The Memoir as Linked Short Stories or Blog Pieces

In addition to slogging through Michener's The Source for my book club meeting in 6 days, I've also been reading Lauren F. Winner's Still:  Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis.  For a traditional review, see this post on my theology blog.  In today's post here, I want to consider the memoir as linked short stories.

Let me first offer a disclaimer.  I tend not to read widely in the genre of the modern memoir.  I first became aware of them back in the 90's when every whiny 20-something seemed to be writing their life's story--and frankly, once you've read one memoir of addiction or first job crisis or break-up, there's not much point in reading them all.  At first, I loved the idea that a memoirist could look at a smaller slice of life than someone writing autobiography.  But I quickly became bored with the lives that most people discussed.

Maybe it goes back to my love of science fiction.  Why stick to the world of reality when our imaginations offer so many other possibilities?  But the sales of memoirs of all sorts remind me that my preference is a minority view right now.

There's one major exception to my memoir refusal:  women writing about their spiritual experiences.  The works of Kathleen Norris, Nora Gallagher, Anne Lamott, and Lauren F. Winner have won me over to the idea of a memoir.  Through the works of those women and many others, I've found my life enriched in all sorts of ways.  Lately I've noticed that memoirs being written have more in common with linked short stories than they do with a traditional narrative that travels from beginning to middle to end.

In my younger days, I'd have adopted a feminist explanation that revolved around wombs and circles.  But in my tired midlife, I'm wondering about the circling narrative and what it says about our lives.  I'm also wondering if others have seen this phenomena in other memoirs that they've been reading.

Let me explain what I mean, using Winner's latest work as an example.  Her book explores the life of a woman who has made her living as a professional Christian of sorts who has a bit of a mid-faith crisis. You may remember Winner from her past books, most famously Girl Meets God, the story of her conversion to Judaism and then her conversion to Christianity, all before the age of 23, if my memory serves. Winner went on to write more books, to be a contributor to many Christian magazines, and to get a Ph.D. in History.

She also got married at the same time that her mother died and quickly felt unsettled in the marriage. She wrestled with Christian teachings on divorce. Perhaps more important, she began to feel a shift in her relationship with God. She had been a Christian who had a running discussion with God, and now she didn't feel like doing it anymore. This book chronicles her passage through this post-divorce, mid-faith time.



Instead of structuring her book in a traditional way, the book approaches the subject in a variety of ways.  She discusses the idea of middle ground with an essay on the middle tense in several languages, none of them English.  She talks about middle tints in painting.  She talks about the middles in narrative.

She weaves these essays around other essays that talk about Christian seasons, primarily Lent, and a Jewish holiday or two.  She has several short essays connected by their exploration of the Eucharist.  She talks about pilgrimages to Emily Dickinson's house and to a bookshop.

All of these essays are linked together, some more loosely than others, by their connections to the theme of the book.  Technically, they are stand-alone creations; the reader could dip in and out and read an essay from the back and then skip back to the front.  But they're more rewarding when read as a whole.

Liked some linked short story collections, there's a central narrator throughout, along with secondary characters.  Could a memoir work if the narrative voice shifted from character to character?  Probably, but no memoirists who even attempt this feat come to mind.

Unlike many religious memoirs, Winner's story doesn't rigidly follow a calendar or liturgical year--like, say, Nora Gallagher's Things Seen and Unseen does.  Still:  Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis does contain essays rooted in the calendar, liturgical, or academic year, but again, the book circles in and under and through them, instead of travelling in a straight line.

The book reminds me of the early works of Kathleen Norris.  For example, her book The Cloister Walk loosely follows her time in a monastery, but it takes all sorts of interesting side trips and digressions and diversions. 

I could argue that argue the books like The Cloister Walk and Still:  Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis read more like a collection of quality blog posts than traditional memoirs.  To my knowledge, neither Norris nor Winner blog, but that shouldn't prevent those of us who do from thinking about our blog posts and how they fit together.

The very nature of a blog gives us a structure.  Add to that structure the fact that many of us circle back to connected topics in a variety of ways, and I imagine that many of us have some very interesting book manuscripts lurking in our blogs.

