Creative Non-Fiction

In many of the writing workshops I have given people asked me how to write their stories without hurting the people they love. There is no answer for that and in fact, that is the wrong question. The question is, how do I write my story, tell the truth, and let it go?”

I changed this question simply because if you focus on others, you will not tell your story. Demons have a way of staying in your head allowing you to change what you want to say. That might be okay, if that is the way you want to do it.

Or, you can write it in creative non-fiction form which means you write your story, change the details, names and maybe even the plot and let it go. The Basket Weaver was such a writing for me. But for me, it was too painful to write as a memoir, so I gave my story to a character, Alana, and I gave the relationship I wanted to write about to someone else. Then I let my fingers type out the story that needed to be told. If I wanted this book to be in pure memoir form, this is not the book I would have written.

At the time I wrote The Basket Weaver, I knew I had to come to grips with a painful sibling relationship that had plagued me for decades. Writing it in memoir form was unbearably painful. So I gave my story away and then I felt free enough to write it, pain and all. I was terribly ill with MCS from an overexposure to black mold and thought I was going to die. I had to move to the desert to calm down my body. It nearly broke me financially but what choice did I have? My doctor and a friend told me I had to do something to heal myself emotionally because this illness was hanging on and I was not healing. Besides being betrayed by neighbors and friends that caused great suffering during this mold incident, I knew I had to deal with my sibling issues. My friend told me I had to write about it or she would sit on my lap until I did. So I did. And she didn’t have to.

Readers either love The Basket Weaver or they don’t. I have been shocked at the responses I have gotten. And I noticed that as soon as I submitted The Basket Weaver for publication, a part of my decades-long angst released and I have not felt agony over this relationship since. A few of my books allowed me to feel a deep healing after they were sent for publication but I’ll get into them later.

My advice: write your story, heal yourself. Too painful to write? Give your story away.

Keep your pen moving,

Blessings, Jan

The Power of the Pen

I want to share a quote I fell in love with:

What I like in a good author isn’t what he says, but what he whispers. -Logan Pearsall Smith, essayist (18 Oct 1865-1946)

Writing says so much more than what we think our words say. I learned this from reading memoirs. There is a spirit, an energy, an aura, around people who sharing their stories through writing. When you finish reading a memoir isn’t there a sense of the author’s life that lingers with us? It usually comes to us and up from within us as the message or inspiration penetrates us.

I have spoken with dozens of people whether in my classes or at the office or at the deli section of the grocery store who asked me why they should listen to that nagging self that keeps telling them to write their stories. I tell them to write. There is no other way to say it.

If, like these people, you find yourself stuck in believing your story matters or ask yourself why anyone would want to read your story, you may never know. Once our stories are ‘out there’ readers will take something away that will resonate with their own lives. Trust me. I’ve heard many accounts of memoirs others read and how that book changed their lives or simply made an impression on them that turned matters in their own lives around.

I once left five copies of The Breath of Dawn, my memoir, in the laundromat. I assumed the owner would toss them after cleaning up for the night. A month later a woman called me. She was in tears explaining how appreciative she was for my free book because she was going through a health issue and it changed how she thought about getting well. In that moment of her appreciation, I felt a deep sense of connection and purpose for all I had been through.

Keep the pen moving,

Jan

Writing Memoir

Writing your memoir can seem like an enormous endeavor. After all, our lives can be quite complicated. The usual question I hear from writers is: where do I start? I would like to share a wonderful tip for helping organize your narrative. First, decide on the theme of your memoir. Is it overcoming, healing, relationships, finding love at 50? Having a theme will help you get focused. Once you have your theme, type a sentence or small paragraph for each of the experiences you think should be included in your theme. Then, put each situation on a separate piece of paper and dump them into an envelope. Each day, take one paper out and write on just that situation until you have emptied the envelope. Then, if you have stayed on focus, you can put these pages in whatever order you think would read the best.

