I write about love because I tell stories; and it is impossible, I believe, to tell any kind of powerful or valuable or meaningful story without writing about love. And, too, I have found that it is impossible to write a story without love. The writer must love her characters, must open her heart to …
(This blog post is reprinted after appearing in The Loft’s “Writer’s Block.”) “I’m not interested in spiritual stuff. I just want to write stories.” A friend—a thoughtful, church-going friend—said this to me in passing the other day. Since she couldn’t hear my internal temper-tantrum, I’ll give it here: What in tarnation is more spiritual than …
Four Excuses Not to Write Spiritual Memoir, and One Invitation Read More »
The real subject of autobiography is not one’s experience but one’s consciousness. Memoirists use the self as a tool. –Patricia Hampl Perhaps because I’m entering my twenty-third year of teaching writing, I’m getting curmudgeonly about memoir. I still revere fine examples in the genre, but the vast majority of memoir seems myopic and disengaged. Published …
Recently, while reading yet another volume of Philip Zaleski’s Best Spiritual Writing, I grew increasingly annoyed at essay after essay of heady language about grandiose meditations and abstract ethical conundrums. My spiritual life, lived out as I potty-train my daughter, lift canned tomatoes from a boiling bath, struggle to remain a loving member of my …
When I teach, I often ask the question, “What’s at stake for you in this story?” I’m not alone; it’s a common question in the world of writing. Students are puzzled by it, however, and usually ask me to explain. Really I’m looking for the intersection between the writer’s heart and the words on the …
Perhaps the most important question for every creative writer to ask—and definitely the hardest question to answer—is “What’s at stake for me?” For writing to work well, the writer must care deeply. On the surface this question seems simplistic; our care is instinctive, compelling, and unspoken. In practice, the journey through revision is an excavation …
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 …
I’m a tender-hearted gardener. When last year’s cherry tomatoes reseed themselves, I don’t have the heart to pull them out. And so I end up with an abundance of late-ripening cherry tomatoes. What to do? Make tomato sauce. But cherry tomatoes are a hassle to peal, even after blanching, so I choose the lazy route, …
In Vivian Gornick’s The Situation and the Story, she writes: The subject of autobiography is always self-definition, but it cannot be self-definition in the void. The memoirist, like the poet and the novelist, must engage with the world, because engagement makes experience, experience makes wisdom, and finally it’s the wisdom—or rather the movement toward it—that …
If we show up in our stories as a character, our memoirs are stronger. Why? A reader entering a story needs shoes to walk around in and a pair of lenses to see through. We are embodied creatures. Even in the two-dimensional world of language, we need bodies or, at the very least, personality. Every …