Motherhood, Writing

Writing Motherhood

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What a privilege to be part of this Hugo House panel on Writing Motherhood last month. I was blown away by each of the readings from these talented mama writers, and particularly excited to meet poet Amber Flame. I first saw her at a Seattle Lit Crawl (coming up again October 24th!) reading work inspired by Whitney Houston. Carla Sameth read from her wonderful memoir in essays, “One Day on the Gold Line,” and my dear writer friend and talented teacher Anne Liu Kellor read a new poem. Samantha Updegrave served as host, shared a striking essay, and guided the panel discussion following the readings. The gathering was even a highlighted event by The Seattle Review of Books.

I enjoyed the chance to discuss how and why we write about motherhood, as well as how motherhood has influenced our writing and the writing life. For me, I came to writing as a serious vocation only after I became a mother, so motherhood tends to infuse and influence much of my work. Though I write about much more than motherhood, the fact that I am a mother is so central to my identity, just like being multiracial, or a physician, or growing up and living in the Pacific Northwest are all integral components to the lens through which I create art. I’m grateful I had a chance to discuss motherhood and writing with these extraordinary women and hope to continue this important conversation.

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Writing

Mark

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I wrote the braided essay “Mark” a few years ago but never found the right home for it. On a bit of a whim, I submitted the flash piece to the 2019 EPIC Writing Contest and am so pleased it won Honorable Mention. Tonight, at a reception for the contest winners, I read the piece. A stranger came up to me right after, tears in his eyes, and expressed to me how much it meant to him, both because of his own history and that of his children. I won’t go into details, but was touched by his clear connection to the essay and told him I was grateful for sharing some of his own story with me.

As I walked back to my car, I realized: this is why I write, why I share. As a nonfiction writer, as a memoirist, as someone who writes about the raw issues of my life and of those in my life and work, I’ve struggled mightily this year with how much is appropriate to divulge, what stories should be shared with the larger world and which are written just for myself or my writing group or my children. What I’ve learned in recent years, though, is that the more we disclose, the more authentic we are with our stories, the closer we become to others. When I share my own struggles, my own failings, my own fears and hidden joys, people are compelled to open up regarding their own. Just like the stranger at this reading – there is comfort in camaraderie, in the recognition that we all struggle, we all have great challenges in life. Being completely authentic with others is therapeutic and connecting in a way I never imagined possible.

Though in this age of social media and superficiality and anonymous critiques, opening up about your vulnerabilities can be biting at best, crushing at worst. Knowing that creative nonfiction, poetry and memoir are in my writer’s blood, I’ll have to continue to wade through the murky waters of authenticity and exposure. A wholly unexpected interaction like I had tonight, though, makes me want to write more, share more, and connect more with others. That is, after all, what creating art and being part of humanity are all about.

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Writing

AWP 2019 Recap

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My first AWP conference was everything I thought it would be: overwhelming, inspiring, and engaging. At times I felt like hiding in a small dark room by myself, at others I was torn by all the panels and gatherings happening simultaneously, wishing I could somehow replicate myself so I could be in all places at once. I met and interacted with admired authors, poets, editors and other emerging writers. I left Portland exhausted and elated.

As an emerging writer who hasn’t had formal training, I didn’t have the same MFA reunion or tribe that other writer friends enjoyed, but I did benefit from a new cohort I now belong to: the AWP Writer to Writer Program. Diane Zinna runs this mentorship program, now in its tenth session, with contagious enthusiasm. I was able to meet Diane and my mentor in person at AWP, as well as other Writer to Writer alumni.

The panels I attended were varied and largely helpful. I learned about writing and teaching flash nonfiction, the perils and pitfalls of writing about real people, writing through trauma, managing parenthood and the writing life, and so much more. I was able to hear Cheryl Strayed and Colson Whitehead speak about the writing life and their craft and hear my own mentor Emily Maloney and writing friends Anne Liu Kellor and Natalie Singer share their work.

I applied for a Tin House intensive workshop on writing the very short essay with Melissa Febos, and and was thrilled to be accepted. An afternoon writing offsite with courageous and creative women was a highlight.

photo credit: India Downes-Le Guin

One of the biggest joys, and hurdles for me, of the week was sharing my own work at a paired reading. I read an essay that has not been shared publicly before and holds particular emotional weight. It was freeing to release this work out into the world and I’m grateful it was well received.

Writers are, by and large, a forgiving and authentic crowd. Though many, like me, are introverts, I was impressed that the feeling of holding space for each other infused the conference. I moved out of my own comfortable cocoon of anonymity by walking the book fair, approaching editors of presses and journals I admire, striking up a conversation with unsuspecting poet Jane Wong as I was walked by the Hedgebrook table (hopefully in a decidedly uncreepy way), and doing a public reading myself.

I tweeted some favorite quotes from the event, but wanted to share these pearls here as well:

“Be willing to dig through the layers of artifice to get to the deeper truth.” – Cheryl Strayed

“What is the purpose of art? To suggest potential realities or states of mind that would not otherwise suggest themselves.” -Richard Froude (a fellow physician!)

Jessica Wilbanks shares she learned “to trust my subconscious more than my intellect” during her writing process.

