Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew | Spiritual Memoir Author and Teacher

Author: Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

  • Gnawing on Stories

    About a year ago Gwyn went to the doctor for an annual check-up and received her two-year immunizations.  She screamed the entire visit.  Shortly afterward she began requesting the story—“Tell the story about going to the doctor”—three, four, even five times a day.  Almost twelve months later we still tell the story with countless variations; we play doctor and “tickle doctor” and acupuncturist and midwife.  Every piece of tape is a band-aid.  Anything with earplugs is a stethoscope.  Gwyn still gnaws on the doctor story fiercely, like a bone.

    We have many theories about why.  Perhaps the shots were traumatic, and she’s trying to understand why her loving moms would let someone inflict her with pain.  Emily took her to that two-year appointment after a long recovery from cancer; perhaps the visit was a turning point in their relationship, when Gwyn realized Emily would reliably care for her.  Perhaps the office brought back hard memories of Emily’s surgery.  Gwyn’s fascinated with a photo we have of a midwife listening through a stethoscope to her birth mom’s belly; perhaps her obsession with doctors has something to do with her birth or adoption or the mystery of where babies come from.

    Regardless, the more we tell the doctor story the more I appreciate how it contains an entire cosmology and, yes, it’s worth chewing on.  It includes a journey into the unknown, human suffering, faithfulness, love, healing, and mystery.  It contains fundamental paradoxes that are not easily resolved:  Why would a loving, cuddling mother let this nurse poke me?  If the doctor helps sick people, why do we go there when we’re healthy, get a shot, and then feel miserable?  What kind of world is this, anyway?  Reliving a story is a child’s best way to unpack such huge conundrums.

    Adults do much the same thing, traveling through Jesus’ life repeatedly as we traverse the liturgical year.  His is a good story, worth gnawing on.  How can God enter the world through a poor baby?  Why did Jesus choose to live the life he did?  What kind of world permits crucifixion?  Contained in this story are all the mysteries of creation.  Just when I begin to get tired of it (not again!) it opens to me in a new way, revealing something true about myself or others or God.  Many stories do this, even doctor stories.  Whether I like it or not, the Christian story is my bone to chew, and it’s a good one.
    –Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

  • Modern Spiritual Discipline (12/15/11)

    My mother-in-law’s church has issued a spiritual challenge to its members:  Buy nothing new for a whole year.  In response, support groups have sprung up like weeds.  There are purists whose underwear will grow thin, there are realists who gather to weigh alternatives before making a purchase, and there are new communication networks to facilitate the movement of used items between parishioners.  Why shouldn’t the retirees clean out their basements and simultaneously help new graduates set up apartments?  If Sue needs a lawn mower and Joe has one languishing in the garage, shouldn’t the church play a role in conserving these resources?

    As an inveterate garage saler and chief proponent of Twice Nice at our annual church bazaar (which, by the way, netted over a grand this year), I get shivers of glee hearing about Epworth’s commitment.  I love the alternative economy they’re creating, how individuals are learning to tap community resources first before heading to the mall.  I love how they are using ordinary stuff (clothes, dishes, books, the detritus of daily life) to build connections to one another.  I deeply respect this commitment to the earth which is also a commitment to our inevitable interdependence.  And I’m thrilled that this work of fulfilling individuals’ physical needs (and even desires) is being taken on by the church, an institution which has usually ignored this domain.

    One of the lasting lessons from my three year stint living in Christian community is the value of making do.  If a mop broke, we’d try to fix it.  If we needed a tool, someone tried to create it.  The benefits of making do were physical (we didn’t spend much money), emotional (we grew self-reliant, resourceful, and creative), and, I suspect, spiritual.  The jerry-rigged system that re-used laundry water filled me with awe, as did the pervasive sense that the community members skills were more powerful combined.  When communities commit to sharing resources, the power and creativity that emerge are beautiful, miraculous even—the body of God manifesting itself.  Of course churches should provide alternatives to our consumer economy!  This is the bread that nourishes all of life.
    –Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

  • God’s Great Faith (11/15/11)

    After dropping Gwyn off for her first morning of preschool—she was too interested in the puzzles to say goodbye—I came home and cried.  I was proud that she was eager and ready; I was thrilled for some extra time in my week; I grieved the seven hours I now won’t see her; and I ached for the baby who is no longer.  Mostly I cried because this step is the first in a long progression as Gwyn begins a life quite separate from mine.  She’ll make her own friends, eat food I don’t approve of, hear stories that scare her, and be exposed to people and ideas beyond my control.

