One Rich Life
When winter knocks at the door I love to cook soups and stews. They can take a long time to simmer allowing the goodness and flavor of the ingredients to be released into the pot. Writing a book can be like that, too.
I’m over on Sherrey Meyer’s blog today with a guest post with a list of ingredients and the recipe I used to keep myself working on my book. I hope you enjoy it.
I’ve always been afraid of getting lost.
I don’t mean just a little afraid. I mean the kind of afraid that sits in my gut and makes me want to run and hide. Sometimes it feels as though I can’t breathe. Thoughts race through my mind resulting in confusion. I don’t know what to do. Driving in a place I’ve never been before, I’ve sometimes had to work hard to keep my cool and keep going, rather than freezing in place.
My panic attacks can happen anywhere. They can arise in a crowd of people as I’m being pushed, shoved, and bumped along. I’ve had them walking through Times Square in New York. I once had one at a wedding where I didn’t know any of the other guests. Traveling to places like Greece and Portugal where I didn’t speak the language have also been times of panic for me.
These seemingly uncontrollable reactions seem to be about my fear of being abandoned, of looking stupid, and my having a low sense of self esteem. They’re about getting lost in life … fear of the unknown, of being alone and unable to take care of myself.
As a kid, I rarely felt capable of doing anything right. My parents were very critical. I never mowed the lawn properly, or got the dishes as clean as they wanted them to be. And I rarely got the perfect grades they wanted me to get in school. Getting a C on a test was like flunking in their eyes. I didn’t think much of myself either. I followed the rules, tried my best, but always felt like a loser. Sometimes I just plain gave up trying.
As a result, I’ve wasted a lot of time and energy searching for things I didn’t think I had … approval, love, and a purpose. Without them I was continuously lost, unsure of myself, and prone to painful moments of panic.
Part of the problem was that I didn’t know what approval, love, and purpose looked like. I was too busy watching my back, or preparing to run or fight back, to see that I was loved, that many people respected me, and that I was not broken.
A year or so after I was married, I was parked diagonally in front of a pharmacy where I had to pick up a prescription. While I was inside, the person who parked next to me opened his car door, slamming it into the side of my car, leaving a huge dent. After we exchanged insurance information and I was on my way home, I started to panic. I was convinced that Bill would be mad at me for putting a dent in our newly purchased car. I was expecting his reaction to be like my father’s would have been … blaming me for “letting” this happen by parking to close to the car next to me.
By the time I got home I was in tears. When Bill came out to help me carry packages in from the car, I tearfully started apologizing for the dent. He calmly asked me how it happened and when I told him, he held me in his arms and told me it wasn’t my fault. He asked, “How could you think that?”
After our son was born, I spent a few months battling postpartum depression. When I saw a therapist to get help, he realized I was suffering from something more than mixed up hormones. His big question to me was, “What are you so afraid of?” My response was, “I don’t know.”
But his question began to haunt me and I began the slow process of trying to find the answers to his query.
As I examined old memories and explored the road I had been traveling, I found the cloak of victimhood I began to wear as a child and tore it to shreds. I started taking responsibility for who I was and what I did. I began to see that my parents had done the best they could … that they had their own difficulties to overcome … that I didn’t have to live by their rules or limit myself to what they would approve of.
Fear still occasionally jumps out of the shadows, finding me vulnerable, and sometimes ready to run. But it’s more easily banished now. I know what love looks like, and that the only person’s approval I need is my own. I’m no longer afraid of getting lost. If I don’t know where I happen to be at any given time, I know that nothing terrible is going to happen, and that I’ll soon be back on track in the direction of where I want to go.
In much of the reading I do to stay tuned in on how to have a lot of followers on my blog and build a following for my upcoming memoir, it is said that you need to be an expert on what you are writing about.
My Scrivener dictionary describes an expert as someone who is, “a person who has a comprehensive and authoritative knowledge of or skill in a particular area: experts in child development | a financial expert.”
In order to be an expert, you have to know about something a lot of other people don’t know about and need or want instruction in. Like how to train your dog so that he or she won’t attack the mailman, or how to make a loaf of sour dough bread that tastes heavenly.
In Australian Locker Hooking, A New Approach to a Traditional Craft, the first book I wrote and published back in 1980, I was definitely taking on the role of an expert. My book was an instruction manual with photographs and technical drawings on how to use raw wool that has been freshly shorn to make beautiful hand made rugs. I was an authority. Those who bought my book wanted to know how to make the things I made, often from the wool of their own sheep.
