Cathy Zane's Blog, page 5

How We Form Families

Guest Blog by Barbara Stark-Nemon

Nearly a year ago, my nephew and his husband welcomed their first child into the world.  Five years after legally marrying, they established their careers, bought a home, and researched a number of ways to create the family they both wanted. They chose surrogacy as a means to have children, and selected their surrogate in an extensive reciprocal vetting process. They joined her a week before the baby was born so that they could attend the birth. Our entire extended family were ecstatic and eagerly waited to welcome baby Abigail.

How times have changed.  The sentences I’ve just written above would have been unimaginable thirty-five years ago, when I began trying to have a family and experienced infertility. Most people who had children then were married— to members of the opposite sex. Legal same-sex marriage didn’t exist. Adoption was only available in my state through public, licensed agencies with long waiting lists, and then almost entirely for the purpose of placing children with heterosexual married couples.  Private adoptions were legal in only three states in the U.S. While creating pregnancy, using sperm donation, was well established as a means of working around male infertility, births through in-vitro fertilization were still rare, considered by most insurance companies as experimental, and therefore not covered.

The early days of surrogacy as a means to have children (the mid 1980s to early 1990s) were a “wild west” of legal wrangles for both traditional surrogacy (the surrogate carries a baby resulting from her egg and the intended father’s sperm) and gestational surrogacy (the surrogate carries a pregnancy resulting from implantation of an embryo genetically unrelated to her.) The legal and financial barriers to unregulated surrogacy were formidable, and there were no reputable clearinghouses for information or resources. Highly publicized cases of courts reversing decisions terminating parental rights left adoptive parents and parents hopeful of using surrogacy to form families, frightened and insecure about their futures.

New gender identity policies and LGBT laws, changes in marriage laws, and particularly, advances in reproductive technologies have now allowed infertile heterosexual couples, same-sex couples and single individuals desiring to produce children to do so—legally and openly. There are pre-birth orders identifying parents of the babies born to surrogates, and law firms and agencies entirely dedicated to the surrogacy process.   There are organizations dedicated to the ethics of surrogacy. At the same time that all these changes have complicated social and legal definitions of family relationships, they have broadened the acceptability of different family constellations, and brought critically important conversations into the mainstream.

These facts underlie a major theme in my recent novel, Hard Cider, which tells the story of a woman who must confront a shocking piece of news involving surrogacy, just as she is trying to launch her reinvention as a hard cider producer in the northern Michigan land that she loves.  Her resilience, often tested, must be summoned once again.  The notion that we form family in different ways is also important in my first novel, Even in Darkness, historical fiction that takes place over the whole of the 20th century in Germany— through the world wars and the Holocaust.

The ethical and emotional consequences of producing children and families in new ways, is a theme I’ve explored in my own life, with friends, with other family members, and through the fiction I  read and write.  Infertility, alternative means of forming a family— including adoption, surrogacy, and children born outside of marriage— have all presented challenges to my own self-determination, my definition of family, as well as to others’ near and dear to me.  What are the ripple effects of those challenges? What emotional history is pulled into consideration?  These types of questions are no longer simply great fodder for fiction, but reflect the reality of the expanded ways we now create family.  I wish for my great niece a secure and happy place in this new reality.

Below is a list of books that relate to the themes of infertility, surrogacy, adoption, and/or  how we form families.  Enjoy!

Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love,  by Dani Shapiro

The Doctor and the Stork: A Memoir of Modern Medical Babymaking, by K.K. Goldberg

The End of Miracles,  by Monica Starkman

The Husband’s Secret, by  Liane Moriarty

The Choices We Make, by Karma Brown

Little Fires Everywhere, by Celeste Ng

The Orphan Daughter, Cari Noga

 

Barbara Stark-Nemon lives, writes, swims, cycles and does fiber art in Ann Arbor and Northport, MI. She is the author of the award-winning novels Even in Darkness, (2015, She Writes Press) and Hard Cider. (September 2018, She Writes Press). Stark-Nemon is a contributing blogger at Huffington Post (https://www.huffingtonpost.com/author...) and author of award-winning short stories and flash fiction. Learn more at www.barbarastarknemon.com  contact: bstarknemon@gmail.com

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Journeys: The Inside, The Outside

Guest blog by Mary K. Jensen  

The first time it happened I was not prepared. I was sitting atop a high stool, reading to a roomful of women who smiled and laughed as they enjoyed excerpts from “Rudy’s Rules for Travel,” the story of our marriage of opposites meeting the world. I had just begun to read my account of a treacherous, but bargain elephant ride selected by my risk-taking, frugal  husband, when I spotted a young woman in the first row. She was not smiling. As I paused and glanced her way, her hand shot up:  “Why didn’t you leave him?  I mean, didn’t you think about it?  He was always getting you into danger, and you seemed so afraid..…”

I answered with one of those responses that, while flippant, had a measure of truth. “Hey, let’s face it.  I was always either packing or unpacking.  I didn’t have time to leave him.” Fleshed out, that was code for “Of course I thought about that every day I traveled with impulsive Rudy, but then we’d get off the elephant—or the broken-down bus or the tiny bemo—and find a sweet garden of bougainvillea, and glasses of a local white wine. All my mentally rehearsed threats (sample: “One more hair-raising day with you and I fly back home”) would vanish.”

