Terry Helwig's Blog - Posts Tagged "memoir"
Terry Helwig: One Author’s Adventures in Social Media Book Marketing
Shirley Showalter hosts a popular blog called 100 Memoirs: Because 99 just isn't enough. Shirley asked me to share some of my experiences of book tour with her readers, which I was happy to do. You can check out my essay on her blog at
http://100memoirs.com/2011/11/21/auth...
http://100memoirs.com/2011/11/21/auth...
The Power of Story
Maybe Mama was right. “Never judge a person until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes.”
Since the publication of Moonlight on Linoleum: A Daughter’s Memoir, people have been pulling me aside and quietly telling me about their childhood or the childhood of someone close to them. I’ve heard about the family of a coal miner with ten children living in a cabin without electricity and running water; a refugee who was sent to a concentration camp; a sister addicted to prescription drugs; a son who never heard the words “I love you,” and a husband who survived great hardship and decided, like Tom Robbins: “It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.”
Recently, a member of a book club wrote me: “Everyone loved the book. It generated some amazing conversation about our own childhoods, and a lot of revelations about each other through the conversations. Someone even commented that it was probably the most connected we had felt at book club. I've known some of these women 20 years and learned some new things all because of Moonlight!”
I’m discovering that listening to one another’s stories is often the doorway to love and compassion. Indeed, when we slip our feet into another’s shoes (which memoir allows us to do), we feel with and for the other. A son’s sorrow becomes our sorrow; a daughter’s triumph our triumph. Such is the power of a human story—written or told.
Note: If your book club is reading Moonlight on Linoleum: A Daughter’s Memoir, you can find discussion questions at http://www.terryhelwig.com/discussion...
Since the publication of Moonlight on Linoleum: A Daughter’s Memoir, people have been pulling me aside and quietly telling me about their childhood or the childhood of someone close to them. I’ve heard about the family of a coal miner with ten children living in a cabin without electricity and running water; a refugee who was sent to a concentration camp; a sister addicted to prescription drugs; a son who never heard the words “I love you,” and a husband who survived great hardship and decided, like Tom Robbins: “It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.”
Recently, a member of a book club wrote me: “Everyone loved the book. It generated some amazing conversation about our own childhoods, and a lot of revelations about each other through the conversations. Someone even commented that it was probably the most connected we had felt at book club. I've known some of these women 20 years and learned some new things all because of Moonlight!”
I’m discovering that listening to one another’s stories is often the doorway to love and compassion. Indeed, when we slip our feet into another’s shoes (which memoir allows us to do), we feel with and for the other. A son’s sorrow becomes our sorrow; a daughter’s triumph our triumph. Such is the power of a human story—written or told.
Note: If your book club is reading Moonlight on Linoleum: A Daughter’s Memoir, you can find discussion questions at http://www.terryhelwig.com/discussion...
The Light & Shadow of Writing a Memoir
When I began writing Moonlight on Linoleum six years ago, I had no way of knowing the outcome of unbridling my family's story and turning it loose into the world. It was a time of blessing and curse, excitement and apprehension, light and shadow.
Cocooned behind my desk, I wrote to make sense of the chaotic life my family and I lived, moving from one oil town to another in the American Southwest. I wrote to piece together the puzzle of our lives, to better understand my mother, to examine the undercurrents than ran beneath my every-day existence. I didn't think much about readers looking over my shoulder as I wrote--which probably kept me from closing too many curtains.
Still, I'm caught off-guard when I realize strangers know me better than most of my friends. If I casually mention something about one of my sisters, I'm often asked which one. Then I realize people now know my sisters by name. I'm literally "an open book."
Writing my memoir has brought much light into my life. In addition to being given coupons for 12 free malts (those who have read the book will understand), I have re-discovered lost friends and family my sisters and I didn't know existed. For decades, I had puzzled over a photograph in my possession of me, my sister Vicki, and a blond, curly-headed child a few years older than either of us. Some fifty years later, via ancestry.com and a chance glimpse of another photograph, the mystery was solved. The child's name was Bonnie; she is my cousin. She's coming to our family reunion this June.
Unfortunately, writing my memoir also has cast a long shadow over my life. One of the persons I most wanted to pay tribute to was not pleased--my stepdad. Even though I consider him to be a hero, he is not happy that I unbridled the past. I have to live with the absence of his approval.
