The surprises everyone holds

Imagine walking through an airport. All around you are people carrying bags – small purses, large backpacks, gym bags, duffels, briefcases. Imagine that you have to guess what’s inside each bag.

A lot of the time, you’d probably be fairly accurate. A laptop. A water bottle. A wallet. A phone. Cosmetics. Paperwork. Snack food.

But if the bags started falling open, you might be surprised by some of the items that fell out. Heirloom jewelry. Small weapons. Toys of an unidentifiable nature.

That’s how I feel when I meet with prospective memoir clients. They have a story to tell. Usually I can guess parts of that story. Sometimes I can even guess most of it. But there are always surprises.

Yesterday I met with a prospective client in her nineties. She was trim, mobile, alert, articulate. She must have had an easy life, I found myself thinking as I settled into an upholstered chair in her well-decorated condo.

She talked for nearly two hours. And like a stranger’s purse spilling open in an airport, some of it was what I might have guessed. A happy childhood with several siblings. The run-up to World War II. A romantic chance meeting with her eventual husband. A lifelong penchant for arts and culture, especially community theater.

But surprises spilled out too. One of her three children suffered from incurable mental illness and died in middle age. She said goodbye to her parents at the age of 22 in her country of birth and never saw them again. As a young wife and mother of three, she held a clinical fascination for the fast-evolving technology of birth control in its early years. In their eighties, she and her husband were victims of a violent home invasion. 

She recovered from that event, though, and now tells the story of the home invasion in nearly as merry a tone as when she described emigrating from the U.K. to America by ship and seeing the war refugees kneel at the sight of the Statue of Liberty. If there was lasting trauma, it isn’t apparent anymore. It’s just another thing that happened to her, another bead in the strand making up the story of her life.

If she decides she wants to do a project with me, I’ll learn even more details. As with all my memoir clients, I’ll be amazed at some of the details that spill out and unsurprised by others. But as I listen, I always remember how hard it is to guess. As you walk down the street or through the airport, you just cannot imagine what is in all those bags. Remarkable, really, just how different each story is…and how different each person is.

Eloquence happens

I worked on profiles of two different men this week.

If they were to sit next to each other on an airplane, which is where I can best imagine them meeting, they would assume after exchanging just a few words that they had little in common. Though close in age, one grew up in Minnesota and became a professional football player. As an offensive tackle, he was a two-time All-Pro, a six-time Pro Bowl selection, and played on one winning Super Bowl team. The other was raised in India and came to the U.S. to attend a college none of his friends back home had ever heard of – Dartmouth. (“So you didn’t get into any of the good American colleges?” they asked him at the time.) He stayed at Dartmouth for medical school, where he earned a Ph.D. in cellular biology, and became a senior policy advisor for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

No, the two men might not find much to talk about on their hypothetical airplane ride. But to me, having interviewed both of them within a matter of days, they have something profound in common: both men are passionate about their work, and both speak about it with the eloquence born of unwavering devotion to what they do.

Eloquence matters to me as an interviewer. I don’t mean that someone needs to have a fine vocabulary or a poetic sense of sentence structure. I just mean it’s much easier to interview someone for whom the thoughts and ideas, and the answers to my questions, flow rapidly. And this happens, I’ve come to realize, not when someone is particularly well-educated or even naturally verbose, but just when they are talking about what they love.

Of course, this is true of me as well, in my own work of helping people tell their stories. “Don’t get me started,” I sometimes caution friends who casually ask what I’m working on. I know they’re just being polite, and yet I can’t hold back once I start describing my latest project. Names and identifying details of my clients are kept confidential, of course – I leave it up to my clients to decide when and how they want to reveal themselves through their work – but once their stories get into my head, I can’t stop rummaging through the details. “She had her first child at the age of eighteen – with her husband off at war!”, I find myself saying. Or “They met at an art opening in their sixties and moved in together the following week.” “He stole a police car at the age of twelve and no one ever found out.” “She first learned about Thanksgiving when her boss invited her to his house to celebrate it.” “He was the only volunteer firefighter at the firehouse who couldn’t drive a firetruck– he was still too young to have a driver’s license.” Like both men I wrote about this week, I too find it almost impossible to hold back when asked about my work.

So once again, it was an illuminating week for me. I learned about what it’s like to be drafted by the same NFL team you used to race home from church to watch on TV as a kid – and then sit on the bench for your first two years on the roster. And I learned what it’s like to advise Bill Gates on cholera research.

The two men will probably never meet, and probably wouldn’t see many similarities between themselves if they did. But both left me feeling full of enthusiasm to write their stories, because both loved talking about what they’ve done. It’s a contagious kind of passion – and one that makes my job easy.

Writing versus cleaning: My eternal struggle

It’s another one of those weeks when the housework has gone largely undone.

