your journey of becoming a lifelong book author?

Beth: Well, I’ve been very lucky, in many ways, with writing.  Before I wrote memoir, I published dozens of short stories in literary magazines, and each time out, I learned something new.  Memoir taught me many things — and the published books and the honors they received opened more doors, let me experiment with new forms, gave me a platform from which to speak and teach.  That is not to say that it is easy.  Ever.  In many ways, in this publishing environment, it gets harder.  But everything you write, published or not, teaches you something about what you are capable of and what you are still battling.  And every reaction you get to your work helps you see your best efforts from the outside.

Jerry: How did the memoir writing inform your later YA novel writing? (Note: Beth Kephart’s fifth YA novel Dangerous Neighbors is winning critical acclaim.)

Beth: After I wrote the five memoirs, I wrote an autobiography of the Schuylkill River called Flow, which felt, very much, like a river’s memoir.  I clung to that first-person voice, because I understood it, because through it I could speak most honestly.  My first four young adult novels were all first-person novels, and in each of the books the main characters contained aspects of me that I understood and unfurled, just as if I were unfurling my own thoughts in memoir.  The other day I was teaching in a classroom and the students, who had read one of my YA novels, were sure that the novel was memoir.  I asked them why.  They said because it felt urgent and honest.  The blog, too, allows me to exercise the first-person voice.

Jerry: Writers have many responsibilities: to say a thing clearly being in my opinion number one, and get to the heart of it, perhaps number two. But to do those two things and at the same time to add beauty of language seems to me to be almost a transcendent goal. Not only is it difficult to find colorful language. It can even be risky.

Beth: You are very right about language being risky.  But in my mind, there’s no point to writing a book if you aren’t willing to put your heart, soul, and imagination on the line, in almost every sentence.  Push as hard as you can, then edit back. Try to create something original and new.

Jerry: As a writer, I limit my use of metaphors and other artistic devices, because I fear they could be distracting, calling attention to the words and away from the purpose of the sentence. Then I read a book like yours and remember how uplifting and invigorating language arts can be.

Beth: Thank you.  Part of my “style” comes from the fact that I was a skater as a kid and I’m a dancer now and I believe in choreography and movement and color.  They are like religions to me.

Jerry: On many pages of Slant of Sun, I caught my breath, gasping at the simplicity, elegance, and originality of your word choices. Your phrasing lifted me, made me happy, and at the same time brought me deeper into your experience. On only two or three sentences in the entire book, I thought the word-image was a tiny bit out of center, but instead of distracting me, those moments merely made me grateful for all the passion you had put into your writing.  Could you give me some idea about how you achieve your style or voice? Do you practice? Is it a lifelong obsession? Did you go through a period of honing your voice? Do you remember some of the tools, techniques, or strategies you used to develop the knack?

Beth: Thank you (again).  I think voice–real voice–comes from an authentic, untrained place.  The impulse for an image, the idea for a metaphor — it can’t be taught.  What can be taught is self editing.  Toning it down.  Making it work.  I work on that all the time, and sometimes I get it right, and sometimes I don’t.  There’s no getting anywhere, though, if you don’t read a lot.  I do that all the time. Just this morning I finished reading and blogging about one of the best memoirs I’ve read in years–Gail Caldwell’s Let’s Take the Long Way Home.  I think it’s pitch perfect, all the way through.

Jerry: Will you write another memoir?

Beth: Sometimes I wish I had the courage.  I teach memoir writing at Penn.  I think about it.  I do.  But nothing is in the works.  My blog is my memoir at the moment.

Jerry: What are you working on now?

Beth: I am in the midst of finishing two novels — one, ten years in the making, the other, three.  I have just released a book that took me five years to write. It means a lot to me, for it is about Centennial Philadelphia.  Normally I run from promoting a book.  This new book, Dangerous Neighbors, is a book I am fighting for.  I’ve prepared a teacher’s guide (which is on my blog) and I am spending the time and energy it takes to share the book with teachers with the hope that local students will read the book and be transported back in time to a city I love.