    As happens often with parenting, I find myself wondering what my feelings have to teach me about God.  Surely the free will we’ve all been granted causes God lots of tears.  I take comfort in the thought that this tremendous gift—self-determination; the freedom to find our way in the world without a manipulating, divine hand—might not be so simple for our maker.  With free will we’ve been given the power to cause holocausts, to destroy our own environment, even to hurt our own children—as well as form healthy communities, create brilliant art, and bring peace into areas of conflict.  Our potential for evil goes hand-in-hand with our potential for good.

    Some days, after reading the headlines, our creator’s choice to give us free will seems like a crap shoot.  Maybe God made a terrible mistake.  But my tears at leaving Gwyn convince me that God’s first act with humanity was one of faith, a great faith that despite our proclivity to take other’s toys and run around during story hour, we humans will choose to grow, and grow toward good.  From the beginning God believed in us.  I can’t imagine a more loving act.  And like Gwyn, who knows I’m cheering her from afar, I suspect God’s hidden in the fabric of creation weeping and cheering.                                                –Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

  • The Small

    9.15.11

    Despite our determination to teach Gwyn to pick up her toys, our house is littered with things:  paperclips moved from the office to her toy kitchen, a nickel on the back of the toilet, Mardi Gras beads in the mixing bowl—you get the picture.  I spend a ridiculous amount of time putting things away.  At times I get fed up and decide to purge; if we didn’t have so much stuff, Gwyn couldn’t move it.  Clutter irritates me; as I pick up, I must work hard not to get annoyed.  I hope all the bending over at least counts as exercise.

    A year ago I began to make peace with the mundane nature of my spiritual path. Others are called to service or silence or ecstasy; my fate is to find God in the details.  The doll clothes I discover at the bottom of the laundry chute and must carry back upstairs are a hassle, yes, but they’re also an opportunity to open my heart.  Gwyn’s two; she’s learning by doing, experimenting with doors and containers and gravity, and my small task of straightening supports her important work.  The God of Gwyn’s mess asks of me generosity, patience, perseverance, order, and a capacity to recognize where good is emerging.  At times straightening serves this good, and at other times I must hold Gwyn accountable.  I’m not her maid.  When she’s able to be responsible for cleaning, she should.  Good boundaries and high expectations help bring out the greatest good.

    In the meantime I fish the playing cards out from behind sofa cushions and pick up dozens of rubber bands and resort the silverware as a form of prayer.  Thank you for this abundance.  Thank you for an inquisitive child.  Make my heart still.  May my every action be loving.  I’d prefer other spiritual practices given a choice, but this is what’s before me now.  Any small moment can blossom into communion if I’m open.  So I practice opening.
    –Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

  • Language 2: The Right Word

    Great premium is placed on language in our literary culture today. Is it fresh? Is it witty? Does it dazzle? The question I wish reviewers and publishers would ask about language is “Is it true?” We need writers who name the vast diversities of our reality with language that illuminates rather than obscures.

    Truth, of course, is relative. But the truth I’m referring to isn’t singular or objective; it’s resonant, as full of mystery as fact. We’ve all had the experience of reading a passage that describes a familiar object or event in a way we’ve never considered but which feels absolutely right. Here are a few of my favorites:

    The rooks too were keeping one of their annual festivities; soaring round the tree tops until it looked as if a vast net with thousands of black knots in it had been cast up into the air; which, after a few moments sank slowly down upon the trees until every twig seemed to have a knot at the end of it. Then, suddenly, the net would be thrown into the air again in a wider circle this time, with the utmost clamour and vociferation, as though to be thrown into the air and settle slowly down upon the tree tops were a tremendously exciting experience. –Virginia Woolf’s “The Death of the Moth”

    Woolf’s image of a knotted net is an accurate description of birds rising and returning to a tree. The comparison aids the reader; we see more clearly because of it. Both the image (quite ordinary) and the language (quite simple) help the reader experience this moment. Nothing in this passage calls attention to the language or the author.