And I try not to let that bother me. I remind myself that housework goes undone when I have interesting writing projects under way. When nothing much is on the docket workwise, I have plenty of time for vacuuming and dusting. An unswept kitchen floor shouldn’t signify lack of sanitation to me; it should signify creative endeavors taking place.

But I have trouble being that sanguine about it. It preoccupies me, knowing that I’ve let my usual weekly housekeeping tasks slide.

But slide they have, because this week I have four different writing projects at four different stages of completion, each one as engaging as the next, and I just can’t seem to step away from my computer long enough to pick up a broom.

I know that this shouldn’t get under my skin the way it does. I remind myself that in the grand scheme of things – what the corporate folks I worked with years ago called the fifty thousand foot view – I won’t want to be remembered for the cleanliness of my kitchen floors but rather for the fine writing I produced.

But really, I want people to associate me with both. A clean house and a creative mind. And I don’t think the two need to be mutually exclusive.

Except that this week they are, because I’m just too busy to scrub. Yesterday I managed to clean some of the bathrooms, but not all of the bathrooms. That’s a small improvement, but since I didn’t get to all of them, I can’t cross “Clean the bathrooms” off my To Do list, so it feels as worthless as not cleaning any of them.

Perspective, I try to tell myself. No one would walk into this house and say “Ugh, dust on the bookshelf.” And even if they did, isn’t it more important to have books on the bookshelf than dust not on the bookshelf? Better still, books that I wrote?

Yes, true, all true. And I should mention that the reason all of these conversations happen inside my head is that no one else in my family cares a whit whether and when I clean. To them, the only outcome of my having cleaned the bathrooms is that they have to search in drawers for all the toiletries that were previously littering the countertop and therefore effortlessly accessible.

Soon, these four current projects will all be at press, I reassure myself. And then I can go on a cleaning blitz. A siege. A binge of cleaning.

Or I can hope for more projects. Because ultimately, I really would rather be a good writer than a good housekeeper. Although being both is still my ideal.

Telling stories, hearing stories

In the midst of writing and revising family memoirs for three different sets of clients, with two more on the back burner, I’ve learned more about memoir writing in the past few months than in all my years as a writer up to now.

The three active projects involve two couples in their eighties and one widow in her nineties. Perhaps not surprisingly, given their similarities in age, certain common themes arise, even though there are numerous differences concerning the specifics of their lives. Differences include where they were raised; where they live now; what their professional lives have involved; the number and ages of their children; their religious backgrounds. Commonalities include military service, a career path that began with manual labor and brought them eventually into the business world, the issues specific to immigrants (in one case) or children of immigrants (in the other two); losing a parent at an early age. Other details linking their stories arose unexpectedly, surprising me: two different memoir subjects mentioned the Horn & Hardart Automat – one woman frequented the one in New York City as a child; another couple visited the one in Philadelphia as graduate students – and two different subjects had connections to General Claire Lee Chennault and the Flying Tigers.

From each of them, I’ve learned a lot about life in America in the 20^th century, although each of my subjects experienced it differently: some as hardworking college students, some as soldiers stationed overseas. I’ve learned about a variety of perspectives on parenting and grandparenting.

And as their memoirist, I’ve also learned anew the importance of listening. Writing a memoir is a wonderful project for a senior because they are left with a book for their children, grandchildren, and future descendants to read, but what I am increasingly coming to understand is that the process itself matters. Last week I received an email from the daughter of my 91-year-old client that said this:

“Yesterday i called my mom. It was quite apparent to me that she sounded more vibrant and alive than I have heard her in a very long time. I asked what was she doing and she told me about writing a memoir of her life.  What a wonderful thing to do - she has had quite a life!  This appears to have brought new vitality to her.”

It reminded me that the process itself is as worthwhile as the end result. All of my clients have children and other family members who willingly and eagerly listen to their stories, but there’s something different about narrating a life in chronological order. Most families tell sporadic anecdotes, not unbroken narratives, and sometimes children hear their parents’ stories often enough that they stop listening. Having the opportunity to hear a life story from its beginnings gives me a perspective that isolated anecdotes usually lack.

Two years ago, I worked with residents at a nursing home on a community memoir project. A couple of months after the book was published, I saw the obituary of one of the participants in the newspaper. I felt privileged to think that I was probably one of the last people who heard her tell a story about her life. She had loving children and grandchildren; I don’t mean to suggest no one took an interest in her, but I had the privilege of sitting down with her without other distractions to hear exactly the life story she wanted to tell me, a story she was most likely telling for the last time.

Telling our stories matters, but listening to them does too. In my work as a memoir writer, I’ve become a dedicated listener. And I’m grateful anew for every story I have the opportunity to hear.

Editorializing from the bunny cage

“I was cleaning out the bunny cage,” said my friend Kathy, as I wondered fleetingly why she was telling me a story about animal sanitation, “when I looked down and saw an article you’d written about sightseeing in Concord.”

