What I Know Now

Flannery O’Connor said, “I want to discover what I know.” As work on my memoir progresses, her words take on greater meaning. O’Connor was one of the inspirations for The Sweet Carolines, the fiction novel that I spent a year writing and revising before putting it aside last summer to write creative nonfiction. I may get back to the novel some day, but I’m thinking that I’m not up to the task yet. That I haven’t developed what Russell Kirk called the “moral imagination,” which is so necessary for the fiction writer. Thomas Howard says that the moral imagination “refers to the vision of good and evil we find in works of fiction.” Dostoyevsky immediately comes to mind. And authors from my own Southern soil like Eudora Welty and Harper Lee. And just a few miles up the coastline, the brilliant novelist, Pat Conroy and his inspirational wife (and author of The Sunday Wife) Cassandra King Conroy.

Having just finished (today!) a paragraph outline describing all twenty chapters of my memoir, which will become part of the nonfiction book proposal I’ll be sending to an agent soon, I’m more than a little bit stirred up. More than a little bit aware of what I know now about the early years of my life.

Shopping at J Jill, my favorite store, the other day, I found a copy of a book, displayed amongst the jewelry near the checkout counter. Evidently it was a national bestseller in 2006, but I was too engrossed in the fiction world to have noticed it at the time. It’s called, What I Know Now: Letters to My Younger Self. You can buy it here. The descriptive subtitle, Extraordinary Women Share the Wisdom They Wish They’d Had When They Were Younger, and list of 41 authors drew me in. The name on the list that called out to me first was Elieen Fisher. Probably because I’m using clothing as a narrative frame for my memoir, and Fisher is one of my all-time favorite clothing designers.

Fisher is my age, and is head of one of the largest privately held female-owned businesses in the U.S. Ellyn Spragins, who edited the book about all these women, says of Fisher:

She ignores trends in favor of designs that reflect her personal values…. She shares a minimum of 10 percent of aftertax profits with her six hundred employees, gives each two thousand dollars annually to spend on education and wellness,….. and her company is one of the few in the United States to meet workplace standards set by Social Accountability International, a not-for-profit watchdog group in New York City.

You can read the letter Fisher contributed to the book here. But this is my favorite part:

You know how much you love to dance? You’ve danced for the fun of it from the time you were tiny. You went dancing with your boyfriend in college and rocked out with friends in your dorm. All that joy is going to fall away because you’re going to stop dancing for twenty years—unless you take care to listen to yourself and shepherd all the pieces of who you are through to the future.

Of course her words remind me of Lee Ann Womack’s song, “I Hope You Dance.” But they also remind me of my own journey. Of the years the locust ate. Of the years I allowed others to keep me from dancing.

Flipping through photo albums as “visual research” for my memoir, I found hilarious pictures our some of the members of our “group”—the Jesus cult that was trying to (and finally did, thank God!) become a church—dressed up for pre-karaoke parties in the 1980s. Most of those folks would probably think it was all just foolishness, looking back on it now. Not me. I believe that at some subconscious level, we were escaping the straight-jacket lives that had been defined for us by the collective will, if only for a few evenings of costumes and music.

One of those parties was based on the popular 80s TV Reality show, Puttin’ On the Hits , which featured costumed contestants lip-synching their favorite songs. For my entry, I reinvented myself as Kim Carnes (the real Kim pictured at left) lip-sinching "Crazy in the Night/Barking at Airplanes," (watch Kim sing it here) with help from my “band” on guitar and organ. (below, left) I paid meticulous attention to Kim’s clothes as I put together my costume for the night. (right)

As I look at the pictures now, (I was 34) twenty-three years later, I wonder what I would say in a “letter to my younger self.”

Would I say, as NBC news commentator, Ann Curry, says in her letter (in What I Know Now),

You’re comforming to what people expect you to look like…. And the real world seems to have no hesitation about judging you on appearance, so you’re changing as fast as you can…. If you can have faith in your real self, you’ll suffer less. You won’t waste valuable time that could be spent on more important things.

When I’m finished writing my memoir, will I be able to write myself a letter and proclaim, as mystery novelist, Lisa Scottoline does:

Your hair matters far, far less than you think. In fact, the way you look matters far less than you think.

