Kathleen Pooler's Blog, page 38
March 23, 2015
The Next Chapter: Life After Memoir Publication by Pamela Little
Posted by Kathleen Pooler/@kathypooler with Pamela Little/@forelightone
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our Light, not our Darkness, that most frightens us.” – Marianne Williamson, often accidentally attributed to Nelson Mandela.
Writing a memoir can be a daunting task. I speak from personal experience when I say dredging up painful memories and turning them into a story that reads like a novel can leave a person depleted and in need of a rest. But with that feeling of depletion comes a feeling of transformation. Memoir has that power to transform both the writer and the reader. Such is the case with Memoir Author Pamela Little whose memoir, A Resting Place: A Graveside Diary addresses her battles with PDDD,-“post-divorce destruction disorder’ as coined by the author and food addiction. Pamela overcomes these conditions by facing her mortality in a very unique way, visiting her prospective gravesite. I won’t give any more but I will tell you it makes for a gripping memoir.
My reviews of her memoir can be found on Amazon, Goodreads, Shelfari, LibraryThings and Riffle.com
Please join me in welcoming Pamela in this guest post about what life has been like for her since publishing The Resting Place.
Memoir Author Pamela Little
Enough Rest Already: Taking Up My Bed and Walking
Clearly, I sleep too much. I use the excuse that I awaken at 3 a.m. having fallen asleep around 10 p.m., do an hour meditation, then write, then fall back asleep in the forelight, then start the day, burn myself out until lunch time, nap 1-2 hours, then get up for shift #2 on the day.
Ever since I published The Resting Place on October 29 in 2014, my bed feels like the only safe place. I’ve even returned to the grave twice now and no longer found it to be the comfortable cave that incubated the book. I just want to crawl into bed every chance I get.
Strangely, it isn’t depression. I’ve never been happier in my life. It isn’t even fear. I feel full of faith. I can’t pinpoint it. I can only guess until further notice. It appears that the extreme vulnerability of the content of my book exposed all the darkness to the light of day.
And the future’s so bright, I have to close my eyes every chance I get. Plus, the exhaustion of my isolation revealed itself. I didn’t realize how much energy it takes to keep out of the flow of life, until I was back into the flow as a result of writing the book.
Another interesting effect of having written the book is that I’m seeing how because of it, I wrote my way free of food addiction. On the fifth day of a new committed abstinence from compulsive overeating, the book was published, and I was set free, not having retreated to the food even one time. Up until five days before publication date, I was still trying to ward off the new world waiting for me, with food as a fortress again. No longer.
Attempts to use mental illness as a justification have just been obvious excuses.
So now I’m wondering whether this book is powerful enough to help set others free from food addiction as it did for me publishing it. How would I ever know if this is happening for other people or not? I’m not engaging in social media at all, though this guest blog post is my re-entry.
How do I get up from my bed and stay awake? I’ve had enough rest at the grave, and I’ve been sleeping too much in bed. I just have to take up my bed and walk. Walk in the light.
How hard can it be?
March 12, 2015: Very hard. I began the sequel for The Resting Place after a retreat into active food addiction, once again, in my very next journal entry. Here’s a short excerpt from the sequel to the Resting Place coming out next year, which helps explain why I’m not back at two days abstinent today. It may not make sense to some people, because the first memoir ends on such a high note. But I knew from that book that the toughest challenge laid ahead: transforming to an existence based on love and thriving, not fear and suffering. I wrote that it’s a more difficult challenge for me to face “the good life” than live from the grave.
A Diary of Living Well Excerpt
By Pamela Little
Release Date: 2016
Citrus House, Jan. 28, 2:35 a.m.
The jury’s out: The sequel here won’t be as good as the first book. There’s drama in crisis and no conflict in peace and harmony. It’s so hard to get used to: a loving relationships that flows consistently with effective communication, a job in which I find I get to be myself and be productive, no inner wars with food and body, and downright fearlessness. Where’s the story, the transformation, the plot? None. Unless…it’s about the struggle involved in acceptance and courage.