Covered with rabbit poop, apparently, but still, my byline shimmered through. Hmmm. In the 21^st century, journalists are happy to be read at all, and I’m no exception. If that’s what it takes, it’s still good enough for me.

Every journalist fantasizes about readers who scan the pages looking only for that one byline, eager to read any word you write, on any topic, but I find more often these days that people are reading me by accident, as Kathy did while freshening up her pet rabbit’s dwelling. Actually, I’m impressed that she gets a print copy of the newspaper at all, with all the virtual options now available. My household subscribes to the iPad version of the paper; when an article of mine gets published, I have to ask my parents to save the clipping for me so that I can add it to my portfolio. Occasionally when my daughter wants to do an art project, she’ll ask me for newspaper to protect her work surface, and I’ll have to admit we don’t have any newspapers in the house anymore, so she ends up papering the kitchen table with supermarket circulars and real estate brochures instead.

Stories are getting shorter, too. The quarterly alumni magazine for which I write used to allot me 1,200 words per profile, or one full two-page spread. A few years ago they cut the profiles from two pages back to one page, or 600 words. For the most recent issue, my editor said she thought 450 to 500 words would be ideal. “Do you want me to just do a detailed photo caption?” I asked her, half-joking.

Still, I find it just as satisfying to know my work has been read now as I did with my very first byline in our local newspaper when I was a college student trying to accrue clips for a job-hunting portfolio. Earlier this month, I wrote a story for the Globe about a Concord family taking part in a trans-Iowa bike ride. The day it was published, I received emails from two different newspaper editors at small-town papers in Iowa, asking if they could run my story. Of course, I told them. I’d already gone to the trouble of writing it; why not savor the fact that more eyes would rest upon my words, at least for a moment or two while they scanned the lead paragraph?

Other writers are more opinionated than I am about the issue of proprietary work and intellectual copyright in the Internet era. I know my work has been printed without my knowledge at times; if I Google my name, I find references to essays I wrote for local publications popping up in special interest magazines and newsletters from Alabama to Albania. But it’s okay. We write to be read, just as we speak to be heard. Whether it’s Albania or the bunny cage, I’m happy to be in print.

Memoirs and memories

Recent conversations with potential clients for personal memoirs have made me think a lot about who tells stories and what kinds of stories they tell.

Of course, this isn’t really anything new for me. Since first becoming interested several years ago in helping people to write their memoirs, I’ve devoted plenty of thought to questions about personal story-telling. But as we consider more and more potential projects, the questions become increasingly interesting.

For example, because much of our potential clientele comes from the senior demographic, where memory loss is sometimes an issue,we’ve been asked how we can write about someone’s life when his or her memory seems so spotty. That’s an easy one for us to answer: we can bring in family members and close personal friends of the subject to help jog his or her memory, retelling stories that the memoir subject has told many times in the past. 

Sometimes these stories help the memoir subject to remember related stories. Sometimes one family member will remember one anecdote and another family member will remember a related one, and soon we have a whole stream of stories flowing.

But just as often, family members who think their elderly relative will have trouble with a memoir project because of perceived memory loss is pleasantly surprised to find out that the subject can remember stories from the past just fine. This makes sense, actually: memory loss in seniors often relates more to short-term memory than long-term. As the typical joke goes, people who can’t remember where they left their car keys can still remember the name of their second grade teacher from 80 years ago. But this works to the advantage of us memoir writers. We don’t need to know where your car keys are; we need you to remember what matters to you from the past.

Questions also arise about what people may not choose to tell. Our answer is that we help people write memoirs, not autobiographies. They are free to include or leave out whatever they wish. Accuracy is certainly helpful, but comprehensiveness isn’t necessary. We encourage memoir subjects to tell the stories they choose to pass on and leave out the ones they would rather not have figure into an overall reflection on their lives.

What becomes more apparent to us every day is that not only does everyone have a story to tell – after all, that’s the basis of our memoir-writing business – but everyone also has someone who wants to hear their story. It may be a large and diverse audience; it may be just one person. It may be several decades of students or devotees of someone’s professional persona; it may be one spouse or one child. But we have yet to find anyone who can’t find a single ready ear eager to hear the story they can pass on, or a single ready pair of eyes to read the text, increasingly engrossed in the story of a person they thought they knew but about whom they may still have so much more to learn.

Critical reviews

Rick wasn’t crazy about our Christmas poem this year.

It was bound to happen. Every December since 1992, which was the year we got married, I’ve cranked out a Christmas newsletter comprising about eight to twelve stanzas of rhyming pentameter, covering the events of the past year for us.