As you know, travel has each of these moments–the times it brings us lovingly closer to our journey mates, and the times it makes us wonder what the penalty for murder is in this particular country. At the very least, travel tells us who we are in relationship to this fellow journeyer, the one we thought we knew so well…but that was back home when we knew each other, home where the electricity and the hot water and the toilets usually worked.

Now, I think about that young woman and her question every time I do a presentation. Why did I stay in this nomadic marriage of opposites?  Maybe it was the adventure of it: on the Italian autostrade the car could veer to an unplanned itinerary and land in France. Maybe it was the growth in it for me, so many years his junior, so naïve about the world and its cultures.  Maybe I was simply caught up in the tornado that was Rudy. But if I had to bet, I would say it was the blue eyes that were responsible for my loyalty. After my chastising him yet again for his recklessness, his head would go down, but the deep blue eyes would look up, straight at me.  “You have to admit I’m cute though, aren’t I?  and—I loves you, girl.”

* * *

This summer several books present relationships in the context of travel, a combination likely to both attract and intrigue the reader.  I’ll try to avoid spoiler alert material here, because the books in part sometimes read like good mysteries. Travel and journey mates—anything can happen.

In Driving Miss Norma, Tim Bauerschmidt introduces us to his ninety-year-old mother who chooses the open road rather than cancer treatment, and embarks on her journey with him, his wife and a dog. Mother and child lines fade as three adults and their pet bond during the ultimate of adventures—finding each other and new life.

Tracey Carisch‘s Excess Baggage: One Family’s Around the World Search for Balance is about alluring places, but also about evolving relationships, both within the “run away” family itself and in those friendships the family makes in eighteen months spent around the world.  A refreshing feature: Tracey has her most oh-so-vividly described meltdown(s) before leaving for the journey.  From then on, she is free to tell us all about the others.

Dena Moes tackles interwoven questions of travel, marriage and family in The Buddha Sat Right Here: A Family Odyssey Through India and Nepal. Theirs is a spiritual journey, a pilgrimage rooted in the ties that bind them.

And, if you would rather concentrate cleanly on romantic Italian villages and delectable pasta dishes, check out Frances Mayes’ summer read, See You in the Piazza.  It doesn’t breathe a word about tangled and conflicted relationships on the journey. What could be wrong with that?

 

     Mary K. Jensen is author of the memoir, Rudy’s Rules for Travel: Life Lessons from Around the Globe. Named by Kirkus Reviews as one of the Best Books of 2018, this odyssey of a World War II veteran has to date earned seven national awards. Jensen is proud to be alive after two battles with aggressive cancer and decades of travel with her irrepressible spouse. She hopes you will visit her website,  www.marykjensen.com

 

 

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Writing Essential Truth, Regardless of Genre

Guest blog by Betsy Graziani Fasbinder

More than a decade ago I attended a workshop offered by one of my favorite authors, Pam Houston. Houston offered many nuggets of wisdom that have served me well, but one thing she said has informed my writing and coaching in a profound way: Everything I write is true and some of it actually happened.

At first, this statement troubled me. I feared it offered license for falsehood, particularly in memoir. I resent those—be they writers, journalists, politicians, or friends—who embellish or twist facts for their nefarious, greedy, or merely ego driven purposes. It enrages me when I hear of memoirists who have misrepresented their experiences (or straight up lied) in order to make the bestseller list. It’s cheap and tells me that they didn’t trust their writing enough to create an engaging enough story without the lies.

I learned that Houston’s words were not a license for falsehood. Rather, she’s calling writers (and indeed all people) to a higher level of truth than cannot be embodied by facts alone. I’ve come to think of this higher level of honesty as “essential truth”.

Essential Truth in Memoir Writing

As a writer of both fiction and memoir and a coach for writers across the genres, this concept of essential truth has become a yardstick by which I measure not only simple accuracy, but a deeper level of authenticity in storytelling. Essential truth is as much about the intention of storytelling as about its factualness.

In memoir, essential truth plays out in a few ways. It means that, of course, I’m telling The Truth. I’m not going to write that I was a street junky in Paris because I think that story will sell, if that’s not the truth of my experience. Let’s file this under the “duh” category.

Beyond the “duh” of lying and falsely embellishing, memoirists encounter nuances to the notion of truth.