Links
Visit Beth Kephart’s Blog
Amazon page for “A Slant of Sun: One Child’s Courage” by Beth Kephart

Here are links to all the parts of my multi-part review of “Slant of Sun” by Beth Kephart and an interview with the author:

Use this memoir as a study guide: lessons 1 to 3

Lessons 4-5 from Beth Kephart’s Memoir, Slant of Sun

Four More Writing Lessons from Reading a Memoir

Memoir Lessons: Mysteries of emerging consciousness

Memoir Lessons: Moms, Quirks, Choices

Lessons from Kephart: Labels, Definitions, Language

Memoir Lessons: Buddies, Endings, and Beyond

Interview with Beth Kephart

More memoir writing resources

To see brief descriptions and links to all the essays on Memory Writers Network, click here.

To order my step-by-step how-to guide to write your memoir, click here.

Memoir Lessons: Buddies, Endings, and Beyond

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by Jerry Waxler

Read how our collective interest in turning life into story is changing the world, one story at a time.

After you live for a few decades, you look back and find you have learned many lessons from your own School of Hard Knocks. When you read a memoir you have the privilege of attending someone else’s school, learning what they learned, gaining some of their wisdom. You can look back on their experience, too, and learn more from it in retrospect than you learned the first time.

In this post, I wrap up the last of the twenty lessons I found in Beth Kephart’s Slant of Sun. I have delved into this enjoyable, well-written book, a process I have grown accustomed to. After reading a memoir, I go back and consider it again. I hope you will do the same. By studying the lessons that other people learned in their School of Hard Knocks, you will gain the skill and courage to offer readers an insider look at your own.

Slant of Sun is a great example of a buddy book!

A mom loves her only son. They hang out together and share many, many hours. She is constantly trying to understand him. But this memoir is not a biography of him. It is about their relationship. He is important in relation to her and vice versa. They are buddies.

I notice certain, noteworthy features of books in which the protagonist is tightly focused on one other character. In addition to understanding each individual, you are also learning about the way they relate to each other. The relationship becomes a sort of third character. Look at how close these two are. He actually emerged from her body, and relies on her every minute, as intimate as a relationship can be. Slant of Sun focuses so tightly on this one other character, she subtitled the book One Child’s Courage.

Notes
Another example of a buddy book is Courage to Walk about Robert Waxler’s love and concern for his adult son. When I first read Courage to Walk I was surprised by the author’s attempt to get inside his son’s head. Now, after reading “Slant of Sun” I see the similarity. Obsessing on your child’s thoughts is part of being a parent.

Two more examples of buddy memoirs involve non-human friends: Alex and Me about Irene Pepperberg’s relationship with a parrot, and Marley and Me about John Grogan’s relationship with his dog.

Some relationship books show the dark side of interpersonal connections. Consider the destructive relationship between Leslie Morgan Steiner and her abusive husband in Crazy Love.

Writing Prompt
What individual in your life might make a strong character that would carry a chapter, or two, or an entire book? Try writing that person’s profile and a description of the relationship. What was your connection? How close were you? How did you treat each other? How much did you think about that person?

Denouement

At the end of a story, the author’s job is to build a bridge to help the reader return from the world inside the book back out into the real world. This last segment is called the denouement. The end of memoirs can sometimes be a lesson learned, or a segue forward in time, taking the narrator from the younger life in the memoir out into the life of the memoir writer.

In Beth Kephart’s denouement, she shares her concern about the medical, family and community response to children in Jeremy’s situation, and the difficulties for a young mother of a child with special needs. Despite the fact that she isn’t an expert, I welcome her views. In my opinion, she has earned the right to speak authoritatively about the child mental health care system.