    She was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree soaking in the alto chant of the visiting bees, the gold of the sun and the panting breath of the breeze when the inaudible voice came to her. She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight. So this was marriage! She had been summoned to behold a revelation. Then Janie felt a pain remorseless sweet that left her limp and languid.
    –Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God

    Here’s a passage where language does call attention to itself, but not for the sake of the author’s self-aggrandizement. Rather the extreme word choices here—“panting breath,” “sanctum of a bloom,” “love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree,” “a pain remorseless sweet”—help us understand Janie’s teenage point of view. Janie knows extremes of passion that are inconsistent with the dull prospects of the rest of her life. Inhabiting her perspective is intense, ecstatic, and memorable.

    The truth revealed in these passages is dual. First, these authors name their physical reality accurately and beautifully. They represent the “facts” on the page in a manner that is fresh but also accountable to real human experience. Second, they choose details that point through physical reality to some emotional, spiritual, relational, or psychological truth—the inner story.

    But it’s possible to create resonant truth with expository language as well:

    It began to seem that one would have to hold in the mind forever two ideas which seemed to be in opposition. The first idea was acceptance, the acceptance, totally without rancor, of life as it is, and men as they are: in the light of this idea, it goes without saying that injustice is a commonplace. But this did not mean that one could be complacent, for the second idea was of equal power: that one must never, in one’s own life, accept these injustices as commonplace but must fight them with all one’s strength.
    –James Baldwin, “Notes of a Native Son”

    Even abstract words, placed well and applied intelligently, can make beautiful prose. Note how Baldwin’s repetitions ring like bells. Note how, despite the complexity of these sentences’ construction and the paradoxical nature of the ideas he’s conveying, his words are quite plain. Above all, he wants to communicate. The integrity of his language extends naturally frm the integrity with which he explores his struggles with racism.

    The authors I respect most choose their words with integrity. They do not seek to impress; they seek to discover, to uncover, to name what is. Fresh words serve the story.

    So how do we find language like this? I’m no authority; I’m still seeking it myself. But here are a few techniques that serve me well:

    • In early drafts, write quickly and plainly. As best as you can, use your natural language. Because you are a unique person with an inherently fresh voice, your language will be fresh if you show up on the page.
    • Throughout revisions, return to a journal to reflect on your work. Writing for no audience eliminates strain and self-consciousness from language.
    • When clichés appear, take note. Keep going if you’re writing an early draft, but later return to these passages and ask yourself what this easy language is covering up. Clichés usually show us places we’ve taken on others’ explanations of the world rather than inventing our own. They always point to shallowness in our thinking—an acceptable naming of reality rather than a naming that digs.
    • Strive to serve the story and not some sense of writerly writing. Choose words that reveal, not conceal. Use the thesaurus to find accurate words, not fancy ones.
    • Use the dictionary. Whenever you are uncertain about a word’s meaning or its implications, look it up.
    • With each crucial word choice or description, first ask yourself, “Is it true?” Only then ask, “Is it fresh?”
    • Read Strunk and White’s Elements of Style every few years. Their advice is spot-on and modeled by their language: “Omit needless words. Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all sentences short, or avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.”

    –Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

  • Language 1: Triage

    I’m a great proponent of the triage method of revising:  Take care of the big problems first and gradually work your way down to the details of language.  In the abstract, this is a great philosophy.  If there’s such a thing as a time-saver, prioritizing like this is it.  And generally writers DO pay more attention to word choice, sentence structure, rhythm and sound the closer they get to publication.

    But the truth of the matter is that writers, to varying degrees, can’t help but pay attention to language from the very first draft.  On one extreme are writers who must perfect each sentence before continuing to the next.  While this method works for some, I wouldn’t recommend it, as it poses far too many opportunities for a newer writer to get stuck.  Most of us get attached to sentences we’ve polished, and this attachment interferes with our ability to remain flexible and open-minded about our work.  It’s awfully hard to lop off a chapter that took you six months to write or to fundamentally restructure an entire book when all the sentences are beautiful.

    On the other extreme are sloppy drafters who spew out text, trusting that revision will tighten and clean up their prose.  I know writers who, when unable to conjure up the right word, insert asterisks instead.  Preserving the flow of ideas is too important; the right word can always come later.  When we’re not attached to particular words, it’s much easier to play with the larger elements that form a work—structure, character, themes, plot, voice…

    Most writers fall between these two extremes.  We try to stay loose but can’t help but consider our word choices.  Luckily, language is quirky.  Just as a strong working title can give direction to a draft, the right word can unlock material rather than the other way around.  An accurate description can reveal a character’s nature to the writer.  Precision in word choice can expose new concepts worth exploring. There are benefits to occasionally slowing or even stopping one’s “flow” to deliberate over language.

