Tag Archives: writing conferences

Another Tip for Writing Memoir

Infusing ordinary lives with detail makes story, Marilyn Abildskov*  told us at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival in July. She presented several  examples where authors framed their stories around the everyday details of life.

One example, the “action detail” of washing dishes, propelled me to “free associate.”  In Tobias Wolff’s short story, “Say Yes,” washing dishes frames a story about a couple that ends up depicting their relationship. What starts out as cordial finishes in anger. The readers can hear it and feel it by how the tone of the conversation heightens and the clatter of dishes and pots intensifies.

As I listened to Marilyn’s presentation, I remembered when I used to dry the dishes for one of my older sisters. Our “cordial” relationship would begin to unravel when I stated swatting the “washing” sister with my dish towel. I heard my dad say, “One of you will end up crying.”

I saw the green linoleum of that kitchen which made me remember dreary Saturday mornings on my hands and knees waxing that floor with Johnson’s paste wax. Which made me remember how mad I’d get that it was I who had to do that task every Saturday.

But then I remembered, as a reward I would be allowed to drive the family car that day.  A ’54 baby-blue Plymouth, a four-door sedan with a black top. New. Sleek. Upscale for a minister’s daughter. I’d take a few friends to the beach, slather up in baby oil, and get bronzed.

And that memory jumped me to a Cancun experience in 2009. We were having a sisters’ week at a timeshare. The first day, during a welcome orientation, skin spa promoters presented their services. One sister and I made appointments for a skin analysis and something that looked like a facial vacuuming.

After the treatment, the aesthetician removed a piece of paper from a folder. “Did you spend much time on the beach growing up?”

With warm memories of heat beating on my eyelids, baby oil seeping into my skin, sand filtering through my fingers, and waves folding gently in the distance, I said, “Oh yes, hours and hours on a Saturday, as a teenager, after I got the kitchen floor waxed.”

“That explains it,” she said, no nonsense. She flashed the paper for me to see. “Your extensive skin damage.” I saw a photo of some sort of x-ray that probed the skin layers in my face.

Shocking.  Uneven shadings. Darkened ominous patches.  Sobering.

Making things worse, she slipped another piece of paper out for my perusal. “This is a projection of what you’ll look like as you age.”  An image of an older me. A sun-wrinkled face. Sagging, drawn.

I recall thinking I’d have to remember to age with grace, to smile my age away.

English: Women washing dishes under a bridge a...

Is this how you wash dishes?

So you see how the simple detail of “washing dishes” can not only “frame” a story, but can lead you to many other stories. Try it.  Do a five-minute free write: write “washing dishes “on the top of a blank sheet of paper, and make a list of memories you have, starting with washing dishes.

See where you end up. Then start writing.

*Marilyn Abildskov, a frequent teacher at the festival, is the author of The Men in my Country, a memoir of living in Japan, and lives in the Bay Area where she teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Saint Mary’s College of California.

Photo credit: Wikipedia / Women washing dishes under a bridge across a river near Bukittinggi Nederlands.

“What’s Love Got to Do with It? A Field Guide to the…

Sentence in Poetry and Prose” was the catchy title faculty member Juliet Patterson chose for the week session I just completed at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival. The festival, held on the University of Iowa‘s campus in Iowa City, is enjoying its twenty-sixth year.

Starting in 2001, I’ve attended the festival seven times and taken thirteen courses. It should be clear that I love it, everything about it: the four-hour drive from my skyscraper life through corn fields to a small city sloping downhill off I-80; the impressive Pentacrest (former capitol building of Iowa, flanked by four majestic rectangular buildings); the L-shaped, tree-shaded, pedestrian mall featuring boutiques, bars, bookstores, and restaurants; plus the variety of courses, the excellence of faculty, and the diversity of classmates.

The first years I took courses on writing memoir. Then I branched out into classes on writing wild, humor, and essays, followed by more specific subjects as writing the scene, showing not telling, and finding my voice.

So, this year was time for getting down to basics-the sentence. And how better to do that than spending time with a poet/teacher and poetry students. They know words, the importance of use and placement of nouns and verbs, dependent and independent clauses, syntactical devices. And much more.

Juliet started us at the beginning–diagramming sentences to make us aware of what part of the sentence each word plays and progressed through inspiring examples of sentence writing from poets like Robert Frost and Elizabeth Bishop and prose writers Tim O’Brien and Barbara Kingsolver.

And, at a writing festival, what do you think you’d find in a Beadology shop? If you can get past all the colorful beads, you’ll find festival students from all classes giving a three-minute reading on Open Mic night. I was one who got stuck in the shop and bought a silk pink and black long scarf from Karen Kubby, featured below in a slide show.

At the reading, I presented the ostomy story from my memoir Caring Lessons. Afterwards, one older man said, “Wow…I had no idea. My mom was a nurse and I still had no real idea of what nurses do.”

Exactly. That’s why we nurses have to write.

If I’ve made your fingers long for a pen or keyboard, you must plan to go to Iowa yourself. To give you an inside look at what you could experience there, travel along with me on this pictorial representation that I’ll call, simply, Iowa.  No words, just images. See what feelings bubble up.

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Thanks to Juliet (below, striped tank, black shoulder bag) and classmates (one is missing), our group jelled well and were appreciative and supportive of each others’ work.

After class on our final night, a few of us lingered. “Does anyone want to do dinner?” Juliet asked. It clearly was hard to part. We went to Masala for Indian food. We sat around an old fashioned oak table, extended with two leaves to accommodate our group, making it feel much like a family dinner.

As the food was starting to come, Juliet asked the straw-hatted man above if he would say grace. He agreed, and we spontaneously formed a circle with our hands. He intoned his opening words with a palpable heartfelt resonance, “God of all peoples…”

So what’s love got to do with it? I already know. What do you think?