Theo Pauline Nestor's Blog, page 9

Anna Marandi’s 26-Minute Memoir

Hi Readers,  Here’s the latest in the 26-Minute Memoir series. This one is from Anna Marandi who found Writing Is My Drink in the Brooklyn Library. Thank you, Brooklyn. Thank you, libraries.

 

26-Minute Memoir
By Anna Marandi

 

Anna Marandi

Growing up I had this curiosity, this insatiable wonder for mysterious things like the Bermuda Triangle, The Universe, Dinosaurs – how did they really die? Why were they so huge? Aliens, UFO’s, they made the list too. I would spend my very young days reading all about these things and then fall asleep dreaming about them. Other mysteries included – who would be my husband? Would I have children and what would they be like? What am I going to be when I’m all grown up and can make adult decisions?

I’m 35 now. Some days, I feel like this is the age where those dreams go to die. Either they have been answered by now or they have ended. Other days, I feel hopeful, like it’s ok to start ALL over again with something new. And really, I wouldn’t be starting from scratch because there is this whole incredible life of adventure I’ve had that has come before.

Let’s reminisce – it was 2002. I was in my early 20′s, didn’t have much of a clue, but I loved to box. I had moved to New York at the end of 2000 to figure it all out after college. This was the most exciting time in my life. I found a boxing trainer, moved to the Bronx and was working at FEMA full time as a Spanish translator, post 9/11, working with victims of the disaster to help them with bills and rent and other such immediate needs. I got involved romantically with a strange guy -  he was kind at first, generous, but overall, he was shady. I didn’t trust him. But I was lonely. And I let him in.

We lived together for a few ridiculous, up-and-down months when I finally realized I had had enough of the manipulation. I tired to force him out. He wouldn’t leave. I went away for a week to clear my head and hope that he would be gone. I returned to New York to find my apartment ravaged, the dude high on crack, and my plants. Oh, my poor plants, they were all dead. He finally left a few days later, was arrested for selling drugs, and was safely out of my life. But I was a broken girl.

How could I have let this person in to my circle? What was I thinking, and was I really that lonely and desperate? I felt like shit and beat myself up for it for several months. I returned to my true love, my first love – I dove deeply back into boxing. Our painfully intimate affair would last for years, fishing me out of trouble when I most needed it. It never asked questions, it never made a stink. It was always there. I trained like a beast for months, and even took a fight just a short while after the trauma-drama. I lost, but I knew I was back.

2003. The Golden Gloves finals were scheduled as they always were for April at Madison Square Garden. Would I be ready in time? I was mentally still shaken from all the drama of 2002, and struggled each day to shake it all off and get stronger. Slowly, by February, I knew those Gloves would be mine. There was a big camp of us all training together – 5 or 6 girls and a few guys. We trained every night at 7:30. It was like evening mass, every night – if you didn’t show up, you had to explain yourself the next day. There was a subtle feeling that every day you showed up that someone else didn’t, you got just a little further in line than they did. A little closer to the gold, to the win. We had ringing ears, bloody noses, busted lips, and most of us had to go to work the next day with our scratched up faces. It was like a mini badge of honor – so funny to imagine having that now, how different I would feel with a black eye at work. Back then I was proud.

April rolled around. Emotions and tensions were running high. Two of my team mates were scheduled to fight each other and it had caused a minor rift in our camp. We had to bring in another trainer to work with us. Then, I received a call a week before my fight, informing me that the cracked-out ex boyfriend was being released from jail. Oh wow.

I fought that night, at the Garden, in front of thousands of people. I looked over and saw Jake LaMotta sitting ringside. I had co-workers there, friends, relatives, and strangers from all walks of life cheering for and against me. Was that asshole in the crowd too? I skimmed the faces, but I saw nothing. Who cares I thought. Whether he’s there or not, it really doesn’t matter. I secretly hoped he was so he could see how far I had come and how low he had sunk. But I was doing this for me. I won, as it turned out, and it was a fantastic fight. I’m still friendly with my opponent. She has 3 kids now.