I've thought of my blogs as a source for essays and a repository for a variety of future inspirations.  It's only been lately that I've begun to think of my blogs as the rough draft of a book--or a variety of books!

Valentine to Fabric, Color, and Curves

Yesterday I left my office world of flat screens and words to go to the Fashion Department's Tie Dye workshop.  My department donated supplies.  I took pictures.

I find the process of bunching up the cloth in rubber bands and applying the dye to be soothing in a strange way.  Even taking pictures of others doing it was a balm:

I often wish I could do more with fabric and color in my daily life. 

Some days, I wish I was paid to turn cloth into wonderful colors.  I am probably paid more to administer a college department than I would be if I was paid to dye cloth.

I was struck by all the dress forms around the department.

But these forms are so tiny--where are the forms that show us the proportions of larger women?   I'm not the only one who has noticed this.  I loved this bit of resistance (if you can't read the words, someone wrote "Thick Gurls are way better" and "Big Giirl Sexy"--are the misspellings intentional?  Let's say they are):

On my way out, I stopped to admire the window that the fashion students had put together.  You may or may not be able to discern an Alice in Wonderland theme:

Then, last night, my spouse and I made valentines for my nephew, who has just discovered the U.S. Mail and who yearns for mail.  I can completely relate!

My spouse made the more professional looking one:

I made a book with glue that oozed everywhere.

A final reminder:

Kairos Time for Writers and Other Artists

I've been thinking a lot about time in general.  On my theology blog this morning, I wrote this post that talked about the difference between Kairos time and Chronos time:  "The world moves rather rigidly on Chronos time. We march forward to the incessant beat of the clock.  Kairos time talks about the right or opportune time. It's often a more indeterminate time, an opening, a qualitative measure rather than the quantitative measure of Chronos time. In theological terms, we often use the idea of Kairos time when we talk about God's timetable rather than the timetable we create."

As you might expect, on my theology blog, I wrote about the theological implications of these two ways of viewing time.  But these ideas of time have some implications for writers and other types of writers.

In my writing goals, I try to keep both a long view of time and a close up view.  I try to write poems on a weekly basis, and I'm lucky to have writing assignments that come my way, and usually, those deadlines are within a month or two.  I also have a longer view of time:  what I hope to accomplish before I die.

In my professional life, I have some control over outcomes.  I have projects with deadlines and assessment measures, and I meet them, or I don't.  I'm lucky in that in my professional life I'm often working on projects that I can accomplish.  And if a project is doomed, I usually know that from the start, and it's usually not my fault, and we all agree to move on.  For example, I could create all sorts of fine programs to benefit students if money was in gushing supply.  However, our budgets are tight right now, so I don't continue to bash my head against the budget wall by creating programs that will never get funded.  I move along.

I have some control over my long-term writing projects, but not as much as I might like.  I can create a manuscript, and I can send it out.  If I want a publisher to accept it (as opposed to publishing something myself), that's where my control ends.  There are many fine manuscripts circulating out there; I don't kid myself that my manuscript is more deserving.  It's one amongst many deserving manuscripts, in a landscape of shrinking publishers.

But unlike in other professional areas of my life, I don't move on.  I keep submitting.  I want a book with a spine with my name on it.  I want it to an object of beauty before the reader even gets to the actual writing.  I want paper with enough heft and fiber to delight the fingers.

I've adopted a Kairos attitude when it comes to my publishing.  It may sound a bit New Agey, but I believe there's a larger current than the one I can see, than the shallows where I swim.  I send my work out, but it may not be the right time.

That doesn't excuse me from the work of writing or submitting.  But it means I'm not going to beat myself up when I don't get the publishing prizes I would like.  I'm going to wish the winners well.  If they're decades younger than I am, well, great for them.  My rewards will be sweeter if I must wait.

That last paragraph makes me sound so well-adjusted.  Don't get me wrong.  There are days when I gnash my teeth, days when I wonder if I'm deluding myself.  But I've gotten enough encouragement that I keep going.