(to be continued in 2016)
***
Thank you Pamela for your brave and honest sharing of your memoir writing experience. You have asked an important question here: will revealing my deepest struggles help others? I am happy to hear that you are experiencing freedom and peace in writing your story. I have no doubt your willingness to be honest will touch many others who struggle with similar issues.
***
About the Author
Pamela Little’s writing career began in the fifth grade when she won The Evans Award for Drama for a play she wrote overnight titled The Case of the Missing Watch. She went on to win two American Pen Women prizes for creative writing in high school. While a college student, Pamela earned recognition from the William Randolph Hearst Foundation and the Annual Hemingway Days Festival for her newspaper journalism.
As a professional, Pamela wrote the “Family Matters” column for five years at The Desert Sun in Palm Springs, managed communications for a tourism agency, attended the Betty Ford Center’s Professionals in Residence program on scholarship, and worked for a Montessori school. She also received the Gannett Award for Best Enterprise Reporting and numerous accolades from the Society of Professional Journalists, Sigma Delta Chi.
As a writing coach, Pamela helps people organize their journal collections and publish their diaries. Through her ministry Soul Custody, she creates and conducts Marriage Memorial Services for divorced families. Pamela is currently at work on a series of daily meditation books to help parents after divorce. The Resting Place, A Graveside Diary, is her first book.
Website: Pamela Little
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/restingplacebook
Google+: https://plus.google.com/113541097587220806602/about
Twitter: https://twitter.com/forelightone
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/forelight/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/9826503.Pamela_Little
Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/Pamela-Little/e/B00P76AXWC/
Book Synopsis:
In search of a resting place, Pamela went to her final one– her grave site. Tackling life from the perspective of death, she addresses her darknesses, including alcoholism, food addiction, bipolar disorder, and her self-diagnosed “post-divorce destruction disorder.” Over the course of four years, a new light begins to remerge, beckoning her back from the living dead.
How about you? How has life after publication been for you? If you have not published, how have you handled confronting painful memories?
We’d love to hear from you. Please leave your comments below~
***
Reminder: I am on a Lenten Sabbatical from my own blog posts and social media until 4/13/15. However, I will be available for comments and sharing of all guest posts.
Next Week:
Monday, 3/30/15: “Afraid of Everything Wow Women on Writing Blog Tour and Review with Karen Jones Gowen.”
March 16, 2015
What Kind of Stalled Writer Are You- And What to Do About It by Denis Ledoux
Posted by Kathleen Pooler/@kathypooler with Denis Ledoux/@denisledoux
Denis Ledoux is a well-known and well-respected memoir writing author and coach. It is my pleasure to feature him in this post about pushing through when we feel stuck in our writing. Denis has posted memoir writing tips here in the past. He is on a virtual book tour for The Memoir Network”s Memoir Writing Series. Today he will present excerpts from one of the eBooks in his series,”How to Write to the End” and discuss strategies for finishing your manuscript and achieving publication.
Welcome back, Denis!
Memoir Author and Writing Coach Denis Ledoux
What Kind of Stalled Writer Are You ~and What to Do About It
An unfinished manuscript haunts a writer, sapping energy that ought to go into more writing. Over the years of editing and coaching, I’ve noticed that there seem to be two sorts of people who do not finish their manuscripts.
Those who have been writing a good amount of text, which is accumulating without somehow coalescing into a book. The manuscript lacks dramatic arc and pacing. It is like a scarf being knitted without any sense of where it will end. So… the knitter knits and knits.
Those who have already composed 20, 30, or even 50 or more independent stories or vignettes and these, too, are not coalescing into a book. These writers produce stand-alone pieces, which is not a bad goal to have really, but writing a series of stand-alone pieces is not what they set out to do.