And still...I find myself cocooning behind my desk, continuing to open myself up to the movement of light and shadow.
Cocooned behind my desk, I wrote to make sense of the chaotic life my family and I lived, moving from one oil town to another in the American Southwest. I wrote to piece together the puzzle of our lives, to better understand my mother, to examine the undercurrents than ran beneath my every-day existence. I didn't think much about readers looking over my shoulder as I wrote--which probably kept me from closing too many curtains.
Still, I'm caught off-guard when I realize strangers know me better than most of my friends. If I casually mention something about one of my sisters, I'm often asked which one. Then I realize people now know my sisters by name. I'm literally "an open book."
Writing my memoir has brought much light into my life. In addition to being given coupons for 12 free malts (those who have read the book will understand), I have re-discovered lost friends and family my sisters and I didn't know existed. For decades, I had puzzled over a photograph in my possession of me, my sister Vicki, and a blond, curly-headed child a few years older than either of us. Some fifty years later, via ancestry.com and a chance glimpse of another photograph, the mystery was solved. The child's name was Bonnie; she is my cousin. She's coming to our family reunion this June.
Unfortunately, writing my memoir also has cast a long shadow over my life. One of the persons I most wanted to pay tribute to was not pleased--my stepdad. Even though I consider him to be a hero, he is not happy that I unbridled the past. I have to live with the absence of his approval.
And still...I find myself cocooning behind my desk, continuing to open myself up to the movement of light and shadow.
Memoir Can Read Like a Novel
A comment I love hearing about Moonlight on Linoleum, is: "Your memoir reads like a novel." This comparison to literary fiction affirms the countless hours I spent constructing floor plans of our trailer house, perusing old photographs with a magnifying glass, locating marriage certificates and divorce decrees, interviewing relatives and friends, and creating an elaborate time line that spanned two decades. My voluminous research became the building blocks for vivid scenes in my memoir that anchored the action of our family's story.
Instead of telling our story in generalities (we lived in a trailer), I tried to invite the reader into our trailer. I described the roughness of the wood Daddy used to build two benches and a picnic table for our tiny kitchen--the only way eight of us could fit around a table. No need to tell the reader that picnic table became the heart of our home--it's presence in scene after scene said it for me.
Imbedded in my scenes were bits of dialog and descriptions that stirred the senses. I wanted my readers to "meet" my parents, to smell the rose-water on Mama's skin and the Old Spice on Daddy's cheek. I wanted them to see Mama fiddling with the beaded fringe on her white moccasins and listen to her own description of her unfaithfulness: "When the cat's away the mouse will play." I wanted readers to hear Daddy whispering "Lookie there," while pointing to one of the world's wonders, whether it be a sunset, an arrow head or tarantula lumbering across a two-lane highway.
I looked for the narrative arc in my story, seeing myself as a protagonist. What was my emotional truth? When were the desires of my heart thwarted or rewarded? More often than not the emotional truth I uncovered revealed a universal truth, which novels often reveal. Plumbing the depths of human longing is not exclusive to either fiction or memoir, nor is writing scenes laced with dialog that tell a story with a beginning, middle and end. There's no reason why true stories can't read like novels, too.
Instead of telling our story in generalities (we lived in a trailer), I tried to invite the reader into our trailer. I described the roughness of the wood Daddy used to build two benches and a picnic table for our tiny kitchen--the only way eight of us could fit around a table. No need to tell the reader that picnic table became the heart of our home--it's presence in scene after scene said it for me.
Imbedded in my scenes were bits of dialog and descriptions that stirred the senses. I wanted my readers to "meet" my parents, to smell the rose-water on Mama's skin and the Old Spice on Daddy's cheek. I wanted them to see Mama fiddling with the beaded fringe on her white moccasins and listen to her own description of her unfaithfulness: "When the cat's away the mouse will play." I wanted readers to hear Daddy whispering "Lookie there," while pointing to one of the world's wonders, whether it be a sunset, an arrow head or tarantula lumbering across a two-lane highway.
I looked for the narrative arc in my story, seeing myself as a protagonist. What was my emotional truth? When were the desires of my heart thwarted or rewarded? More often than not the emotional truth I uncovered revealed a universal truth, which novels often reveal. Plumbing the depths of human longing is not exclusive to either fiction or memoir, nor is writing scenes laced with dialog that tell a story with a beginning, middle and end. There's no reason why true stories can't read like novels, too.