Many memoir authors take advantage of the denouement to offer lessons that have resulted from experience. At the beginning of the memoir, Here if You Need Me Kate Braestrup loses her husband in a freak auto accident. During the following years, she goes to school to become a minister, and then works for the Maine State Game Wardens, helping comfort survivors of deadly accidents and crimes. By the end of the book, Braestrup earns the right to draw conclusions about the most profound topics of good and evil, life and death.

In Three Little Words, Ashley Rhodes Courter describes her upbringing in the foster care system. By the end, she is speaking to groups to help raise awareness about improving the foster care system.

Writing Prompt
What conclusion have you drawn from the experiences in your memoir? Write a synopsis of these lessons, and consider if they might work at the end of your book, to share with readers things that they might be able to use. This “lessons learned” ending is especially relevant if you intend to give talks to audiences who might be interested in applying your experience in their own lives.

People age. Books don’t.

When I read Slant of Sun I was bonding with Beth and her son in an earlier time frame. Which is a strange bit of time travel, because it is 15 years later, and their lives have moved on. When I ask her questions about the book, in the interview which I will post next, I can feel her striving valiantly to return to that earlier time. Unlike a fiction writer, who can leave her characters behind, a memoir writer continues to live with her characters, forever.

Last year I read Zlata’s Diary by Zlata Filopovic. She was 11 when she was catapulted to fame by the diary she kept of her experience in the war in Sarajevo. Ten years later, when I read the book, she was in college. I reached out to ask her a few questions and she politely declined. She wanted to grow up.

Even though we aspiring memoir writers cannot see the future, and don’t know what it will feel like to publish a book that captures a part of ourselves, these are good questions to ask yourself. Once a memoir is out in the world, you will have to live with it for a long time. As another memoir author, Bill Strickland, (Ten Points) told me in an interview, that someone came up to him and started talking about his past. The first time it happened he was horrified by the intrusion. Then he remembered, “No wonder they know. I told them.”

Writing Prompt
Write an imaginative story about what it will feel like in ten years when a reader asks you about a passage in your ten year-old memoir.

You’re neither too old nor too young

You don’t have to be old to write a memoir. Beth Kephart was in her thirties when she wrote hers. Another of my favorite memoirs, Publish This Book was written by 24 year old, Stephen Markeley. And don’t worry about being too old, either. The Invisible Wall was written by 93 year-old Harry Bernstein. Forget your age. Write the story.

Here are links to all the parts of my multi-part review of Slant of Sun by Beth Kephart and an interview with the author:

Use this memoir as a study guide: lessons 1 to 3

Lessons 4-5 from Beth Kephart’s Memoir, Slant of Sun

Four More Writing Lessons from Reading a Memoir

Memoir Lessons: Mysteries of emerging consciousness

Memoir Lessons: Moms, Quirks, Choices

Lessons from Kephart: Labels, Definitions, Language

Memoir Lessons: Buddies, Endings, and Beyond

Interview with Beth Kephart

Links
Visit Beth Kephart’s Blog
Amazon page for “A Slant of Sun: One Child’s Courage” by Beth Kephart

More memoir writing resources

To see brief descriptions and links to all the essays on Memory Writers Network, click here.

To order my step-by-step how-to guide to write your memoir, click here.

Lessons from Kephart: Labels, Definitions, Language

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by Jerry Waxler

When Beth Kephart’s son was diagnosed with a vague “disorder” she had to cope with the news. But how do you make sense of information that affects people you love when it is so technical you can barely understand it? You must sort out more than jargon. This is your son, and you must take into account the leanings of your heart. Later, returning to the scene as a memoir writer, you must search for words that will convey these emotional, and sometimes even philosophical struggles. To help you sort out your own story, consider the way Beth Kephart tells hers.

Technical Definition Informs the Story

After many exams and interviews, Jeremy received his diagnosis. He had “Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified. (PDDNOS)” Such an obscure, clinical sounding term might seem out of place in a memoir about a child. But Kephart includes it, and even quotes the exact definition in the psychiatric manual, DSM III.