Writers in both groups want to make a statement about their lives as a whole—not to record in an ad hoc fashion interesting, unique and possibly weird events that may have happened to them. (Yes, alas, there are writers who believe that a memoir ought to consist of this dazzle!) Both groups have been working on their memoirs for a significant while, but they are spinning their wheels. They are stuck and not moving forward to publication and seem to have driven off what once seemed like a clear road to finishing their memoirs.
What writers in either group want is to finish to write a polished memoir, a memoir which reads and eventually looks like a real book, but they are not doing it.
There are many reasons why people stop writing and do are not finish their memoirs.
Sometimes people don’t finish simply because they don’t put in enough work. They are, in other words, “couch potatoes” who would prefer their memoirs to finish themselves. As I have written many times, “No one ever said that writing a memoir was going to be easy!” This sort of person makes many excuses—“I need time to go really deep and I don’t have the time to do that now”—but produces little text. This may not be you, but if it is, your best bet is to schedule writing time and do the work.
There is another group of people to whom a lot of life has happened—often quickly. The memoir has had to take a back seat. Progress becomes impossible or at least improbable—given all else in their lives: a new job with a steep learning curve, personal or relationship issues, the birth of a child, the illness of a family member, a move from one home to another. For these or other reasons completely unrelated to being a couch potato, a number of months later, these writers find their memoir is at a standstill. These writers would do well to look for half an hour here and there to undertake to write snippets. In this way, their re-connection with the memoir, as well as a whole chunk of memoir writing, could be achieved.
Another category is of writers who have insufficient skills to write a memoir. Coaching, books and MP3s on writing in general and memoir writing in particular, tele-classes, and memberships in memoir-writing groups could all be of great benefit. But something stops these writers from pursuing such options. The question becomes: why do they not partake in these services, moving quickly through the beginning ranks? Evaluate your needs and take a step towards addressing them.
Some writers don’t have their subject yet and consequently have been writing about the wrong life experiences or writing them from the wrong point of view. These are sincere hard-working writers but they too find they are not making progress. If this is you. take some time to understand what you really want to write and why you aren’t doing that, I feel confident you would make some progress towards finishing your memoir.
Too many writers have become “frozen” in fear of what others may say . They are afraid of reactions of family members and friends or of revealing something about themselves. An antidote is to give yourself permission to write only for yourself. Any thought of sharing with an audience needs to be put off. That decision is for later—after you have finished your memoir.
There is the overly ambitious writer who wants to say ever more in his/her memoir (the memoir is always open-ended). The over-ambitious writer might set deadline in which to finish the book. This may keep expansion on hold.
There is also the unfocused writer who sets the current manuscript aside in favor of starting a new one. The unfocused writer needs to make a firm decision not to quit a manuscript until it is finished no matter how compelling another manuscript may seem to become.
Over time, stalled writers become non-writers. Too often, writers do not know how to re-connect to their manuscript. Writers who have stopped writing may want to write again, to pick up their memoir, but the train of thought, the feeling, and the sensibility that went into the creation of those previously-written stories have now been lost. They are no longer in that zone where writing a memoir is something they can execute easily. The source of their inspiration has dried up. Better to never have allowed one’s self to stop writing!
Action Steps
If you have felt stalled in your writing, identify which of the above examples of writers who do not finish is true for you.
Follow the suggested strategy today and tomorrow and the day after to counter “not writing”
About the Author:
Denis Ledoux is the author, most recently, of Write to the End / 8 Strategies which is part of the seven book Memoir Network Writing Series. Also in publication is Should I Write My Memoir? and Don’t Let Writer’s Block Stop You. A complete list of publications is available. Receive free membership in My Memoir Education.