I'm also always trying to stay open to serendipity.  Along the way, I've had this vision for what I wanted in terms of my writing:  a best-selling novel, a book of poems with a spine, a monthly column that would pay me enough to live on and provide health insurance.

So far, I haven't gotten those.  But I've gotten other things that I didn't even realize that I wanted enough to ask the universe to send them, like my blogging at the Living Lutheran website and my assignments writing prayers and bulletin inserts.

My hope is that all of these developments will work together and that as the years and decades go by, I'll look back and see patterns that I can't even discern now.  And a book with a spine would be nice!

Literary Thrillers and Our Modern World

Today is John Grisham's birthday.  Today, he's fairly well-accepted as an American writer, and one of those wonderful kind of artists who does a lot for the community where he lives.  I wonder if grad students today see him as a good writer.  When I was in grad school in the late 80's and early 90's, he was one of the authors that MFA students liked to sneer at.

I think of an encounter I had with an MFA student years ago, when I was almost done with grad school. He learned that I had literary ambitions, and he asked, "Are you hoping to be good or are you hoping to sell a lot of novels, like John Grisham?"


At that time, I was the only person in America who hadn't read The Firm. I had been finishing my Ph.D. in British Literature, and I hadn't read any literature written by a non-Brit in almost two years. I thought the MFA student offered me a false choice. I asked, "Can't a book be both?"

He said no, and I have to admit that so far, it seems like the rare book that's both beautifully written and compelling to read in the way that sells lots of copies. I have since read several of Grisham's novels, and I think he pulls it off.

I think of that MFA student and the question he was really asking: would you accept boat loads of money for your writing? Of course I would; wouldn't we all?


I think of John Grisham reading Writer's Digest and seeing a formula for building suspense.  He followed it--and he was a strong enough writer that he pulled it off.  He made a book that people couldn't put down.  Not many of us can say that.  I think of him writing The Firm and A Time to Kill as he commuted to his law firm job.  How many people have dreamed of writing their way out of their current job?  And Grisham actually did it.

Thus, the jealousy targeted towards him.

I celebrate anyone who can write a book that lots of readers want to buy--hurrah for that.  And if there are some literary elements, like with the books of John Grisham, so much the better. 

Today is also the birthday of Kate Chopin, who wrote short stories that seem surprisingly modern for nineteenth century American fiction.  I didn't read The Awakening until I taught an American Lit survey class.  Even though I knew the ending, I found the book compelling and suspenseful in ways similar to modern thrillers:  a woman held back at every turn--how will she escape her fate?

Chopin is seen as a feminist writer and she is--but she also explores race in a way that few other authors were doing.  And she sees the issue of class in ways that few others wrote about at the time.  Her short stories are amazing in their analysis of race, gender, and class--she does so much in just a few pages.

Another writer who propelled us towards the future that we're enjoying today was Elizabeth Bishop, who was also born today.  Think about other poets, like T. S. Eliot, who were exploring big topics like how to exist in a world where World War I had changed the landscape both literally and figuratively.  Think about Bishop's poems, how she explored daily life in such beautiful poems.  Many of us are writing poems that are more aligned with Bishop's poetic world view--I might argue that more of us are writing poems that are similar to Bishop's "Sestina" than are writing poems along the lines of "The Waste Land."

You might mourn that development.  You might say that the Grishams and Bishops of the world have ruined literature for the big questions which it should address.  But I would argue that the literature world is big enough for both, that we don't have to choose.  One day I'm writing a poem about the joy of tea and scones on a rainy day, and the next day I'm wrestling with what it means to live during the Holocene extinction.  The world is big enough for both approaches, and everything in between.

Bleak Houses and Little Houses on the Prairie

Today is the 200th birthday of Charles Dickens, an author whom I have both loved and loathed.  I first fell in love with A Christmas Carol, the pathway of many people into the work of Dickens.  I wonder how Dickens would feel if he came to us today, and we told him of the popularity of that work.  Would he say, "Great!  I'm just happy someone is still reading my work.  It was hard enough to get readers and keep them during my day."  Maybe he would say, "Hey, I'm owed some royalties.  But what else is new?"  I've often wondered if he would say, "But I worked so much harder on works that I'd prefer you consider my masterpieces!"

