October 2, 2013

This post is about my e-mail exchange with a M.F.A. student, whom I'll call Janet B. In my last post I talked about my memoir writing, in particular a piece of creative nonfiction called "Winter Count, 1964." Well, Janet read that piece when it appeared in either Brevity or Creative Nonfiction, and she wrote me the following e-mail:


Hello Mr. Lishan,

I am an MFA candidate in non-fiction writing with a low-residency 
program called the Whidbey Writer's Workshop based on Whidbey Island,  Washington.  This semester I am taking a class called Short Forms, in which we examine writing techniques in prose poems, flash fiction and brief non-fiction.  One of the pieces we've discussed is your brilliant "Winter Count, 1964." I am writing a paper for the class about how to make childhood memories seem fresh and immediate.  I am using "Winter Count, 1964" as an example of how to include different senses in your description, something you do very well in this piece.  ("ka-chunk" is my new favorite sound effect).

I wonder if you could comment on how you were able to engage your 
senses when recalling a boyhood memory. I can of course speculate, and include techniques that I use.  But since I'm using your example, it would be great to hear your view of this technique, and, with your 
permission, quote you in my paper.

Thank you so much for any help you can provide.

Warmly,

Janet B,
MFA Candidate
Northwest Institute of Literary Arts, Whidbey Writer's Workshop


Well, I have to say, I was a bit flattered by Janet's e-mail. While I've published a lot over the years, it's not often that readers have written me to tell me that I've touched them in some way with my words. A few days later I e-mailed Janet back:

Hi, Janet,

Thanks for your e-mail. I envy you getting to hang out at such a beautiful place as Whidbey Island.

As I recall, the first draft of "Winter Counts 1964" arose out of some writing assignments I was doing with my students in a class I was teaching at Ohio State a few years ago (a class for teachers and teachers-to-be on the pedagogy of creative writing). I'm attaching them above in case you're interested (feel free to use any parts of them you wish for your paper). One of the exercises*, based on the oral calendars that members of the Sioux nation used to keep, has to do with creating a personal winter count of one's life (an entry for each year of your life). It's riffed off an assignment that Margot Fortunato Galt outlines in her book, The Story in History (Teachers & Writers Press). The other assignment* is based on the memory map idea that Bill Roorbach outlines in his excellent book about writing memoir, Writing Life Stories (Story Line Press). Used together, I've found that the two exercises can work nicely as vehicles to uncover and then crack open memories into stories. In my case, when I did my own personal winter count, the entry for 1964 was Sherrie Luna knocking Jerry's head into that handball court wall at Kester Avenue Elementary school (secret for your eyes only: I wasn't sure of Jerry's last name, so I made it up -- everything else in the story is true, though). Cracking open that image eventually led to the story you see now.

I hope that helps, Janet. Let me know if you have any more questions.

Best of luck with your paper and in writing the sweet words,

Stuart Lishan

p.s. If you're not quite sure what the traditional winters counts were, do a Google search of "winter counts." One of the first entries you'll see is this very cool and informative presentation about them on the Smithsonian website. Peace, sdl

That answer didn't quite satisfy dear Janet, who wrote me back the following e-mail:

Stuart,

Thanks so much for your prompt response, your explanation, the
attachments-- all very helpful. I wonder if I might trouble you a
little further to clarify some information about the sensory details.  I
see in the assignment you say:  "try to include vivid details of color,
taste, smell, and sensation."  This is one of the strengths of your
piece, and part of what makes the story so vivid.  Can you pinpoint how you accessed sensory details that were forty years old?  Would you say doing the memory map helped?  Did you do any other exercises to jog the sensory parts of your memory?  How did you remember that the song you danced to was the theme from 2001?  That Melinda's curls caught in your wireframe glasses? etc.

I hope I'm not asking too many questions.  I'd like to address this in
my paper, because I think it can be a stumbling block for people as they re-create old memories on the page.

I did google winter counts, such a fascinating concept and a great idea
for a writing prompt.  Have you written other "winter counts?"

Jerry Kruger is a great name, real or not!

And I agree, Whidbey is a wonderful place to retreat to for our writing
residencies.  we are lucky.

Thanks so much again,

Janet

 

I guess I was still flattered, I guess, because a few days later, I wrote Janet back this e-mail:

Hi, Janet,

Well, as you no doubt know, as you crack open a scene, and think and imagine yourself or your characters deeper and deeper into the particular time and place and action of the situation of your scene, you are apt find out more and more and, in the case of memoir, to remember more and more, as well.

One exercise I do with my students (and myself from time to time) is to imagine myself in the place of the scene and close my eyes (with computer keyboard or writing pad handy). I tell my students to look to their left. What, in their scene, do they see, hear, smell, touch even. Write that down. Then I ask them to look right (do the same with regards to writing down what they perceive using their senses). I also ask them to look behind them and then in front of them (sometimes up and down, as well). For each direction, I ask them to write down what my students hear, see, smell, and perhaps touch. Sometimes we'll even use blindfolds (makes it more fun and mysterious). But you don't have to do that -- just twisting yourself mind and imagination deeper and deeper into the well of scene can produce the same results.

