Linda Joy Myers, President of the National Association of Memoir Writers

Linda Joy Myers, the president and founder of the National Association of Memoir Writers (NAMR), has generously had me speak on three telecom roundtables at her site. We also met virtually on a few Google + hangouts. So what a joy to finally meet in person last June when we both appeared on a panel to discuss writers' platforms at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference. 

Linda Joy graciously writes for Choices about how she created her powerful, must read memoir, Don't Call Me Mother. When you do read it, you'll see my endorsement near the front of the book:

"With poetically visceral prose Linda Joy Myers tells of her relentless work to emerge from an abandoned and abused child to a forgiving and loving daughter, mother, and grandmother. This must read memoir brings her raw dark secrets to life. I couldn’t tear myself away." 

My 5-star review is on Amazon. 

Please welcome Linda Joy.

Art, Poetry, and my Memoir Don’t Call Me Mother

by Linda Joy Myers

When people ask me how long it took to write my memoir, I say, “It took a very long time.” I say this with a half-embarrassed shrug, because my goal now as a coach is to help people to get to “the End” faster than I did. But we each have our process, and my autobiographical arc of healing made its way through various art forms before finding its way into a memoir. My journey to the final version took the time it needed.

Since I was young I’d look for solace between the pages of books, enjoying the world of story. At the same time, I was looking for something, though for a long time I didn’t know what it was. Now, I think it was this: I was looking for me. Through stories, real and fictional, I was trying to learn how life could be lived better, fuller, and with more compassion. The early abandonment by my parents left me a seeker, trying to find answers.

My memoir Don’t Call Me Mother is a saga that spans several generations. As I began to think of writing it, I’d think, “I wonder if other people had mothers who ran away from their children, I wonder if other families have three generations of daughters who were raised by other people.” Many of us write our books because we need to write the book we want to read.

As I grew up, I learned the long hard path of practicing the piano and cello and performing from grade school through college, and I earned a degree in art as well before becoming a therapist. In art, I learned to “trust the process” of the unfolding of the artistic idea. When painting, I learned that you could try an image, and if it didn’t work, you could rub it out and start again, or use part of the image, or cover it up. It didn’t have to be “perfect” the way that playing the piano or cello did. That was a relief! It was through art that I first started my autobiographical exploration of my life and family.  Using images to express my story in a variety of media, showed me two things: that my true artistic love was writing, and that words were more precise than images.  

I began with poetry, capturing fragments of images and memories, inviting the wispy nature of memory and poetry to help me learn understand my beautiful mother and grandmother. I wrote many poems about my lost mother, my great-grandmother’s life on the farm, sometimes combining them with images I collaged or painted. To learn more about my father, I created a photo etching of his life. After a while, I realized that the core of my story—the toughest, hardest parts—were  falling in between the lines of the poems. I thought that prose would “catch the missing pieces” of my story, the painful ones that I’d found hard to paint or capture in poetry. Too much was missing.

Today as I coach writers, I feel a particular empathy with those who get lost in the circular labyrinthine exploration of memory, the family sagas, looking for ways to express an inner self. I think the journey of writing a book is challenging no matter what the genre, but for memoirists, the urge to cover up, to stay silent, or to give up is tempting. I tell people that I gave up on my memoir many times, but it didn’t give up on me. I would get lost in where to start, confused about whose story I should tell—I wrote two novels versions in my search for the right form; or I’d feel so ashamed of some of the events that happened that I thought it was crazy to be writing a memoir, even if almost everyone had died already.

But then, there was another voice, the one that Mary Oliver speaks about in her poem "The Journey"

…and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own…

Finally, I faced the memoir that was chasing me and shouted, “All right, I’ll finish you. I will write to the end, and get it published, and then will you leave me alone?”

Good thing only the cats were watching me right then.

Once the stories were found, having faced the dark corners of my psyche and my history, I held the book in my hands. The enormous mountain I’d been climbing seemed smaller. The feelings of despair, loss, and grief were contained, and rested in soft cotton-basted boxes of joy—each chapter its own territory of thought, or exploration, or resolution, balancing the dark and the light. It was truly a healing experience to put everything between the covers of a book, to edit it down, to shape it, and to silence the voice that was chasing me. I wrote the book that I wanted to read, hoping that my story of loss and learning to find forgiveness could help others.

