Marcia Butler knows how to write about healing. She has done so brilliantly in her highly-acclaimed memoir, The Skin Above My Knee. And now she is on the QWERTY podcast talking to us about that and much more. Her book is among my very top survival memoirs. What she survives is sexual abuse at the hands of a family member. What she does with this tale is write to the power of art to inspire and heal. Also the author of a novel, a world-class oboist, as well as an interior designer, Marcia brings her polymath sense of creativity to her writing. Read along while you listen in to the remarkable conversation we had about living a writing life.
Read along as you listen to this episode of QWERTY, my podcast with co-host David Leite. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes, Spotify or Stitcher. (The following transcript has been edited from the original recording).
Marion Roach Smith: I want to introduce you to Marcia Butler, who I met online through her marvelous memoir, The Skin Above My Knee, and I was so curious after reading the book about her, particularly when I learned that she has been a professional oboist. In fact, the principal oboist and soloist on some of the greatest stages in the world. Her interior design projects are well known. She’s got a documentary film exploring the essence of creativity, out Spring 2019. As I said, she’s this memoirist and she’s also a novelist which is-
David: I love under achievers, don’t you?
Marion: Yeah. Well I think the only question we can do is just turn right to her and say, “Yeah well, so what Marcia, can you bake a cherry pie?”
David: Exactly.
Marcia: Well, thank you for that.
David: Welcome to the show Marcia.
Marcia: Thank you so much. It’s a pleasure and I cannot make a cherry pie. In fact-
Marion: Oh, thank God.
David: I know really, at least there’s something you can’t do.
Marcia: It’s my one flaw, but you know, thank you for all the … Listing all of my various accomplishments or whatever you want to call them. At the end of the day, of course, as a creative artist, I’m on my knees sobbing every other day.
Marion: Absolutely.
Marcia: So it’s not to say anything is easy. It’s not to say that anything has come easily to me. I used to say a few years ago that yes, yes, I’ve been very lucky. Yes, yes. I’ve been very lucky. I actually am revising that as of about a month ago. I work very, very, very, very hard at whatever I do. I work like a dog in chains, and opportunities come past my door and that is what I think has helped me be successful in a couple of different careers. Working hard. I mean there is no such thing as luck, so I’ve just worked really, really hard at what I do and just been drawn by my various interests in the arts.
Marion: We’re so grateful.
Marcia: I’m going to make a cherry pie though. I just want to, yeah.
David: And I’ll be happy to show you how if you need a little bit of help.
Marcia: Please.
Marion: David’s the one to teach you. Absolutely. Well, as you remember we met over your book, The Skin Above My Knee, and honestly the ideas that you bring forth in this book as you chronicle the abuse of your childhood, the healing of the music brought you. I’d love you to give our readers, our listeners, sorry, not our readers, our listeners, a little background and then tell … And then maybe if you could tell us at what point in your healing did you feel equipped to write the book? I think that would be so helpful to other people who are writing from healing.
Marcia: And by background do you mean my life story?
Marion: A little bit of background about the abuse. Just where and what and then how the music and yeah.
Marcia: Right. Okay. I grew up in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, which is Western Massachusetts and I grew up in a family that was very, very chaotic. My father was physically abusive to his sister, beat her up a lot and I was sexually abused in a sort of an oblique way from a very early age, probably earlier than I can remember, where I would sit on my father’s lap and his penis was erect. I didn’t realize that that was going on until I sort of woke up to it. And from that point it became a bargaining chip for us, my father and I.
I had discovered music when I was four years old through the music of Richard Wagner and the opera Tristan und Isolde, specifically sung through this … By Kirsten Flagstad, who is a wonderful Wagnerian soprano. That was my first exposure to music.
Marion: Wow.
Marcia: And it was very impactful. I saw that expression, that harmonic language of Wagner as a profound expression of love. And so it was a substitute for me in a family where my father was abusive. My mother was … I believe she was aware of it, but was one of those typical 1950s family where you just looked the other way. And you know, wear a pretty dress and a string of pearls and kitten heels and there you go.
