A conversation with the author of Dispatches From The Couch: A Neuroscientist and her Therapist Conspire to Reboot Her Brain.
When including flashbacks to childhood sexual abuse, Stacey included questions she had at the time. These questions perfectly captured the confusion of the experiences, while at the same time showed just how young she was.
Was I wearing my hair in pigtails? Or did he brush the shimmery strands aside. Was this after my Dorothy Hamill haircut?
There’s a fair amount of self-loathing for her childhood self. Rather than tell the reader this, Stacey lets us into her mind to see the self-loathing for ourselves:
Why can't there be a surgical option to cut any remnants of that chubby little misfit out of my adult self?
Within the walls of our house, the overarching sense that we were a healthy, stable family dissolved overnight when fifth grade Stacey opened her goddamned mouth.
If I could go back in time, I would let him do even worse things if I could tell myself to keep my fucking mouth shut.
So much healing came after the book was published. Stacey’s older sister, at first, said she had no plans to read it because “she already lived it.” Once the book was published, though, she did read it, and the two spoke openly in a way that Stacey said it was the start of a completely new relationship with her sister.
Stacey was most nervous to share the book with her mother. In one scene towards the end, she writes about the time she was in kindergarten and had been recently, repeatedly, sexually abused by her perpetrator, a dean at their church and family friend. The abuse had been going on for some time. On this particular day, Stacey seemed fine in the morning but once she got to school she felt sick, and her mom had to come pick her up.
In the scene, Stacey’s mom is livid with her. She keeps up appearances with the teacher but once their in the car she unleashes on Stacey:
"Why do you keep doing this? Who are you lying to, her or me? What kind of mother sends her daughter to school only to have her say she is sick this many days in a row? If you are sick, you need to stay home in the first place. Why ride all the way on the bus if you are going to tell her your stomach hurts as soon as you get here?! Now Mrs. Conway thinks I am a bad mother!!"
I found Stacey’s mom in this particular moment to be completely relatable. Only Stacey and the reader knew about the abuse. I felt myself in her mom’s shoes, expecting to go about my day as planned and then getting a phone call from the school, and then losing my patience with a kid who claimed to be sick but just seemed fine when she was at home.
I think, in memoir, you have to go all in on sharing the ugly or unlikeable parts of another character. When you try to protect them by skirting around the truth or caveating with explanations and excuses—or worse, skipping parts altogether—it makes those characters less relatable. This one scene and this one paragraph made my heart break for little kindergarten Stacey, yes, and it made my heart break for a mother who did not yet know what was going on, and did not parent perfectly on that day, just like I don’t on so many days. This scene made her mother human.
Books that inspired the writing in Stacey's memoir:
Body Work by Melissa Febos
Whip Smart by Melissa Febos
Wintering by Katherine May
Dispatches from the Couch is now available as an audiobook from Barnes & Noble and will soon be available on all major platforms.
A conversation with the author of The Maps They Gave Us.
Wayne Scott refers to himself in the third person when discussing his memoir. I asked if that was a tool.
“Absolutely,” Wayne said. “Some of my most miserable experiences in writers’ critique groups have been when people were writing memoir, and as you’re having the conversation in the group they’re saying, ‘I did this, I did that.’ They’re talking about the story and continuing it in the first-person narrative, and then it really just becomes group therapy because people want to rush and comfort the ‘I’ that’s sitting in front of them.”
Wayne and I also discussed when to take creative liberties and change inconsequential details, how to build suspense in scenes, how writing in first-person present tense kept him more vulnerable because it created guard rails around the narrative and did not allow him the foresight or knowledge of the writer at the desk, and how he thinks about writing memoir and its impact on our kids.
I asked his advice on how to move through the publishing process for my own book.
“Write an honest book that’s beautiful,” he said. “And don’t think about the market. Then see where you can make it go.”