You have to trust in your reasons to write and your voice, and keep writing. You will be using words to find the silence within, the still small voice that needs to be coaxed out. It is your story—let it breathe and become what it wants to be.

***

Thank you so much. I love your words, "Many of us write our books because we need to write the book we want to read." I also resonate with your writing poetry as a way to begin. I did the same.

Linda Joy Myers bio

Linda Joy Myers, president of the National Association of Memoir Writers, began NAMW to support other memoir writers in their quest to find their story, to find healing and hope through story. Each month there are two teleseminars that offer writers guidance and support from bare beginnings to the final steps of publication, and everything in between. There are two free Telesummits each year. Please visit www.namw.org.  She co-teaches Write Your Memoir in Six Months, and enjoys seeing the progress people make in a structured program. Linda is the author of Don’t Call Me Mother—A Daughter’s Journey from Abandonment to Forgiveness, The Power of Memoir—How to Write Your Healing Story, and The Journey of Memoir—The Three Stages of Memoir Writing. She is editing a novel called Secret Music—about World War II and the Kindertransport. Her blog is http://www.memoriesandmemoirs.com

Introducing Chanel Brenner, poet extraordinaire

I met Chanel last May at a poetry workshop led by Richard Jones. I was immediately taken by the poem she wrote during the workshop and that we have something in common - we each have lost a son. Chanel's grief for six and a half-year-old Riley who died from the rare disease Arteriovenous malformations (AVM)* is still new. And her beautiful poetry shares that grief with her readers. Here is Chanel's story, reminiscent of friends of mine who left after my son died.

My Friend From Another Life

            She sits across from me, wearing a purple sundress, her dark hair relaxed around her face.

“You look really great,” she says, her voice thick with surprise, her eyes approving as they scan me from head to coral painted toenails. It’s not what she’s said, but what she’s left out, “compared to a year ago,” the last time we had lunch together at this restaurant, shortly after Riley died.

She scooted away after that, one email at a time. First, “If you ever need to talk, call me,” then radio silence for two months. Then lunch plans initiated by me and canceled by her. One after another, with each excuse making less sense.  Then, an email from me asking how she was doing, because I hadn’t seen her in so long. “I’ve never been happier. My life has never been better,” she replied. I couldn’t help filling in the blanks… since your son died and you are not in my life. Then, the kicker email. The one where she asked if I was lighter these days. I couldn’t respond. How could I tell her that I didn’t want to be lighter? That without the weight of grief, I’d be nothing, and so would Riley—how could I say I wear my dead son proudly like a pregnant belly? I want to ask her if she’d be lighter without her daughter.

         “You look great too,” I say, “I like your dress.”

         “It’s old,” she says, “So, I don’t feel good in it.”

         We trade awkward pauses and polite questions. I’m distracted by the bugs that accompany the creek-side view. Two land in my tea, one in my water. She notices and comments there are none in hers, says I manifest them. I think about trying to manifest them in my house. I wonder if she thinks I manifested my son’s AVM, his brain hemorrhage and his death. I wonder where the line gets drawn in this whole manifestation thing. I wonder why we are having lunch. Closure or starting over? Her guilt or my curiosity? Nostalgia for a time when two women became friends over pre-school chauffeuring because it was easy? A time when conversation flowed lightly. A time when both our children were alive and we had that in common.

***

I also want to share one of her lovely poems. It won first place at the first annual Write Place At the Write Time poetry contest, judged by one of my poetry teachers, Ellen Bass.

July 28th, 2012

It’s Riley’s second birthday,
without us.
He would have been
eight.
Instead of dead.
Instead of chalk dust.
Instead of oysterless chips of pearls.
Instead of a giant,
insatiable pit.
Instead of a collage of photos
and cutout red crayoned hearts.
Instead of our tears.
Instead of a vanilla birthday cake
bejeweled with his name.
Instead of a ghost,
haunted by us.
Instead of frozen
at six and a half.
Instead of this fucking poem.

Chanel's bio

Chanel Brenner is a writer living in Los Angeles with her husband and their five-year-old son. She is the winner of the First Annual Write Place At the Write Time poetry contest, judged by Ellen Bass, for her poem, “July 28^th,  2012.” Her work has been published in Cultural Weekly, Foliate Oak, Forge, Memoirs Ink, Sanskrit, The Coachella Review, The Poetry Juice Bar and The Write Place At the Write Time. She also won a nationwide contest for her poem “What Would Wislawa Szymborska Do?” and, as a result, it was displayed at the James Whitcomb Riley museum in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Chanel studies with the poet Jack Grapes and is a member of his L.A. Poets & Writers Collective. She has written a collection of poems and essays about the death of her six-year-old son, Riley, called The Christmas Boy Will Not Disappear.  It was written during the first two years of grief. Her hope is that her writing will help others heal and realize they are not alone in their pain.