Marion: Nothing like kitten heels to get a girl through some really hideous stuff, yeah?
Marcia: Right, yeah. So this was my life. I understood when I started playing the Oboe at a young age that that was going to be my way out of this house. And so the power struggle between my father and I was essentially, if I sit on his lap, he would take me to my Oboe lessons. And this went on for years until I left, when I was age 17 to go to New York city and become an oboist. I went to a music conservatory here. So that’s the reader’s digest version of what happened to me and how music saved my life.
Marion: So did you have to wait till you were “healed” to write this book? I mean, when did you say to yourself, “I got this, at least I’ve got an interest in it.”
Marcia: Right. I had never written anything in my life, no journals, no nothing, nothing. Until I had established an interior design business after I was an oboist for 28 years in New York city. I started interior, I went back to school, I started an interior design firm and I had a blog and I was writing about aspects of design and creativity. And I started writing short essays on my childhood and that’s when the floodgates opened. That’s about 10 years ago. But I had not written one creative word before that.
And it cobbled, I cobbled together a few things and that’s when I sent I think about 40 pages to you Marion, tell me what this is. You were unbelievably helpful. I mean, you were so clear and you said, “Yes this, no that.” In other words, like gave me my marching orders and then I proceeded to go for the next two years and write the memoir and was able to get published.
Marion: Yes, you did. Yes you did. I remember when you sent me an email saying, “Getting it published.” And I thought, “And there is no surprise here, but I am so completely on my knees with delight.” That was one of the most astonishing emails I had gotten. The first one where you said, “Do you think there’s anything here?” And I read it saying, “Oh hell yes.”
David: Well, I have to say, “Kudos to you and bow down to you.” If you had not written anything before and then this is really your first book that you’ve written, your first work of writing, that’s astounding. That just shows that creativity is creativity is creativity. And those people who knows how to harness it can harness it in so many different directions.
Marcia: Aww, well, you’re very kind. You’re very kind. I really appreciate it. I don’t have answers that, I just don’t know how. Other than the fact that being a musician in a rigorous way, in a professional high level of professional rigor to my music making and also bringing that to interior design, I somehow feel that there was a foundation of understanding aesthetic correctness, rightness. This is good, this is bad. And somehow I think that just bled into language, and it didn’t come easily. I had never told 90% of that book to anyone. Friends did not know. Husbands did not know, knew nothing about what happened to me. I had kept it bottled up. So I think that-
Marion: It reads like that, it reads like you are just having that look across the landscape of it as a whole-
Marcia: Aww, well that’s so-
Marion: It’s one of the things that’s so wonderful about it.
Marcia: Well it certainly was palpable when I was writing it and I kind of couldn’t believe that I was writing it and what was I doing here? And of course I went writing these things and exposure and everything when I hadn’t even told therapists. I was lying to-
Marion: So let’s talk about that, who we do tell. A lot of my people that I work with, students and clients ask, “Should I show it to my family? Should I tell them? Should I warn them? Should I let them know it’s coming? Should I share it with my sister?” What’s your advice to people about when you’re writing something that’s clearly got the truth as a ooh, power. Powerful.
David: And if I could interject also. Were your parents alive when this was published?
Marcia: No.
David: No.
Marcia: Luckily, right? I mean, you know, I was glad that that was the case.
Marion: Of course.
Marcia: But there was no … I didn’t really think of writing it after, because it sort of just came out organically. But there’s a few things that I would advise people in writing a memoir which is about family. One is to be very careful that A, you are writing what is your own experience, so you’re not taking inventory about the people in your family or whatever the conditions are that you’re writing about. For instance, one of the other people in my memoir is my sister. I did not say, I only said what I experienced with my sister. I did not go into her life story. In fact, she was a prostitute for many years.