This critical technical diagnosis is so important in the lives of Beth and Jeremy Kephart that the book could have been subtitled, “My son’s PDDNOS, and what I did about it.” I’m glad she didn’t shy away from this technical detail. Now I know one more piece of her puzzle, and if I meet a child afflicted with this condition, I’m better informed.

Writing Prompt
Perhaps at first glance, the technical details of your situation might seem obscure and unimportant to anyone but you. But sometimes, these nonfiction tidbits can be valuable additions that help readers understand you and your world. Perhaps you garden and you worry about the chemical makeup of the soil, or you are a birdwatcher and you had an interaction with a wonderful creature. If it was important to you, it could be important to us. Consider sharing the technical name or description.

Philosophy of everyday life: “I will not confuse my son with a label.”

Sometimes a diagnosis helps you find a treatment. If you know you have appendicitis, you can switch from antacids to surgery. But sometimes a diagnosis confines you in a prison without a door. This is why Beth Kephart rails against the diagnosis “PDDNOS” being applied to her son. She refuses to be limited by this strange-sounding label.

“All those labels? Which one is the one? Which one fits? I turn and look at Jeremy and his radiant beauty, try to side with one or the other of the decrees. All I see is his giftedness, his otherworldly qualities, how even in the fit of a dream, he’s reached for me, grabbed my finger with his hand. I see his black hair and his feathered eyelids and I am reminded about acts of mercy, how God sent him, this saintly creature, into the clutter of my home. As if I deserved anything nearly this gorgeous. As if I would know what to do when he arrived.”

In a sense this is the core of her entire memoir. She strives at every step to see him as a unique, elaborate being, not a simple category. Throughout the book she seems to be making the case that love transcends labels, that when you love someone you see their individuality.

Weirdly, this exact point is what makes memoirs so powerful. Memoirs go deep inside the individual uniqueness of their author’s life. Every memoir is the author’s attempt to transcend labels, and to elaborate on the scope of an entire, complex, unique human being.

Writing Prompt
What label has cornered you, or someone you love? Show a scene in which the label hurt you, and show how you fought against that limitation.

In the next post, I will offer the last of my list of 20 lessons based on “Slant of Sun.”

Links
Visit Beth Kephart’s Blog
Amazon page for “A Slant of Sun: One Child’s Courage” by Beth Kephart

Here are links to all the parts of my multi-part review of “Slant of Sun” by Beth Kephart and an interview with the author:

Use this memoir as a study guide: lessons 1 to 3

Lessons 4-5 from Beth Kephart’s Memoir, Slant of Sun

Four More Writing Lessons from Reading a Memoir

Memoir Lessons: Mysteries of emerging consciousness

Memoir Lessons: Moms, Quirks, Choices

Lessons from Kephart: Labels, Definitions, Language

Memoir Lessons: Buddies, Endings, and Beyond

Interview with Beth Kephart

More memoir writing resources

To see brief descriptions and links to all the essays on Memory Writers Network, click here.

To order my step-by-step how-to guide to write your memoir, click here.

Memoir Lessons: Moms, Quirks, Choices

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by Jerry Waxler

Mothers supposedly have instincts that tell them exactly how to raise their child. But we all know situations in which the child presents problems that exceed the mother’s grasp. At what moment does she decide that her own resources are not sufficient? It’s a profound question I would have never considered before reading this memoir, about the author’s search for insight, search for help. Here are three more lessons about memoir writing, in my series of 20 that I learned from “Slant of Sun” by Beth Kephart.

Intimate look at a mother’s relationship with child psychology (non-fiction bonus)

Child psychologists are the ones in our society who offer training and expertise, and so, when pushed to the limit, Beth Kephart goes to ask them to help. And yet, she resists them, afraid they may try to bring a cold clinical analysis to her precious individual baby. In scenes filled with suspense and compassion, she explains her situation to the psychologist. What a beautiful, loving compassionate scene she portrays about a mother’s worry and fretting about these difficulties mothers face when seeking help.