Or will I take Olympia Dukakis’s words to heart? The daughter of Greek immigrant parents, she grew up in Lowell, Massachusetts (my mother-in-law’s home town) where she rebelled against the “good Greek daughter” label but later became the “good Greek wife” as she nursed a husband, crippled by a car wreck, while pursuing her acting career with a passion. In her letter she encourages her younger self to:

…realize that being strong doesn’t require that you deny yourself pleasures. You don’t have to “earn” them by toiling harder than every other workhorse…. Even now, you have a lot to look forward to…. Purposefully capturing happy moments expands your soul. On your fortieth wedding anniversary, you’ll have an enormous party at your New York City loft with fifty people raising their glasses to you. In time you’ll start to rent a giant house at a different beach every summer and invite the whole family to come. It won’t be a “happily ever after” story—the cycles of darkness and light continue. But have patience. Your most important struggles will be hard-fought but won well.

I’m all for the house on the beach. With lots of room for visiting family and friends. Like our favorite place at Seagrove, Ramsgate townhouse, the green one. And the 40th wedding anniversary party, although it probably won’t be in New York City. Mark your calendars: June 13, 2010.

Hey! Maybe we’ll have the party on the beach—maybe even the one we discovered here, at Seagrove, with Jon and his friends, back in 2006…. Sigh.

I took my best friend, Daphne, there in March of 2007.

And then Beth, in the spring of 2007... here we are, watching for dolphins, which swim just off our deck. Yes. Now if I can just get Jason down there. He claims not to like the beach. But I ask you, what's not to like? Can you tell I'm craving the beach... with no plans to get there until the middle of May? sigh....

Up Through the Dirt

I went to sleep thinking about the first chapters I had just read in Joshilyn Jackson’s new novel, The Girl Who Stopped Swimming. I woke up dreaming about Mamaw, my mother’s mother, who died twenty three years ago. (That's Mamaw and me, in 1984, a year before she died. Her name is Emma Sue... my namesake.) If there's a connection between Joshilyn's novel and my grandmother, I haven't made it yet, but who knows.... I'm in the middle of writing a memoir, and trying to remain open to what Dinty Moore taught me about "discovery" at the Creative Nonfiction Workshop last month.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. First, about Joshilyn and her (third) book. She’s the gifted writer I met last summer at the first Mississippi Writers Guild Conference (that's us at right) the one who said to me, at the end of one of the workshops she taught (in addition to being the keynote speaker): “Go forth and blog.” She’s the reason I created Pen and Palette to begin with, so from time to time I’ll pause to give her a nod and some of the endless white space on this magical paperless notebook. (By the way, this is my 101st post since I started the blog in August! I guess I should have celebrated my 100th post on Tuesday, but it wasn't on my radar.)

The Girl Who Stopped Swimming has that rare combination of page-turning story line and literary excellence. You can hardly get through a single paragraph without the delightful experience of yet another of her magical metaphors or over-the-top character descriptions. She makes the most ordinary actions (not that there are very many of those in her books!) jump off the page. A dead girl shows up in Laurel’s backyard swimming pool, and as she and her husband, daughter, and daughter’s spend-the-night friend stand frozen in shock at the scene, Joshilyn describes it this way:

A flood of people, paramedics and policemen, poured through the glass doors, streaming around the four of them as if they were rocks in a river.

Later she describes a suspicious character this way:

Stan Webelow had a pixieman face, and his hands were moist and soft, as if he’d deboned them.

As if he’d deboned them? Who thinks that way? A brilliant wordsmith. And I love how she captures the “Southern way” that’s such a part of Laurel’s DNA that she can only act in certain ways:

Laurel had been raised on Miss Manners and King James, maybe in that order; neither source had ever told her what was proper on a night like this. She didn’t know if she should offer to make coffee or start screaming until someone gave her medicine.

Isn’t that exactly the dilemma of every Southern woman in a crisis? Coffee? Tea? Nervous breakdown?

I ordered Joshilyn’s book from her “virtual signing” and when I opened it I read her words to me with joy: To Susan: keep writing! XXO, J

As the sun peeked through the windows this morning, I headed outside to take pictures of our Japanese magnolia tree (right) it's buds trying to break through into the early spring morning, having survived the snow of only six days ago. A squirrel was digging up goodies from the dirt that has been thawing all week. And our camellia bushes were in full bloom… I even had to bring a few in for the kitchen table.

