I’m not out in the world actively mining for transcendent moments. I’m an American from Queens, New York, who possesses little more than a patchwork, sandlot sense of the divine. I am no more Zen, enlightened, or realized than the next person, stumbling into and through little moments of realization. But I do catch some of those moments in my notebook, or on my handy index cards. What frequently happens to me is that some odd aspect of an encounter amuses or disturbs me, and when I’m in my car or walking home, I’ll jot down one image, or piece of conversation, which I’ll start to think about, and worry like a set of prayer beads. What was that I just saw, I’ll ask myself. What just happened there? Like those after-bubbles from a camera flash, they’ll stick around only so long, so I write them down, having learned that what at first might seem tangential, frequently expands upon consideration.

Here’s an example

I wrote this essay, set on the evening that my neighbor’s dog died. A big event, absolutely, and unforgettable, though what I wrote down when I arrived home was none of the regular fragments of experience—the who, what, when—but merely a description of an article of clothing someone was wearing that night.

The essay

There had once been a time when our dogs divided us. It happens in neighborhoods, and it did, in ours. Each of us lived behind our own invisible electric fence, keeping our dogs in our own territories, allowing for no mixing of our pedigreed charges. The humans walked, we waved, but we knew little of one another’s lives, except, perhaps, that it was the woman in each home who walked the dog. That much was clear. And for a while that’s how it was: Not much contact, little to say, we walked our dogs along the perimeter of each other’s lives.

We became aware of changes in our homes only via a husband’s obituary in the newspaper, the absence of the truck in another’s driveway, the vision of one of us walking without a dog, but crying. Small inquiries at the hem of the yard, nods exchanged, solace offered, we edged closer. A new dog appeared; there is always something to say about a puppy. Always.

Then, as that puppy grew and neared his third birthday, he got very sick. He nearly died from something that a neighbor’s dog had survived only the week before, from which she, too, had nearly died, and the exchanges, and the information, cards, a bouquet, a note, and longer conversations ensued.

What we talked about when we talked about our dogs, of course, was love.

And then one summer evening came a pounding on my front door.

“Marion! Marion!” I heard, as I was making an upstairs bed.

“Marion!”

My dog and I went running to find my neighbor. Smeared with dirt and tears, having come in from hours of gardening, she had just found her beloved dog motionless on the kitchen floor.

Oh no, I thought. Oh no.

Soon we two were standing over the peaceful body of her hulking animal, all 140 pounds of him. He seemed asleep. He was not. And as we knelt and stroked him, a car door slammed outside and I went out to see our other woman in our dog-friend-triangle, coming up the driveway. But something was odd. My, I thought, how thin she is. How thin. Or something. Maybe that’s not it. But there is some aspect of the equation of her body size that’s off. Just one of those snatched thoughts you get under pressure, the very thinking collapsing as I saw that she, too, was in tears.

And then there were three of us standing over the 10-year-old body of the dog we had known since he was all ears and paws.

Others arrived to help. There were plans made, and calls made, and for 30 minutes or so there was a lot of action, and then for an instant, it was again just us three in the kitchen.

We were going to take the body to the local animal hospital for cremation. Not even we could dig a hole this big, though I know that for an instant we considered it. Keeping him close. Keeping him home. But no.

And then, as we began to pile into cars, came the question.

“Do I look like shit?” This, from the woman whose dog had just died.

Only a woman would ask.

And only two such friends would think before they replied. She had been gardening most of the day, on her knees, in the dirt. She had been crying. It was hot. We all looked like shit. But what do you say to move forward a woman who needs to go say goodbye to her dog? How do you not lie, and yet get her onward into the place she needs to go? How to be tender, yet prodding?

I hadn’t needed to debate this, as the other of us had this clearly covered, gently touching the voluminous shorts I now saw that had been the reason she looked so thin, so fragile, at first.

And then came the gift.

“I’m wearing my dead husband’s swimming trunks. I think we’re good.”

And I snorted. And the woman who just lost her dog belted out a laugh, a laugh so big that it propelled us where we needed to go next.

It’s the small stuff

Never forget about the small stuff and how it reveals the big stuff of life. In this case, it had been the bathing trunks that had provoked me, noticed and tucked away amid the sadness and the heat. It was those shorts I carried home in my head—like a burr in a sweater, a sand particle in an oyster—and after I wrote down, “swimming trunks,” they did their job to irritate me just enough to see their larger theme. It’s the little stuff that matters. Never disrespect its power.