*AVMs are defects of the circulatory system that are generally believed to arise during embryonic or fetal development or soon after birth. Although AVMs can develop in many different sites, those located in the brain or spinal cord can have especially widespread effects on the body. 

Deborah Kalan says, "Just do it"

I’m so pleased to have Deborah Kalan back here at Choices. Since we met in a Pilates class about a year and a half ago, our friendship has blossomed. We get together socially with our husbands, and we always have our writing projects to talk about.  Yet, sometimes life events seem to interfere with our writing. Deborah tells how the obstacles play havoc on her determination to keep sitting in her chair in front of her computer. They are wise words indeed.

How to Begin Your Daily Writing

(when you just don’t think you can)

by Deborah Kalan

There are three obstacles that often interfere with my writing. 

    1. Getting started

    2. Going back to a previously written piece

    3. Staying focused 

Getting Started

Some days I’ll flip open my computer and what do I see in front of me? No, not a blank page. That would be easy. What I see is my Yahoo page with a multitude of hooking headlines. “Sex Prequel Casts New Samantha,” “Coolest Vending Machine Ever,”  “Dogs See in Color,” and other distracting previews. Then, as long as I’m there, I click on my inbox to see if anyone is sending me some oh-so- important news or information that can’t wait another second to be read. After taking 15 or 20 minutes to scan all of the minutia and delete 98% of it, I quickly and guiltily log onto my Facebook page to ogle over the mostly unimportant self-serving posts of my seventy some odd ‘friends’. And still I haven’t written one single word.

Getting Back To Previously Written Pieces

When I am on a writing roll, I often finish a rough draft, or even 2nd or 3rd run through of a satisfying piece of writing. I’ll slap on a cursory title, save it to my documents and then I . . . forget about it. It could be a genius essay. It might be a poem that has a chance for a Pulitzer.  But I put it somewhere and forget where it is or even that I’ve written it at all. I could blame this on “old age,” but it’s honestly a matter of disorganization. Should I make a hard copy and file it in a colorful file folder marked “to be revisited?” Should I leave it on my desktop where I will see it the next time I open my computer? 

I know I have many pieces saved and filed and forgotten. If I could find a way to organize the work that I have completed, I would find some well written buried treasures.

Staying Focused

I now decide to get down to business and open a blank page to start writing. If I’m not in the middle of a piece I have been working on, I often go to one of my writing sights that I subscribe to for inspiration. Maybe I’ll go to Robert Lee Brewer’s Poetics Asides Blog with the intention of finding a poetry prompt. Instead I start to read about an old Welsh poetic form called a gwawdodyn, or a more commonly known one called a sestina.  I learn the formula and read some examples of the forms. I make a mental note to try these when I get some extra time. 

Then I remember that I the online newsletter from “We Wanted to Be Writers” arrived this morning. I open it and get dizzy with the distraction of a dozen bright blue highlighted links. There are book reviews and lists of books related to the review. There are interviews and blog posts. There’s a calendar of events and words of advise. There’s gossip and anecdotes. I click link upon link and find myself falling down Alice’s hole to the center of the earth where it’s almost impossible to climb back out. Thirty minutes later I’ve become a well informed writer on a wide range of topics but I have yet to begin my daily writing.

I need to call upon my writing genie. You know, the one who pops out of my laptop to encourage me to stay focused, help me organize my work, and stop reading about writing and start writing. 

Like any goal in life that you want to perfect, you need to show up, go through the motions, and keep at it. Then repeat the process until it becomes your habit and you get better at it. 

Just do it!

Deborah's bio

Deborah has been writing about real life since she was in the fifth grade and received a diary with lock and key for her 10th birthday. Even at that young age she found that people in ordinary situations made for intriguing writing. Deborah also writes poetry and fiction and finds the short short story to be one of her favorite genres.

She has been married for 42 years, consecutively, and has two married children and two amazing grandchildren. She likes to describe her dual California residences as living “bi-coastal."  One home is near the coast of Manhattan Beach and the other is near the “coast” of Calabasas Lake.