    The trick is to discern which words or sentences are worthy of careful construction early on and which are distractions from the hard work of composing.  There’s no easy answer.  Generally, though, if we stay alert to our motives we can tell which is which.  Is a particular quest for accurate language motivated by genuine questions about the content?  If so, your work with language helps reveal the heartbeat and is worth pursuing early on.  Is your struggle with language about presenting your material to the reader?  If so, consider tackling this work later.  Better find the core of your story first and then polish the surface.  –Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

  • Life Behind the Writing

    A critical but usually unspoken component to writing well is the quality of the human being who writes.  Is he or she smart?  Thoughtful?  Curious?  Provocative?  Original?  Has he or she done emotional research to undergird the story?  “Living a conscious and reflective life is a prerequisite for writing a memoir of substance,” writes Judith Barrington.   Likewise with poetry and fiction.  The written word may be wiser than the human who wrote it, but never by much.

    Writing classes don’t address these questions, for good reason; little can be done in a school setting to address a student’s basic nature.  Perhaps when writing teachers despair of ever being effective, this is why.  Unfortunately, many writing teachers shy away from teaching revision as a result.  Creating writing prompts is easier than helping writers to jettison egos, generate new narrative structures, and discover the emotional undercurrents that will become unifying themes.

    But to never address the inextricable link between creative writing and the human creator is a mistake.  We write, innumerable authors claim, to find out what we think; personal discovery is intricately interwoven with the effort to make art.  Fiction writers are consciously or unconsciously engaged in exploring the workings of the human psyche; memoir writers thrive on the interchange between memory and the present; poets understand poetry to be not just a craft but a lifestyle.  A writer genuinely interested in improving his or her craft won’t get far without also striving to see the world (and therefore live in the world) afresh.

    –Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

  • Beginnings and Endings

    The last thing that we find in making a book is to know what we must put first.
    –Blaise Pascal

    Why do new writers assume they must begin writing at the beginning and end at the end?  Of course this is a silly question.  We read from beginning to end, so this order seems obvious.  And getting the beginning right before moving forward is a time-honored writing technique.  Unfortunately in practice it can seem forced, deadly even, and often causes writers to get mired.

    Beginnings are almost always the last part of a story to come together.  If we don’t know what a story is about—it’s heartbeat—until deep into revision, how can we possibly know how to begin that story?  Beginnings must do a terrific amount of work:  They must introduce characters, setting, conflict, the narrator’s voice, and the writer’s emotional stake.  I recommend setting aside the beginning until you know your material well enough to then also know how you want to introduce it to the reader.  Likewise, don’t worry about how a piece will end until late in the writing timeline.

    Instead I suggest first writing (and rewriting) those scenes and reflections you find the most compelling.  Use the Ouija board technique:  Where in your project do you feel energy?  Following our curiosity is a good policy; we want to track down mystery; we need to ferret out those places of tears and surprise.  Compelling material makes us want to write.  Our interest helps us prioritize.  When we have nothing to learn from a scene, it’s probably not worth writing.  When we’re highly engaged in a scene, usually we have a stake in its outcome.  Interest level is a gauge we must learn to heed.   Eventually we’ll have a mass of text in which we’re highly invested.  Only then is it valuable to ask, “Where does this story begin?”

    At times the story begins with the plot.  In other words, the outer story follows a direct chronology, and we must be faithful to that chronology.  When this happens, revision requires that we order our scenes from the start of action to the end.  At other times, the story begins at the start of an emotional quest.  Say you’re thirty-six, attending your uncle’s funeral, and learn for the first time that your father served in Viet Nam.  Looking back over your life you can see the consequences, but why hasn’t he ever told you?  The quest begins with the funeral but takes you back in time, through history and memory, and forward in time as you confront your dad.  In other words, the emotional hook is your beginning rather than the first event chronologically, and the plot of your story proceeds with that emotional quest.

    Stories can also begin with a lyrical moment that conveys the heartbeat or with reflection that highlights the narrative voice in relationship with the subject matter, or they can launch directly into the action.  Regardless, beginnings always introduce what’s at stake.  A reader enters with the question, “So what?” and expects an answer immediately.