This is not just cold clinical material. This is personal and intimate. When Kephart takes Jeremy for psychological testing she tries to protect him from the psychologists. Then she wants to coach the testers to let them know that he is not just any ordinary boy. Her desires, fears and other details of the visits can help other moms in the situation. In fact, Slant of Sun could be a mini-handbook about what to do if your child needs psychological help.

Writing Prompt
I have read books about the anxiety people face when waiting for heart surgery. (Hands Across my Heart by Perry Foster. The wall between mother and baby during post-partum depression (Down Came the Rain, by Brooke Shields), and the life and death battle against breast cancer (Sky begins at your Feet Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, and Healing with Words by Diana Raab). By sharing  emotional and technical details, these books offer strength and instruction to readers. What non-fiction bonus information from your life experience might benefit your readers? You might think your experience was mundane, but by writing about it in detail, you can help people understand what you were going through and offer them strength to face their own situations.

Surprising variety of inner worlds

Over the last few years, there is an increasing understanding that disorders related to Autism come in degrees. Many symptoms now fall under the broad umbrella of “The Spectrum.” People on the Spectrum tend to hyperfocus on tasks. They have a hard time letting go of their fascination with thoughts and mental images. In extreme case, these tendencies are anti-social, making it difficult for these people to form relationships or work in organizations. In milder cases, or when a person has learned how to direct their attention, these qualities can be valuable. Successful artists, scientists, and business people are able to focus intensely and ignore distractions.

“Slant of Sun” offers a wonderful, warm glimpse into the early childhood of a boy who is on the Spectrum, offering an example of the surprising variations that can take place in people with these traits.

Writing Prompt
The way we think is uniquely our own, and a memoir is a perfect opportunity to explore the unique aspects of yourself that play out inside your own mind. Consider ways your thought process differs from other people. Obviously you have no direct evidence, but over the course of years, you have heard hints that you are more or less competitive, more or less artistic, more or less obsessive, and so on. By paying attention to these differences, you can offer a portrayal of your character that will let your readers see you as individual and unique.

Search for a special school

When Beth needed to find the right school for her child, her hunt was more than casual. It was crucial for her son’s future. She researched. She asked friends and acquaintances for recommendations. Her account gives an in-depth look at interviewing school officials, letting us feel their attitude towards children with special needs.

Kephart’s urgent search for a specialized school could be generalized to a broader set of circumstances. Finding the right school is an important milestone on many journeys. When we look for the right college, or camp, or job, or therapist, we are lining up forces that will influence our future. After we enter that particular the situation, we will be governed by its rules and rulers. To influence our future, we have a great responsibility to effectively evaluate the institution we’re heading towards.

Writing Prompt
What sort of search have you conducted in order to locate and accepted by the “right” school, mentor, or training situation?

In following blog posts I will continue the list of lessons that I drew from “Slant of Sun” and suggestions for you, as well.

Links
Visit Beth Kephart’s Blog
Amazon page for “A Slant of Sun: One Child’s Courage” by Beth Kephart

Here are links to all the parts of my multi-part review of “Slant of Sun” by Beth Kephart and an interview with the author:

Use this memoir as a study guide: lessons 1 to 3

Lessons 4-5 from Beth Kephart’s Memoir, Slant of Sun

Four More Writing Lessons from Reading a Memoir

Memoir Lessons: Mysteries of emerging consciousness

Memoir Lessons: Moms, Quirks, Choices

Lessons from Kephart: Labels, Definitions, Language

Memoir Lessons: Buddies, Endings, and Beyond

Interview with Beth Kephart

More memoir writing resources

To see brief descriptions and links to all the essays on Memory Writers Network, click here.

To order my step-by-step how-to guide to write your memoir, click here.

Memoir Lessons: Mysteries of emerging consciousness

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by Jerry Waxler

Beth Kephart has a knack for generously sharing the way she sees the world, not only observing what goes on outside, but also letting us in to her inner world, as well. In fact, a good deal of the power of her memoir “Slant of Sun” lies in her obsession to know as much about what goes on inside her son’s mind as her own. Learning about inner worlds is a good reason to read “Slant of Sun,” and might be a good reason for someone to read your memoir. Here are two more lessons, from my series on things you can learn about memoir writing from “Slant of Sun.”