“Trust that isn’t absolute isn’t trust at all.” – Alison Kinney

“Living a trauma is living a trauma. Writing a trauma is a reconsideration, an attempt to capture yourself in the reconsideration.” – Alison Kinney

“The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers.” – James Baldwin

“I’ve learned that writing a book will not make you whole.” – Colson Whitehead

“It is a joy to be hidden and disaster not to be found.” – D.W. Winnicott

“Telling this story was worth more than my comfort.” – Melissa Febos

“Real people are more than the worst or best things they’ve done. Craft requires we honor a person’s complexity.” – Lacy M. Johnson

“Be rigorous ethically and in craft before you put your work out in the world. [When writing about real people] scrutinize your own intentions.” – Melissa Febos

So much of writing feels like a solitary pursuit, laced with overwhelming rejection. But, like I’ve experienced in medicine and motherhood and many other aspects of my life, finding a tribe, a cohort of passionate individuals to help support each other and share in community, is invaluable. Thanks, AWP 2019, for providing that space.

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Narrative Medicine

Narrative Medicine Monday: Why Doctors Should Read Fiction

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Sam Kean’s article in The Atlantic, “Why Doctors Should Read Fiction,” highlights what many medical schools, residencies and medical groups are realizing: medical providers and patients alike benefit from physicians taking an interest in literature. Kean asks, “if studying medicine is good training for literature, could studying literature also be good training for medicine?”

Kean’s article outlines a study in Literature and Medicine, “Showing That Medical Ethics Cases Can Miss the Point.” The study found that “certain literary exercises…can expand doctors’ worldviews and make them more attuned to the dilemmas real patients face.”

Students rewrite and dissect short stories that expose an ethical case study, such as physician-writer Richard Seltzer’s “Fetishes.” The study’s author, Woods Nash, argues that “short stories are far more effective means of teaching students and health-care professionals to wrestle with the mess, to pay attention to narrative perspective and detail, and to become more comfortable with ambiguity.”

Writing Prompt: Have you read a piece of fiction that outlined a certain bioethical dilemma? Do you agree with Kean’s assertion that doctors should read fiction? How might the practice prove beneficial to a medical provider? Read Seltzer’s “Fetishes” and rewrite the story in short form, as a poem or case study. What new insight do you gain from this exercise? Write for 10 minutes.

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Ramblings

Free Write Friday: Book Club

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I imagine we meet monthly, in the evenings, after dusk. People trickle in, peeling off their Frye boots and stylish rain coats, scattered with droplets from the evening drizzle. They hold tea cups with three fingers, china inherited from a grandmother, delicate gold rims. Or maybe wine glasses without stems, cupped securely in hand. A cheese plate laid out with warm Brie and rosemary crackers, plump purple grapes on the vine. The lighting is dimmed just barely, warm glow overhead illuminating the minglers.

Maybe it’s just women: friends from a church group or a baby group or a local elementary school; tethered by shared stage of offspring and the need to get out of the house for adult conversation. Or maybe it’s a neighborhood group: gathered from one street, connected by locale but varying in age and marital status and recreational interest. 

I imagine some have read the book, a few all the way to the end. Most have found time to make it only part way through, returning it to the library a week after the due date, resigning themselves to the fact that they won’t actually finish it and accumulating a small fine is not going to push the cause further. 

We take our seats, glass in hand, fruit tart on plate. Circling round, small talk continues in twos and threes. We’re friendly and interested. The host begins, we each rate the book on a scale of 1 to 10. I never choose 10, no matter how much I like the book. Extremes make me wary; there’s always room for improvement. Someone’s off on a tangent, dissecting the weather or their sister or the last movie they saw. 

Most like the book, a few dissent. We all wrote book reports in high school and college, but this is less analytical, more a social interaction, a question of how much one succumbs to group think. I imagine the conversation weaves through topics as they relate to our children, our jobs, our neighborhood. There’s a pause, pregnant with silence, and someone checks the time. I imagine we’re all a little hesitant to leave. Eventually we scatter, back to our homes and our bedside stack of novels and manuals on child rearing in the modern age. 

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Ramblings

Free Write Friday: Reading Peter

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The cream cord spiraled on the Formica counter. My mom lifted me up as I held the receiver to my ear. My grandmother was on the other end, eager to hear what I had to say. I balanced the book on my lap, turned the worn pages with sage lettering and delicate drawings of a defiant rabbit, an angry gardener and a new jacket left behind.

The letters still swam, but I sorted them out, plucked each from the recesses of my mind: a pool of shapes and lines intersecting and crossing, curving around. Then I linked them together, like one boxcar to the next. I paused with each sound so they were connected but staccato, not quite cohesive.

I remember it being difficult, and then all of a sudden it wasn’t. Some synapse connected and I could read. I could make sense of the shapes strung together like Christmas lights. Like magnets they drew themselves together; like a baby babbling they sounded themselves out. I didn’t have to work at it anymore; it was automatic. Like breathing or the beating of the chambers of the heart: involuntary and subconscious. I only thought about it if I stumbled, skipped a beat.

My grandmother listened patiently as I read each page, pondered each picture. I later wondered if I was actually reading, if it was all a farce, if I simply memorized the whole thing, not knowing what memorization really was; it only came as the vaguest sense that maybe I was an impostor, deceiving my loved ones. I felt uneasy.

I still feel unsettled sometimes, like maybe I am an imposter in this life of mine, pulling a ruse over all those involved. My insecurities linger, from that five-year-old sitting on the counter, grandmother on the line. I wonder have I really achieved what I think I’ve accomplished, or is it simply an elaborate mimicking of all that I should know.

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