Memory can be fuzzy. Nobody can remember verbatim the words spoken in an exchange from yesterday, much less from years ago or from childhood. And yet, dialogue is a vital storytelling device. Sometimes the sequence of events or the exact locations of where we were when we had a conversation may be muddy in memory, or frankly, don’t matter. For reasons of privacy or legality, we may choose to protect the identities and privacy of people, so we change names. We might make composite characters out of groups of neighbors or co-workers that aren’t central to the story. We may omit mention of real people or events not integral to the story that we are telling. We may combine events or omit them or for the sake of the pacing or dramatic arc of the story.

If I’m fabricating dialogue, changing names and places, and combining and omitting characters and events, can I still write an “essentially true” memoir?

In short, yes.

Essential truth remains intact when the changes are minor, don’t alter the story’s trajectory, and don’t misrepresent the people, events, or experiences of one’s life.  It makes little difference to the essential truth of a story if a conversation took place on a Tuesday or a Thursday or if we combine several conversations on a topic into a single scene. If the dialogue has been manufactured, but the gist of the conversation was represented with the intention of honesty, the core of the story remains essentially true.

Essential truth in memoir writing, as in life, is about integrity. Am I changing minor things (and letting readers know that in a disclaimer or author’s note) for the purpose of the essential truth of the story? Or am I slanting, twisting, or fabricating for some other gain?

Essential truth starts with each author being honest, first with herself then with her readers.

What about Essential Truth in Fiction?

Truth in fiction writing may seem like an oxymoron. Essential truth is also about artistic integrity. Mary Dorian Russell’s Children of God is a masterpiece of science fiction. Her characters travel through time and space and live amongst indigenous beings on other planets. It’s one of the truest stories I’ve ever read. This book is so “true” that it made my bones hum. She writes with passion about the deepest truths—faith, trauma, survival, love—that her fictional characters explore. Through her fiction, Russell writes to our most essential truth —  the truth of what it’s like to be alive.

To write truth in memoir as well as in fiction is to write without gimmicks, agenda, or ego. It is to write an emotional and experiential landscape that rings true in the human soul.

 

Betsy Graziani Fasbinder is an award-winning genre jumping author. Her publications include a novel, Fire & Water, a memoir, Filling Her Shoes, and a how-to, From Page to Stage: Inspiration, Tools, and Public Speaking Tips for Writers. She provides both in-person and virtual writing and speaking coaching to writers and other creatives of all kinds.  Visit her at http://www.betsygrazianifasbinder.com/

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Cozying Up To Mysteries

Guest blog by Bonnie Monte

What is it about cozy murder mysteries that devotees of the genre love? Surely it’s not the murder itself. In my experience, cozy lovers are some of the least violent (and brainiest) people I know. What engages their sharp little minds is the puzzle, the dance with the writer of deciphering the clues, discerning which are red herrings, and keeping up with the sleuth as she puts it all together. Ideally, the reader shouldn’t guess the truth before the sleuth does. After all, figuring out the answer too soon spoils the fun and makes finishing the book pointless.

In my mystery, The Sleeping Lady, I endeavored to provide enough clues to make the ending believable. But I also tried to misdirect the reader, casting suspicion on several other characters before the true villain was revealed. I had a good time setting the action in the northern California town of San Anselmo, where I used to live. As part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it’s certainly sophisticated, but its bucolic environs and intimate size make it perfect for a cozy. Besides a small-town setting, another hallmark of a cozy is an amateur sleuth who feels compelled to unmask the murderer even though it’s not his or her job to do so. And perhaps most important, no gore. Yes, someone is dead, but that mayhem happens off the page..

Perhaps the most classic of cozies are Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple series. The dear elderly lady is certainly an amateur, but her remarkable insights into human nature makes her a sleuth to be reckoned with. A Murder Is Announced is one of my favorites. First published in 1950, it hasn’t lost its luster, still offering a delightful glimpse into English village life and the foibles of the monied class. As the title suggests, an odd invitation summons guests to attend a murder at a country home. But the event turns out to be not a festive murder mystery dinner when an actual death takes place, befuddling the hostess and the guests. Accident? Of course not, as Miss Marple deftly proves.

For a more modern-day take on the cozy formula, I like Sandra Balzo’s Maggy Thorsen series. Maggy, recently divorced, runs a coffeehouse in a fictional Wisconsin town. Uncommon Grounds is the first in the series and has Maggy just launching her new business. When one of the partners turns up dead in the shop, our heroine begins investigating, sometimes clashing with the local sheriff. Despite them butting heads, there’s the hint of a romance in their future. What I like about Maggy is that she’s a thoroughly 21st-century woman—entrepreneurial, independent, and funny. Recurring characters feel like old friends as the series progresses.