I've read many of those masterpieces, but there are huge gaps in my Dickens reading.  I've read Bleak House, but only after I tried to slog through it several times before the year I finally finished it.   It's one of many classics where I can recognize the art and the mastery, while being exhausted by it.

I much prefer Hard Times.  It seems like the perfect Dickens work to me, with its scathing criticism of industrialization, education, and the plight of the poor.  I hated Great Expectations.  I felt guilty about that, until I read this great article that explores myths about Dickens in the Sunday The Washington Post.  The author says that "it has always seemed odd to me that teachers think Great Expectations is a good novel for young adults. Just when they are embarking on their adult lives, we give them this story that says: You will never fully comprehend the most important events in your life while they are happening. Any plans you make will not work out — and you may grow up to be a jerk. If you are lucky, however, a series of traumatic events will wake you up and show you how insufferable you have become."

I also love Oliver Twist.  Sure, there's that unfortunate musical that makes it look like being an orphan boy in Victorian London would be a fun romp.  But go back to read the book.  Again, Dickens shows us the precariousness of life in Victorian London.  And this book shows the plight of women, in some poignant ways.

Dickens is one of those authors whose personal life might impact our opinion of him.  He had a wife, but he took up with an actress.  He separated from his blameless wife who had borne him 10 children.  I know that many academics would tell us that it's not fair to judge writers by modern standards or by our own morality, but I don't always agree.

If you want a celebration of Dickens, I loved this NPR piece this morning.  The audio will be up shortly, but you can read the transcript now.

Today is also the birthday of Laura Ingalls Wilder, the first author whom I loved completely.  I have written about the impact of her Little House series before, so I won't belabor the biographical details or my own fascination with/yearning for homesteading.

The biographical piece of her life that jumped out at me this morning was that she didn't start writing until she was in her 60's.  I felt this odd surge of hope.  We're surrounded by stories of people who lose their jobs when they're in their late 40's or 50's, and we hear about how dim their chances are of ever getting full-time work again.

Yet there are plenty of alternate stories of people who make a profound switch at midlife or early old age.  It's never too late to reinvent ourselves!

Or, as another British Victorian writer, George Eliot, would remind us, it's never too late to become the person you were meant to become.

Turning Points and the Roads Not Taken

Yesterday, while the rest of the world got ready for its annual football extravaganza, we watched The Turning Point, which I hadn't seen since the late 70's.

How did I come to watch this movie?  Someone asked me if I knew that Shirley MacLaine had been a dancer, and I thought about this movie.  When I saw we could stream it on Netflix, that was that.  We've spent a lot of time streaming old Westerns.  It was time for a ballet movie.

For a movie released in 1977, it holds up well.  The ballet scenes, of course, are timeless.  Even the clothes, which are so 1970's, didn't distract.  The shots of 1977 New York City fed a hunger I didn't even know I had:  New York, back when it was really gritty!  And look, the World Trade Center towers, just after they were built!

How strange to think how the world barely knew Barishnikov when the movie was released.  As I watched him dance, I thought of his character in Sex and the City, and how he never really changes his look radically.

It's strange to watch this movie from this vantage point in my life.  When I first watched it, I was the young drama student, taking dance classes, taking drama classes, dreaming of Broadway.  I knew that I would never, NEVER, make choices I would regret later.  I would never wonder about the roads not taken.

Ah, the certitude of youth.  What vanity.

Now, of course, I know that I will always wonder about the roads not taken, even if I'm sure I made the right decisions or the decisions that were right for me at the time.

I wonder if people stop thinking about turning points in the roads of their lives as they get older.  It would be a relief.  Maybe it's similar to weight loss and body image.  Through the years, it's become abundantly clear to me that to have the angular body I think that I want, I'd have to cut my calories to about 900 a day--and even then, I'd probably be a curvy kind of angular.  I will never have the ballerina body I would like to have, and as the years have gone on, I've quit trying and quit yearning to have something so different than what I do have.