When I think about dreams, mysteries, strange things in life – I often wonder when that day will come when I will be at peace with the not knowing. With the not caring. With just doing. Accepting. I am 35, my dreams are not dead. I just have to look around, remember that no one is looking, and do what I need to do for me. I still wonder who my husband will be and what my kids will look like.

Margaret Blaha’s 26-Minute Memoir

Hi Readers,

In 2009 I started a blog called 26-Minute Memoir and started publishing 26-Minute Memoirs--stories that describe the essence of your life written in 26 minutes–from students, friends, Facebook and blog followers. In my book Writing Is My Drink: A Writer’s Story of Finding Her Voice (And a Guide to How You Can Too), I encourage readers to write their own 26-Minute Memoir and send it to me, and they have! Over the next few weeks, I will be posting these writings. Below you’ll find Margaret Blaha’s 26-Minute Memoir. Please feel free to write one of your own. You can find instructions and links to other 26-Minute Memoirs here: http://writingismydrink.com/26-minutes/.

Theo

26-Minute Memoir
By Margaret Blahas

The precise year events unfold in has never been important to me.

I’m not really sure what year my grandpa died.

One year is never exactly like another. I think I live a pretty adventurous life and will go on doing so.

Soon, I won’t remember what year it was that I lived in China, that I got my first real job. But is that so important?

A year ends and begins in a single night, anyway.

I can never remember how I spent the last night of a year. Save for this last one. At a round table, three previous generations recounted a past that didn’t include me with greater clarity than I can recount yesterday.

Resolution isn’t a good word. It sounds like you’re starting the new year with a problem you’ve got to solve: “I’m going to lose weight.” In other words, “Resolve my fatness.”

I have a list for the New Year.

I have a list for each new day.

The start of the rest of your life. Carpe Diem. A fresh start. We get this every year. But it’s hard to see New Year’s Day as separate from the cycle of the rest of the year.

If I hear another person say they hope for world peace….

Why only on this day does anything seem possible?

Eventually we all feel defeated. Problems don’t get resolved. There’s no pausing the passing of time in order to meet our deadlines.

How cruel. How unfeeling.

I haven’t fallen into the trivial and mundane routine of adulthood, yet. I hope I never will.

I still look at adults who cannot seem to accomplish all they wanted in a year’s time with pity, with disgust. If I take the time to empathize with them I know why. But most of the time I write them off as people I will never become.

My ambitions will make me greater than the three previous generations who sit at a table with me.

Great in what way? Define greatness.

I can’t.

It’s a feeling in my gut.

Since I was little, I’ve wanted the whole world.

What does an expression like this even mean?

The whole world?

Tomorrow I’d like to pack up and go to Iceland. Russia. Italy. Argentina.

I question whether I actually want to see these places or to just tell people that I’ve been to them.

If it’s the latter, doesn’t that make me as bad as my friend who seems to only like to travel somewhere to get a stamp in her passport?

It’s time to really question what makes a life worth living…worth saving.

I have an uncle who’s practically a vegetable and dying in hospice.

Some people are born vegetables. Is it okay to assume that their lives are miserable?

Maybe my life’s miserable. I’m not exactly happy. But I am content.

How many of us can say we even know what happiness is?

Sometimes “happy” people look ignorant to me. They couldn’t possibly have much self-awareness.

Being able to really “look” at myself is important to me.

Renee Aubuchon’s 26-Minute Memoir

Hi Readers,

In 2009 I started a blog called 26-Minute Memoir and started publishing 26-Minute Memoirs--stories that describe the essence of your life written in 26 minutes–from students, friends, Facebook and blog followers. In my book Writing Is My Drink: A Writer’s Story of Finding Her Voice (And a Guide to How You Can Too), I encourage readers to write their own 26-Minute Memoir and send it to me, and they have! Over the next few weeks, I will be posting these writings. Below you’ll find Renee Aubuchon’s 26-Minute Memoir. Please feel free to write one of your own. You can find instructions and links to other 26-Minute Memoirs here: http://writingismydrink.com/26-minutes/.