Initially, it was a lark, just something I thought would be fun for our first Christmas together. And there was plenty to tell that year: our wedding, the arrival of our first niece, our honeymoon in Venezuela, a trip to Colorado, a new job for Rick. And somehow I was able to make all of it rhyme.

Some years it was more difficult than others, but every year I managed to come up with something. This year, too, though I had to confess in the course of the poem that it hadn’t been a particularly eventful year – but that sometimes an uneventful year suits us just fine. The kids are well-established in school, happy and doing well academically; Rick and I both have plenty of work and plenty to do in our downtime. No safaris, cruises or mountain treks to describe; no major life changes to touch upon. And that’s fine with us.

Still, Rick didn’t think it was a very good poem, when it was done. But I didn’t really mind. After nearly 25 years as a professional writer under one guise or another, I’m pretty thick-skinned. Not everything I write resonates with everyone. Most of the editors I currently work with tend to offer very little criticism of my work, but I don’t necessarily see that as an altogether good thing, knowing it’s mostly because we’ve worked together long enough that I know just what they like.

And criticism can come from various places: not just editors and not just bosses. Last year a local realtor asked me to write a marketing piece for her, describing a historic property that was up for sale. I worked on it for days, and the realtor was delighted with the results, but one of my closest friends visited the property during the open house and said afterwards, not knowing I’d written the marketing materials, “The house is wonderful, but the brochure didn’t do it justice at all.”

I couldn’t really understand why she didn’t like it, and I don’t really know why Rick wasn’t too fond of this year’s Christmas poem. But in a paradoxical way, sometimes this kind of criticism makes me happy, because it reminds me that I’ve reached a point in my life and in my writing career when I understand that not everyone will like everything – and that one off-the-mark piece doesn’t make me an incompetent writer. It’s subjective, and I don’t take it to heart when someone doesn’t like something I’ve written.

On the other hand, it’s always useful to listen to people’s criticism and learn from it. I don’t have to impress or please every reader with every piece of writing, but I’d rather write marketing copy that my friends find appealing, and I’d rather write a Christmas poem that Rick considers an engaging reflection of our year.

So being thick-skinned is good in my profession, but been attuned to feedback is as well. I’ve learned a lot from pieces I’ve written that have been well-received, but I’ve probably learned more from those that haven’t. I put effort into everything I write. And sometimes it’s invaluable to learn, through negative feedback, how that same amount of effort might have been better used. And how I might be able to do better next time.

On the teaching of writing

I sat down over the weekend to draft some notes for the writing class I’m teaching for Concord-Carlisle Adult and Community Education, which began last night. “I’ve taught writing here off and on for the past ten years,” I scribbled as I began working on an introduction.

Then I paused. Ten years? Was that right? I thought back and remembered the circumstances of my life when I started teaching: I had recently started a new job in Cambridge, which made it possible to commute to Concord in time for the class, and I was married but with no children.

Come to think of it, that was 1994.

I’ve been teaching this class for nearly 20 years? I mused. That didn’t sound right either. I didn’t start writing for the Boston Globe until 2005. I didn’t even write for the Concord Academy Magazine or any of my smaller clients until after 2000. In 1994, I wasn’t published anywhere but the Carlisle Mosquito. 

So what possibly gave me the idea to teach a writing class?

But the more I thought about it, the more the answer seemed obvious to me, just as it must have back then when I had the temerity to apply for a job as a writing instructor even though I wasn’t really much of a published writer.

I taught it because it was something I enjoyed.

In the almost twenty years since, my writing career has become fleshed out, even if I’m still not exactly on the short list for a Pulitzer Prize. I’ve become a weekly arts columnist and regular feature writer for the Globe; I contribute four alumni profiles per issue of the Concord Academy Magazine; I wrote the lead feature for the inaugural issue of a regional magazine called NorthBridge.

And yet the class I teach isn’t really about how to write for magazines and newspapers; even if it were, I’m not sure I’d have all that much insight to offer. The class is about writing just for the love of writing, and as I remembered the twenty-something-year-old me who taught that first session, I wonder if I’m any more qualified now than I was then. I’m no expert on writing, but I’m good at making it fun, because I have so much fun with it myself. People return to my class not because they receive such insightful critique from me but because every week we all have fun getting together to write.

Looking back, I think what actually gave me the temerity to teach writing when I was an unpublished, nonprofessional writer was something poet Natalie Goldberg says: If you want to get good at something, teach it.

Her words remind me of the maxim that medical students use regarding new procedures: Watch it once; do it once; teach it once. We learn through doing, but perhaps we also learn through leading.

I’m no expert on writing. I’m just an avid practitioner. If that’s enough to motivate the people who come to my class, then I’ve offered them the best I can give. Even though I have more publishing credits now than twenty years ago, I may not have much more wisdom to impart. I just really like writing, as much now as I did back then. And if all I can do is communicate that passion, it still somehow seems to be enough.