Oreo sneaked out onto the front porch (she’s literally a housecat in her old age) to welcome the new life that was budding everywhere. And I came back inside thinking about Mamaw and why I dreamed about her last night.

Here she is with me and Jason, just before his third birthday, in the spring of 1984. She had Alzheimer’s, and kept asking “who is that little Chinese boy?” She was too far gone to understand that we had adopted Jason from South Korea and he was her great-grandson. I’m so sad that he never knew what an amazing woman she was.

But I knew. Her life is woven throughout the early chapters of the memoir I’m writing, from the years she made all my clothes during the summer vacations I spent at her house in Meridian, Mississippi to the wedding gift she gave me in 1970—a patchwork quilt sewn from scraps of all those dresses. The quilt! That's it! That's the connection with Joshilyn's book and why I dreamed about Mamaw after reading it.... Laurel (in The Girl Who Stopped Swimming) is a QUILTER! So there it is... that mystical connection, always crouching just beneath the surface of our subconscious, if only we will listen for it. I can look at that quilt all these years later and remember what those dresses looked like. With my mother’s onset of Alzheimer’s, I can’t help but worry about my own plight one day, and I wonder if this quilt will help me remember.

Of course there are also dark memories, and as the dirt thaws, they’re coming at me with abandon, and I’m sorting through them, writing some into my book, letting others sift through my fingers, leaving traces of red clay from the hills outside Meridian where my grandfather took us for rides in the back of his pickup truck.

So on this early spring day, I’m thankful for the beautiful things that come up through the dirt and bloom when the dirt thaws…. like camellias and Japanese magnolias. And memoirs. And, yes, Joshilyn, I'm writing!

Humility and Freedom... and another Essay Published!

It's only the second day of Great Lent and I'm already struggling on so many fronts, but especially with humility. We pray this prayer of St. Ephraim every day during Lent:
O Lord and Master of my life, take from me the spirit of sloth, meddling, lust of power and idle talk.

But give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience and love to your servant.

O Lord and King, grant me to see my own sins and not to judge my brother, for blessed are You unto ages of ages. Amen.

I've always struggled with balancing humility and repentance with joy and freedom, so I was happy to find this wonderful essay by Metropolitan Kallistos Ware a few years ago, in the book, Living Orthodoxy in the Modern World. The essay is called, "Lent and the Consumer Society." It's actually where I first read about flying kites on Clean Monday. Anyway, I love his approach to Lent:

We are encouraged to associate Lent with fresh air, with the wind blowing on the hills, with the coming of spring. Lent is a time for flying kites--a time for adventure, exploration, fresh initiatives, new hope.... It also has to do with freedom.... Lent is a time when we learn to be free.... As a human person in God's image, I am not truly free unless I have learnt how to use my freedom rightly, and this process of learning presupposes obedience, discipline and self-denial. Freedom is not only a gift; it is a task....Lent is concerned, first, with the offering of the world back to God in thanksgiving....

I love that. It's not about self-depracation and groveling. It's about seeing ourselves as God sees us. Yes, seeing our sins and repententing of them. But also seeing God's gifts come to fruition as we labor. Freedom means freedom from slavery to self and harmful passions, but also freedom to be all that we can be.

In that vain, I'm going to share some more good news about my work, thanking God for these two encouragements I received in the mail last week:

First of all, the essay I entered in the Santa Fe Writers Project's Literary Awards Program was a finalist, although not a winner. The essay, "Blocked," will appear in sfwp a Literary Journal in the coming weeks or months. (I'll let you know the date so you can read the essay at their online journal site.) The letter I received from Andrew Gifford, Project Director, was just the shot in the arm I needed at this time in my writing. Here's part of it:

We found that your work shows great promise. As you know, writing is a difficult process, and it often takes years to develop the skills and the voice to tell your stories in ways that speak to a reader. Your voice spoke to us, and we listened.... we feel that you have mastered the most difficult element in writing--you captured the attention of your audience.

This will be my fourth essay published since November, and my first one published by a literary journal, so I'm very thankful, and yes, trying to be humble! (But I won't forget to let you know when the essay is available online!)

