A few years ago, I went to hear author and now presidential candidate Marianne Williamson speak. She was describing a conference she held on race relations in Los Angeles. She said that tension was rising in the room when a white man stood up and angrily addressed an African-American woman.
“We’ve heard about all of this injustice again and again!” he yelled. “This is not helping anything. Why can’t we move on?”
So you want to write about your life, but let’s face it—you’re afraid to share personal stories that involve people you know. Your experiences are populated with your loved ones and this is what’s stopping you. You can’t share your story without including the good, the bad, and the ugly, and those can come in the form of friends and family.
How do you write the truth without alienating your entire social network?
Bring to mind someone you know who seems to have it all. You know the kind—the Eternal Optimist, the friend with the Midas Touch, the Big Man on Campus.
Someone like Kim, who was the lead singer at the church I attended. She was talented and vivacious, with a powerhouse voice and energy that lit up the stage. Week after week she performed with a smile on her face while I slouched half-asleep in the pew wondering how she did it.
I’m from Holland, Michigan, and when I was a kid, my grandma taught me a children’s rhyme in Dutch. She didn’t speak Dutch fluently, but her parents had and this little ditty was one of the things she remembered.
She wasn’t completely sure of the meaning, just that it was something about a cart before a horse.
Years ago, when I was still shell-shocked from learning of my husband’s infidelity and angry that I had become a divorced woman, I went out to dinner with two friends. Both were divorced, so we had that in common. But one was talking easily about co-hosting her son’s graduation party with her Ex and his new wife—the woman he’d left her for.
She barely even rolled her eyes when she said his name!
How’s this for a conundrum? I spent eight years writing a book about divorce, then when I finally reached those two magic words I’d been certain would never materialize on the page—the end—I discovered that I was expected to talk about it. A lot.
In my mind, once I put the story on paper, I’d never again have to relate this difficult time in my life. If someone had a question about my past, I could point them toward the nearest bookstore and say “Read the book.” I could move on to writing happier, made-up stories.
If you know me at all, you know that I like a good dose of woo-woo in my world.
I believe in following my intuition, prioritizing my spiritual practices, and recognizing divine messages. This is the lens through which I find inspiration and make decisions. It’s also, to me, a way of having fun.
I’ll admit, it’s an odd form of fun that can show up in strange ways.
The dedication in my memoir reads: to my mother, and to all single mothers, who are doing the very best they can.
In my book I wrote, in part, about the challenges I faced going through an unexpected divorce and how many of those experiences helped me appreciate what my own mother went through as a single mom.
Last week, I wrote about how ‘Keeping it Real’ can be hurting your writing. I shared the reminder that if our goal as writers is to create dramatic action (and of course that’s the goal!) then we need to remember that fiction is not reality. It’s concentrated, intensified reality.
I told the story of my humiliating attempt, at age nine, to jump off the high dive at the local pool. Both that story and the idea of turning real-life events into fiction elicited some great responses that are too good not to pass on.
I heard the word “springboard” the other day and it made me flashback to the summer I was nine years old and went off the high dive for the first time at the community pool.
Except that I didn’t. What really happened was pure humiliation: I climbed the long ladder for what felt like ages, shuffled to the edge of the diving board, looked down, and froze. Uh-uh. There was no way I was jumping. With shaking knees, I backed up and started down the ladder, which was a slow process because I had to wait for all the kids behind me to back up too. And then I went home.
👉 Enjoy dedicated writing space just steps from Lake Michigan
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