Maybe some day, it will be the same with careers.  Maybe some day, I will quit thinking about career paths I didn't take.

I also found myself thinking about the more recent movie Black Swan, and how I just could not slog through it.  Hmm.

And I thought about going to traditional ballets when I was in high school, how I found Swan Lake just so boring, but I knew I wasn't supposed to find it boring.  Once a modern dance troupe came through town, and I found their dances electrifying.  I felt like I was liking all the wrong things.

Of course, now, I realize that there are plenty of art forms for us all.  How lucky I was to have had access to both traditional ballet and modern dance.  And now, thanks to all sorts of cable and online resources--and of course, PBS--we have access to all sorts of art forms we would never have seen back in 1977.

Writing Prayers, Paying Taxes

I've been thinking about the fact that last year, I would have been at the AWP conference and loving every minute of it.  I had planned to attend in Chicago this year, but I will not be there.  Once the main conference hotel sold out before I had a chance to make reservations, I was less happy about going to Chicago in the winter and trekking back and forth between hotels.  Then I realized that I had been thinking that the conference was on a different week-end, and the week-end that it was actually happening wasn't as convenient.  As always, there is no travel money from my school; I should start looking for some travel money/grant money for next year, and I should start doing that now.  And it's a lot of money, and I had hopes that I would be selling our condo, which would mean that next year, I may have some extra cash, but this year, I had to bring a chunk of money to closing.

I'm trying not to kick myself for missing all the great readings this year--and I could have been part of 2 of them, because of publications in the past year.  Last year, no readings.

More importantly, I'm trying not to feel sad about the opportunities I will miss to meet people, especially people with whom I already have a connection because of my online life.  I'm hoping that we're all young enough that we can look forward to future possibilities.

Yes, let me begin to plan ahead for AWP 2013 in Boston.  I want to put together a panel presentation on women writers and how we use fairy tales; I want it to be accepted.  I have no power over acceptance, but I can submit.  By the end of February, I'll touch base with all the possible presenters.  Hopefully, they won't say, "I thought she was going to do this last year.  I'm not going to be part of this.  That Berkey-Abbott has no follow-through."

I have a year ago on the brain too, because it was a year ago that I was asked to write prayers for a daily devotional book.  I wrote this post about the serendipitous way that this assignment came about and about the AWP presenters would have told me not to write for such a tiny amount of money and why I thought they were wrong.

I wrote those prayers and loved the experience.  I wrote about it here.  It's continued to tug at me.  I'd like to create a curriculum for seminarians to talk about spiritual writing beyond the sermons that they might write.  I've noticed that many pastors either don't write prayers at all or miss opportunities in their prayer writing.  I think that poetry has a lot to teach prayer writers.

I just got an offer to be part of this year's project, and I immediately wrote to say yes.  The editor also told us that the 2011 edition of the devotion book has sold out.  Wow.

Yesterday I got my contributor's copy of Women on Poetry:  Writing, Revising, Publishing, and Teaching, a book which likely will not sell out.  It's a great collection of essays, but at $45, I wonder how many people will be able to afford it.  Ah well.  I enjoyed writing the essay that's in the book, and I'm happy to get a copy.

Again, I think of those people at the AWP panel who would tell me that I was ripped off, that someone is making money from this book, and it's not me.  They would tell me that I need to stop writing for contributor's copies.

Of course, when I do my taxes next week-end, I may wish that I had been paid more in contributor's copies, less in dollars.  When I do my taxes a year from now, the condo sale at a loss will help offset my writerly gains, such as they may be.  This year, we shall see.

Don't get me wrong; I'm incredibly grateful to be paid in real cash for some of the writing I've been doing.  That's relatively new for me in my writing life.  I have hopes that money from my writing will continue to come in to my household.  I should be a bit more intentional in my taxes and the business side of my writing life.  That will be my goal for 2012, one of many goals.