Emergence of Language and Self-awareness

Beth is worried about her son’s incessant pacing. In fact, she is terrified. Psychologists warn her that if she lets him have his way, the obsessions will take deep root and will control him forever. But when she tries to stop him from pacing he panics, fights, and struggles, desperate to continue. She doesn’t know whether to trust the experts or listen to her love. Later, when he is old enough to speak, he says to her, “I need to pace long enough to finish the movie that is playing in my mind.” His explanation relieves some profound desire to understand him. The first wave of relief is hers, but in the process, she gives the same gift to the reader. I am so grateful to him (and her) for helping me understand how such a compulsion could be explained in simple terms. It is a stunning example of the birth of a child’s language, the birth of introspective explanation.

Writing Prompt
Jeremy was using his words to explain his actions, and that’s what memoir writers do, too. Your whole memoir is an attempt to describe how your life works, from inside your point of view. Go deep and stay fresh and amaze your readers with descriptions of your inner life the way Jeremy explained his actions to his mom.

Spirituality of a child

Jeremy wants to see God, and cries and begs his mother to explain how this will ever happen. Then he realizes that he has upset her, and he switches from concern about himself to concern about her. The scene ends with him trying to console her, telling her that it’s okay if she doesn’t know the answer yet.

This scene made me wonder if children might be closer to God. After all, they did recently emerge into the world. Perhaps they remember a little about what it’s like over there. And if they do, then perhaps occasionally their mothers open up to that awareness, as well. In a beautifully written scene, Beth Kephart lets us participate in just such an event. When Jeremy shares his fantasy world with his mother, she leans in closer and closer, until for a moment she pops over into an altered consciousness. It’s a compelling instance of that transcendent state described in religious and spiritual accounts and in some memoirs.

Another glimpse of a mystical experience with a child is in Martha Beck’s “Expecting Adam” about her Down Syndrome son. In Matthew Polly’s memoir, “American Shaolin,” he explores the possibility that transported moments are more common than we realize. Memoirs could open a door to these hidden moments.

Writing Prompt
Write about an imaginative or transcendent experience, for example when you were a child or with a child. Such a scene might be hard to remember, since I believe most of us file them away in dark corners, with the label “never tell this to anyone.” Following Kephart’s example, retrieve one of those silent memories, and turn it into words.

In following blog posts I will continue the list of lessons that I drew from “Slant of Sun” and suggestions for you, as well.

Links
Visit Beth Kephart’s Blog
Amazon page for “A Slant of Sun: One Child’s Courage” by Beth Kephart

Here are links to all the parts of my multi-part review of “Slant of Sun” by Beth Kephart and an interview with the author:

Use this memoir as a study guide: lessons 1 to 3

Lessons 4-5 from Beth Kephart’s Memoir, Slant of Sun

Four More Writing Lessons from Reading a Memoir

Memoir Lessons: Mysteries of emerging consciousness

Memoir Lessons: Moms, Quirks, Choices

Lessons from Kephart: Labels, Definitions, Language

Memoir Lessons: Buddies, Endings, and Beyond

Interview with Beth Kephart

More memoir writing resources

To see brief descriptions and links to all the essays on Memory Writers Network, click here.

To order my step-by-step how-to guide to write your memoir, click here.

Lessons 4-5 from Beth Kephart’s Memoir, Slant of Sun

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by Jerry Waxler

After reading Beth Kephart’s “Slant of Sun,” I kept finding more reasons to like it. Here are two more that can be used not only to appreciate her memoir but to give you tips to enhance your own.

Astoundingly cool word choice, and language arts.