References:
Wayne’s Modern Love essay
Huffington Post essays about his son:
Why We Let Our Teenage Son Treat His Mental Health Issues With Marijuana
My Son Is Skipping Thanksgiving This Year, But Not For The Reasons You Might Expect
A conversation with my editor, Michael Dean.
Our biggest tension, in the eighteen months we’ve worked together on my book, is Show vs. Tell. I want to show all the time with action, dialogue, examples, and stories but Michael says you can’t only show. You have to tell sometimes so the reader can make sense of what you’ve shown them. We discussed multiple examples of showing and telling, and what makes a good tell vs. a bad tell.
We also worked towards a new principle. There are two yous in the book—the you in the story and the writer at the desk. The new principle is this: the writer at the desk should be curious. The writer at the desk can wonder and think and have tangential thoughts, but she cannot show emotion or pass judgment. It doesn’t matter if you’re writing about a story that happened twenty years ago or one that happened yesterday. There has to be some detachment from the writer-you and the person-in-the-story-you. So I can say a direct quote from the me in the story that was emotional: “Get out of the pool! You’re not listening!” but my commentary on that cannot pass judgment with something like, “I shouldn’t have said that,” or “They were stressing me out,” or “I wish I could just be more patient with my kids.”
Michael, who has a knack for coming up with principles, added, “It's not that no present self is allowed, it's that the present self shouldn't do too much emotional manipulation. They can wonder, digress, show you things like a time traveler, but it's not their role to label or interpret.”
This led to our thoughts on vulnerability and what it means to be vulnerable. I said vulnerability should feel scary when you hit publish, like jumping off the high dive. If you write something shameful or embarrassing like, “I yelled in my kid’s face,” you can’t then say some version of, “I know that was wrong, I know that was terrible, I know I’m the worst.” Michael added, “To be vulnerable means to surrender control of the narrative of yourself.”
Here’s what I learned from Joanna Rakoff:
How many characters do you really need? Make a list. Every character needs to be fully-fleshed, each with their own motivations. In order to make them real, you need to find them interesting, complicated. You need to be curious. Then, you need to write from a place of love and cold-bloodedness at the same time.
“If you really want to write something great, if you’re really aiming at greatness, at things truly working, not at just like getting something out there, you have to be okay with letting some time pass. … You ultimately know what you want to do. You know what your book is, even if you don’t think you do, you do, and you just have to do be patient with yourself.”
Book proposals are difficult to write (it took her two years to write her most recent book proposal). It’s not something to write on your own; it’s something you tackle with an agent.
You should not consider hiring a publicist until you sell your book to a publisher.
Favorite writing conferences:
Book recommendations:
Fairyland by Alysia Abbott
Poser by Claire Dederer
Wild by Cheryl Strayed
When Skateboards Will Be Free by Saiid Sayrafiezadeh
The Mothercode by Ruthy Ackerman
Permission by Elissa Altman
All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung
All of Donna Tartt’s novels
The Girls from Corona del Mar by Rufi Thorpe
Faith by Jennifer Haigh
Write Through It by Kate McKean
Here’s what I learned from my conversation with Virginia DeLuca about her memoir, If You Must Go, I Wish You Triplets:
-When you include your thoughts that are unkind, immature, or that you’re embarrassed to admit, it’s funny and relatable.
“In the bedroom, I grab two boxes and throw in Perry's shirts, belts, ties, underwear, shorts, and pants, and dump them in the garage. Hopefully, they'll mildew.”
-Sometimes you need an outside perspective to title your book. You, as the writer, are too close to it. Fresh eyes on the manuscript could see something you don’t. Virginia used a company called Title Doctor.
-When you’re writing a scene about your younger self, think of how that version of you is different from your current self. In Virginia’s case, she used to curse a lot and avoided direct confrontation with her mother, so in the scene, she cursed (only once; otherwise it would have been distracting), and when he mother asked her questions she responded in other ways: shrugging off the jacket she didn’t want, and cursing in her mind, wondering where her ride was.