Theo

26-Minute Memoir

By Renee Aubuchon

The other day I saw a weed growing up between cracks in the sidewalk.  There was this vibrant, determined green glory of a plant crowned by a sun gathering yellow flower and I thought- that’s me.

I am surrounded by concrete, and still I bloom.

Now I am wondering if I am not only the flower, but also the concrete.  I am wondering how I create my own concrete.

I am going off topic.

That moment in the morning when the air is still and gently full of mystery, when the sky is blue and pink and full of possibility.  That’s me.

When you are at the beach and the sun hangs low in the sky, and the fading sunlight flies like sparks on the edges of waves. That’s me.  I am that sun.  Those sparks.  That wave.

When you go into a bookstore and someone looks at you for the briefest moment and returns to their book.  That’s me.  I have thought of saying hello and told myself you probably don’t want to hear from me.  Then I will wonder why I am lonely.

When I play my drum and the rhythm is tentative, finding itself, and then becomes joyful and sure.  That’s me.  It is also me when the rhythm stumbles.  When it stops.  When there is silence.

I am also the gray haired lady in the grocery store pushing a cart down the isle.  Hair tamed into a ponytail.  There and not there.  That’s me.  That is also me, putting the groceries into the car and then driving them home.  That is me, being tired, aching, bringing the bags of groceries in and putting them away.

That is me… the one who is grateful I can buy groceries.

I am also one of the silence seekers.  I love silence.  I am some of the possibilities silence holds.  I live with someone who likes to have the TV on whether she is in the room or not because the noise keeps her loneliness at bay.  I am the one she is annoyed with when I come home, because she knows I would prefer some silence.

I am also the holder of griefs to come.  I am the one who is afraid of losing people, and am in that stage of life wherein one loses people.  These tears forming in my eyes as I write this.  I am those tears.

I am a glimmering of happiness that loves children more and more the older I get.  I love them in their beauty.  Their innocence.  Because they do not know what it is like to be old.  Even their parents seem young and beautiful to me.  And yet I am also every old person that you see.  I love them and I know them because they are me and I have become them.

I am the blue sky.  And mostly I am also clouds that form and turn into mist and disappear.  I am that cloud that is vaporizing.  I am those tendrils of cloud that you can still see, those fine wisps, and then I am also the nothing of the cloud that is left behind.

I am this tiredness I hold.  This tiredness that I am afraid of, and this tiredness who speaks to me of rest.  Of turning.  I am  also, in my imagination, a dancer.  My imaginary dancer does not need rest.  She leaps into the air, extends her arms and legos out into space and is free.  See how effortlessly she flows into the air!

That is me.  That flowing.  That rising into the air.

This is me also, the person who finds it difficult to get out of a chair gracefully.

At this point I am tired of writing about me.  Writing about so many things I am and am not.  I look for the essence of who I am and I see emptiness, a place of no things.  This is not bad,  It is freedom.  

I am that potential.

I am the sound of Alan Watt’s laugh when he used to say, “You see?”

I am one of those people Walt Whitman reached out to across time and who was saved by him.  I am the yearning and the love of life in his poems.  You will find me there.  You will find all of us there.

I am no different than you.

We are, after all, one.

Heidi Sloss’ 26-Minute Memoir

Hi Readers,

In 2009 I started a blog called 26-Minute Memoir and started publishing 26-Minute Memoirs--stories that describe the essence of your life written in 26 minutes–from students, friends, Facebook and blog followers. In my book Writing Is My Drink: A Writer’s Story of Finding Her Voice (And a Guide to How You Can Too), I encourage readers to write their own 26-Minute Memoir and send it to me, and they have! Over the next few weeks, I will be posting these writings. Below you’ll find Heidi Sloss’ 26-Minute Memoir. Please feel free to write one of your own. You can find instructions and links to other 26-Minute Memoirs here: http://writingismydrink.com/26-minutes/.

Enjoy!