I can’t say for sure why I fell so hard in love with Beth Kephart’s memoir “Slant of Sun” but certainly her language arts played an important role. How do you pick just the right word, or as the French say “Le mot juste.” (And while I’m thinking of it, why do the French have a phrase for everything?) Anyway, picking fabulous words seems to be a knack that has helped Beth Kephart convey her inner reality to her readers. And isn’t that exactly the challenge? We need to find the right words to tell our story, but which words?

Consider these examples:

“If I now walk the house at midnight among the tittering gossip of my obligations and fears, I also walk beneath a child’s artful dreaming.” Pg 29

Referring to the roots she has worked to develop for so long, she says, “And yet — finally sprouted with family — I have found myself longing for wind. Ungraciously longing to be swept sparse and stemless through the storm of the sky, to be dropped down rootless in a place I cannot name.” Pg 104

I know it’s not easy to develop this knack, but a book like “Slant of Sun” renew my determination to increase the freshness of my language arts. (By the way, the title itself is a double entendre (another French expression!) “Slant of Sun” and “Slant of Son.”)

Writing Prompt
Sometimes when writing in my journal, a turn of phrase pops out. I usually dismiss it as too outlandish for ordinary discourse.  Thanks to Kephart’s example, I see that well-controlled flights of word play can embellish prose and make it more exciting and entertaining. Consider looking at your own turns of phrase with the kind of freedom she does. What, if any of them, could be used in your outward facing material to offer the reader a fresh way to think about your situation. (Also, consider taking a poetry course to vitalize your relationship with words.)

Techniques: Pacing and suspense

Typically we associate suspense with thrillers or murder mysteries, but this emotion is crucial in all stories, which must draw the reader from page to page with a sense of anticipation. In many scenes in “Slant of Sun,” I feel an edgy concern to know what is going to happen next. I hear a door slam or a train go by, or Mom commands Jeremy to sit still while she tells him just one story. I worry how he will respond. What if her story can’t pull him away from his obsessions. What if he panics? She has turned her relationship with her son into a psychological thriller.  To find the answer, I must turn the page.

Writing Prompt
Suspense is one of the fundamental emotions of drama, and so as you develop your story, look for ways to play with suspense the way Kephart does. Pick a scene, and instead of jumping right to the outcome, build up to it. Remember how you felt while you were still worried, still anticipating. Did you discuss your fears with other people, or muse about the possibilities? Pause, anticipate, feel heart racing. Note the tension. Let my heart pound, too.

In following blog posts I will continue the list of lessons that I drew from Slant of Sun and offer suggestions for you, as well.

Links
Visit Beth Kephart’s Blog
Amazon page for “A Slant of Sun: One Child’s Courage” by Beth Kephart

Here are links to all the parts of my multi-part review of “Slant of Sun” by Beth Kephart and an interview with the author:

Use this memoir as a study guide: lessons 1 to 3

Lessons 4-5 from Beth Kephart’s Memoir, Slant of Sun

Four More Writing Lessons from Reading a Memoir

Memoir Lessons: Mysteries of emerging consciousness

Memoir Lessons: Moms, Quirks, Choices

Lessons from Kephart: Labels, Definitions, Language

Memoir Lessons: Buddies, Endings, and Beyond

Interview with Beth Kephart

More memoir writing resources

To see brief descriptions and links to all the essays on Memory Writers Network, click here.

To order my short, step-by-step how-to guide to write your memoir, click here.

Use this memoir as a study guide: lessons 1 to 3

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by Jerry Waxler

In the memoir “Slant of Sun,” a mother notices her child is more withdrawn than other kids. He sits alone for hours arranging toy cars, and furiously resists new situations and people. Jeremy is Beth Kephart’s first child. She is madly in love with him, and thinks everything he does is wonderful, but soon she realizes he needs to move along.

Her journey to help her son enter the game of life abounds with courage, psychological sleuthing, and love. It is a warm coming of age story of two people: Jeremy’s development into childhood, and his mother’s maturity as the shepherd of her son. I learned so much from reading the book that I think it would make an excellent self-study or teacher-led training manual for memoir writers. In this and the following posts, I share 20 lessons I learned from the book, and offer suggestions about how you can apply these ideas to your own memoir.