-Endings are hard! According to Virginia, “It’s hard to sign out.” She wrote an Epilogue five years later, and ended with dialogue—a conversation with her ex-husband. Originally, the exchange was supposed to be at the beginning of the book. Late in the writing process, she moved it to the end.
-Virginia published her book through Apprentice House Press, the nation’s first and largest entirely student-managed book publisher. They don’t require an agent. University presses are a great way to publish your book if you don’t self-publish or go through a traditional publisher.
-Write fan letters to your favorite writers! Virginia wrote a fan letter to Abigail Thomas. She wrote that it was her first fan letter, told her how much she loved her writing, and that she had had a small writing success. Abigail responded immediately and said no writing success is small, and asked Virginia to share the link for the article she had published. Later, Virginia asked her to write a blurb. Abigail read her manuscript and wrote a blurb that said, “I’ve never quite felt this way before with any other book.”
-Virginia’s advice, when I asked about publishing my first book, was to get into a writers group. You need a few people to read your writing and see how everything is landing.
Here’s what I learned from my conversation with Kate Gies, author of It Must Be Beautiful To Be Finished:
-The key to writing about someone you love who you’ve also been hurt by, is to write with empathy. Think about their perspective and their experience and be generous and loving when you do.
-Be wary of the please-feel-bad-for-me voice
-Analogies should be both fresh and accurate
-Metaphors written as standalone chapters, without any reference to how they relate to your story, are a powerful way to trust the reader and not hit them over the head with they're meaning.
-The most important person in getting her book published was her agent.
-Three memoirs that have inspired her writing.
A conversation with the author of Happy To Help: Adventures of a People Pleaser.
LINKS
Books:
Essay:
Why I Didn't Want A Girl (originally titled: A Daughter At Last)
Podcast:
References:
Here’s what I learned from Happy To Help: Adventures of a People Pleaser by Amy Wilson:
-Include your fantasies. It’s especially funny if you can incorporate four levels in the build up to the punchline:
First: set the scene—what’s about to happen
Second: set the stakes—why is this a big deal
-Write a short and snappy analogy that has pronouns and alliteration: “It was like hiring Kidz Bop for a bachelor party.”
-Include pronouns. Pronouns that are personal to you make the writing more compelling, specific, and yes, even funny: “I used to make fun of my husband for letting his perception of a good night's sleep be ruined by what his Whoop told him.”
Memoir deep dive #21
Here’s what I learned from Here After by Amy Lin:
One way to treat your audience like a genius is to not say the next obvious thing. Where can I leave out what the reader already knows is coming? One approach to this: in every paragraph I write, where can I remove the last sentence? “I stare at the blank ceiling tiles and wonder when Kurtis will call me. I have so much to tell him.”
Expressing negative feelings about a person’s appearance is funnier than directly expressing negative feelings about the person. “Also, I hate Michelle’s haircut.”
When using Anaphora—which is repetition at the start of a sentence or clause—the last line should punch with specificity. “It is the only thing I feel able to do since he died. The only way I am able to say what it is like for me. The only place I can meet grief without being utterly consumed by it.”
The most important place to leave out thoughts and feelings (and only show dialogue and action) is when I’m the most emotional. The angrier I feel, the less feelings should be put on the page.
Here's what I learned from Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction by Tracy Kidder and Richard Todd:
-When writing memoir, never insert present knowledge about your past if it means condemning your past self or celebrating your present self.
-Avoid casual prose such as, "you know," or "bet you thought," or "ummm, hello?" This style of writing seeks instant intimacy with the reader. It's a style what wants to SEEM fresh and authentic but has the opposite effect.
-Don't be melodramatic! I cannot write that "I was homeless" because I was crashing on my friend's couch in between living situations. Just write what happened. Just write the facts.
-If you want to publish a book you don't need a marketing plan or a book proposal. You need 20-30 pages of good prose and a trusted agent's counsel.