My second blessing came from Laura Garner, Middle School/High School ELA Coordinator for the Berkeley County School District in Moncks Corner, South Carolina. Laura had read my essay, "myPod," in skirt! Magazine back in November, and wrote to ask my permission to use it as part of the curriculum for teaching creative writing to 8th graders! At first I thought, "eighth graders? what does that say about my writing, if it appeals to 8th graders?" But then I read the letter which she sent me last week, along with a copy of the curriculum unit she created, which included my essay:

Thank you for granting me permission to use your essay, "myPod," in an eighth-grade curriculum unit. The title and subject matter of the piece held obvious appeal for our students, but it was your writing style and the organization of the essay that prompted my request. I found your style to be as warm and spicy as the barbeque I enjoyed when visiting your city for a conference last summer.

Okay, that felt really really good to read. And her curriculum unit is nothing short of amazing. I wish I had been taught creative writing at this level when I was in the eighth grade! KUDOS, Laura! The "Author's Craft Review," used by the students to evaluate each piece, included these five categories, which aren't bad things for all writers to consider as we hone our craft:

1. Position Statement

2. Support for Position

3. Accuracy

4. Use of Literary Terms

5. Grammar & Spelling

So... as I continue putting together my book proposal and revising sample chapters for the agent who requested them at the Creative Nonfiction Workshop, I'll try to keep these not-so-contrasting elements before me: my Lenten struggle for humility and freedom, and the encouragement I received from the Santa Fe Writers Project and the South Carolina State Department of Education. The structure and discipline of Great Lent are really conducive to the difficult self-discipline involved in writing and revising, and I'm so thankful to be entering into this season of learning to use my freedom in this way.

Forgiveness Sunday and Kites on Clean Monday

Orthodox Christians all over the world will enter into Great Lent tomorrow, on Clean Monday. You can read about why Western Christians (Catholics and Protestants) celebrate Easter (Orthodox Pascha) on a different date here and here and here.

At St. John Orthodox Church here in Memphis, we began preparing for this day at Great Vespers on Saturday night, when we chanted verses about the expulsion of Adam and Eve from paradise, and also commemorated the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste. If you’re not familiar with this story, you can read it here. I’ve heard the story so many times over the years, but never noticed that the canon includes the individual names of the martyrs. Somehow, as their names were chanted last night, their love for Christ, for each other, and their courage became more real to me. I found myself thinking, those are the three things we need to enter into any kind of martyrdom, any kind of self-denial, even if it’s only increased fasting and prayer for forty days (Lent):

(1) love for Christ,
(2) love for one another, and
(3) courage.

Why courage? For some of us, denying ourselves the things we use to numb pain or escape the reality of life at times (for me, food and alcohol are right up there at the top!) takes courage. But also love. I don’t love God very much, if at all. But I am able to love my husband, family and friends, albeit imperfectly. But I think it’s their love for me that strengthens me to try to restore the image of God in myself through ascetic struggles, especially during the season of Great Lent.

Tonight at Forgiveness Vespers, we exchanged the rite of forgiveness. You can read a good article by Fr. Alexander Schmemann on this here.

There are almost always tears as we ask one another for forgiveness, “Forgive me, a sinner,” and offer the response, “God forgives and I forgive.” At the end of the rite, the choir leads us in a few Paschal hymns. The joyful, victorious message of those hymns reminds us, at the beginning of Lent, that we’re heading towards the Resurrection. Without this goal in mind, our prayer, fasting, and almsgiving—our ascetic struggle—could easily become legalistic actions rather than life-giving vehicles of God’s grace.

And so I ask all my family, Godchildren and friends that weren’t here with us at St. John tonight:

Please forgive me, a sinner.

The Greeks fly kites on Clean Monday, to celebrate letting go of our sins that weigh us down. I love that image. It reminds me that even this extra body weight I’m carrying around because of gluttony keeps me earth bound. I hope to lose some of it during the Fast, but mostly I hope to draw closer to God.
May God grant us all a Good Lent!