Now, your e-mail also brings up a question of ethics, Janet, in particular the ethics of the journalist versus the ethics of the creative nonfiction writer. In both cases we try to "get" what happened rightly and truly. That's our pledge, yes? In fiction, we try to do that, too, more or less (that is, fidelity to the scenes and characters and fictional world that we make up), and it's the "more or less" where the "creative" part of creative nonfiction comes in. Did Miss Arlington play that Straus waltz on that particular day in 1964. I can't swear that she did, although I do remember she played it sometime during that semester when I was a poor pupil in her class. And did I have a crush on Melinda Coates when I was 8. Absolutely. Did I dance with her on that particular day when Sherrie Luna rammed Jerry's head into the handball court wall? I'm can't swear to that, either, but I did dance with her, and my hair did get caught in the hinges of my glasses now and again.

As a creative writer, as opposed to being bound as a journalist is to presenting the sequence of events exactly as they happened, I feel justified in rearranging those details of what happened for the sake of the verisimilitude of the scene and the story I'm trying to tell, a story that is at its heart, I feel, right and true in its overall TRUTH (in this case  a truth about love, in particular the inarticulate ways we have of expressing love at that age, and, all to often, alas, beyond). And I'm also bound to tell the truth (note the little "t") of what happened, even if it didn't happen in that order or on that day. Journalists can't take that liberty of rearrangement, but creative nonfiction writers can. However, we are still fulfilling a trust to the reader that what happened on the page indeed happened. If no Martians fell from the sky, then no Martians can fall from the sky in the tale we're telling (unless, of course, our true-life character truly imagined that they did, but that, dear Janet, is another story, isn't it? :-).

Enjoy the day,

Stuart

There's a lot in those e-mail exchanges, I think, about how our stories can arise, and how we can develop them when they do, and where the real truth lies within them, even if what we're writing about didn't actually happen in the actual way that they're played out on our sweet pages.

Until next time,

be well and write well,

S.D.


* P.S. If you're interested in seeing the assignments that I refer to in my e-mails to Janet B., read on...

Neighborhood Map and Story Exercise

Purpose: To draw upon what we know (or what we didn’t know we knew), literally and figuratively.

Part One: Neighborhood Map and Story:

Draw a map of a neighborhood from your childhood. Include as much detail as you can.

Who lived where? What were the secret places? Where were your friends? Where did the

weird people live? Where were the friends of your brothers and sisters? Where were the off-limits places and so forth?

 

Part Two:

a)      Tell a story from your map. You may begin with static description, or you may prefer to establish conflict right up front: “Once when my next door neighbor Mrs. Neddlemeyer slipped on her icy driveway and blamed my brother for missing the spot…” Elaborate on your recollections to develop a coherent story. Aim for something to happen in this story (don’t forget Flannery O’Connor’s admonition: “If nothing happens, it’s not a story”). Don’t edit yourself much; don’t try for anything finished. You’re just getting started for now. So the story needn’t be long: two-three pages are fine (but keep going if you get inspired). Also, include a detail from your image journal in the story.

 

b)      Or, since you’ve already started to build and develop a story already (you remember, the story machine assignment with the character and odd, quirky detail cards?), use your neighborhood map to revise and build upon that story. Use your neighborhood map to elaborate upon what you’ve started. Maybe now, you’ll think of different directions, different complications to throw in as you turn up the burner of the conflict you’re creating (or the pattern of connection/disconnection if you like).

 

Part Three:  Reread your map story and look for a sentence or a phrase that condenses or skims over or rushes past a possible scene. Build the sentence or phrase you’ve identified into at last two pages of scene: pure action uninterrupted by explanation. The idea is to start to develop an eye for scenes that can move a story forward or dramatize a character’s internal struggle. Remember that dialogue is part of scene. Feel free to include a little or a lot of believable conversation between characters. Also, don’t forget your image journal detail.

 

And if you're interested in Margot Fortunato Galt's writing assignment about creative writing and history, here's a section from  chapter on creative writing in the Handbook of Research in Arts Education, which I wrote with my colleague, Terry Hermsen. It discusses Galt's work in a little more detail:

 

One of the best books that describe how creative writing can enhance the study of history, however, is The Story in History: Writing Your Way into the American Experience (1992), by Margot Fortunato Galt. In her book Galt presents a number of lessons centered around such diverse topics as the family in history (linking one’s personal past to an awareness of the individual within a public context of historical events); or she uses creative writing to help students more fully enter the lives of “real” historical people (to help students close the distance between the historical past and themselves); or she creates assignments based on various aspects of aboriginal culture (to inculcate lessons in diversity and broader cultural awareness); or she uses photographs and literature to build assignments that help students understand the effects and consequences of war, violence and protest (to use literature and the visual arts  make the “facts” of history become more alive for students); or she manages to create assignments that make concrete what for some students are abstract terms such as “social and technological change” (to help them realize that these sorts of changes have consequences upon their own lives). For example, building upon the idea of “Winter Counts,” the oral histories of the Sioux tribe of native Americans, students construct their own personal Winter Counts (pp. 108-124); or, using Walt Whitman’s words to help them make the transition, they imaginatively enter American Civil War-era photographs and write from the point of view of people in that time and place (pp. 146-176); or they write radio sketches from the 1940’s that dramatize social change (pp. 188-209). Galt writes, “When we study history at arm’s length, with more emphasis on facts than on individual human responses [… t]he past remains distant, not quite real, safe.  But when we invite imagination to enter our study of history, we open the door to character, emotion, irony, and the magic of metaphorical language” (p. 165). When that happens, she suggests, real learning takes place.