A cozy that had me laughing out loud is The Crepes of Wrath by Tamara Myers. With similarly punny titles, all the books in this series feature Magdalena Yoder, a Mennonite who runs a bed and breakfast in Pennsylvania Dutch country. How’s that for a new take on crime-solving? A local cook whose food is, shall we say, not the best, is poisoned by a batch of crepes, and Magdalena investigates. Good thing, too, since the local police chief isn’t the sharpest guy around. Magdalena may be religious, but that doesn’t stop her from cavorting with assorted men and generally getting into hilarious predicaments as she noses her way to unraveling the clues. Quirky characters and an impossibly offbeat sleuth make this series tremendous fun. And since Magdalena runs a B&B, recipes are included in every book.

In real life of course, murder is tragic and horrific. But cozy mysteries bypass all that, providing an entertaining read that gives our brains a workout.

 

 Bonnie Monte is the author of the cozy mystery, The Sleeping Lady. Learn more at her website https://bonniemonte.com/

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You Can Take The Girl Out of the South…

Growing up in the South yet living on the West Coast for nearly 40 years, I resonate with the idea that you can never fully “take the South out of the girl.” I still feel Southern in many ways, as if the culture were in my DNA, even though it isn’t. My parents were transplanted Northerners, so my experience of being Southern came less from them and more from my own experiences in school, with friends and their families, and of course, in the pages of books. Classics like Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell gave me a rich picture of the Antebellum South and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee exposed the dark side of class and racial bigotry of the depression-era South.

More recently, Kathryn Stockett’s The Help portrayed the South of my childhood in the 1960’s. While we didn’t have “help,” I knew families that did. Memories of the Civil Rights battles of that time are threaded into the fabric of my being and this book resonated deeply with the pain I felt about the injustice that existed all around me. Stockett did a masterful job of weaving together the inconsistencies of that time period – the familial bonds between whites and their “help” as well as the exploitation of Black Americans. This book is on my list of favorites.

Another powerful depiction of Southern culture in the 1960’s was Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees. The white, motherless protagonist Lily had been raised by her black nanny/mother figure, Rosaleen. When Rosaleen is beaten in a racial incident, Lily joins her in fleeing town and Lily’s abusive father, with a plan to travel to a town that might offer clues to her mother’s death. This was a powerful coming-of-age story about healing past trauma and the power of love and connection.

On a lighter note, when it comes to Southern “beach reads,” Mary Kay Andrews is my go-to, hands down. I’ve read all of her books written under that pen name, and have thoroughly enjoyed them all! As I described in Blog #7: Girls Just Want to Have Fun, her books don’t surprise me as much as bring me comfort and enjoyment. They are engaging and fun and remind me of the things I still miss things about the South. I’ve really enjoyed her more recent books, The Weekenders and The High Tide Club, which have tackled some deeper and darker issues than her earlier books.  Still, I think my favorite is Ladies Night. The therapist in me loved the themes explored in this book, and the setting was so much like my hometown that I felt transported back in time!

The newest on my list of Southern authors is Lisa Patton. Her Dixie series of three books (Whistlin’ Dixie in a Nor’easter, Yankee Doodle Dixie, and Southern as a Second Language) was as Southern as it gets. The protagonist, Leelee Satterfield, reluctantly leaves her hometown of Memphis and follows her husband to Vermont, only to have him desert her, forcing Leelee to run the inn they purchased on her own. In the second of this series, she returns to Memphis where the welcome home is less than welcoming, and in the final book of the trilogy, things start to look hopeful until some unexpected events occur. I think this final book was my favorite, primarily because I was so invested in the characters. I was rooting for Leelee and desperately hoping for some promising or happy ending. If you want to spend some time with a Southern Belle, this series will satisfy!

Patton’s most recent book, Rush, took me back to my late 70’s sorority days and the amazing camaraderie, comfort, and safety I found there. It also explored some important and relevant social justice issues within the Greek system of the past and present. It’s reminiscent of Stockett’s The Help, but set 50 years later, with racism and class inequities still very much alive. I found myself growing attached to the characters, especially Miss Pearl, and found it hard to say goodbye – I’m hoping a sequel might be in the works!

Like the title of Lisa Patton’s third book suggests, “Southern” really can be a second language and a culture shock for those who haven’t lived in it. Are you a Southerner or not?  And do you have a favorite Southern book or character?

 

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Sticky Wicket Memoirs

Guest blog by Francine Falk-Allen

My book, Not a Poster Child: Living Well with a Disability – a Memoir, was challenging to write, taking me several years. I revised it eighteen times, and then revamped it with a capable editor. But it wasn’t just the writing and editing that was difficult to accomplish, it was navigating emotional territory and old wounds that I was divulging to the public, and writing about people from my life who might read the material, plus making the topic of disability palatable. I had to consider repeatedly how I wanted to tactfully express the truth of my story, and I re-wrote several sections that pointed out how others (mostly strangers) had been inconsiderate, or parts that conveyed my occasionally annoyed attitude. I emphasized humor whenever I could, though disability is not intrinsically funny. In this process, I discovered what may be a deeper compassion waiting to evolve in myself; I evolved with the writing.