Now I’m writing a memoir. ME, MYSELF AND MOM, a Journey Through Love, Hate and Healing, is about a portion of my life, during which I invited my mother to come live with my husband and me. Her health was failing, and she needed care. I was not an expert on eldercare when I invited her into my home, and when she died seven years later, I was still not an expert on eldercare.
Seven more years have passed, and I still don’t feel as though I am an ”expert” on eldercare, or how to build a relationship with an aging parent. If you read my book and try to follow what I did in order deal with your aging parent, you could be making many BIG mistakes and end up hating me for sending you in the wrong direction. What works for one person, most often doesn’t work for another.
In my mind, writing memoir is rather like being a scribe or a storyteller. It’s a record of what happened from the writer’s perspective. It is not necessarily a how-to-book.
When I read memoir, my favorite genre, I am interested in being told a story and being inspired by how a particular person managed to get through a certain period of time in their lives. I am not interested in learning the steps they took to arrive where they are today. What I want, is to know is that I am not alone in my happiness or travails.
Making difficult decisions about how to care for aging parents is something many of us will face, as we ourselves grow older. As I continue to rewrite my memoir, my intention is to inspire adult children who may be taking on that tricky journey, while they try to go about living their own lives. It’s a difficult task.
Mine is the story of why and how I tried to care for my mother. As hard as it was, I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to learn so much about myself and human nature.
Are you an expert or a storyteller? How do you feel about being one or the other?
Check out my guest post on Madeline Sharples, blog, Choices.
It’s about the difficulties of writing the hard stuff and the final reward of being able to see life in a new way.
My muse, acrylic on canvas, copyright, Joan Z. Rough 2002
It’s back. You know … the manuscript I sent to my editor a few weeks ago. Although there were a number of beta readers who read it after I wrote the first draft, this time things feel very different. When I sent it out to Kathy, Shirley, Jane, Judy, Kevin, Bill and Sue, early in the year, I was excited at having gotten that far. I knew my story needed lots of work. But I also needed a sense of what it could be. Why go on if it wasn’t going to be a story that people would want to read?
Their verdict, in all cases, went something like this, “Powerful story. Send it to a developmental editor.”
After many months of tearing it apart, deleting, adding new material, and putting it back together again, I sent it out to Dave Malone, who has a great reputation for his work in helping writers look at the “Big Picture.” Last week he sent me a fifteen page document with his comments, accompanied by my manuscript with more detailed comments.
At first I was overwhelmed. When I sent the manuscript out to him, I was totally sick and tired of my story. I had a few thoughts about killing it off and moving on to something else.
Okay, I’ll start painting again. Maybe I’ll go back to writing poetry. I’ll start working on my bucket list. I still have that urge to visit Mongolia. What about going back to Africa and taking Bill with me this time, so he can see the elephants living in the wild where they belong?
But still, there was that silly, naive hope that I was just tired, and that this highly recommended editor would think my book was perfect. 🙂
Thankfully, Dave started his comments with, “I have a lot of feedback for you, and despite how intensive it may be, know that I believe in your memoir, and I do hope you continue moving forward with it to publication.”
He added other wonderful compliments and commendations, but it was the rest of what he had to say that gave me pause and an increasing ache in my already tempestuous stomach.“Delete this; delete that; show, don’t tell; add more of this and less of that.”
I set it all aside for a few days, worked in the garden, spent some time with friends, and had a great massage.
All along I knew there was no killing it off, going back to Africa, painting, or writing poetry. At least for the moment. I picked up Dave’s comments and reread them. The “big picture” I’d had in mind was willing to change a bit.
I liked much of what he suggested … like choosing a different starting chapter and eliminating a lot of stuff that is unnecessary and repetitive. But there are other things I still don’t agree with him on. Perhaps as I start rewriting again, I’ll change my mind about those things and begin to see his point of view. But maybe I won’t. I have the major puzzle pieces of my story before me and hopefully I can put them back together in a way that makes sense to all of my future readers.
To his comments, Dave graciously added: “What I say is NOT the law. Merely suggestions (though confident ones nonetheless). You must own your changes; you must own your edits.”
As I begin the next stage of my process, I’m taking all of his words seriously. I’m staying open, letting go of expectations, and dancing with my muse. I’m allowing myself to take my time. I’ll continue to take risks, make mistakes, and start all over again if need be. After all, that’s what life is all about.
Do you allow yourself to risk making mistakes? How do you react to what you consider failure?
The Winner of Last weeks Book Give Away of Bonnet Strings, An Amish Woman’s Ties to Two Worlds, by Saloma Miller Furlong, is Dorothy Sander, over at Aging Abundantly.