Here’s what I learned from my conversation with Sandy Schnakenburg, author of The Housekeeper's Secret:
When you’re writing about a tragic or shocking event, one way to create suspense is to tease that something bad is coming. In the book she had a terrible accident on her bike, and at the beginning of the chapter a character calls out and tells her to be careful riding to school. From there until the moment of the crash she slows down time by including the tiniest details and specifics surrounding the moment—what time she left, her route to school, who she was meeting, why she couldn’t be late, and that first period math was her favorite. She described the actual ride, the way she rode with no hands, and later how she stood up on the pedals.
It took Sandy 14 years to write her book, and the structure changed from a book of essays, to a braided memoir, to a chronological, compressed timeline with a hook at the beginning pulled from the midpoint of the story.
An editor helped her to remove 50,000 words and bring the reader more onto the page by removing her analysis of the scenes. Her editor said, “Leave it to the reader. Let them decide. Let them process what happened.”
Sandy wrote a synopsis and summary of her book before it was ever finished. She sent the synopsis to an agent and he picked her up—just like that!
She attended the San Francisco Writers Conference, where she pitched her book all day long to writers, editors, and agents. It was there she met her editor and book publisher.
If you want to publish a book your story needs to have a universal theme. Once you have that and can really communicate that, then you need to figure out how to distribute it. Then you need a good publicist. (Sandy interviewed twenty-five publicists.)
Here’s what I learned from Long Live The Tribe Of Fatherless Girls by T Kira Madden:
First lines should make the reader curious to read more. They can be surprising, specific, and/or present a conflict.
It’s important to stay in moments longer by going deeper with details and going on tangents that add context.
Write unsparingly about yourself to get the reader to root for you—without disclaimers.
Write about complicated characters in your life by sharing stories that show their different sides.
Here’s what I learned from Still Life At Eighty by Abigail Thomas:
Revealing the dark parts of yourself in writing makes those things less scary and less powerful.
Simple, clear, no-frill writing can be just as powerful and moving as fancy prose. Lean into your style, whatever it may be.
Sometimes writing can just be keeping a log of your feelings and experiences. It might not be something to publish now, but later, when you can look back at that time in your life and have rich details to include once you’ve had some separation from it.
If you don’t know what to write about, write about what you’re struggling with.
Rhythm is important: Print out what you’ve written in a different font so it looks like somebody else wrote it and read it out loud. When your voice goes dead, there’s either something hiding behind that sentence or it’s just boring.
Memoir is not a place to get revenge or cast oneself as victim.
Freelance Writing Direct podcast interview with Abigail Thomas
Here’s what I learned from My Salinger Year by Joanna Rakoff:
How to write dialogue in a novelistic or cinematic way:
Include details about the surrounding area. The weather, scenery, anything the characters interact with, other people in the room. This is especially useful at the start of the scene, and if/when the scene changes.
When you add context for the reader it should relate to the dialogue before it. It can also help establish the relationship of the characters.
There are three people to consider in a two-person conversation: the two people in the scene and the reader. Dialogue can be inside-baseball between the two characters even it’s unclear to the reader, but interjections by the writer can clarify and invite the reader into what’s happening.
A scene should not end at the end of the conversation, but at a point when a character says something that transitions into the next scene.
And here’s the link to Joanna’s conversation with Estelle Erasmus on Freelance Writing Direct.
Sam is back to discuss more marital arguments, though he insists they rarely argue while Charlie insists they argue plenty.
I submitted a personal essay to the New York Times weekly column, Modern Love.
In this episode I talk about how I learned about the column, how I decided to submit an essay under my real name, and a little context for what the essay is about.
References:
39 Submission Tips for Modern Love
Estelle Erasmus interviews:
Here’s what I learned from three sobriety memoirs:
The Night of the Gun by David Carr:
Interview the people from your past. It doesn’t have to be formal or recorded. It could be as simple as a text message to see what they remember about the event.
This can accomplish three things:
It’s a way to add more details into your story.