Write to the End / 8 Strategies [ http://thememoirnetwork.com/memoir-writing-books-series ]
Should I Write My Memoir? : [ http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Should%20I%20write%20my%20memoir ]
Memoir Network Writing Series: http://thememoirnetwork.com/memoir-writing-books-series
Don’t Let Writer’s Block Stop You: [http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Let-Writers-Block-Stop-ebook/product-reviews/B00PCKIS6G/ref=sr_1_1_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1]
Available : http://thememoirnetwork.com/memoir-writing-books-series
My Memoir Education : http://thememoirnetwork.com
How about you? What do you do when you feel “stalled”?
We’d love to hear from you. Please leave your comments below~
Reminder: I am on a Lenten Sabbatical from my own blog posts and social media until 4/13/15. However, I will be available for comments and sharing of all guest posts.
Next Week:
Monday, 03/23/15: “The Next Chapter: Life After Publication by Memoir Author Pamela Little.”
March 9, 2015
All I Needed to Know About Memoir Writing I Learned Playing Ball by Pat McKinzie
Posted by Kathleen Pooler/@kathypooler with Pat McKinzie/@PattyMacKZ
“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
Pat McKinzie is a trailblazer. She defied the rules and broke down barriers for all women by playing in the first US women’s professional basketball league in the 1970s.
Pat and I met in Dan Blank’s Build Your Author Platform Course in 2011 and have been online friends ever since. She inspires me with her feisty determination to face her life challenges with style, grace and a healthy dose of humor. Her ability to balance drama and humor amazes me. Her storytelling captivates me. From the Midwest to D.C. to Paris to Marburg to Geneva, she moved 12 times in 18 years. From the hard courts of Illinois to the classrooms of Switzerland, she has lived in four different countries, speaks three languages, and raised two bi-cultural kids.
From this lifetime of experiences, she crafts the most delightful stories on her weekly blog complete with beautiful photos. I often feel like I am accompanying her on a tour, whether it be to her family cabin in Wisconsin or to the Swiss Alps. And I don’t even need a passport.
Pat’s memoir Home Sweet Hardwood: A Title IX Trailblazer Breaks Barriers Through Basketball is about breaking down gender barriers in sports in the seventies, earning the first women’s basketball scholarship in Illinois and playing in the first women’s professional league in the United States. When that went bankrupt, she headed overseas to Paris. When the French Federation banned foreigners, she moved across the border to Germany. When a car accident ended her career, she became a writer. But first she had to learn to hold a pen again.
My reviews can be found on Amazon, Goodreads, Shelfari , LibraryThing and Riffle.
March Madness–for both men and women– is a perfect time to welcome Pat back!
Memoir Author Pat McKinzie-LeChault
Pat was the keynote speaker at NCAA , Div III Final Four Women’s Basketball Tournament , 2014
Everything I Learned About Writing I Learned Playing Ball
No kidding! I was a feisty in-your-face kid who defied society and refused to take no for an answer. I insisted girls could play basketball, too, even during the era when women’s participation in sport was taboo. I showed those naysayers and became one of the first female professional globetrotters, fighting the status quo every step of the way. What an arduous journey it has been from battling to be allowed on the court in the early infancy of Title IX (1972) to becoming a keynote speaker at an NCAA Final Four basketball tournament (2014.)
NCAA Speaker
So how do the skills developed playing sports transfer to the craft of putting words on paper? Writing requires tremendous self-discipline, a lot like mastering a sport.
You need to warm up. Just like a pre game jog and stretch, it is beneficial to drop into downward dog or Pilates push up to get the creative juices flowing.
You have to practice when no one is looking. I often shot baskets alone for hours and have kept a journal since childhood, just because putting words on paper was the only way I could make sense of the world. Journaling hones the craft and helps recapture those moments of the past, which is especially useful in memoir writing.
You need a team. There will be days you feel like quitting. That is when your network of family, friends, and cyber writing buddies inspire you to go on in the face of rejection. You will need feedback from readers and editing tips from others with more experience than you, so you must learn to humbly accept criticism. Yeah, and sometimes the coach must yell at you!