Other memoirs have traversed rough territory successfully as well.

Vanya Erickson’s Boot Language is a memoir about a dysfunctional family dynamic, with a bad dad who kept her and her siblings wary if not terrified much of the time while growing up.  Her descriptive capability is remarkable, and I could easily envision their California home, their mountain retreat, the horses she rode to escape her fears, and her father’s threatening and critical presence in the scenes she created.  I was also impressed by her ability to keep me in a state of heightened apprehension:  What’s he going to do next? – even though in fact there was not constant physical abuse.  She truthfully told her experience as it happened to her, and described the emotional toll it took, without saying, “This took an emotional toll upon me.” She told the wrenching story in a way that did not involve self-pity or a maudlin attitude.

In Off the Rails, Susan Burrowes recounts her teenage daughter’s severe struggle with addiction to drugs and alcohol.  Susan chose an unusual form to tell this heartbreaking story, that of alternating edited journal entries written by herself and her daughter as they made this hard journey through a couple of years. I at first wondered if the format would work, but it flowed seamlessly; I could not put it down, despite my not being a parent.  I was so invested with all the family members, and cried with relief and joy at one reunion scene when I, too, was on pins and needles waiting to see how a mother-daughter meeting would go.  Susan’s honesty, humor, personal expression and insights were the invisible glue that shaped a vivid portrayal of the angst, the worry, the search for solutions, the devastation of not knowing how this crisis would resolve, creating a narrative that pulled me into the family dynamic. Her ability to craft in this way and also be respectful of her daughter made the book (a potential guide for other parents on navigating similar experiences) not only a revealing saga of the issues but a courageous lesson in familial loyalty and perseverance.

In a very different kind of book, What is the What?, back in 2006, Dave Eggers partially fictionalized the autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng, one of the “Lost Boys of Sudan,” who fled their country while it was overrun by militias, essentially an ethnic cleansing which obliterated entire villages in front of children who hid terrified in grain bins and trees. Achak told his story to Mr. Eggers, who then composed it. Achak was only six when his tribulations started, so all conversations were manufactured based on his rough memory of the subsequent years. Situations were elaborated but represented the truth of the story, illustrating events that happened to most refugees if not directly to Achak. Thousands of orphans and other refugees walked mostly barefooted, a thousand miles across the desert to Ethiopia, pursued not only by men but by wild animals, eventually settling in a refugee camp where they at least had food, water and shelter. Although the book covered heartbreaking material, there was joy and hope carrying the tale, along with cultural insights. Gradually, some Sudanese emigrated to the US to start new lives, including Achak, having lived at the refugee camp for decades. When he obtained a home and work in the US, he started college, and then came home one evening to be beaten and robbed – by American blacks, desperate and disdainful of the foreign ways of Africans.  Although the story is a difficult one, and the book walks the line between novel and memoir, it illuminates the indefatigability of the human spirit.  This was another page-turner for me, and with its straightforward style, helped inspire me to write my own memoir.

 

Authors Susan Burrowes, Vanya Erickson and Francine Falk-Allen, who are all finalists for various best book awards, will present a memoir panel discussion entitled “Writing the Hard Stuff,” moderated by She Writes Press publisher, Brooke Warner, at the Bay Area Book Festival on Saturday, May 4, 2019, at 10:00am, Shattuck Boiler Room, Hotel Shattuck, 2086 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA. 

https://www.FrancineFalk-Allen.com  Facebook: FrancineFalk-Allen, Author

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Writing Down the Soul

Guest Blog by Mary E. Plouffe Ph.D.

When my sister died suddenly, unexpectedly, I should have had all the books I needed. I was a clinical psychologist with 20 year of experience. My office was filled with books on adult trauma and grief, and child therapy texts to help me console my three-year-old niece whose mother was suddenly gone.

But none of it helped.  I’d sit, reading page after page without remembering a word. None of it made sense. It was logical, sequential, practical.  And what was going on inside me was chaos.

The first book that made any sense to me was a small paperback I got from the local Center for Grieving Children (Companion through the Darkness:  Inner Dialogues on Grief, Stephanie Ericsson, 1993). It was written by a 35- year old woman, pregnant with her first child when her husband died suddenly of a heart attack.  It had nothing to do with my loss, but It had everything to do with my pain.