Theo

26-Minute Memoir
by Heidi Sloss

 

This past weekend would have been my aunt’s 83rd birthday. I always remember how old she is/was because she was exactly 30 years older than me (well really 29 years and 11 months, but who cares). But I always had a hard time remembering the exact date of her birthday. I knew it was at the end of November, but some years it was on or around Thanksgiving, some years as much as a week off.

When she was alive I tried to call often, many times as much as 3 or 4 times a month. She was always interested in talking and listening on the phone, a great combination for someone I love who lives far away. And I usually made sure to call around Thanksgiving, knowing it would be close enough to her birthday. She loved celebrating her birthday, in fact when I think of her, I think of a celebrating kind of gal.

Last time I saw her, before her death, I took a tape recorder, and had her tell the family stories to me once again. One of the many stories I loved to hear was her reaction to finding out I was born and that she was now an aunt for the first time. It was always funny for me to hear this, because by the time I was born, she had 4 children, all under the age of 10. And yet she celebrated my birth and becoming an aunt. When I think back to the days when my two children were young, I became an aunt left and right between my brother and my husband’s brother and two sisters. All of a sudden, the whole next generation was born and frankly I was too consumed with mothering by two to be a special aunt to the other 11 children born in those years. I only had two and she had four and yet she told me how special my birth made her feel to become an aunt for the first time. And because she felt special, she treated me as the cause of that specialness.

This meant I always felt at home and welcome in her home, which was no small feat for me given that growing up, we moved every few years. By the time I was 10, we had lived in 5 places, no one place lasting even a full 5 years. But going to my aunt’s home, was a constant back then to me. It wasn’t my family home, but it was a family home in which I felt wanted and welcomed and cared for. And because my aunt showered me with her love and affection, her kids did too.

But this year, I sort of forgot. At least for a few hours. This yea, on her birthday, without realizing it was her birthday, I went to a yoga class and during the quiet meditation time afterwards, when I like to feel my mind and spirit clear and clean and twinkly, I felt a strong pull. Normally when my mind wonders while meditating, I am able to push it aside, but this wasn’t a wondering as much as a strong urge and pulling sensation. And it wasn’t from her so much as from the house, which is now for sale. So I went with it. I allowed myself to be pulled to the family home, in western New York State far away from my new home in northern California. I see distinctly her dining room, the table, the chairs, the drapes the carpet, the homey feel of a loved and cared for family homestead, like an anchor. And then all of a sudden it hit me, like a ton of bricks, decorating the outside of the front of her home, that it must be her birthday. I just knew it was.

Then, like so many days these past 4 months since her death, I yearned to reach out and touch her on the phone. I longed to hear her voice, in that western New York State twang that reminds me of a home, that I never lived in, but always came back to.

Happy Birthday Aunt Moanne. Rest in peace.

Jackee Holder’s 26-Minute Memoir

Hi Readers,

In 2009, I started a blog called 26-Minute Memoir and started publishing 26-Minute Memoirs--stories that describe the essence of your life written in 26 minutes–from students, friends, blog followers. In my book Writing Is My Drink, I encourage readers to write their own 26-Minute Memoir and send it to me, and they have! Over the next few weeks, I will be posting these writings, starting today with Jackee Holder’s. Please feel free to write one of your own. You can find instructions and links to other 26-Minute Memoirs here: http://writingismydrink.com/26-minutes/.

Enjoy!

Theo

Life Begins On Paper

by Jackee Holder

 

I had just completed university. It was a relief. Three years of writing essays that I had very little connection. Sitting in lectures wishing I were invisible. Academia had stunted me. Had placed an even more tough shell around me.

I had done the one thing my parents had been proud of. I was the first in my family of five other siblings to walk the road of academia and enter into university. Ever since childhood my Dad had expressed the importance of education and how education was the gateway to freedom. The truth was I did love learning. From primary school right through to sitting my A Levels I was that student who spent the whole weekend researching her history topics. Creating fantastic covers for her weekend history assignments. But my joy as the student who was proud of her marks was short lived as my joy gave way to shame and embarrassment when only seconds later I could feel the glare of twenty or more pairs of eyes from my school mates piercing into my back. I learned then that showing your passion, excelling did not win you friends and I learned quickly to undersell myself not just in education but also in so many other areas of my life.