It allows the person to feel like they’re a part of the process of writing it as opposed to feeling like it’s one-sided.
It makes you, the writer, more relatable and reliable because you’re giving different perspectives.
The Unexpected Joy Of Being Sober by Catherine Gray:
Don’t break the fourth wall to manipulate the reader or try to get them on your side. Breaking the fourth wall should always be a statement, not a question.
Option: Use sarcasm or let them in on a secret.
We Are The Luckiest by Laura McKowen:
Just tell the story and leave the reader out of it.
Heres’s what I learned from Drinking: A Love Story by Caroline Knapp
AND
The Elements Of Eloquence by Mark Forsyth.
Anaphora is when you start each phrase, sentence, or paragraph with the same word or words. But be careful: readers always remember the opening words but often forget the rest. So when using anaphora, be intentional about what you want to emphasize. Also, only using one word for the anaphora—as opposed to a phrase—is slightly less powerful but beautifully hypnotic.
Epistrophe is when you end each phrase, sentence, or paragraph with the same word.
Diacope is when a word or phrase is repeated after a brief interruption.
Parataxis is short, clear, matter-of-fact sentences, often subject-verb, without conjunctions (think Hemingway). Knapp was selective with parataxis, using it when she wrote about the moment she found out her father died and again at the moment her mother died. In both instances, it was a shocking, cringey admission because she was drunk both times.
Pleonasm is the use of unneeded words, sometimes repeating the exact same word, other times saying the same thing in a slightly different way. This can annoy readers, but when utilized for intentional redundancy can be quite effective and powerful.
Do you want to write under a pseudonym or not?
I have been writing as Charlie Bleecker for over four years. If you want to give it a real go, commit to it for a year.
Do my friends read my writing? No. Does my family read my writing? No. That is the whole point.
If you care at all about growing your audience in a time span of less than 10 years, don’t do it.
What about support? It’s nice to have your family and friends support you… That’s true. But give it time. You only need one or two people to support you in the beginning. I have SO much support now, and none of it comes from my friends or family, except for my husband. He is the one person in my life who knew about Charlie from the beginning.
How to choose your name: Pick a name you like! One that’s easy to say and easy to spell and isn’t super common if you search it in Google.
Here’s what I learned from Life On Delay by John Hendrickson:
On Structure:
When you open with a big event, where something big is about to happen, it creates suspense.
The opening is a pivotal moment. There was life before this moment, and then there’s life after.
Around ¾ of the way through the book he comes back to this moment and finishes the story.
The life-changing moment is only the beginning of the major changes to come for John (aka, the main character). The life changing moment, then, is a catalyst for change and growth.
On the relationships with his family, namely his brother Matt:
Adjectives are manipulative when describing the people you’re close to. Showing is always more compelling than telling.
When writing about your past—especially your adolescence—the best way to evoke emotion out of the reader is to leave your feelings out of it, whether they were your feelings back then or your feelings now.
The best way to introduce a main character in your story is through multiple stories about them.
When introducing a character who you had or have a troubled relationship with, it’s important to write about them completely separate from you. So there should be stories that involve you AND stories that don’t involve you, so the reader can get a fuller sense of who this person is.
Phrases I will never write in my own book: “I don’t blame them,” or “absolutely thrilled.”
Other Notes:
When jumping around to past, present, and future, it’s important to find ways of anchoring the reader and orienting them by letting them know where we are on the timeline, in relation to big events that have already occurred in the story.
Freeze frame: when you’ve finally arrived at a big moment—in this book’s case, a hard conversation—one way to build suspense is to break up the dialogue by commenting on something else that’s happening at the same time. In this instance, John wrote about what was going on in his head simultaneously.
On Endings:
A powerful way to end is with a story. It doesn’t have to be fancy or clever. This was simple, abrupt, and beautiful.
Here’s the link to Michael Dean’s video about the David Foster Wallace essay:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wbjup1xuo8Q&t=1s