Truth in memoirs, Part 1. Sincere voice

One of the reasons I dove so enthusiastically into Slant of Sun is because of Beth Kephart’s voice. All the components of her written voice, her choice of words, phrases, and sentences, make me feel like I’ve known her for years. If my best friend told me a story, I wouldn’t put up any walls of doubt. Nor would I resist this author’s story. Her ease and spontaneity draws me into her world.

Writing Prompt
An authentic, sincere voice is an important goal for any memoir writer. But voice is a subtle quality without specific rules. Here’s one exercise: write an anecdote as if you were telling a best friend. Or call a friend, and turn on the recorder while you tell them your anecdote. Then look for phrases in your speech that might add a sense of intimacy to the written version. Another exercise is to write the same anecdote in your journal as if it was only for you. Look for intimacies in your private version that might make the public version more personal and believable.

Truth in Memoirs Part 2: Messy Emotions and Self Reflection

Another way memoirs convince us of their authenticity is through a sort of organic messiness. When Beth Kephart shares her worries, confusions, thoughts and daydreams, she takes me deeper into her psyche than I would expect in a fictional character. Fictional characters are sometimes wonderful and deep, but I know they only go as far as the author’s imagination. Real characters go on and on, into the depth and breadth of real life. I want the memoir to let me see the lack of boundaries, to show me the infinitude of individuality. The entire book is one big example of this principle. Here are a couple of passages that show her humanity, sharing her motherly obsession about her son’s thinking process.

“when Jeremy stares at length at the pictures in books, at the fire trucks and, increasingly, at the cars on the floor, at the mix of light radiating in through the window, [I want to believe] it’s poetry he’s thinking about. Something too resplendent to share.” [Pg 51]

“Without an obsession he’s forlorn and empty. He gets tangled in his tasks at home. He forgets to look us in the eye. It doesn’t occur to him to start a conversation. He gives fewer lectures. He’s less engaged in what we’re saying.” [Pg 111]

Writing Prompt
Instead of trying to polish your emotions, reveal their rough edges. Consider times when you worried without basis, or did something that made you feel flaky. Share these errors with your readers. The imperfection or spontaneity of your inner reality helps readers relate to you. Counter-intuitive though it may be, your flaws can give your character more authority, rather than less.

Some astonishingly vivid, unique visual images,

Mother and son go shopping for a hat and Jeremy selects a big green one. He loves it so much he demands she buy it. Then he refuses to take it off. People comment on how inappropriate it looks. Someone points to the hat and makes a gesture pulling a knife across the throat indicating “kill it.” On the cover of the book, there is even a wonderful photo of a boy wearing a bright green hat. Another beautiful visual object in the book was a hand crafted wooden car. I can see its “buttery surfaces” in the palm of the kind man who made it for Jeremy.

Writing Prompt
Describe a particular object that had meaning for you.

In following blog posts I will continue the list of lessons that I drew from Slant of Sun and suggestions for you, as well.

Links
Visit Beth Kephart’s Blog
Amazon page for “A Slant of Sun: One Child’s Courage” by Beth Kephart

Here are links to all the parts of my multi-part review of “Slant of Sun” by Beth Kephart and an interview with the author:

Use this memoir as a study guide: lessons 1 to 3

Lessons 4-5 from Beth Kephart’s Memoir, Slant of Sun

Four More Writing Lessons from Reading a Memoir

Memoir Lessons: Mysteries of emerging consciousness

Memoir Lessons: Moms, Quirks, Choices

Lessons from Kephart: Labels, Definitions, Language

Memoir Lessons: Buddies, Endings, and Beyond

Interview with Beth Kephart

More memoir writing resources

To see brief descriptions and links to all the essays on Memory Writers Network, click here.

To order my short, step-by-step how-to guide to write your memoir, click here.