I had always felt the outsider. In my family I was the one who escaped to the library and found in it’s building a safe house. I was the one who discovered that there was a world beyond the everyday realities of my home life that I could escape to in books.

On the journey from primary, to secondary school and right through to my first year at university books were a safe harbour for me. I remember my first full-time job and sitting on the 106 bus that I would travel to the tube station on from and to work totally engrossed in Alice Walker’s, The Colour Purple. I recall the moment when I was 18 and my friend said with a look in her eye I think you should read this and handed me a copy of I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and my whole world opened when I realized I was not the only human being walking around with the secret.

Almost thirty years later writing still manages to save my life whether it is through other people telling their stories or my own telling through my stories and writing. Books have been the best medicine for my soul.

Even today my writing was activated when noisy neighbours interrupted my sleep in the early hours of the morning. The second day into the New Year I have arrived at that place of knowing that the unavoidable is staring me right in the face. The splinters in my life are growing bigger and becoming wider and I can no longer hide and run from what is wrong and what is out of alignment. When I cannot speak, the pen will speak for me. I must trust, I must have faith and I must be willing to risk. And this was what happened when I went on retreat just after completing university almost thirty years ago.

I had gone away on a counseling retreat in the North of England. It was a gathering of people of colour so it offered me a space where I could be more of myself than I normally am in many spaces that I inhabited at the time.

The moment I arrived through the snowstorm that almost meant the retreat would not happen and entered the steps of the large Mansion House I knew something different was about to happen. About fifty of us gathered in the large drawing room around a huge fire. It was 1986 and I was pregnant with stories and secrets I wanted to give birth to. The load was heavy and it was time to go into labour. Over the course of the next three days what I could not verbalise because the pain was still so raw came out in poem after poem. I wrote about race, about childhood abuse, about searching for my voice, about domestic violence. That weekend no topics were off limit. Since arriving in the corridors of university life I had ceased to express myself in any creative or self-expressive way on the page. That was halted over the course that weekend. The person leading the retreat Barbara Love (I know, that really was her name) opened spaces in every session for me to recite and hear my words. Almost as she sensed the need for me to shed and heal.

For the first time in years I heard myself. I excavated that inner voice that I had silenced. In the faces of my peers I felt seen, no longer invisible, able to retrieve parts of me that had withdrawn from life.

That weekend was the beginning of the great thaw. An awakening, a cracking open of a galvanized shell I had been entrenched in that hidden so much of what was good and wholesome about me. When I couldn’t reach these parts writing did the work, drip-by-drip, word-by-word, line-by-line. It has taken over thirty years to come back home to myself and writing has been the path that has slowly returned me back home.

It has been a long haul. When I could have easily sunken into deeper levels of depression, addictions or self abuse, writing in my journals and notebooks have helped me to not just keep my head above water but slowly over time, often tiny steps at a time I have witnessed a slow path of transformation as I have moved from the state of survival into a more expansive space of thriving. When it did not feel safe to express myself verbally the blank page became my listener, my out of hour’s therapist, and a service for my soul that was open 24 hours of the day.

http://www.jackeeholder.com

http://www.writeyourselfwell.com

Getting My Writing Groove Back

My new secret place. Shh! Don’t tell anyone!

Good news, Readers: I’ve been given a new writing deadline.* How badly did I need a deadline? Very. I’ve been out of my writing groove, a direct result no doubt of launching a book about finding my writing voice. Life loves irony.

I’ve been doing more talking about writing in the last six months than I’ve  done, well, ever. It’s been a lot of talking and a lot of work (but not much writing!), and it’s been an amazing joy and privilege. I’ve met emerging writers online and in person from numerous countries and walks of life and gotten to share a stage with three writers who provided a good heft of the inspiration for the book Writing Is My Drink: Julia Cameron, Natalie Goldberg, and Anne Lamott.