"Bring my soul out of prison, that I may confess Thy name." Psalm 142:7

A Birthday to Remember

It doesn’t get much better than this: today’s my birthday, and I woke up to God’s gift—a gorgeous and rare (for Memphis) winter wonderland with all the perks (beauty) and none of the minuses (loss electricity, frozen roads, trees crashing into houses, etc.) My sweet hubby opened the blinds so I could enjoy the scene, just as he brought me coffee in bed, and followed that with breakfast. (He even cleaned up.) Here he is, retrieving the newspaper from our snowed-over driveway. Hopefully our crapes survived the spring freeze, and our Japanese Magnolia, whose buds had begun to peek out!

We took pictures out front before the snow began to melt… me with Oreo, (my cat) who was a little less excited about the snow, to say the least!

A cozy morning at home with a few well-wishers, cards and gifts arriving via mail and in person. Here’s my favorite birthday card of the bunch, from my friend Nancy McGee. I laughed so hard at that one… and especially the jar on the woman's dressing table that's labled, "Cheeks So Tight"... and I'll laugh all the way to JJill to spend the gift card she gave me! I’ll have to get something to match the gorgeous JJill necklace that Pamela gave me. (Ya’ think these people know me?) My other friend named Nancy gave me a Starbucks gift card... she's the friend I actually met at Starbucks several years ago!

Getting ready to drive up to Ripley, Tennessee to my Goddaughter, Stacy’s baby shower at her cousin’s house, I pull on my Uggs, which Claire just returned yesterday. I loaned them to her for her trip to Amsterdam… and she brought me a coffee mug and this precious magnet from the Van Gogh Museum… check out the quote. Again, I feel so loved because these people know me.

Another Goddaughter, Hannah, dropped off a gorgeous gift bag with four “patio” wine glasses (plastic, that look like glass, so I won’t break them!) and two sets of precious cocktail napkins… one with flip flops on them. Makes me yearn for spring and cookouts on our patio! Madeleine (another Goddaughter) dropped by with a beautiful pendant in an antique box.... and yet another Goddaughter, Sarah, came by with Dinstahl's candies!!! Yes! Oh, and 5-year-old Sophie came by with her mom to bring me gold earrings from Syria the other day. (She was still wearing her diamond studs from our ear-piercings on February 24.) Again, I'm humbled and grateful.

Driving up to Ripley I passed this sign. For those living outside the South (or Tennessee), Ripley is the “Tomato Capital of the World.” And Stacy, of course, was the Ripley Tomato Festival Queen at least one year.

Here we are at Stacy's shower… bringing back the 70s with our geometric print dresses. (Sadly, I’ve gained a little weight and if you didn’t know I was 57 today you might wonder what might be hatching under that A-frame mini-dress…. But alas, it’s plain old-fashioned blubber. Even the Spanxx can’t hold it all in. Thank God that Lent begins on Monday!) Stacy is due on Pascha (Eastern Easter - April 27).... but she's still a size 0 with a little belly poking out in front!

Okay, that’s it for today. I don’t think a girl should have to work on her birthday, do you? In fact, I could take some advice from Lauri Granieri whose essay, "Leaving Work to Watch Sunsets," was published on "This I Believe." Listen to her podcast here. So watch for a more thoughtful blog on Monday…. I’m going out to Blue Fish for my birthday dinner tonight. It's as close as I can get to the beach while I'm in Memphis! Thanks, everyone, for making my birthday so special!

Discovery: Uncovering the Precious Cross… and the Sunken Sensations of a Distant Past

Sorry about the long title, but I was having difficulty getting started this morning. I woke up with the first paragraph of another chapter of a book on my mind. The paragraph I struggled with for about an hour yesterday. Dinty’s Moore’s words about the importance of discovery (see my post from Monday about the CNF Conference) were ringing in my ears. My sweet husband had brought my first cup of coffee to my bedside table, but I let it get cold as I made my way to my icon corner in the dining room to pray. And there it was, on my Orthodox Calendar: March 6: The Uncovering of the Precious Cross and the Precious Nails by the Empress Helen in Jerusalem .

Saint Helen was the mother of Constantine the Great. They began to rebuild Jerusalem in the fourth century. They especially wanted to build a church at the site of the Lord’s Resurrection. After leveling the pagan temple of Venus, they found Golgotha, the place of the Lord’s crucifixion. Nearby were three crosses and four nails, the nails used in the crucifixion.

The problem was, how could they discover which cross was the one Jesus was crucified on? Patriarch Macarius came to Helen’s aid by ordering that the body of a dead man be placed on each of the three crosses, one at a time. Finally, when placed on the third cross, the man came back to life. Yes. This really happened. And by this miracle they discovered the true cross, on March 6, 326.

Each time I read a truly gripping creative nonfiction book, like the works of Anne Lamott or Haven Kimmel, I find myself saying, “Oh, but their lives are so much more interesting than mine! What do I have to write about?” I’m learning that I’m asking the wrong question. That instead, I need to be asking myself how can I discover the treasures that are buried in my life, and in lives around me?

The poet Rainer Maria Rilke writes in his small volume, Letters to a Young Poet:

If your everyday life appears to be unworthy subject matter, do not complain to life. Complain to yourself. Lament that you are not poet enough to call up its wealth. For the creative artist there is no poverty—nothing is insignificant or unimportant. Even if you were in a prison whose walls would shut out from your senses the sounds of the outer world, would you not then still have your childhood, this precious wealth, this treasure house of memories? Direct your attention to that. Attempt to resurrect these sunken sensations of a distant past. Your will gain assuredness. Your aloneness will expand and will become your home, greeting you like the quiet dawn. Outer tumult will pass it by from afar…. Go within and scale the depths of your being from which your very life springs forth. At its source you will find the answer to the question whether you must write.

That’s one level of discovery. But the discovery I learned about at the Creative Nonfiction Workshop last weekend continues into everything you write. My fellow students’ words are ringing in my ears this morning (the ones who critiqued my work at the workshops):

Your work is too concrete. You don’t leave enough for the reader to discover. You tone is too confident, as though you yourself have nothing left to discover. We want to know how you felt, as narrator, as author, as main character, at every turn in the story.

So I returned home to Memphis to try to revise and write my stories with this spirit of discovery. And I’m learning (again, as I already knew this about myself) what a control-freak I am. How hard it is to let go and let the work teach me, as the writer Madeleine L’Engle often said:

A writer is a dis-coverer: He takes inventory of what is already there. He does not create ex-nihilo. He uses what has made itself known to him in all his lie, and he uses this material in the most concrete manner possible. For, as Henry James says, the job of the *novelist is to render, not to report; to show, not to tell. And this rendering, this showing, depends on all the people the writer has ever known—family, friends, people met at airports…. They all leave their imprint on the creative subconscious mind of the writer.

*I might add that these same principles apply to the writer of creative non-fiction, whose job it is to write non-fiction in a literary style. L’Engle wrote both fiction and non-fiction, and throughout all of her work I saw this element of discovery… of herself, and her characters, whether real or imagined, being alive. As she explains in Madeleine L’Engle, Herself: Reflections on a Writing Life:

I can only affirm that the people in my stories have as complete and free a life of their own as do my family and friends; to the extent that they become alive for the reader, the story has succeeded….The creative-below-the-surface mind will do the underwater work and send the character up to the surface when needed. It’s a mysterious act of collaboration between intellect and intuition.

L’Engle talks a lot about listening. So did Eudora Welty. When I saw this quote by her on the walls of the room in the journalism building at Ole Miss where I was waiting to pitch my book ideas to editors and agents this past Saturday, something clicked:

Back to L’Engle:

There are creative ideas out there, and we are meant to be finely tuned receivers. Most of the time we’ve lost our ability to receive, and we hear static. But every once in a while we can pick it up. And what the artist does is keep tuning the receiver so that the message comes in more and more clearly. And that’s one reason I do not dominate or manipulate the work any more than I want to dominate or manipulate my friends or my children or my family, because that is destructive, not creative.

Wow. One line in a prayer I often pray in the morning (written by Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow) goes like this:

Bless my association with all who surround me…. Teach me to act firmly and wisely without embittering and embarrassing others…. Teach me to pray. Pray yourself in me.

Prayer isn’t all that different from writing, if you listen to the words of Rilke and L’Engle… who both talk about going inside and sending the character up to the surface. Just like prayer, it seems that writing (or any kind of artistic creation) is indeed, as L’Engle says, a “mysterious act of collaboration between intellect and intuition.”

So here I go, back to the opening paragraph of the next chapter of that book… God help me to listen to the work, rather than trying to dominate or manipulate it. And as Metropolitan Philaret said, “In all my deeds and words, guide my thoughts and feelings.”

Turning Experiences into Words

Pour yourself another cup of coffee and get ready for a long post…. as I attempt to turn my experiences at the 2008 Mid-South Creative Nonfiction Writers Conference into words. The conference theme was: “Travel Writing & Memoir—Turning Experiences into Words.”

Okay, I’m actually going to use lots of photos for this post, which should make for a fun read on a Monday morning. I’ll open with Dinty Moore’s pre-conference workshop on Thursday. It was a manuscript critique workshop. Eight of us submitted a memoir-in-progress ahead of time, received the other writers’ pieces via email, and came prepared to participate in the group critique of each piece.

Dinty got us started with a few pointers about writing memoir. About experience and artifact… about taking what happened and how it felt and creating a shape, style, and voice in order to present it to the reader. His words about frame, structure, point of view and voice weren’t new to me, but obviously things I need to learn over and over again. But his emphasis on discovery was eye-opening. In Dinty’s words:

What’s the piece about? Struggling with this is what lifts the writing off the page and makes the reader care… it gives the reader a sense of discovery.

As our group of eight writers critiqued each other’s manuscripts under Dinty’s guidance, I experienced several “aha” moments. When several people have the same response to a certain aspect of your writing, you sit up and listen to what they’re saying. And then when you see strengths in the other writers’ pieces, the workshop becomes an even more valuable show and tell for the craft we’re all struggling to hone.

I was encouraged to keep my writing alive by lessening the confident tone and leaving more mystery. My “take home” challenge was to give my work more compression, in order to be more reflective.

An over-arching theme of the conference was STORIES. Lee Gutkind (left) harped on this back at the Creative Nonfiction Conference in the fall, and we heard it again, over and over. It’s interesting that one of the quotes painted on the walls in the journalism building where we met was this (at right) from Willie Morris.

Our group enjoyed lunch out with Dinty at Ajax on the square before returning for an afternoon of continued critique work.

At 5:30 I returned to the Thacker Mountain Radio Show at Off Square Books to hear Dinty read from his memoir, Between Panic and Desire, which I reviewed in an earlier post, here.

One of the musical acts that night was Caroline Herring, one of the show’s founders, and now a mother of two. I snatched up her new CD, "Lantana," at the end of the show. I loved her acoustic guitar playing and lyrical folksy sound.

A reception at Pearl Street Pasta completed the evening. You can see how quickly writers bond when we’re intensely working on our craft together all day and then get to relax in the evening. That's Sarah Einstein, whose brilliant memoir-in-progress inspired us all during Dinty's workshop, and Kathy Rhodes (middle) who is already a published author, with me at Pearl Street. You can order her book, Pink Butterbeans, here.

Friday brought another manuscript critique workshop for me, this one led by Kristen Iversen, who teaches in the MFA program at the University of Memphis and serves as Editor-in-Chief of The Pinch, the literary magazine of the U of M. Her latest book is Molly Brown: Unraveling the Myth. There were only four of us in this class, which left plenty of time for some craft teaching by Kristen. As my fellow writers took my work to task, it was interesting to see how people from outside the South responded to my memoir, about growing up in Mississippi. But it was more helpful (and yes, sometimes painful) to hear the common thread in their response to my work:

The narrator’s voice is strong, but her character isn’t clear enough… I’m not showing why she feels the way she does. Some of that can be fixed with structural changes, but I think Carol (one of the workshop participants) nailed the issue when she said, “Is she (narrator/main character) using clothing as a substitute for being?” (The memoir uses clothes as a frame.

Another reception Friday evening, this time at The Memory House (which was the home of William Faulkner’s brother) gave us another opportunity to relax together, and to hear a few words from Lee Gutkind (Conference Director and founder and editor of Creative Nonfiction) and Samir Husni (right) the Chair of the Journalism Department at Ole Miss.

My friend Daphne (from Little Rock) and my Goddaughter Katherine (from Memphis) arrived on Friday for part of the conference, so it was great fun to pal around with them as encourage each other in our creative pursuits.

Saturday brought the panel discussions led by writers, professors, editors and agents from all over the country. It was inspirational to see the varied personalities of editors like Charlie Conrad (Doubleday/Broadway) and Ole Miss grad Webster Younce, as well as Conde Nast Traveler editor, Ted Moncreiff and Slate’s foreign editor, June Thomas.

Three writers shared their stories: Mike Rosenwald (staff writer at the Washington Post), Virginia Morell correspondent for Science, and regular contributor to National Geographic, and Rebecca Skloot, (freelance writer and creative nonfiction professor in the MFA Program at the University of Memphis.)

Literary agent Gillian MacKenzie completed the panels and endeared the audience with her warmth and accessibility.

The “One-on-Ones” offered the opportunity for writers to pitch their ideas for magazine articles or book proposals to these folks. This was a new experience for me, and the scene was charged with high hopes and insecurities. It looked like a casting call, as we stood in lines for our three minutes with each editor or agent.

During lunch I had prepared my “pitches” …. two book proposals and two magazine/essay ideas. The book proposals were for two actual works in progress. In the world of creative nonfiction, editors and agents like to hear the pitch first, whereas in the world of the fiction novel, they seem to prefer a complete manuscript. In every case, published clips are a plus, so I was armed with copies of my three recent published essays.

It was fun watching my fellow writers as we stood in the lines together. Some were practicing their pitches with each others. Others were laughing and chatting nervously. One woman told me she thought she might throw up. At first I didn’t want to chat with anyone because I want to “practice my lines” …. but after a while I found the conversations relaxed me. As I allowed others access to my feelings, I took an important step towards becoming more real. I bonded with other real humans who were courageously putting their treasures on the line with these strangers who held power over our futures.

Looking across the room at a new friend who just finished their pitch to one of the editors, I’d raise my eyebrows and shoulders, body language for “how did it go?” and they’d give me two thumbs up and a smile, or sometimes a “so-so” flip of their hand and a painful half smile.

I was pleasantly surprised at how helpful and encouraging the book editors and agent were, giving me concrete feedback and specific help for my works in progress. They named published books that dealt with similar themes, asking how my work would be different, would stand out from those… and how it would be similar in its appeal. Thankfully, these were books I had read, so I was able to give a half-intelligent response!

One of them asked for my published clips, which I handed over, and then asked me to email a sample chapter of one of my works-in-progress. I’ve got my work cut out for me now, to choose the “best” chapter and revise it and polish it before sending it off. Do I hurry to send it before they forget who I am, or do I take my time and make it the best it can be? Hopefully I’ll find my way as I begin the work of revision this week.

Lee Gutkind had to hurry off on Sunday (for China!) before we were able to properly thank him for his work in making the conference so wonderful. His new book, Almost Human, is a six-year project involving research in robotics. Have a great time in China, Lee!

Neil White, Creative Director and Publisher of The Nautilus Publishing Company was one of the conference hosts, and gave the parting words after another wonderful panel on Sunday. He was also wonderfully helpful in shuttling people around the campus all weekend, collecting our parking tickets (“they’re not real cops here”) and watching over the flow of the conference with efficient attention and care. Thanks, Neil! (that's Neil with me at right) We’ll be watching for his memoir, The Outcasts, forthcoming from William Morrow/Harper Collins. It’s a story about the year he was imprisoned in the last leprosarium in the continental United States. Wow.

The conference was video-taped, so watch the Creative Nonfiction website for future podcasts, as well as the University of Mississippi’s Department of Journalism.

Katherine had to return to Memphis on Saturday, but Daphne and I spent Sunday afternoon enjoying the sunshine and ambience of Oxford…. Drinking lattes on the patio at High Point Coffee, visiting with other conference participants who were still hanging around, and bouncing ideas off each other.

We drove through a neighborhood just north of the Square, lusting over the beautiful historic homes and dreaming of living there. We even peeked in the windows of this home which has been lovingly renovated, and probably has a huge price tag. In the empty lot next door, early spring blossoms whispered good wishes for our own regeneration.

A brief visit to Off Square Books for some magazines and it was time to say goodbye and begin our separate drives up I-55 to our homes in Memphis and Little Rock.

Of course we talked on our cell phones most of the way, not wanting our time together to end. And still so stirred up by the creative energy of the conference… and the strong sense of place that being in Oxford always brings.