Ericsson wrote each chapter in two fonts; one a voice of descriptive explanation, framing the topic at hand. The second, in italics, told the experiential story: fluid, wilder, a rageful journal entry, a crazed letter to her beloved, or a moment of finding herself frozen in the world.

Profound grief is one of the most primitive, dislocating experiences any of us will have. What we reach for, what helps the most, is knowing one thing: others have felt this devastation and survived. Others have walked this treacherous ground and found a path. It does not matter that their path is different, their loss unique. What matters is sharing the human experience of terror and despair that defines profound grief. Knowing that there are words for this pain grounds us and gives us a floor to stand on as we face the unknown.

This may be why memoir remains the most powerful way to write about grief.  And why memoirs that do it best, endure. C.S. Lewis’s 1961 classic, A Grief Observed, is a profoundly personal, but universal story. When Lewis loses his wife to cancer, he loses his deeply held Christian faith as well. His story resonates with anyone who has experienced how one profound loss can upend everything we believe, all the truths that we hold dear about ourselves and the world. Walking with Lewis as he finds his way back to his God is an exercise in trust. If he can find something to hold onto again, so can I.

Joan Didion has written two books that articulate grief in profound ways.   A Year of Magical Thinking (2005) is her memoir of the year following her husband’s death. She dances with insanity, feels her mind losing hold on reality, and describes it with unflinching honesty.  No one reveals this aspect of grief better. The wondering if it will drive you insane, or, at times, if it already has. In her deepest pain, she lives in magical thinking, flitting between denial and despair, desperately trying to wind reality back in time, living in a myth that she can undo the truth, then wondering if that means she is losing her mind.

A year and a half after her husband’s death, their only child, daughter Quintana, dies at age 39. It takes years before this story is written.  Blue Nights (2011) follows a stream of consciousness of grief, the wailing, wounded words that often cannot form a sentence, but somehow convey meaning. It is a different loss, this out-of-sequence burying of a child. And the writer’s language reflects that brokenness. Nothing is ordered or logical, yet the reader understands.

Two other grief classics have stood the test of time. Harold Kushner (When Bad Things Happen to Good People, 1981), a conservative rabbi, watches progeria condense decades of his son’s life into months, his whole life into a few short years.  His faith collides with the tragedy unfolding before him, and he struggles to find reason and God.

At the other end of life, Morrie Schwartz invites his student to visit, to talk with him about the process of his own dying. Tuesdays with Morrie (Albom, Mitch, 1997) invites us in to those visits, and in his gentle confrontation with pain, and dignity, Morrie teaches us how to grieve ourselves.

These books all taught me something about grief. But more importantly, they gave me the courage to choose memoir when it was my turn to write. And when I’m asked why, I answer with a simple truth. We learn best from story, from myth and parable and oral histories that resonate with the deepest human experiences.  We find comfort and courage in that resonance, and can find our own way home from there.

 

Mary E. Plouffe Ph.D.  is the author of I Know it in My Heart: Walking through Grief with a Child. Visit her at www.maryeplouffe.com or look for essays and musings on grief at Mary E Plouffe author on Facebook.

 

 

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Name That Character

Guest Blog by Ellen Notbohm

“We called him Barney for short,” Mark Twain relates in Following the Equator. “We couldn’t use his real name, there wasn’t time.”

Long name, short name. Popular name, uncommon name. Family name, Biblical name, exotic name. Compound name, nickname, unusual-monogram name.

If you’re writing fiction, you won’t escape having to invent names for characters. Some authors find this fun, others agonize, still others wait for divine inspiration.

I excruciated over naming my real-life children and felt no different when naming the characters in my historical novel. Both are so permanent! Would the name fit the character, or should I bestow a name that deliberately did not fit? Does it have any unsavory associations that would be unfair to the character, or readers? Is it phonetic, or will readers be mispronouncing it in their heads all through the story?

Sometimes it felt like a riff on an old song. If you’re happy and you know it, overthink . . .

Maybe you’ll never get what one feisty ancestor of mine called “the frantic dithers” over character names like I did. But if you do, here are some avenues to explore.

1.  Wandering through cemeteries often yields unusual names you might not happen across in internet searches. I keep an A – Z list that includes Alfretta, Azilee, DeEtta, Doraettie, Elbryanna, Hansina, Icyphine, Lazette,  Leahdora, Phrosine, Royaldine, and Vyretta.

2.  The Social Security Administration maintains lists of baby names ranked by popularity for any year after 1879, from John and William and Mary and Anna in 1880, to Liam and Noah and Emma and Olivia in 2017.

For my historical novel The River by Starlight, I calculated a character’s birth year and consulted the SSA lists, going far enough down to find names that were interesting but not bizarre. Of course, there will always be the occasional character whose bizarre name is a necessary element of the story. Think Humbert Humbert (Lolita), Holly Golightly (Breakfast at Tiffany’s), Hannibal Lecter (The Silence of the Lambs), Willy Wonka.