One of the questions participants at both Black Mesa Writers’ Intensive and Bird by Bird & Beyond posed to Cameron, Goldberg and Lamott: What do YOU do when YOU get stuck? All three of these writers famous for inspiring others said that they did, in fact, use their own advice to get back to the page. Cameron does her “morning pages,” Goldberg does her timed “writing practice,” and Lamott writes her “shitty first drafts.”

Although I give lots of advice about how to get yourself to the page in Writing Is My Drink, one thing I left out was what I did when I got stuck writing the book itself. I don’t think it occurred to me to include that story. Maybe it would’ve seemed too metafictional to say, “Actually, Readers, I’m having trouble finding my voice right now!” But I did, in fact, get quite stalled about three months after I signed the book contract. I got very trumped up by the idea that I was being paid to write the book and was what I had to say “worth it.” So, uh, I actually stopped writing. Days clicked by, flying off the calendar as they do in cartoons that depict time whizzing by. And, yes, the more time that went by the antsier I got because then my brain started calculating how many words I would have to write a day if I were to complete the book on time. Really scary types of thinking! So did this scary thinking make me write? Nope. Being scared never makes me write.

So I did the thing I do when I can’t write: I returned to my love of writing. I asked myself what book had brought me joy last. The answer: One Hundred Demons by the divine Lynda Barry. So I got in bed with that book and I read it and reread it. I felt my tremendous gratitude for Barry, gratitude that she existed, gratitude that she thought to write such a book. Usually, this type of gratitude (unlike fear) IS the thing that will coax me back to the page. But this time there was a snag: One Hundred Demons is a graphic memoir. So, um, instead of being inspired to get to the keyboard, I found myself standing in the art supply store salivating over fine tip Sharpies and paper so smooth it would make you weep. And yes, next I was at home DRAWING. Not my plan, not my plan at all. Pages flying off calendar, guilt mounting.

I’m wasting time! I thought to myself. But then, I just went with it because…because I didn’t really have a choice. Writing wasn’t available to me. But doing rudimentary cartoon drawings of the characters from Writing Is My Drink for some reason was. So I kept at this work of hamfisting out my stick figures in comic book storyboards and coloring them until finally I tossed the sketch pad aside and said, “Fuck this! I can’t draw well enough to convey the stories I want to tell.” But by then urgency to communicate my ideas had built up so much that I could no longer resist writing …and so, yes,  I began rapidly scribbling out the stories my cartoons couldn’t portray.(And yes, I handed the book in on time and was not, in fact, burned at the stake or sued for breach of contract).

As happy as I am now to have this new deadline, I found myself stalled out the other day over how to write the story the way I want to write it. And then my mind turned to pens, to paints, to color, and I found myself sitting in the sunlight, playing with paints instead of writing, but then somehow the love of painting reminded me of my love for writing and that brought me back to here, where I belong.

—————

* I’m writing an essay version of the series Alienated Youth Is My Drink for an upcoming anthology of coming of age stories. Yay!

Next on Drink: Readers of Writing Is My Drink have been sending me their 26-Minute Memoirs. I will be posting them over the next couple of weeks.

Anne Lamott and me at Bird by Bird & Beyond.

Julia Cameron, Natalie Goldberg and me at Black Mesa Writers’ Intensive.

Registration for the Doe Bay Work-On-That-Book Writers’ Retreat Is Now Open

Hi Readers,

Details and links to registration for the writers’ retreat I’m hosting at Doe Bay Resort & Retreat June 4-8th are now available on this page: http://writingismydrink.com/2014/02/11/doe-bay-work-on-that-book-writers-retreat/

The Doe Bay Work-On-That-Book Writers’ Retreat will be four days on Orcas Island in Washington State’s San Juan Islands with daily memoir classes from me, peace and quiet to write, great food, and chance to experience community with a group of focused writers. Guest teachers will include Nicole Hardy, author of Confessions of a Latter-day Virgin, and Natalie Singer, Managing Editor of Parent Map magazine. Hope to see you there!