Not organizing your book into a theme, or chapters, or points will keep you confused about what direction you need to head into. If you have more than one theme, make sure you have chapters for each theme. Read a lot of memoir. You will see that memoir usually involves one topic. I can’t say it enough: read a lot of memoir so you can see how authors of memoir structured their narratives.

Should you have any questions about your writing, feel free to contact me at jan_marquart@yahoo.com. Make sure you put WRITING in the subject line or your email will get lost in my hundreds of emails. So, if you do not hear back from me, that is what happened.

Keep your pen moving,

Jan

Prompts

Prompts are helpful ways to start your daily writing practice. I always wind up writing something I never dreamed would suddenly appear on paper. Call it what you like, by writing unplanned topics, your pen will uncover, discover, and recover ideas and experiences that give way to new roads to develop further. You might just develop a deeper honoring for the writing process.

If all else fails, write what is in front of you. If that leaves you blank-minded, start with the weather, a sound, a taste of your morning tea, a dream lurking in the back of your mind.

Keep your pen moving,

Jan

Daily Writing

I know it is difficult for some people to write everyday. Certainly writing everyday is not a prerequisite to having a writing practice. If you want to write, you can make it doable, if you are genuinely interested in writing. Keep your pen and journal in a convenient place. If you tuck the journal under your underwear, it might not be convenient. But, if you place it on your desk, on your kitchen counter, on your toilet, that might make it easier for you to jot down a thought or two, sketch out a poem, write a first line to a story you want to build upon. Writing works differently for everyone. I write every morning and most nights. I have heard interviews with writers who said they only write when a good idea comes to them which they continue writing on a little each day until it manifests into a manuscript. Find your rhythm.

I find it invaluable to take as many writing workshops as I can, depending on my finances at the time. Most of them are not very expensive.

Everyone has a narrative, whether it is their personal story or one they want to build in the fantasy world.

Why not? Go for it!

Keep the pen moving,

Jan

Take Your Prompt from Anywhere

Frank Gaspar wrote a poem called, “The Fire and the Rose”, which is one of my favorites. This is a perfect poem to steal a phrase, line, or word from and use as a prompt. Here is a half line from this poem:

I had nowhere to go . . .

Pick up your pen, either time yourself 15 minutes or write until you have nothing more to say. Have fun and remember, don’t stop to control your thoughts no matter how weird they seem. Just keep writing.

Free the pen,

Jan

Wild Writing

Get your pen ready. I will give you three words to coordinate with the picture above. Write a flash fiction (under 1000 words). Write in depth.

Girl, zero, art work

Make sure all three words or phrases are in your piece. Let the imagination go and explore boundaries. This is a wonderful exercise to test your imagination and imbibe any emotions, backstory, foretelling or ideas into your piece. Let yourself play with words and ideas.

Keep the pen moving,

Jan

Writing Prompt for the Morning

Here is a writing prompt for today. You can set your timer and write until the bell rings, you can write until you finish the page, or you can write until you have nothing more to say. Here it is: this old thing.

Even if you can’t come up with anything in the spark of the moment, start writing and see what comes up. It is a wonderful, surprising, inspiring, and creative practice.

Keep the pen moving,

Jan

Emotional Writing

Every daughter is a daughter. Not all daughters become mothers but that isn’t the part of the dyad I want to discuss here. When I was a little girl I adored my mother. She was creative and beautiful with her red lips and cherry red fingernails that she always tapped on the Formica table while waiting for me to make my move while playing Rummy.

As time went on I often found myself in a chasm of conflict. How could I express my growing will while also being her dutiful daughter? I focused on doing good hoping to win her approval. Sometimes I got it but often I did not. My mother was difficult to please and I know this first hand because, believe me, I tried. I tried for the 34 years of my life she was alive. It got more difficult as time went by and my mother became more controlling. She was threatened by seeing me activate my free will and more threatened when she realized her need for control was failing as I got older and entered adulthood.

The more I let my mother know I loved her the more she seemed to not believe me. It was always a lose/lose situation. Like in the sitcoms on TV I would call my mother and then listen for 20 minutes about how I never call her. But my mother’s ability to be creative, spontaneous, outspoken, and caring lived inside me and she never allowed me to discuss any of this with her because her sadness and pain was the focus of our conversations. It was very difficult. The irony is that I always wanted to get closer to her but the more I tried the more she pushed me away until one day I shortened my calls and visits because I was near a nervous breakdown upon each visit.

I wrote almost daily in my journals about this tormenting relationship. As a psychotherapist I found my client caseload consisting of young women in similar situations with their mothers. The pain I listened to was enough to wrap around the world a zillion times. I started seeing daughters with their mothers and mothers with their daughters. That is how Echoes From the Womb, a Book for Daughters started to form. I realized I was not the only woman in such a painful and frustrating place.

I was so deeply touched by the responses to my two question questionnaire I sent to a hundred women that I published all responses I got back without any editing. After Echoes From the Womb, a Book for Daughters was printed something painfully gripping from deep inside me released. In the writing of the pain, I healed. In the writing of what it was like to be my mother’s daughter I realized my mother was a daughter too and the relationship she had had with her mother was enmeshing having been raised by a single mother. It was through the writing process that facets of this relationship came to me for further processing and understanding.

Echoes From the Womb, a Book for Daughters is part narrative and part journal. From the sales of this book I received dozens of note cards from women who were changed in their relationship with their mothers, not just because they read it, but because they wrote out the incomplete sentences in the back of the book and processed their relationships themselves.

Writing heals. Keep the pen moving,

Jan

WILD WRITING

Wild writing is the most fun practice of imaginative writing that I know. I’m going to share with you my own example of that.

I chose three random words: balloon, buffoon, and ballroom. Then I began to write whatever came to my without censoring and kept writing until I was able to fit all three words in the same piece. Here is what I wound up writing.

It was our first date and instead of roses he brought me a yellow balloon. It was fun and a little quirky so I rolled with it. Flowers would have been sweeter and I guessed right off the bat that romance wasn’t his up-front mood. But since he planned to take me dancing to a ballroom, I figured we’d have a nice romantic dinner, dancing, and maybe a stroll by Lady Bird Lake or Mt. Bonnell since being by water was calming and lent itself to closeness.

We got to the ballroom and I expected to be seated at a quiet table but he only wanted to go there to dance the cha cha to show me what an ex girlfriend taught him because he thought he finally mastered it. I love the cha cha too and surrendered into the evening trying to brush away my deep disappointment. I asked if he were planning dinner because now it was 8 PM and I was hungry. He said he had a big lunch, wasn’t hungry, but if I wanted he’d stop so I could buy take out chicken at KFC. I asked him to take me to Whole Foods where I could buy chicken and veggies at their deli section. Begrudgingly, he did, then he was eager to take me to a club because a friend of his wanted him to stop by, regardless of our date, to hear him sing.

After I paid for my meal at Whole Foods, we drove straight to the club. He expected me to eat while he drove so by the time we reached the club we could go right in and he wouldn’t have to wait for me. I took my time eating, not wanting to rush for him, my frustration growing. I wasn’t quite finished eating and wanted to stay in the car to finish so he left to go into the club explaining where I could meet him when done with my meal. I gave him a look of exasperation and he told me not to worry the best part of the night was yet to come. I finished my meal, still in no hurry to rush eating. I noticed a cab company across the street, walked over and asked if I could get a ride home. Of course, they said and I got in and drove off having left the remains of my meal on the seat of my date’s care with a note explaining he didn’t have to call me again. I no longer date buffoons.

Try this wild writing idea. I do three most days and I have wound up writing stories I never would have come up with by sitting and trying to force myself into something creative. Just do it. Have fun.

Keep the pen moving,

Jan