A dead giveaway that someone is disparaging the truth is that cool kind of cynicism that voices many memoirs. No writer should aspire to being too cool to care about the small stuff. Doing so is an offense to us all. The great A. J. Leibling addresses the crime beautifully, reminding us, “Cynicism is often the shamefaced product of inexperience.”

First up is Michael Fischman’s Stumbling Into Infinity: An Ordinary Man in The Sphere of Enlightenment. This book really intrigues me, including early childhood loss and abuse, and yet never taking its eye off the goal of living better. It’s a triumph, as is A Daughter’s Tale, the new memoir from Mary Soames, youngest daughter of Winston Churchill, recently reviewed as “remarkable, uplifting, moving and utterly fascinating. “

If you know me at all, you know my tastes slide from the utterly serious to the totally trashy in, oh, seconds, which brings us to two books that got my attention this month. The first is from Joanna Lumley of “Absolutely Fabulous” fame. Complete with illustrations, her life seems well, fabulous. Lavishly illustrated, this is bound to be the gift for one of her fans. Staying with the entertainment theme, I located a book that is clearly vying for the trashiest of tales ever, and tells them from the point of view of the go-to guy for sex for any of old Hollywood’s closeted stars. Written by Scotty Bowers, now in his eighties, this is the book I’d take along were I going on a cruise and had one monster-big hat to hide under to snicker and giggle. Got such a hat? This is your book. Read a review.

Speaking of Hollywood, do you dream of selling your memoir selling to the movies? Really? You don’t? You are lying to me? You do remember that I take notes on everything, right? Oh well. I’ve had those dreams. See here for a tale that went from Sundance to Sony, and soon to a theater near you.

Along with books, I’ll always bring you newspaper pieces or essays that are fine examples of memoir, including this one, from Psychology Today, written by Deborah Jiang Stein, whose new memoir, Even Tough Girls Wear Tutus, recounts being born in prison and finding a way to inspire others. Another good short piece of recent memoir I read recently relates what happens when we tell one another our stories. Michigan Radio did a great job here. Have a look and a listen.

See something? Read something? Listen to something great? Send it along in the comments. Let’s share what we know. For more, see the Facebook page, the Memoir Project. “Like” it, and let me sort through the new memoir and recommend a few.

Surely you have something to say using one of these as your news peg.

• Even I can do that. Really. I think. Maybe tomorrow
• Because the road ragers need this one thing to make me stop driving entirely
• Could there ever be a big enough mea culpa for this?
• Mobbed up museum. Will it mop up in Vegas?
• Shame on us all that all these children are hungry
• Interracial marriages in U.S. hit new high
• Best recent presidents? Time for me to pull out my best Reagan rants. Again

Looking for inspiration or guidance on how to write a personal essay? Look at my categories for NPR essays, parenting essays, and several other topics. All of the pieces there have been published, or have aired on the radio. If those don’t work, see the interactive calendar for more inspiration. And write on.

See a typo, a grammar flub, my (ever-present) overuse of commas? Point it out, and I’ll throw you in the pool for a monthly free book giveaway. Which book? One of mine – your choice – all of which were professionally copy edited, thank goodness.

What would you call the emotional response to the wonder, responsibility, honor, astonishment, and no small amount of anxiety that results when someone brings in a piece about family abuse? On this night there were several such pieces, and since I never give assignments or prompts, exercises, or suggestions of topics, there is no real preparation for editing such pieces. We just dove in and did the work.

What to do when the topic is abuse

Maybe you’re living with something right now that’s too difficult to write in real time. So take notes; during a long writing life, you will find another time, and, more to the point, another angle from which to view anything.

This is true even when the events you choose to portray become as serious as family damage. Even the most polite, best-intentioned families can do very clever damage. And that makes good copy, as does the tragic damage done when people collide, though writing gets trickier faster for victims of abuse who choose to tell their tales.

Over the years, my class has heard of every kind of abuse. And every time an abuse memoir is read, but before we critique it, I remind the students to stick to what’s on the page; not to judge the actions, offer therapeutic help, or their tales of woe; not to ask what happened next, if it’s not on the page. It’s a necessary prescription if we’re to do the work.