    Endings, on the other hand, needn’t be conclusive; they needn’t tie up all the loose threads nor land on a definitive answer to your mystery.  They should, however, illuminate movement.  A reader needs to land at a different place from where he or she began.  As Judith Barrington advises, “In your search for the right conclusion, don’t fall prey to what has been called the “triumphalist imperative,” which favors completion over complexity.  Don’t shortchange the reality of life in which significant events are rarely put aside in a moment of insight, but continue unfolding into the future.”

    Endings “grow inevitably from the stories themselves,” writes Dennis Covington.   An essay can pose a question, explore it, and end by asking the question in a new way.  A story can trace a character’s transformation from one state to another, better or worse.  A memoir can move from a haunting emotion through memory to understanding of the haunting emotion, without resolution.  Regardless, all stories contain within them their endings—even in memoir, where our lives continue beyond the bounds of the story.
    –Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

  • Structure Discovered

    The structure of a creative work is discovered, not imposed.  Consider the architect’s mantra, “Form follows function.”  A skyscraper exists because of land limitations, population density, and the nature of business relations; its inherent qualities (its purpose, its limitations) distinguish it from a bungalow or a Carnegie library.  Likewise each piece of prose has a unique being—a focus, an exploration, a heartbeat.  We don’t know when we start if our subject has sharp corners or curves, if it’s solid or fluid, if it needs many compartments or just one.  We discover the container that will hold our material as we discover the material.

    How distressing!  Particularly when writers set out on longer projects, they want—even need—a structure to help them get going.  But nothing is more deadly to creativity than a strict plan.  An outline, a story-board or any scheme will only serve a creative writer so long as he or she holds it lightly and is willing to let it go at the first inspiration.  Once again revision becomes a conversation with the story’s will:  You hypothesize a shape for your story, write a draft, and then respond to the shape that has emerged.  “I have become very worshipful of the writing voice and suspicious of all plans and intents,” my mentor Larry Sutin said at the beginning of a lecture on structure.  Here’s Dan Kennedy’s take on it:A lot of people make the mistake of thinking it’s all up to them.  The work itself will start to take on shape and structure as it becomes its own thing…  The whole thing’s bigger than you, you know, so you can relieve yourself of the burden of thinking you’re in control of it.  If you think you’re driving, you’re wrong.  You’re the passenger.  As a matter of fact, you’re not even riding shotgun—you’re in the back seat, man.  Come to think of it, you don’t get to decide if the windows are up or the air conditioning’s on, that’s how much of a passenger you are in this thing.  That’s a truth and a trick.

    In my experience most new writers fret about structure too much and too early.  A tentative structure may get us writing, and an undeveloped skeletal structure resides in an idea before we’ve even put pen to page, but generally a piece’s structure manifests itself quite late in the project.  We’re well-served by patience.    –Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

  • Playing with Revision

    The more I revise and the more I help new writers learn to revise, the more I’m convinced that good revision, like any good writing, is essentially play.   Robin Marantz Henig’s recent article in the New York Times , “Taking Play Seriously,” looks at recent scientific studies that ask, What is play’s role in the evolution of species?   Of course there are many theories, but here is one from Patrick Bateson, a biologist at Cambridge University:   “Play is the best way to reach certain goals.   Through play, an individual avoids…the lure of ‘false endpoints.’ Players are having so much fun that they keep noodling away at a problem and might well arrive at something better than the first, good-enough solution.”

    First drafts are first, good-enough solutions.   We adults are particularly prone to false endpoints because we like results and we like efficiency.   With writing, often that first draft satisfies whatever longings drove us to write in the first place.   But first drafts offer only one perspective, and quality writing, like quality thinking, requires multiple perspectives.   The rich layers of meaning in our favorite books were achieved over time, by authors noodling away at an idea rather than accepting its first manifestation.   As Carol Bly asks, “What more do I have to say here?”   I like asking, What other shape could this thought or story take?

    Many writers complain that their second draft is far worse than the first.   Of course it is!   Second drafts lack that initial inspiration and drive.   Play with your subject; can you see it in an entirely new light?   Start over from scratch.   Keep noodling. Don’t allow the success of one draft to interfere with the possibility of a better one.

    Revision, like any kind of problem-solving, becomes more difficult the more seriously we take our work.   As soon as concern for our end product appears, our process is crippled.   However, if play is our process, even very serious material can be great fun.   Why?   Because we’re still learning, discovering, and growing as we write.   Play on, writers!

    –Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew