Winter, Walking Casts, Writing Books. Going on...

At the nearby track where I walk when the roads are icy or I’m recovering from yet another injury, or have time only for a quick two miles, on many mornings on the inside field, a freelance soccer coach takes groups of youngsters through what to me seem like advanced skill drills. A blur of motion, legs, soccer balls. I have almost no interest in the game, but what I love is that no matter where on the track I am, or even how windy it may be, I hear the lilt of the coach’s rich voice, his island accent, urging his players on.

When he first appeared, I noticed that no matter what mistake a player may make, no matter how much one of the kids may be struggling, what comes out of this man’s mouth is: “And, we go on.”

 At first, I couldn’t decipher it, thinking I’d heard: “andweeego own…” But then I got it, and realized he was encouraging his charges, constantly—and more, suggesting that errors, small or large missteps, don’t matter as much as going on, without pausing to worry or feel sorry.

I learned to love hearing him, and some days when I was driving to the track, hoped fervently the coach would be there, boosting those hopeful, keep-on-trying kids. When I hear him encouraging them, especially on days when I’m considering cutting my walk short, that small push is enough.

 And, we go on.

 And so, I do.

Like now. 

Middle of winter in New Jersey. And though I’ve lived here all but a half-dozen years of my life, I’m always and inexplicably a bit surprised at what happens (snow, ice, bone rattling cold), and also a little dismayed (Seasonal Affective Disorder, otherwise known as the daily gray day doldrums). Toss in two new broken bones in my foot, and here we are indeed: February, slightly depressed, too much forced sedentary-ness, staying home far too much.

 And, we go on.

Keeping me going just now, as I clump around in an awkward walking boot: teaching (this semester, an MFA course, “Reading as a Writer,” which I developed several years ago); writing (barely trudging around the track, but showing up); editing and coaching (absolutely nothing better than helping writers polish their drafts, manuscripts, and skills).

Yet, some days, when it all gets to me—like the gray and icy 13-degree day last week when my foot ached and I ran out of British crime dramas to watch—it’s my non-writer, feeling crummy but determined to do something activities that keep me going on. That is, I organize. Cull closets and shelves, then toss, sell, or find ways to give away. I’ve culled my office, notably my bulging bookshelves, three times recently. A neighborhood social media page ensures the novels and memoirs and biographies I part with find new readers nearby.

Most recently, I’ve been thinning my writing craft bookshevles. This group (pictured) is ready to go. (I've either got a duplicate copy, or read it and got what I needed from it, or for some reason it didn't speak to me but may be just what another writer needs.) And I’d love to give them to you, my blog readers and writing and reading friends. Want one? Email me with your U.S. postal address and I’ll send it via media mail at my cost. (If you can make good use of several, and are willing to share mailing expenses, we can do that too.) That’s it. Books to a new home where they can maybe inspire another writer.

Here’s hoping your winter/pandemic/getting-back-to-normal/whatever projects and activities are feeding you.

 And, we go on together.

 P.S. I have two open editing slots for winter and three for spring, to take on full manuscripts, and room for a few new coaching clients. And of course, editing/feedback for shorter works is available almost anytime. Get started here or email me.  

First-time Author Gratitude that Lingers (plus book giveaways)

To say that the first six months after one's debut book is published are a whirlwind would be an understatement. For me, these months have been filled with so many wonderful experiences and events, new people and opportunities, a better understanding about the publishing world, chances to share insights, and much more.

The feeling which lingers most though when I look back -- as I did recently -- is one of gratitude. Hence, the heading for my recent newsletter:  Starting With...Gratitude.

Since some blog readers may not be on the newsletter mailing list (and you can fix that here), I wanted to let you know that you can read the newsletter at this link. 

Even better, if you haven't gotten a copy of my book yet, until the end of the day on Dec. 9, there's a giveaway going on (via the newsletter) for a signed copy (AND a separate giveaway for a bundle of writing craft books). Details are in the newsletter (and since you won't be able to reply there -- as the giveaway instructions state -- you can enter one or both by emailing me directly:  LisaRomeoWriter at gmail dot com ).

I also want to thank all my blog readers and other writing-world friends for putting up with my barrage of book promo, here and all over the place. Perhaps having gotten to this milestone at a somewhat later-than-usual age has made its significance loom larger. So my gratitude extends to everyone who has listened to me go on and on, who read and responded and supported and liked and shared and purchased and in any other way helped me on this journey, even a little bit. Thanksgiving may be over, but gratitude goes on...

Guest Blogger Melanie Brooks on: Writing Your Story, and Crying if you Want (or Need) To

Besides social media connections, and having graduated from the same MFA program, Melanie Brooks and I share a love of reading memoirs that must have cost their authors an emotional toll—those she covers in her forthcoming book, Writing Hard Stories: Celebrated Memoirists Who Shaped Art From Trauma. [We're giving away a copy, too!]

Melanie works as a freelance writer and teaches at Northeastern University and Merrimack College in Massachusetts, and at Nashua Community College in New Hampshire, where she lives with her husband, two children and yellow Lab. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, Bustle, The Manifest-Station, Hippocampus, Huffington Post, Modern Loss, Solstice Literary Magazine, Recollectors, Stonecoast Review and Word Riot. Melanie's also working on an almost-completed memoir that explores the lasting impact of living with the ten-year secret of her father’s HIV disease before his death in 1995.

Please welcome Melanie Brooks.

The questions were simple: “What are you writing about and what form is it taking?” So, why was I finding it harder and harder to breathe as the seminar leader meandered her way toward me? As she solicited responses from the other students in the crowded room, why was there a sudden tightness in my chest? It wasn’t as if I didn’t know the answers.

I’d started my MFA at the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast Creative Writing Program with a clear purpose—space and time to finally write into a complex family story I’d carried for over twenty years, a story I recognized was big enough to be a book. But when the leader’s kind gaze finally fell on me, the words caught in my throat. I mumbled something about writing about my dead dad, then a strangled sob hijacked anything else I might say, and a deluge of tears broke through my reserve. I was sitting at the wall-end of a cramped row, with no possibility of discreet escape. For the remainder of the ninety-minute seminar, I struggled to stop my nose from dripping without the benefit of a tissue, and I bit my lip until I tasted blood, to muffle the hiccupping sobs that fought to surface.

Nothing in the introductory materials the program coordinators sent out in the months leading up to that first MFA residency had readied me for this horrifying public moment of absolute composure meltdown. No neon labels were affixed to the pages of the orientation handbook broadcasting: WARNING: Writing about vulnerable material can leave you feeling rawly vulnerable. Be prepared to cry. A lot. At inconvenient times.

So when the inconvenient crying first erupted during that seminar, I thought something was wrong with me. And when it happened again while my workshop group discussed my manuscript, I felt the need to make excuses to put everyone else at ease. “I cry all the time,” I said, even though I don’t. “Just call me The Crier from here on out,” I joked, sidelining my emotions.

The truth was that, during the residency, and in the following months when I sat in front of my computer, mired in the very real anguish of trying to shape my painful memories into words, I felt alone. So alone, I almost quit.

I needed to find someone to tell me what I was feeling was okay. Normal. Expected, even. If someone could tell me those things, then maybe I could marshal up enough courage to keep going.

In what began as a very personal (and totally selfish) quest, I went looking for that someone to guide me back to my laptop, someone to tell me those things I needed to hear about my pain and loneliness and fear. I wrote to authors I admired—those whose memoirs did not shy away from any of the tough stuff— and told them how much I was struggling. I asked them if I could sit down with them and talk about the psychological journeys they had to go on to write their books. 

What I found when I reached out was more than someone. I found eighteen someones. Eighteen acclaimed writers—including Andre Dubus III, Mark Doty, Edwidge Danticat, Abigail Thomas, and Richard Blanco— who all responded to my query and welcomed the opportunity to answer my questions and offer some hard-earned wisdom. Writers who’d been as terrified as I was when they began their memoirs. Who’d written into their own hard stories and made it through. Eighteen writers who’d all experienced, at some point during their processes, the inconvenient crying.

The intimate stories these brilliant and generous memoirists told me about their own struggles to find words for painful and traumatic experiences, their misgivings along the way, their moments of wanting to quit, and their ultimate relief that they did not quit, all encouraged me to keep writing and gave me the steadying I needed.

Instead of keeping these conversations to myself, I wrote Writing Hard Stories: Celebrated Memoirists Who Shaped Art From Trauma (forthcoming from Beacon Press on February 7). Each chapter is an in-depth narrative profile of my discussion with one of these authors. I share the circumstances of our meetings – from walking dogs with Mark Doty in the Hamptons; lunch with Marianne Leone and her husband, Oscar winner Chris Cooper at their home on Massachusetts’ South Shore; sipping a cup of tea while sprawled across Kate Bornstein’s bed in her New York City apartment - and the amazing insights I gain.

Since my questions are less about craft and more about survival, I tap into some areas of these authors’ processes that they’ve never shared before. I reflect on how each of these exchanges moved me away from the place where my memories were burying me and toward a completed memoir. I was motivated to turn these experiences into Writing Hard Stories by a realization that others facing the daunting journey to write into their long-carried stories, writers who also felt isolated by their particular circumstances, needed those stories and that steadying, too.

Maybe if I’d had the gift of these conversations sooner, before I started my MFA even, I might not have been so thrown by the emotions that surfaced when writing about my experiences, and when, more often than not, doing so felt like reliving those traumatic experiences. On that day of the streaming tears and hiccupping sobs, when all I wanted to do was hightail it out of that seminar room, I might, instead, have been able to turn to the person sitting next to me, shrug my shoulders, and simply say, “You know, this is what they told me would probably happen.”  

Note from Lisa: Melanie would like to send one blog reader a signed copy of Writing Hard Stories. Simply ask her a question here in the comments (and she'll stop by and answer), and you'll be entered. (U.S. postal address is required.) Post your comment by Sunday, Feb. 12.

You can connect with Melanie via Facebook, Twitter, and her website.

Ready, Set, SIX. I had my say in six. Your turn.

When you work at home a lot, you develop small strategies for mental breaks, often something that doesn't involve writing, typing, or even much thinking. Grabbing the (postal) mail. Tossing in a load of laundry. Marinating the chicken for dinner. Taking a walk.

But sometimes the break I need is just some other form of the thing I do all the time—a writing break that's also, in its own lovely, distracting way—a wee bit of writing.

Then I head to Six Word Memoirs, where anyone can post their own six words on just about anything, or if you're game, on their current topic, contest, or theme – baseball, work, mistakes…hundreds of others. I guess I'm there frequently enough that a couple of years ago, I was once the site's featured member of the week.

Last winter apparently (honestly, I forgot!), one Six Word theme was Advice. And I had some, which came via my mother. And now Mom's advice to me, in six simple words, has made its way onto the page. Page 75 to be exact. 

Larry Smith, the editor and brains behind Six Words, has compiled his latest collection of "Sixes," published yesterday, The Best Advice inSix Words: Writers Famous and Obscure on Love, Sex, Money, Friendship, Family,Work, and Much More (St. Martin's Press).

The lovely little book—by the way, a great size, shape, and price for holiday gifts (or okay, bathroom reading)—offers advice from 1000 (!) people, including folks like Harlan Coben, Mark Bitman, Susan Orlean, Elizabeth Gilbert. Clearly they're part of the "Famous" and I'm the "Obscure." But hey, I do share the same page with Weird Al Yankovic and Brian Lehrer.

In the past, I've even made an assignment out of writing Sixes in my undergraduate and teen creative nonfiction classes, and adult writing workshops: a break that refreshes.

Want to give it a try?  Want to get the book free? Write your own six words on…Writing? Autumn? Early holiday retailing? On…well, anything. Anything at all.

Post a Six in comments below OR tweet a Six and be sure to tag me @LisaRomeo (and if you like, also tag @SixWords) OR if you're reading this on Facebook, put your six in a FB comment under my post, by midnight, Sunday, November 22. Then a random *winner* will get a freebie book from the lovely folks at Six Words.

Let the sixing begin…

Guest Blogger Ann Evans on Knowing How it Feels to Win an Oscar—or Whatever

About four years ago, over a long cup of tea at her suburban home a half-mile from my own, where she was packing to move to a more urban environment, Ann Evans asked me to take a look at an early draft of a possible memoir about dating as a senior, and provide some critical feedback. I was happy to do that. In those early anecdotes and tentative reflections, I was pleased to detect a larger story lurking, and encouraged her to develop it. I'm so glad she did.

Ann's writing appears in academic and literary magazines, she has also built a career as a linguist, and is a recently retired professor. She was featured on the Discovery Channel’s "Sex in America" in 2012, and appeared on the cover of Eldr magazine’s issue on “Sex and Intimacy over the Age of Sixty.” A wife, mother, and grandmother, Ann has traveled widely and lived in Spain, Israel, Italy, Austria, Germany and Greece, and speaks six languages. Ann lives in Hoboken, NJ, with her (third) husband.

Please welcome Ann Evans

After being told (you know how many times) that it was almost impossible to get published; after both professionals and onlookers patted me on my little head and told me: “Well dear, write if you have to.", "Don’t write with the expectation of ever being published.”; and after assorted other indignities, my book was published in November 2014, by the hybrid publisher, SheWrites Press.

It felt something like winning an Oscar.

I plunged into promotion and publicity, following as much of the standard marketing advice as I could without working at it all day every day. I hired a publicist and a graphic designer and moved for a while to another mental planet. The sojourn there hasn’t been so bad. 

Writers and non-writers gave me analyses, some outlandish, about the publishing business, including intricate musings on Amazon’s mysterious algorithms. Some told me how much better it was in the old days—when Truman Capote would pop in for lunch. If I listened long enough, I’d learn a new nugget of information. I reminded myself of the first rule of writing memoir—other people are not really interested in the writer’s life; they are interested in improving their own lives and if a writer can give them some ways to do that through a good story, they’ll read the book. Each person contains their own memoir.

It was disorienting to read on Amazon that Daring to Date Again was number one in my category, “dating.” Being number one in anything was good news, but what did that mean?  Had I sold ten books or a hundred? A few months later, I set up a free account with NovelRank which estimates how many books have been sold on Amazon.  After the first blush of sales, the book’s ranking fell, nudging me to do some more marketing. 

One day I was 1,036,000^th overall. I sold one book (which I learned through NovelRank), and the next day was at 365,000^th. What kind of crazy algorithm is that? I have gradually deduced that it is not common to sell books on Amazon “by the boatload,” (as one webinar promised). Every sale makes an impact. My question still is whether readers pay much attention to Amazon rankings.  Number one would make an impression, but number 2,570 or 1,460,000?

Being interviewed for the radio was fun. I could sit home in my pajamas and do a crackerjack interview over the phone. Since this was my first book, I did not expect to appear on national radio shows, but discovered many internet-based shows with a large following.  Since the shows were Internet based and thus available on each station's site, I could critique them afterwards. Through NovelRank, it appeared as if each interview generated a few sales on Amazon.  

My best radio interviews felt like a schmooze, during which the interviewer's mind and mine were both palpable, without either dominating. My appreciation of Terry Gross increased.

I am still undecided about the wisdom of hiring a publicist. The radio interviews and print articles she garnered haven’t brought in enough book sales to pay her fee, and that makes me uneasy. On the other hand, readers usually buy a book only after they have heard about it several times. Through my publicist, thousands of people have heard about the book for the first time. It is up to me to find the second, third, and fourth introductions.

I thought creating the audiobook would be a breeze, but as the narrator, I had to learn how to use a microphone, avoid making mouth noises, use dynamics to make an aural point, and not to sink at the end of sentences. The measure for audio editing is three to four minutes to every recorded minute, and Daring to Date Again  will be about nine hours long. I couldn’t afford to pay for 27-36 hours of editing time, so with the help of my audio engineer, Roy Yokelson of Antland Productions, I edited much of it myself.

At first, I listened to every tiny sound and progress was slow, but I quickly got more efficient and skilled. Post-recording, Roy had to control the pacing and breaths and set it all up to comply with Audible’s specification. Today, months after print publication, we are nearing completion.  I am now ready for other audio ventures, which will go more smoothly. So why do it? Audio books are (deservedly) priced higher than hard copies or ebooks, and my 40% royalty (I chose to publish exclusively on Audible) will bring me more profit for each sale. Besides, my childhood fantasy of becoming an actress is being fulfilled.

Book reviews were another revelation. Since my book is about dating, I had to decide, for example, how graphically I would write about sex. One agent told me to “be sure to include the word ‘sex’ in the title, because people like sex.” I didn’t want the book to be pornographic though, so, as the Kirkus review mentioned, I wrote my share of sex scenes, but concentrated on “the social, biological, and emotional components of sex.” Several male readers complained about the lack of down and dirty sex scenes, but  Kirkus found my ruminations “illuminating” and “a kick.” I think I could be more graphic in my next book without slipping into porn.

Many people assume I will soon be a rich author. Ha! People introduce me as a “famous author.” Ha! I have to keep myself from laughing and honor their respect. They are setting the bar for me.

The best step toward the success that some others assume I have already achieved, in fact the only next step, is to write another book. I am hard at work doing just that.

Note from Lisa: You can connect with Ann via Facebook, Twitter, and at her website. Ann would like to send one blog reader a signed copy of her book. Just leave a comment here by April 25 (must have a U.S. postal address).

Guest Blogger C. Hope Clark on Why Writing What You Know Doesn’t Mean You Know How to Write

Like many writers, I imagine, I get several newsletters intended to help me write and market work. Some I barely read. Others I keep in a separate, long term file on my computer. I may not read them the day they arrive, but these are the ones I want on hand, and comb them for opportunities and insight. C. Hope Clark's Funds for Writers is one of these. I've found many excellent tips in her pages, and she's impressed me as one of the most sincere, generous, and supportive folks in the writing world.

            

This week, Hope's newest novel, Murder on Edisto (Bell Bridge Books) debuts, joining her previous series, the Carolina Slade Mysteries. It's set in Edisto Beach, South Carolina, a place she considers her second home.  Hope is still editor of FundsforWriters, which has a seemingly perennial place on Writer’s Digest Books' 101 Best Websites for Writers. Her newsletters reach 40,000 readers.

Please welcome C. Hope Clark

When I worked for the federal government, I was once offered a bribe. As required, I called in the badges and guns, and the agents roped me into the investigation as the Cooperating Individual (CI).  Yet even after the hidden recorders, cameras, and memorized scripts, we never charged the guy since he could not produce the money. However, as the case dragged on, I became friends with one of the agents. Once the case was shelved, we dated. A couple years later, we married. Okay. Go ahead and say it. “Awww, what a great story! You ought to write a book.” Heck, why not, right?

           

Eight years later, frustrated at my federal job and eager to write seriously, I thought, “Why not give that novel a try?” With a politician boss, I’d spun words for years. If I could write government fiction, how hard could it be to write mystery fiction? Especially when the story was grounded in my own real-life case.

            As it turned out, harder than I thought. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

            After two years, I finished a manuscript. My mother was friends with Fern Michaels (yes, THAT Fern Michaels, the 50-time New York Times best-selling author with a kajillion copies of mysteries and thrillers in print). Fern offered to pass the manuscript on to an agent, which I later recognized was probably a polite gesture directed at my mother. The agent wrote back with a polite refusal. I still have the note Fern sent afterwards, commending me on completing the novel, and how I ought to be proud at that achievement in itself.

            Sigh.

            Throwing the hard-copy manuscript on a closet shelf, I redirected myself to commercial nonfiction, to better use my natural left brain talents. Over the next four years, my efforts turned into clips, with freelance articles in both Writer’s Digest and The Writer Magazine, and eventually I founded the newsletter, FundsforWriters, in which I used my government knowledge to define myself.  Then a local bookstore owner asked me to pick up a mystery author from her hotel and bring her to a book signing at the shop.

I was gobsmacked, meeting someone who’d accomplished what I’d once dreamed of;  as was the waiter who stumbled all over himself asking for her autograph on his copy of her latest that he’d run down and purchased between our main course and dessert. Then once the doting subsided, the author asked what I wrote. I told her of my freelance work.

“No,” she said. “What do you write for you?”

“Oh,” I replied, a bit red-faced. “I once wrote this mystery. But it didn’t go anywhere.”

She stared at me with an all-knowing smile. “Pull it out,” she said. “Otherwise in ten or twenty years you’ll kick yourself for not giving it another try.”

So I went home that evening and gingerly retrieved the manuscript box. I was struck dumb on the first page. “Oh my God, this sucks!”

The story was still decent, but it seems that after four years of freelancing, I’d learned to recognize marginal writing.

Re-energized, I saved the outline and tossed the manuscript, toiling long and hard with rewrites, contest entries, and agent and publisher queries. After two years, the effort paid off. I’ve published four mysteries now, but Lowcountry Bribe (Bell Bridge Books, 2012)  will remain near and dear to me forever. The book everyone said I ought to write, had finally been written.

I recall my first reading at a conference, when Lowcountry Bribe was two months’ published. Four of us read: a young adult author, a poet, and a literary review editor, and I went last. Heart hammering, I selected a scene where the bribe was offered, and the protagonist comes face to face with the antagonist, each reading the other’s mind about what their back and forth innuendo really meant: a crooked deal.

Halfway through, I sensed the room go silent, people standing still around the hors d’ oeuvres table. But I read on, nervous. Finally, hands still white-knuckled on the book, I finished. The room erupted in applause.

The literary review editor approached me as I stepped down from the stage. “That was excellent,” he said.

Still jittery, I smiled and thanked him. “This is my first published fiction,” I said, clutching my book. “I’ve always written commercially.”

He shook his head with a grin. “Doesn’t matter what you’ve written,” he said. “You’ve put in the time, and it shows in your work. That was good.”

            

           Tears filled my eyes as he turned away. The years in between my first and second manuscripts, while I hadn’t written mysteries, I had indeed kept writing. And unexpectedly I’d grown in the process, every word a step up the ladder.

Writing what you know is important, but it’s only a piece of the puzzle. Knowing how to write it means so much more, and sometimes that only comes with putting one word in front of the other. To this day, I write every day to oil the machine, because when the next great idea comes along, I want to be primed, warmed up, and ready to go.

Note from Lisa: Hope will be stopping by the blog for several days to answer questions via comments. She's also giving away a signed copy of any one of her books (including Murder on Edisto) to one random blog reader; leave your comment before midnight on Saturday, October 11.

Connect with Hope on Facebook and Twitter.

Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Links for Writers - November 29, 2013 Edition

> A terrific find, at Rebecca Skloot's website -- detailed, concise, and extremely practical and honest advice for those who want to build book reviewing into their writing life.

> At Bark, a discussion about being a writer, being an editor, day jobs and whether balance is possible or even desirable. 

> Pulitzer winner, novelist Paul Harding, has five great tips for fiction writers (and like most thoughtful writing advice, I think it applies across all genres), over at Publishers Weekly. I especially like # 6, and also this tip: "Don’t write your books for people who won’t like them. Give yourself wholly to the kind of book you want to write and don’t try to please readers who like something different."  Do read them all.

> For her site Handful of Stones, Satya Robyn is looking for short writing she calls "small stones". You'll understand when you read some of the examples and guidelines.

> Women on Writing has an interview with Linda Joy Meyers, Kate Farell, and Amber Lea Starfire about their experience creating the anthology The Times They Were A-Changing: Women Remember the 60s & 70s, (plus a give-away).

> If you don't already use Duotrope for researching journals, planning, and tracking your submissions, you might want to sign up today, when they're offering a free month with a one-year subscription.

> If Christi Craig's recent guest post here about her time at the Salt Cay Writers Retreat whetted your appetite for tropical writing forays, here's another post at Allyson Latta's blog from a writer who attended her Spice Isle Writing and Yoga Retreat on Grenada.

> Romance writers who are interested in typical advances and royalty rates paid by 30 traditional publishers will want to study this list compiled by Brenda Hiatt.

> If you're interested in my *I Should Be Writing!* Boot Camp in January 2014, you can save $30 by registering on Black Friday, Small Business Saturday (or Sunday!), or Cyber Monday.

> A few cool and low-cost gift ideas for the writers on your list; be sure to check out The Writers Circle's Story Magic Creativity Decks (cool, off-kilter, wildly imaginative prompts), for the young (or young at heart) writers in your world

> You have until midnight on Saturday, Nov. 30 to leave a comment on the interview with Kate Hopper for a chance to win her lovely memoir Ready for Air.

> I hope you had a lovely Thanksgiving day yesterday. Here's a short essay over at Baristanet, about adjusting to my husband's holiday traditions, so different from the ones I grew up learning to love. 

Have a great weekend!

Giving Away Phillip, Housekeeping, and Ch Ch Ch Changes

This and that, maybe of interest...

> My once-in-a-while newsletter went out last night, and includes a giveaway for Phillip Lopate's newest craft book, To Show and to Tell: The Craft of Literary Nonfiction.  You can grab the newsletter here. While there, you can enter for a chance at the book, and if you like, subscribe to future mailings.

> For those of you who read blog posts via Google Reader, did you know the service will cease to exist after July 1?  'Tis true. Seems there are several alternates out there promising to move Reader feeds over with a few clicks. Feedly is one.

> If you've been slogging through on your own without enough pages to show for it, without enjoying the writing, Boot Camp starts Monday, April 8 (and ends a full week before Memorial Day). 

> Changes are coming to the blog. Because, why not?  I do like to shake things up once in a while. And, it's spring. Any suggestions?  Leave in comments or email me.

Guest blogger Ellen Cassedy: On writing about the up close and personal – and the universal – in nonfiction.

As occasionally happens, I cross paths with an author through a mutual writing friend – or in this case, a writing/blogging friend -- and recently met Ellen Cassedy via our mutual connection to Erika Dreifus. Ellen is the author of We Are Here: Memories of the Lithuanian Holocaust, recently published by University of Nebraska Press, a source of so much rich and wonderful nonfiction. Her memoir chronicles what began as a personal journey to Lithuania to poke around in her family's Jewish history. That took on a much larger and more urgent scope as she uncovered unexpected truths and dug further, simultaneously excavating ancestral stories and exploring how a country and culture moves on from an unthinkable past. She lives in Washington, D.C.

Please welcome Ellen Cassedy

Lately I have been pondering what I adore about my favorite memoirs. It is the balance of the personal and the universal, I’ve decided – an individual life rubbing up against the sweep of history. I love writing that offers me an intimate vantage point from which to learn about a larger world – another culture or another era. 

Both as a reader and as a writer, I find that a memoir’s vibration between big and small is more than just a pleasure. It is also a political and a moral matter. When family stories are told in a larger context, we learn a fundamental truth:  that human history is made not only by generals and kings, but by each and every one of us.

So, paradoxically, my advice to fellow memoir-writers goes in two opposite directions:  1) Come closer; and 2) Step back.   

1) Come closer.  Just like a work of fiction or a play, a memoir needs vivid scenes and vivid characters. A memoir sometimes needs to slow down and draw the reader in close – close enough to be right on the spot, minute by minute, soaking up all there is to see, hear, smell. 

As I gathered material for We Are Here, my account of my journey into the land of my Jewish forebears, I kept a diary – a total of nine spiral notebooks, in which I scribbled down observations, impressions, and feelings. I also took nine rolls of film (remember rolls of film, before the digital age?)

Once I was at my desk, conjuring up the encounter with the old man in my ancestral town who wanted to speak to a Jew before he died (and wanted me to be that Jew), I could tell my readers all about his green cap, his aluminum cane, and the blood-red gladioli that framed the door of his tin-roofed cottage.  

Also like a work of fiction, memoirs require vivid characters whom the reader can cozy up to.  With a first-person narrative, that means creating yourself as a character. As the reader’s guide through a difficult moral terrain, I had to work hard to make myself into a someone readers could feel close to. My character had to be just as sharp and memorable as Uncle Will, with his complex secret from his Holocaust past, or Ruta, the passionate young woman driving a Holocaust exhibit around the country in her pickup truck.

2) Step back.  For a family story to become a book, detachment is vital. When I first sat down to write, what was on my mind were my own feelings:  how agitated I felt when my uncle revealed his secret, how perplexed I felt when I learned about the old man who wanted to speak to a Jew before he died.   

But only when my own story came to illuminate something larger was it launched it on its way toward publication. By stepping back, I widened the lens, placing my family story within the broader context of a nation’s encounter with its “family secrets,” its Jewish past. My book became not only a personal journey but also an inquiry into how people in a country scarred by genocide were seeking to build a more tolerant future.

Detachment also helped me understand what did and did not belong in the manuscript.  In writing my story, I found I was less a builder than a sculptor. I had to carve away what wasn’t needed.  That meant even my discovery of my great-grandfather’s grave had to go.  Deeply moving though it was, it didn’t advance what had become the real story.

(Don’t throw away those scraps that end up on the cutting-room floor, though.  You may find a place for them in something else you write.)

It is the balance of big and small that makes me care about someone else’s family story.  What about you?  What makes you care?   

  

Notes from Lisa:  Ellen will be stopping by the blog periodically today and tomorrow to respond to your questions and comments. After, you can continue leaving comments until midnight on April 29 to be entered in a random drawing for a free signed copy of her book.  (Must have a U.S. postal address.)

Ellen is also offering to share a copy of a handout she prepared for her panel at the recent AWP conference, entitled “Your Family Stories:  Ten Ways to Make Your Readers Care.” To request one, use this contact form.  You can read an excerpt from her memoir here.

Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Links for Writers, January 6, 2012 Edition

On Fridays I post links I like. It's called Friday Fridge Clean-Out because on many Fridays, I concoct a dinner plan for my family by pulling out everything that's been accumulating in my refrigerator that week, choosing the freshest looking stuff, tossing it together, and hope everyone at the table will find something they like. Here, the "fridge" contents come from my Google reader, email inbox, Facebook and Twitter feeds, favorite news and writing sites, blogs I follow, etc.  Enjoy!

►Ever get the feeling, as you're contemplating ideas for personal essays, that you just don't have enough turmoil in your life to compete? Then this hilarious McSweeney's personal essay by a personal essay is for you. (via @ChristinGeall)

►A first time novelist wonders about boundaries, subliminal influences, and creating characters, in connection to her profession as psychotherapist and living a visible life in a small community.

►As a writer, are you easy to contact? Do you understand the link between opportunities and being easy to find, especially online? Chuck Sambuchino – and 100-plus commenters – share some terrific tips.

►Over at her Dollars and Deadlines blog, Kelly James-Enger rounds up eight useful posts from 2011. Some of the posts are round-ups too, so there's plenty to explore on a number of useful topics.

►Ever wonder what your shower curtain has to say?  Apparently Dave Eggers has, and the resulting monologue is printed on -- wait for it -- a shower curtain.

►To mark the one-year anniversary of the publication of her excellent short story collection, Quiet Americans, Erika Dreifus is giving away three copies (print or electronic).

►British novelist Harry Bingham runs a helpful blog for the Writers Workshop in the UK. I liked this guest post he featured about finding mentors, especially this line: "A willingness to listen and learn is just as attractive to a potential mentor as a high level of native talent, perhaps even more so."

►You have until Jan. 13 to enter Gotham Writers' Workshops huge giveaway of more than 63 items – writing books and other products, e-readers and tablets, subscriptions and class tuition.

► Finally, for the writer who has everything, a doll of your favorite author?  (via Diane Lockward's poetry newsletter)

Author Interview: Kim Stagliano on her memoir, combining humor and autism. Yep, you read right.

Memoirs by mothers of special needs children are a well-stocked sub-category of the genre, with those focusing on children on the autism spectrum making up a sizable portion. Many follow the family from diagnosis and adjusting to a "new normal," to navigating a maze of therapies and special services, offering a window into a unique kind of family life. So does Kim Stagliano's book – but with two big differences: Autism disproportionately afflicts males, but Kim has three autistic daughters. And, she's done something rarely attempted in this subcategory: she puts humor on the page, with gusto. Her book is All I Can Handle: I'm No Mother Teresa – A Life Raising Three Daughters With Autism.

Kim agreed to answer a few of my nosy questions.

Lisa Romeo: You write with such graceful humor, not going for big laughs, but showing the humor even in very difficult situations. Has humor always come naturally to you?

Kim Stagliano: I am a classic middle child and was always a bit of the class clown. I have a wry, biting humor that isn’t always that nice. I didn’t have to work to create the humor in the book; it’s part of my style in general.

LR: When did you realize you could employ humor in accounts of your family's life with three daughters on the autism spectrum?

KS: When I wrote my first Huffington Post piece in 2006 and people laughed and learned, and complimented the (writing) style.

LR: Did you always know you'd want to write a memoir, or did that build slowly as you began to blog and report on autism and your personal experiences? When did you first see yourself as a nonfiction writer, as opposed to a woman who was chronicling her family's journey?

KS: I was dead set against it! How’s that? I wanted to write fiction – still do! I never thought anyone would be interested in our story and I just didn’t want to relive every moment. But as editors asked my agent for a non-fic proposal, the idea grew on me and I decided I could find a way to write our story while staying semi-sane and get a hopeful but realistic (and humorous) message into a book.

LR: You include images and experiences some other writers of autism memoirs often retreat from – parents injured by a child's meltdown, kids' "decorating" with feces, financial wipe-outs that treatment and other issues can cause. When you are writing, do you ever hesitate and think, maybe I shouldn't go there?

KS: Sure. I try to respect my children’s identities and their humanity – and it’s a fine line. Some folks think I cross the line, others appreciate the candor in that they don’t feel so alone. I hit the delete key about a million times while writing!

LR: Your book mixes family stories with your strong views on autism advocacy, the role of vaccines, social services, education, and public perception, as well as flashbacks from your childhood. How did you go about deciding on an organization and structure for the book?

KS: I knew that the autism community has limited time (to read). So I wanted the book to be broken into bite sized chapters that you could read quickly, digest and then either put the book down or continue reading. I made the book a quick read on purpose to accommodate the needs of the autism community first and to make the book super approachable for those outside our world, like teachers, therapists, outside family members. It’s purposefully a fast, funny read so no one will really know “what hit them” when they are finished.

LR: Although you already had a strong following (dare I use that word: platform), did it strike those in publishing – agents, publishing house editor, marketing folks – as an odd sell, a book about raising three autistic daughters which is also humorous, and at times, hilarious?

KS: Yes it did. We had a lot of editors who just did NOT get me, my humor or how to make the story funny. My agent persevered though and he sold the proposal. There were also a lot of comments that the market was already saturated – but no other book offers the raw honesty and humor like mine does. I like to say, “You won’t need a Prozac to read it,” and I mean it!

LR: You are managing editor of Age of Autism, a major news site and online community. Did that work prepare you (or not) for the challenge of pulling together this memoir?

KS: Writing a book is very different from blogging and running Age of Autism. What AofA did for me was to give me a constant reminder of who I was writing for – my audience of parents struggling to get through the day or the night and desperate for laughter and encouragement.

LR: Is there another book in the works?

KS: Yes there is! Fiction (I get to kill people, yay). I’m working on a young adult novel that brings in the sibling issue with autism. That’s all I’ll tell you for now.

Note from Lisa: We're giving away a signed book to one reader. To be entered in the random drawing, leave your comment on this post by midnight Tuesday, April 5. (U.S. postal addresses only.)

Author Interview: Erika Dreifus on her short story collection, Quiet Americans

Sometimes, a particular writer friend comes along at a perfect time, and through that friendship, that writer seems to "answer" for us questions we didn't even know to ask. Thus it was with Erika Dreifus, with whom I first connected through her excellent blog. Since then, we've stayed in touch, met up at writer conferences, shared meals, and she even showed up at my first poetry reading (now that, believe me, is a true writer friend!). I am completely thrilled her debut short story collection, Quiet Americans, has just been published. I'm not in the habit of praising a friend's book simply because it's a friend's book; with that in mind, let me simply say I loved every single story, paragraph, sentence, phrase and word.

Lisa Romeo: We all know the old advice: Write what you know. And its corollary: Write what you DON'T know about what you know. In this collection, I get a sense of you maybe starting from what you know (family stories and history), and then exploring what you wish you knew, what you suspect you might know but really don't know, and even what you want to know but perhaps might prefer not to know. Does any of that make sense to you as you look back over your motivations and inspirations for the collection?

Erika Dreifus: First, Lisa, thank you so much for conducting this interview. I am a longtime fan of Lisa Romeo Writes (and Lisa Romeo, Writer), so this is a true privilege for me.

Yes, your comments make quite a lot of sense! In many of these stories, I began with something that I knew, but built a story based on what no one had spoken about, or what I'd been left wondering. For example, I've written elsewhere about the kernel of truth that inspired the opening story, "For Services Rendered": a factoid recounted by my paternal grandmother about a German-Jewish refugee pediatrician she met here in the United States. "For Services Rendered" was definitely motivated by my ruminating over the backstory, which I didn't know, and which, by the time I began drafting the piece during my last semester in my MFA program, I could no longer discuss with my grandmother, as she had passed away a year earlier.

LR: As a Christian and an Italian-American, I have no experience hearing Jewish family stories about atrocities of World War II. As I read these stories, however, I found that while the specific context is of course paramount to their meaning, the larger issues -- of human compassion, justice and the delicate nature of family history – were extremely universal. Was that a consideration for you when writing, to be sure the shared human themes were clear?

ED: I think that many of the motivating questions—the things, to borrow your phrasing above, that I wished I knew, or that I suspected I might know but didn't really know—are, in fact, universal. At their core, they are questions about why an individual makes the choices s/he does, and how one's actions can radiate out and affect others in unexpected ways. I'm not certain that these were conscious considerations for me while I was writing, but I'm very glad to have discovered them in the end.

LR: I keep wanting to say this book is such a "great read," but that sounds almost too close to saying it was "entertaining," which I was afraid sounded belittling. But as a reader, it was so engaging, in a literary sense – I did not want to stop reading at the end of each story – and yet I wondered if it was okay for me to be deriving "entertainment" value from a book about such important (and harrowing) issues. Does that make any sense to you?

ED: Well, thank you, Lisa. And yes, I think that I can understand what you’re saying here. I’m encountering some similar feelings, for instance, as I am signing books. Somehow, I shrink from inscribing anything such as “Hope you enjoy the read! J”

But I'm certainly not the first person to write about harrowing issues. To the extent that as writers, we learn about craft from reading, I have learned from others’ examples. The writer has to be careful: You don’t want to drive the reader away.

A current example from the film world comes to mind: Right now, I’m avoiding “Black Swan,” because I just don’t think that I can tolerate watching it. Your response to my book—appreciating the intensity but also being able to remain immersed—is, to me, far more preferable (although it appears that “Black Swan” is doing just fine without me!).

LR: As someone who suffered two serious bouts of postpartum depression, I was gripped by the story, "Matrilineal Descent," in which a character in the 1910s suffers from the condition, and its long-reaching effects on her descendents. I also especially loved the directness you attained by the partial second-person point-of-view. The story seemed to be not so much about PPD itself, but about the absence of it from the cultural conversation. What got you interested in that theme for a story? And how did you arrive at the double POVs?

ED: Here we return to the matters of source material and motivating questions. Like the situation of European Jews under Nazism, but on a much quieter and more private scale, postpartum depression is also a significant part of my family history and inheritance. In its own way, it left me with as many questions and anxieties as the more public history did.

This specific story grew out of emotions and questions attached to my paternal grandfather's life and, more specifically, the circumstances surrounding the death of his biological mother (my great-grandmother) the summer after he was born. There's been postpartum depression on both sides of my family tree, and I've thought about changes in awareness and treatment over time, and how all of that has played out across the generations. So I think that your point about the story's emphasis on a certain phase in that history—a time when both awareness and treatments were rudimentary at best—is right on.

As for the POVs: that's something I'm not certain I can answer. Again, there were things I knew, or was able to discover, and there were things that remained far more elusive to grasp or write about. In some way, I think I needed the additional POV as a way to help me mediate the distance between those two realms.

LR: Many characters, and/or their descendents, appear in several stories, and in places the collection feels like a segmented novel. Yet other stories are completely independent (or did I miss something?). When you were writing, were you intentionally linking the stories, or did you find that certain characters simply kept showing up (or wouldn't leave you alone)? And later, when you were assembling the stories for this collection, how did their inter-relatedness influence which ones you chose and where each would occur in the book physically?

ED: You're quite right, and you didn’t miss anything!

Several of the stories—but not all of them—are linked by characters and family ties. And I've written other stories featuring members of this extended family, many of which have been published in journals and magazines but are not included in Quiet Americans. Somehow, a collection comprising only stories about these characters didn't really come together.

Initially, I was a little squeamish about including only some linked stories. But I gained some confidence when I read Yes, Yes, Cherries, a wonderful collection by Mary Otis (Tin House Books, 2007), in which some, but not all of the stories feature the same protagonist over time.

As for the assembly process: Looking back, I've realized that two literary agents who expressed strong and sustained interest in earlier iterations of the collection were instrumental in helping me select and order the pieces that have gone into the final book. For that, I am extremely grateful.

There's a chronological thread, too, and perhaps it's the academically-trained historian in me that was pulled to this structure. More specifically: The first three stories are set before or during World War II, and the last three stories take place in the first several years of 21st century. The middle story—the fourth of the seven—is pretty much set at a midpoint, in 1972.

LR: Related to that, when writing, do you use any kind of physical or electronic document, family tree, or other device, to keep relationships, time periods and other elements clear and correct?

ED: This is a terrific question, but I have to say that no, I don't use those devices. Which means that I'm especially glad that my publisher/editor caught an inconsistency or two as we progressed toward publication!

LR: The second person POV again, in the story "The Quiet American, or How to Be a Good Guest," for me at least, seems to suggest a bridge (a blurring?) between fiction and nonfiction. While I understand that fiction is only in part reliant on the author's live, that story especially struck me as one that may have had roots in a personal experience. Care to comment?

ED: Yes, there are definite autobiographical components in that story. For example, like the narrator, I did visit Stuttgart in the summer of 2004. I, too, have a terrible sense of direction. And I did, indeed, sign up for a bus tour of the city.

But other elements of that story are entirely invented, and one major thread is borrowed (a much nicer word that "stolen," don't you think?) and adapted from a travel experience in Germany that a dear friend shared with me over a meal a shortly after my trip. This is part of what is so alluring to me about fiction-writing: the opportunity to combine fragments of personal experience, research, what we learn from others, and what we imagine, and create something new and whole in its own right.

LR: I loved the final story, "Mishpocha," in which a man learns he not be quite who he thinks he is; it seemed to tie together threads you explore in the stories that come before. It feels current, since he traces ancestry online, but it's timeless too, the idea of searching for truths we may not eventually want to confront; and you weave it so beautifully into a larger family story. When I read a story like that, I often wonder about the initial drafts and the writer's intentions in the early stages, whether the writer always intended to have these two parallel narratives in the same story, or if that emerged during the process of drafting two separate ideas?

ED: Well, here's a variation on the recipe I just mentioned: Take a discovery, add some research and a dash of personal experience, and mix thoroughly with imagination.
I definitely had more than one idea from the start, but it took awhile for the strands to sort themselves out. First, I'd been captivated by a newspaper story that ran in the Boston Globe during the summer of 2006, about a man who had pursued his family history and genealogy for decades avocationally. He took immense pride in his family heritage, and was stunned to learn around age 70—his mother was in her nineties when she revealed the information—that he'd been adopted. (Jewishness, by the way, was not a part of this particular story.) I clipped the story and put it aside.

About a month after that article appeared, I attended a Jewish genealogy conference for the first time, and that's where I discovered the advances in DNA technology that are referenced in "Mishpocha." In one session, a panelist recounted a true story about someone who learned through this technology that the man he'd considered to be his father was not, in fact, his biological parent. And I just sat there in the audience thinking: That is a story.

So those elements emerged not quite, but almost, simultaneously. And at some point shortly thereafter, as I processed other aspects of the genealogy conference and considered, yet again, the impact of Nazism and the Holocaust on successive generations, the story came together.

LR: As someone who is being published for the first time in book form, did your perception of yourself as a writer shifted at all during the post-acceptance and pre-publication process? Do you now have different writing goals and thoughts about what's possible for your writing future, than before you were able to claim the title, "author"?

ED: It would be great to nod and smile and answer confidently and affirmatively here, but the truth is that I still don't quite know what to expect or hope for from this book's publication. Last Light Studio approached me quite unexpectedly, at a time when I'd long since accepted (and, to a considerable extent, come to appreciate) the ways in which my writing life had turned out to be quite different from what I had envisioned back as a beginning MFA student. So I'm taking a wait-and-see approach here. Time will tell.

Note from Lisa: A free signed copy of Quiet Americans will go to one person chosen from those who leave comments to this post by midnight, Feb. 8 (must have U.S. postal address). Erika is donating a portion of her proceeds from the sale of Quiet Americans to The Blue Card, which supports survivors of Nazi persecution and their families in the United States.