Choosing your point of view

First I look for what works with the piece. Pieces about abuse will be cluttered in whorled images, voices, and meaning, but there will be a uniquely illuminating sentence in paragraph eight, or a reverberating image in paragraph twelve, and we’ll start there, since drawing the writer’s attention to what works is the very best way to get more of the same.

Perhaps what works is the point of view of the child who experienced the abuse. What happens if you transpose your tale to another age? Can you tell it, as did one former student, as her eight-year-old self? She had us watch as her father found her crammed into a corner of the attic, and she recounted what she told herself, how she demanded of herself not merely that she survive but thrive, how she clung to the images of school and freedom and friends, so that years later, as a well adult, she was sitting in our class, teaching us about the topic of abuse.

Transporting yourself back to a younger you, remember to use the vocabulary of your eight-year-old self, and nothing from popular culture after that time—no movie references, or books, no cognitive awareness of a teenager. Remaining in the worldview of the eight-year-old, you might finally tackle something tricky you pine to explore.

Reflecting on the topic

I’ll continue to think long and hard about Wednesday night, and in writing this, what came to mind is that what I was witnessing in the pieces that night was nothing less than the human pilot light – that remarkable force that keeps lit under the most crushing of circumstances. Nothing compares to it.

I’ve had some extraordinary guests writing with me on She Writes. On day one, it was the exceptional Katrina Kenison, author of The Gift of An Ordinary Day, with a fine post about writing. Today, I am deeply honored to be featuring an excerpt from the upcoming memoir, The Letter: My Journey Through Love, Loss, and Life, by Marie Tillman. Marie is the widow of Pat Tillman, who proudly put his NFL career with the Arizona Cardinals on hold to serve his country, and was killed in Afghanistan. Tomorrow, it’s big sister, Margaret Roach, with an excerpt from her gorgeous And I Shall Have Some Peace There. After that? Well, come see.

In his prickly 1916 tome, On the Art of Writing, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch (1863-1944) opines that you must “murder your darlings,” and if there is a phrase more beloved by writers, I cannot think of it. People seem to adore it, almost as much as they rest assured that it applies to everyone’s work but their own. Few writers are actually willing to follow this advice; perhaps none are memoirists.

When Quiller-Couch (seen at left) penned it, he was making the distinction between style and plain bad writing: “Style, for example, is not—can never be—extraneous Ornament.” Later, he gave us his famous instruction: “Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—whole-heartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.”

Elmore Leonard later qualified this for a modern audience: “If I come across anything in my work that smacks of ‘good writing,’ I immediately strike it out.”

When this topic is raised in my class, I default to a short talk on sin, and how from the first word you lay down, writing memoir will pretty much divide your time between committing sins of omission and sins of commission, during which you will soon realize that much as in life, what’s left out may haunt you nearly as much as what gets included.

“But it’s a lovely sentence,” someone will whine, defending their darling when I edit it out. And that’s the problem. It may be, but understanding that writing is not about those single flourishes, and instead about the piece as a whole, is the first step toward learning how to commit the perfect murder—a good final edit.

See a typo, a grammar flub, my (ever-present) overuse of commas? Point it out, and I’ll throw you in the pool for a monthly free book giveaway. Which book? One of mine – your choice – all of which were professionally copy edited, thank goodness.

ICE CREAM

I just wanted ice cream, a Good Humor bar to be precise, either Toasted Almond with its crunchy, pebbled exterior, or perhaps a smooth, slippery Creamsicle to gradually whittle down with the warmth of my tongue:  licking, licking, trying to stay one lick ahead of meltdown.

Buying ice cream from the hulking white cube of a truck was one ritual of long summer days in my 1960s suburbia, as much as playing outside until supper, or the volatile smell of charcoal-lighter fluid splashing in an arc onto the nightly pyramid of black briquettes.  The adults had their happy hour; we had our Good Humor.

Where Mommy was at this moment on this particular evening I do not recall, but no matter. Her long red clutch purse was on the Victorian chaise in the master bedroom, the room she shared with my father. It was furnished with the suite of his-and-hers dressers and twin beds pushed together into one faux expanse, but with that tricky, insistent abyss down the middle where they joined, the one you could fall into.  Sometimes we rough-housed in there, my younger sister and I, two giggling, squealing girls in pigtails, and down the crack between Mommy’s side of things and Daddy’s, one or the other of us would go, disappearing.

But this early summer evening I am on my own in the ballroom-sized space with its crystal chandelier and matching sconces, the floor-length draperies and upholstery all in pale green raw silk.  The way I remember it, I am nine, and I want ice cream, and I can hear the bells of the ice-cream truck growing louder so there is no time to find anyone grown up and ask for the money I need.

I am on what to a nine-year-old is a mission: seeking the shortest route to getting my immediate needs met. Give me ice cream now.

I race upstairs, two steps at a time, to that familiar room where the people whose job it is to protect me start and end their day under matching nubby, dark green bedspreads.  I go and reach my small hand into that big red wallet to find the dollar, as I have in my nine-year-old innocence so many times before. Give me ice cream now.

The bells ring again, and I dig deeper into the clutch – Why is there no single? -and then my hungry rummaging goes really wrong.

I do not find the currency to end my craving, but instead an end to untroubled summer evenings where scoring a dollar bill in Mommy’s wallet was my most urgent desire. In my hand is a small black and white photo of the man who is perhaps my father’s closest friend, the father of my sister’s closest friend, the man with whose wife and family we go to dinner routinely and even travel with sometimes.

I don’t, and I do, understand.

What follows is not the treat I seek, but (to state the obvious, and say it tritely) an end of innocence.  I have not even had a boyfriend yet; I don’t wear (or need) a bra – and won’t for years to come. I am a child, with a girl’s white cotton undershirt and Carter’s Spanky Pants beneath the pedal pushers and striped top Mommy bought me; my white mercerized cotton socks are folded over carefully at the ankles. I am a child, but at this instant I am a child who is forced to become the Confronter, a place in the family achieved when hand touched photo. Tag: You’re it. No longer someone searching for a dollar, I began my life’s search for an honest answer, no matter how ugly. And I begin a lifetime habit of asking questions, endless questions, the first of them spoken silently to myself there in that bedroom.

“Why is there a picture of Jack in Mommy’s wallet?” I was not silent for long.

The answers – from Mommy, from Daddy, and even from Marion – were always the same, no matter how I phrased my question: Be quiet, they’d say, in one form or another. Don’t talk that way. Be quiet.

If you have not read my version on the same event, you can do so here. Does Margaret’s version of the same family experience temper mine? No. Does hers differ wildly from my version? Yes. She found out about our mother’s affair when she was nine, after all. Does this make for a very different narrative sister-to-sister? Oh baby, does it ever. Is one of us wrong? Ah, no.

Should another version of the same family moment leave you blocked? Never.

• Yet another big cave on birth control
• The FBI had a file on him. And them. And you?
• Empowering girls, one doll at a time
• Downsizing a meal: Everyone said they would not do it, but they did
• The most popular video-on-demand of all time? Really?

Surely you have something to say using one of these as your news peg.

Looking for inspiration or guidance on how to write a personal essay? Look at my categories for NPR essays, parenting essays, and several other topics. All of the pieces there have been published, or have aired on the radio. If those don’t work, see the interactive calendar for more inspiration. And write on.

See a typo, a grammar flub, my (ever-present) overuse of commas? Point it out, and I’ll throw you in the pool for a monthly free book giveaway. Which book? One of mine – your choice – all of which were professionally copy edited, thank goodness.

Jeff Goins is comfortable not only with the topic, but also with the act of making publishing an available goal for all. Instead of merely talking the talk, he daily does a great deal toward that goal by blogging, publishing ebooks, teaching a new online course and soon publishing his much-anticipated book, Wrecked: When a Broken World Slams into Your Comfortable Life. See? There’s that comfortable theme again.

What initially drew me to Jeff was his writing voice, and his no-nonsense attitude toward getting the work done. Go see for yourself on his fine blog. When I initially reached out to him, sending him a copy of my new book,  The Memoir Project, the result was a conversation that’s been going on since. Sometimes conducted via email, other times in blog comments, or on Twitter, our topics ranged over the many issues involved in forging a successful writing career, though this was the first time we had actually talked, and dialing the phone, I had a small level of unease over not knowing the proper way to pronounce his last name.

Getting to Know Jeff

“That depends on which side of the Mason-Dixon line you’re on,” he replied, laughing. His people are from Alabama, but his early years were spent in Illinois, where he was a Goynes. Now, living in Tennessee, he is again Go-ins. And yes, he’s comfortable with both.

The topic of comfort also comes up when we engage in a long discussion about brand, a subject, it is safe to say, that most of my writing students and peers continue to find deeply distressing. Not Jeff. He is very “intentional” about creating his brand. Blogging and writing for about six years now, he has seen much more success in the last year. The reason?  He believes it is a result of “the natural process until you find the comfortable writing voice.”

“One of the things that is always true about me is that I am impatient and practical, “ he explained. “It comes out in how I write. Punchy. Intentional. I want to get to the point.”

And that’s what attracted my attention the first time I read his blog. Jeff is writing with intent, a phrase I use all the time, and while he calls it “writing for real,” we both believe in doing it, as well as sharing the ethic with others. It’s where our brands intersect, a lovely place to forge a friendship.

Join the Party

As a result of our new-found bond, we’re having a little cyber party, the favors for which are free ebooks – your choice of one of Jeff’s fabulous publications. Choose from Every Writer’s Dream or Before Your First Book. Both are filled with valuable information on how to successfully live this life of writing.

I’m giving away five of each. All you must do to qualify is leave a sentence below about who you want to be as a writer. In other words, what is your brand, or what brand do you see in your future?

When I asked Jeff to define his brand, along with “punchy,” and “intentional,” he used the words “teacher,” “informal,” “down to earth,” middle-class,” and “not-pretentious.”

“It’s action oriented,” he replied. “When I challenge them, people are responsive to that, and I hone that, and focus that on a brand that is clean and uncluttered both in terms of the visuals the word length.”

“It’s about getting you to act,” he said, sounding very comfortable with the brand.

So act. Let me hear from you, and win a book or two.

How to Win a Jeff Goins ebook

ALL YOU HAVE TO DO TO QUALIFY TO WIN one of the two Jeff Goins’s ebooks I’m giving away is to tell me what you want to be as a writer. What’s your intended brand? Or, what is your brand now? Go on. Understanding who you are is the first step toward getting a brand, or building one.

Don’t worry if you’re feeling shy. I’ll count your comment even if you just say, “garden writer,” or “cat lover.” Two-word minimum. How’s that for easy?

Winners will be chosen at random, using the number-generating tool on random [dot] org, after entries close at midnight Friday, February 17. Good luck to all.

At the time I was reading Amy Tan’s “The Hundred Secret Senses,” in which cateagle figures prominently. I loved the image, the qualities ascribed to the bird, the name itself. Cateagle. It seemed so brave.

Being brave about adopting was not something that came naturally to me. And we were adopting in China so my anxiety was increased by the distance, the cultural gulf between all of us. How would this really go, I wondered? I knew parenting was hard work but would it be harder with a baby not my own? How much did that mean to me? There was no ruler for this, only instinct and instinct can be a frail as it is mighty.

Then one snowy night my husband and I were driving very slowly along a rural road and were abruptly halted in our way by a white owl descending through the falling snow and landing fifteen feet in front of our car. The bird simply stared into the headlights as all around us the snow swirled. No one else came along on the road and so we sat there, two humans pressed up against the windshield, the beautiful big bird gazing back at us with a steadiness I can still feel today.

Maybe we sat for five minutes. Maybe it was only two. But we looked and the magnificent bird looked back and then after a while, gathering all the snow beneath those great wings, the cateagle lifted into the air, right into the snow and swooped off into the night.

“She’s coming,” I said to my husband through my tears. “She’s really coming.” And I knew for certain that no matter what, it was our little girl who was on her way to our hearts and home.

We left for China soon after and on February 6, 1996 were met our daughter. On Valentine’s Day we arrived back in New York.

Every year we celebrate the day we met. We had to commemorate it. Of course, our first instinct was to throw a party but that soon seemed wrong. There was something about our anniversary that called for quiet and simple togetherness. It seemed that this only required a party of three.

We don’t do much on what we have taken to calling Family Day: Dinner at home together, some talking about how much we love one another, how grateful we are and invariably I call our daughter my little cateagle and she smiles, indulging me as she always does when I see or hear an owl or just want to remind her what she means to me. And after I get teary and my husband and daughter get to roll their eyes at me just long enough, we climb onto the couch and look at pictures.

On that very first anniversary, when our daughter was 18 months old, my husband suggested that we get out the photo album and begin a tradition we keep every year by telling the story of her adoption to our daughter. The first time the photos were little more than something to drool over but as the years have passed they have taken on the power that only pictures of such an event can have: There are my husband and me taking the train, the two of us in a garden, the two of us at a hotel. And then there are three and nothing has ever been the same since.