Theo

Writing Retreat Announcement

Hi All,

I got messages so quickly from so many of you loyal followers after I accidentally published the password-protected post about the upcoming writers’ retreat at Doe Bay. Thank you for letting me know! Sorry for any confusion. I will be officially posting the announcement in the next two days, but to satisfy your curiosity in the meantime, I can tell you that the event is for writers starting or at work on a book and will include daily writing classes from me as well as visits from a couple of special guest speakers and some fun surprises. Dates: June 4-8, 2014. Place: Orcas Island! Max enrollment: 20.

More soon! Really.

Love,

Theo

The Doe Bay Work-On-That-Book Writers’ Retreat, June 4-8, 2014

Do you dream about going away for a few days to work on your book, but not really sure you want to go do that all by yourself? Wouldn’t it be fun to go hole up with a group of like-minded individuals nearby but not so nearby that you can’t work? That’s what I’ve always wanted: Enough companionship to be inspired and enough solitude to do the work of creativity. And so, I decided to create just the type of retreat I want when I have a work in progress at one of the places I’ve gone many times to write over the last 15 years.

The Doe Bay Work-On-That-Book Writers’ Retreat will be four days in the stunning beauty of Orcas Island at Doe Bay Resort & Retreat. During those four days, you will have the opportunity to connect with a small group of focused writers in daily writing classes, a chance to meet socially at least once a day with our group, and lots of time to write in a beautiful location–either outside, in your cabin, or in the Otter Library–open 24 hours a day (yes, there’s Wifi). There will also be an Open Mic/Pizza Night, classes with guest teachers Nicole Hardy (Confessions of a Latter-Day Virgin) and Natalie Singer (Managing Editor of Parent Map magazine), a group dinner in the Doy Bay Cafe (included), a group lunch at Cafe Olga in Eastsound (included) and a chance to go hiking, kayaking, and to yoga class (if you want to). See the complete schedule of events here.

Writers of all experience levels are welcomed.

Register early to hold your spot. Max enrollment: 19.

Register now:

Registration fee includes the cost of all retreat classes & activities and the cost of the Thursday lunch at Cafe Olga and Friday night group dinner in the Doe Bay Cafe (including tax and gratuity). Registration fees are nonrefundable but are transferable. If you prefer to pay by check, email me at theonestorprods@gmail.com.

Pay the full registration fee of 499.00 dollars:

OR

Pay half the registration fee now, half on May 1st**:

**You will be invoiced for the second half of the payment before May 1st.

Optional: Add on a one-hour coaching session with one of the instructors:

(You will receive a confirmation email after payment with your appointment time).

Add a one-hour coaching session with Theo Pauline Nestor for 99 dollars:

Add a one-hour coaching session with Natalie Singer for 99 dollars:

(Feel free to bring Natalie your sample pitches for feedback or use your session to get general advice about submitting work to magazines, newspapers, and online sites).

Add a one-hour coaching session with Nicole Hardy for 99 dollars:

Accommodations:

You have two choices for reserving accommodations at Doe Bay Resort & Retreat:

1) Pay now for a bed in a two-bedroom cabin shared with three others for June 4th through June 8th. Your assigned cabin will be either Padma or Agni (see a map of the resort here) and will include a kitchenette and large deck. Please note there are only eight of these spots shared cabin spots available. These shared cabins are for women only. Cost: 4 nights stay for a total of 280 dollars (includes tax).

OR

2) Reserve a cabin, yurt, a bed in the Doe Bay Resort hostel, or even a campsite (there is a shared kitchen available) through Doe Bay Resort. To secure your preferred accommodations, you should make your reservation as soon as you register for the retreat.

Click here to reserve accommodations.

The fine print: If you want to make sure that you and a friend share a bedroom in a pre-purchased shared cabin, please email me at theonestorprods@gmail.com. In the pre-purchased shared cabins, your bed could be either a double bed or a lower-level bunk. Please note that you will likely want to bring food for Thursday breakfast as Doe Bay Cafe will be closed for breakfast that day. For the rest of the retreat, you could also prepare meals in your cabin or in the shared kitchen or you could eat your meals at the Doe Bay Cafe or in Eastsound. The cost of Friday night dinner  and Thursday lunch (including gratuity and tax) is included in your registration fees as is the cost of the drop-in yoga class if you wish to attend. Rental kayaks and massages are available at Doe Bay Resort for additional fees. Doe Bay Resort & Retreat has a beautiful outdoor hot tub and sauna that is clothing optional in the evening hours and clothing required in the daytime hours.