3.  Browsing the US census records for the locality about which you’re writing can give you an interesting sense of both given names and surnames at the time, for people of all ages. As an indexer for the 1940 census, I was struck by the number of women named Edna, a name seldom given to girls today. Using internet sites such as Baby Name Wizard, you can see the curve over time of a name’s popularity. Edna peaked as a baby name in the 1880s, then declined steadily until virtually out of use by the 1980s. An author can manipulate the popularity (or unpopularity) of a name at a given time to work for or against a character.

4.  Surnames aren’t just surnames. Nineteenth century parents commonly gave babies their mother’s maiden name (or a grandparent’s surname) as a first name. Hence we have an ancestor named Bushrod Doggett. Look to your own family tree for possibilities.

5.  Parents across time have named children after particular character traits they hoped those children would embrace. In my family tree, we have women named Mindwell and Thankful. It inspired me to write this amusing excerpt from The River by Starlight:

Annie’s great-uncle and aunt believed all girls should be named Mary, and they inflicted that on their five daughters. Then they compounded the fright by giving them virtuous middle names. Annie ticks them off on her fingers. “Mary Faith, Mary Constance, Mary Patientia, Mary Arete, and, taking utter leave of their senses at the end, Mary Mindwell. The legend,” she relates, “is that Mindwell did not. Mind well. As an adult she went by Mamie, keeping enough of the two Ms to aggravate her parents while she enjoyed a long career in burlesque in Chicago.”

We see a similar trend in contemporary names with handles like Liberty, Verity, Justice, Trinity, Serenity, Faith, Harmony.

6.  Anyone remember phone books? Even before phone books, there were city directories, and they are rich sources of both given names and surnames. Many large-city directories going back as much as 150 years are now available online. Libraries, historical societies, and genealogical societies house many more, on microfilm and in hard copy.

7.  Websites abound that aggregate foreign surnames, handy if you need a name for your Finnish fisherman or Persian weaver.

And one more wise consideration from our sage Mark Twain: “…when a teacher calls a boy by his entire name, it means trouble.” (Eruption). Test run your character’s name out loud—with a holler, a growl, a simper, a laugh.

Does s/he answer?

 

An award-winning author in both nonfiction and fiction, Ellen Notbohm’s work has informed, inspired, and guided millions of readers in more than twenty languages. In addition to her acclaimed historical novel The River by Starlight and her globally renowned books on autism and, her articles and columns on such diverse subjects as history, genealogy, baseball, writing and community affairs have appeared in major publications and captured audiences on every continent.

The River by Starlight has been recognized with awards for historical, regional, and literary fiction. Its focus on maternal mental health and gender bias in the early 20th century explores a history rarely addressed in fiction.

Explore Ellen’s work and subscribe to her blogs and newsletter at www.ellennotbohm.com.

Connect through social media:

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Books and My Hero’s Journey

Guest Blog by Leah E. Reinhart

I am a true product of Oakland Public Schools. And that is not a compliment. When I attended in the mid-seventies and eighties, Oakland had the worst schools in the country and was one of the most violent cities as well. There wasn’t much room for studies when the main objective was trying to stay safe. No one knew much about the term anxiety back then, but you could say I probably had a lot of it. My safe haven was my friends and the need to be busy. It did not include reading.

I started going to the neighborhood church. They didn’t believe in reading books that were deemed evil, sexual, or anything scientific. Education was not for anyone. My mother allowed me to go to the church, but abhorred their philosophies. She was an avid reader and loved Stephen King and many more. She always encouraged me to read, but reading was difficult for me. Not only did I have anxiety and dyslexia, but also probably undiagnosed ADHD. I always had to be doing something that involved moving my body, and reading didn’t fall into that category.

I hated reading to the point where I would make up books and authors to create my own book reports in order to fulfill my reading assignments. It wasn’t until I screwed my life up with drugs, alcohol, and sex, and after leaving the church, that I found an interest in reading.  I was alone and pregnant at twenty-years of age and couldn’t quite make sense of how I ended up in this situation. I sought help with a therapist and through her recommendations, discovered self-help books. I was fascinated by the stories in these books. These people had screwed up like me and yet found a way to be successful. If they could do it, so could I.

The self-help books carried over into my career as a hairstylist. The salon I had been working in started a personal development program which involved reading and setting goals. I was amazed how things changed for me. I could set goals and achieve them fairly easily. My life was turning around. My screw ups weren’t defining me anymore.

Unbeknownst to me, I began my own hero’s journey. The self-help books led me to reading memoirs. I had an affinity to the unexplainable and psychology. I wanted to understand family dynamics. I had no clue what normal was or if it even existed. Reading memoirs showed me that I wasn’t alone. I knew from reading and my own personal experiences that patterns needed to be broken before any real change could happen. Thankfully, I did change the pattern, in my life and in my reading material.