Marcia: I didn’t feel it was necessary to take inventory on her condition. She’s also passed away now, but she passed away before the memoir was out. But that’s one thing is to do not take inventory of other people. Also be very, very careful that you’re not writing from a place of anger. Because I think when you write from a place of anger, the reader does not trust you. And it’s unconscious from the reader’s point of view. But I think writing from anger and kind of getting back at is a time when you, if you can recognize it, you might need to put that book up on a shelf for a while.
Marion: Yeah. The reliability of the narrator is absolutely the most important part of memoir. First and foremost, the reliability. And if we feel rage, we feel dishonesty on some level. It is a very curious tension that’s created with the reader, isn’t it?
Marcia: Yes, absolutely. And then in terms of the writing process, just a few more things on this. I would not have friends and family read anything. I would go to trusted beta readers or trusted advisors and mentors such as yourself, Marion. People who have much … Just the best distance. Distance, so that they can read it without relating to the person who’s writing it.
Marion: Right.
Marcia: So I kept it very close to the chest and I did not … I only used people who were professionals essentially, who could tell me on a writing level and a narrative arc level whether the thing was working. And then once I sold it to Little, Brown, I did have … They brought in an attorney to go through it and ask me questions as to whether people were going to come back at me and fortunately they were satisfied that no one would, mostly because everyone was passed away. Right?
Marion: Well, you can’t libel the dead. And I don’t say that with a smile. I say that seriously. And it’s a very important piece for people to know. But that doesn’t mean that you go and pile on the dead either is you seem to be making the point that you tell your truth.
Marcia: Yes, yes.
Marion: Yeah.
David: And one of the things Marion you always talk about is do not write for revenge. It will never get you anywhere.
Marion: Right. This is not a blunt object, this genre. And it’s used on entirely too much as a blunt object, but that always falls apart. I read lots and lots of memoir that fall apart quickly because it’s meant to set the record straight and of course there is no such thing. I would even argue there is no such thing as one truth, but I get into no end of trouble and on creative panels when I say things like that.
David: Yes. Seems objective truth.
Marcia: Yeah, I agree with you Marion. I mean, everyone has their truth and then there’s the facts.
Marion: There we go.
Marcia: And who could really identify-
David: That’s very well said.
Marcia: … what those facts are because they are always perceived through the prism of your own psychology. And really, what does it matter? I just think that having an agenda and having a purpose which is filled with some sort of negative emotion coming from a place of a negative emotion such as revenge, such as wanting to get back, such as a place from anger or incredible pain, that has not been worked through to a certain extent. I think this is going to get the writer in trouble.
Marion: Absolutely.
Marcia: I think it’s going to be a one note Samba, to use that metaphor. It will not have enough bandwidth. The story will have an emotional patina to it, which will in itself become labored, boring. Not boring, but heavy and not enough bandwidth.
Marion: Sure. I talk a lot about that with people. And just in terms of, is this a blog post? Is this a personal essay? Is this an op-ed? Is it a book? And for a book there’s got to be a degree of grit that you only can understand as you try to write it for. You’ve just got to … It’s got to feel like it can go first of all in your own personal interest, perhaps three years, five years on it. And then, more than that, have you got enough? Have you got enough? Do you understand? Are you willing to look? These are all requirements of sticking with something for this length of time. So, the lessons learned in memoir, do they translate? You’re now a novelist, I’m so happy for you. And so thrilled for me, the happy reader. But tell us please a bit about this decision to go into fiction and then let’s talk about your new novel.
Marcia: Okay. Yes. Well, once I wrote the memoir, I really found … I had the bug, I wanted to write.
Marion: The bug.
Marcia: Yeah. The dreaded bug. And it’s not a butterfly anyway.
Marion: No, no.
David: More like a creative bacteria.