You can also participate in the retreat and stay offsite if you wish.

If you have any questions about the retreat, feel free to email me at theonestorprods@gmail.com.

Getting There:

Doe Bay Resort is located on the west side of Orcas Island in Washington State’s San Juan Islands. Find complete directions here.

Link to Washington State Ferries website.

Classes:

Writing the Memoir with Theo Pauline Nestor

In this daily class, I will be covering the following issues/concepts/skills essential to memoir writing: Understanding your book’s central question, generating material, organizing your material, scene development, transitions, writing a memoir that tells a story larger than yourself, the multi-narrative memoir, developing your narrator as a character, passionate confusion, finding your voice as a writer, prologues/introductions/first chapters, including wisdom in your writing, writing the book you were born to write. Really.

Theo Pauline Nestor is the author of Writing Is My Drink: A Writer’s Story of Finding Her Voice (And a Guide to How You Can Too) (Simon & Schuster, 2013) and How to Sleep Alone in a King-Size Bed: A Memoir of Starting Over (Crown, 2008), which was selected by Kirkus Reviews as a 2008 Top Pick for Reading Groups and as a Target “Breakout Book.” An award-winning instructor, Nestor has taught the memoir certificate course for the University of Washington’s Professional & Continuing Education program since 2006. Nestor also produces events for writers such as the Wild Mountain Memoir Retreat, Bird by Bird & Beyond, and the Black Mesa Writers’ Intensive, featuring talks by literary luminaries such as Anne Lamott, Cheryl Strayed, Julia Cameron, and Natalie Goldberg.

How a Poet Taught Herself To Write a Memoir (In a Hurry!) with Nicole Hardy

How does one navigate the potential pitfalls of crossing genre lines? This class will focus on that question, with an eye toward scene and structure, dialogue, character building, and narrative arc–noting how poetry did (or didn’t) prepare me for the project of crafting a memoir. I’ll share my own hard-won list of Dos & Don’ts, offer some practical advice, and reveal a few Before & After excerpts from Confessions of a Latter-day Virgin.

 

Nicole Hardy is the author of the memoir Confessions of a Latter-Day Virgin and the poetry collections This Blonde and Mud Fla

p Girl’s XX Guide to Facial Profiling–a chapbook of pop-culture inspired sonnets. Her non-fiction has appeared in literary journals and newspapers including The New York Times, and was selected as ‘notable’ in 2012’s “Best American Essays.” She earned her MFA at the Bennington College Writing Seminars, and is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Visit her at nicolehardy.com.

How To Pitch an Editor, Not Piss Her Off with Natalie Singer

Natalie Singer

Getting your articles and essays published in magazines or online is a great way to build your platform and gather attention for your upcoming book. But how do you get the interest of an editor who probably receives 10 … 20 … 200 pitches a day? How do you communicate to the faceless editor across the Internet that you have the story she wants to publish next?

Good pitches don’t happen automatically, and they don’t come naturally to many of us. Good pitches are learned and practiced. They should reflect the voice and energy that your writing does and grab an overworked editor’s attention in a unique way. In this session you will hear how to create solid pitches from a real, live, beating-heart editor.

Natalie Singer-Velush is the Managing Editor of ParentMap magazine and www.parentmap.com. A longtime journalist, multi-tasker and mother of two, Natalie has written for newspapers, magazines and blogs and once pumped breast milk in the bathroom of the Superior Courthouse while covering a murder trial. Natalie is Canadienne via California and now lives in Seattle with her family. She likes cool sheets, cupcakes, tall men and obedient children. In between fielding 200 (often crappy) pitches a day, Natalie is at work on a memoir. Follow her on Twitter @Natalie_Writes

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