One summer my favorite television series ended and I had nothing interesting to watch. I picked up Harry Potter the Goblet of Fire and dove in. I discovered fantasy. It had a perfect combination of family dysfunction with magic. It was then I also discovered late night reading — you know –the kind when you can’t sleep because you need to know what is going to happen next. I had read a few books before, like Jurassic Park, but nothing engaged me like this one. Then Jodi Picoult’s Leaving Time blew my mind.

That was the start of my expansion into different genres and the notion of writing my very own story. It was suggested by many of my hair clients to share my own personal journey. I started my memoir in 2009, the year my mother lost her battle with cancer. It took several years to bring it to life. June 2018 was the official birth of my first published book – Manifesting Me: A Story of Rebellion and Redemption.

Never in a million years would I have ever imagined writing or publishing a book. Now, I am in the process of writing a novel. I wish my mother were here to see her teachings weren’t for nothing. I have read more books in the last year and I have found my new passion. If it weren’t for others sharing their life stories, I wouldn’t have thought it possible for me to share mine.  Who knew that a girl with a marginal education and dyslexia would become an author and avid reader? Mother would be proud.

 

Leah E. Reinhart is a hair stylist and angel card reader turned author. When the market crashed and business was slow, her hair clients encouraged her to write a memoir after hearing some of her stories about her unusual childhood in Oakland, California. She started writing and a whole new journey began as she began to fall in love with writing and reading. Leah E. Reinhart is a mother of two and a wife, and currently works in her not-so-ordinary salon, Wellness Garden Tool Shed.

 

 

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Quite a Character

Characters are always an important part of any book, but they can often take a back seat to the story in a more plot-driven novel. Think about a suspenseful thriller or mystery where you become completely caught up in the twists and turns of the action – or a historical fiction where the real-life events are the main attraction. Characters certainly add depth and richness to these stories, but it is the narrative that is primary.

Character-driven novels, for me, demand a much slower pace. I want to savor them, taking time to really get to know the many facets of the character’s personality — their thoughts, hopes and dreams, their struggles, losses, failures and achievements. I’ve written about several novels in earlier blogs that developed rich, multifaceted characters. They were all books that I didn’t want to end because I didn’t want to say goodbye to the characters.

In Blog # 18, More Biblio-Books, I described that Loveday, the protagonist in Stephanie Butland’s The Lost for Words Bookshop, is a bookstore clerk and childhood trauma survivor who pays homage to her favorite novels by having their first lines tattooed on her body.  She has withdrawn from the world into books to keep herself safe from the risks inherent in relationships, a dilemma she confronts throughout the course of the book. Loveday was a wonderful, endearing protagonist and the story was heartwarming, poignant, and enjoyable.

In Blog # 21, Psychologically Minded, I talked about Gail Honeyman’s protagonist in Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine. A self-described “nutter,” Eleanor states that she is “…happiest in the background being left to my own devices,” and that “Asking for help was anathema to me.” But then an unlikely and compassionate friendship changes everything for her. Honeyman is masterful in unraveling Eleanor’s past trauma in a way that is both reassuring and surprising right to the end. This was a wonderful, uplifting read — laugh out loud funny at times, poignant at others. I came to love Eleanor and hated to say goodbye. This is one of those books I know will read again in the future – simply to “visit” with Eleanor again!

The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin was another book I found hard to leave behind. An independent bookstore owner, A. J., has become depressed and cantankerous since his wife died two years prior. Everything he has valued and lived for now seems lost. But then a wonderful cast of secondary characters, including a baby that is abandoned at his bookshop, incite and support a transformation in both A. J. and his bookstore.

Another book with a similar plot is The Story of Arthur Truluv by Elizabeth Berg. Also a widower, Arthur visits his wife daily at the local cemetery. On one such occasion, he meets and befriends a trouble teen, Maddy. As their friendship develops and Maddy experiences Arthur’s kindness to her and devotion to his deceased wife, she gives him the nickname, Truluv. I can’t imagine a more perfect nickname for this wonderful character. A quote from the book sums up Arthur’s nature for me: “Arthur thinks that, above all, aging means the abandonment of criticism and the taking on of compassionate acceptance.”

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce, is another late-in-life reckoning. Harold Fry sets out to mail a letter to a woman from his past who is dying, but then decides he must deliver it in person. So he just keeps on walking, completely unprepared for the 600 mile journey, and leaves his wife uninformed of his plan. He understandably encounters many difficulties and obstacles, but also experiences a flood of memories and insights about his life. A story of loss, regret, and transformation.

Do you have a favorite literary character? Has there been a character who was difficult for you to say goodbye to when you finished a book?

 

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