You don’t get to choose your opponent. You will meet unimaginable obstacles in your writing journey. Editors will reject your work, agents will be interested then back out, book deals will fall through, the entire publishing industry will be turned upside down in the internet age, but though the venues for sharing your work will change, the stories remain the same… timeless.
You play hard every day (even when you know you might not win the big one.) Go into the competition knowing you will have bad games and days where shots will fall short and words will fail. And let’s face it, chances of publishing a best seller are even less likely than signing that billion dollar pro athlete contract. BUT just like participating in sports, you don’t have to have elite status to make a difference.
You will learn more about yourself than you ever imagined. Some of those lessons will hurt. The disappointment can be devastating. But like the best lesson learned from sport you will develop perseverance…against all odds, especially in defeat.
Your statistics really don’t matter. In sports, records are made to be broken. In the long run of life, who is counting? Is it really that important to keep track of how many Twitter followers, Google+ friends or Facebook fans you have? In the end you realize writing is a lot like participating in your favorite sport, it is not really about notching up those stats, it is about staying in the game.
The most important prerequisite to writing a memoir is believing in YOU.
Ironically, to perfect your craft as a writer you need to isolate, but to share your story you must find an audience, a reader at a time.
My advice from a lifetime of hard hits and setback:
Show up on the page. Everyday.
Put your soul on the line.
Believe you have a story to tell.
Trust you are making a difference.
Go on! I double dare you.
Inspire courage, break barriers, create connections.
One word at a time.
Write your heart out, dear friends of the feather.
***
Pat, I feel like I have participated in a pep rally for writing! Thank you for infusing us with your passion, persistence and courage that you displayed on the court and continue to display off the court. I also want to personally thank you for being a trailblazer for women’s sports. My own daughter, Leigh Ann and many other young women for generations to come have benefitted and will continue to benefit greatly from your “in-your-face” determination to break down the barriers. High Five!
***
Author’s Bio:
As a pioneer in women’s basketball, Pat McKinzie is the first female athletic scholarship recipient in Illinois and first female player to score 1,000 points at ISU. She is one of the first Women’s Professional Basketball League draftees and female inductees in the Hall of Fame at Illinois State. After a 1983 car accident in France ended her playing career, McKinzie began to focus her energy on coaching. With thirty years of experience in coaching, teaching, and writing, she has cultivated an impressive career from hall-of-fame coach to basketball agent, student adviser, columnist, and blogger. McKinzie has a bachelor’s degree in education from Illinois State University. She is married to a Frenchman with whom she raised two Third Culture Kids, and currently resides in Switzerland. Keynote speaker at the NCAA Final Four 2014 and the Senior National Games 2013.
Author Contact Information:
Website/blog: X-Pat From Overseas
Twitter: @PattyMacKZ
Facebook: Pat McKinzie
Book Synopsis:
If you deny a woman’s history, you erase her identity. For the first time, I reveal the athlete’s story, from a female perspective, during forty years of rapid social change since the passage of Title IX. What makes it different from other sport biographies is the voice, of a woman who walks the talk, who dribbled the ball and tells the story. This is the book I longed to read when I was I coming of age. It is a tribute to my mother, my sisters, my coaches, my players and teammates, and all those who fought before me and along side me, so that today no female ever questions her right to be all that she can be. It speaks for the silent pioneers of the past and salutes our highflying daughters of today. So what? Who cares? Anyone coaching an athlete. Anyone playing ball. Anyone loving a game. Anyone raising a daughter. Anyone chasing a dream.
***
How about you? Where have you learned lessons that have helped you in your writing?
Pat has graciously offered to give away an eBook of Home Sweet Hardwood to a commenter whose name will be selected in a random drawing.
We’d love to hear from you. Please leave your comments below~
Reminder: I am on a Lenten Sabbatical from my own blog posts and social media until 4/13/15. However, I will be available for comments and sharing of all guest posts.
Next Week:
Monday, 3/16/15:
Memoir Author and Coach Denis Ledoux on “Writing to the End.”