Marcia: Exactly. Malignant. I don’t know. You know, I really found the thing about writing, contrasting it to my other careers is that there’s a lot of collaboration that goes on in the music world and of course in interior design because you have clients. And the beautiful thing about writing is there’s no interference. You’re really alone with your own decisions, your own story, your own imagination. You know, even in music, you go into rehearsal and you have a bunch of ideas and it’s a collaborative effort to make the music be rendered in a way which is the best possible way for the music. And so a lot of your ideas get on … Get thrown on the floor and it’s all for the glory of music and that’s fine.
But what writing gave me was this independence of imagination. And I started writing fiction. I started actually writing this novel. My novel coming out is called Pickle’s Progress. I started writing it immediately when my memoir was bought. I turned over in bed and started writing. And I-
Marion: Love that.
Marcia: … finished it about the time that my … By the time of the publication of the memoir, which took a year and a half. I felt like I could transfer the learning, the discovery of creating a narrative arc through memoir onto fiction. And basically I see the art forms of nonfiction writing and novel writing as essentially the same in terms of craft. You still have to tell a story, there has to be character development, there has to be a beginning, a middle and end. There has to be stakes, things at stake. There has to be tension, resolve.
Marcia: And I just went for it and I … Here I must say I was very lucky to get it published because transferring from nonfiction to fiction is not a slam dunk. Publishing houses do not say, Oh sure, she’s a memoirist, let’s bring her on as a novelist.
Marion: No, they don’t.
Marcia: It does not happen. And you know, in other words, you might as well be doing another profession. Essentially they don’t make the connection. And so I had to sort of start over and I do feel very lucky that might not have always picked up in this case.
Marion: Did you stay with the same agent? Did the agent get it and say, “Oh sure, let’s try this? Or how was that transition?
Marcia: Yes, the agent is the same. They supported me 1,000%, they were delighted that I started writing fiction. I sent them a couple of chapters and they said, “Go.”
David: Great.
Marcia: So, you know, they said, forge forward, we’ll get this locked and loaded and we will, we’ll send it out. And it was … They were completely supportive of me.
David: What fascinates me is that you bracket fiction and nonfiction together as kind of the craft or the art of writing. And then go back of course, to music and being an oboist. What’s the lateral learning that you accumulated and accrued as being a musician that you were able to apply it somehow to the writing? I know of course they’re completely different arts, but as a creative person, something … There was something there because in an interview you gave, you said that words are like notes and paragraphs are like sections and a novel or a book is like an entire concerto or an entire symphony.
Was there anything that you pulled, anything that guided you initially to move from one art form to another that informed it?
Marcia: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Well, I do believe that all art forms are made from small bits. Whatever, a room is a room and then you put something on the wall, you put something on the floor, you fill the void and you do it in a way which hopefully has a sense of proportion and scale and beauty. So for a musician you have notes, you have to conquer those notes. Then you have to add on dynamics to play soft or loud. Then you have to do the most difficult thing, which is to add meaning to those notes, which is your interpretation of Mozart say. In writing it’s great to have the word, the sentence, the paragraph and how does that all fit in to a chapter?
As you were saying David, I think the thing that music has taught me most about forging through in various different art forms is to understand that you start with knowing nothing and like you don’t know the notes, and you don’t know the words in fiction particularly. Or even in nonfiction. What word will you literally start with? Is it I, is it you? Is it, I’m walking down the street. Those are unknowns. So there’s nothing known in working in an art form. And that’s where you start.
And with that feeling of the unknown comes with tremendous discomfort. Discomfort to the point where you just want to walk out of the room. You want to walk away from the computer, or put the pad down and the pencil, and walk away from this immense, immense discomfort that you don’t know what you’re doing. Even though you know how to do it in a way in a craft sense.
But there’s this like, “What am I going to come up with today that is good.” And it’s almost impossible to fathom, right? To bring a new piece of music that you don’t know, which is incredibly difficult to play and to start practicing and on day one and know that in four months you have a performance which you feel like every step of the way you cannot accomplish and somehow the Cox click in and you have done it. You can imagine at the beginning that you could ever make that journey. It’s the same way with writing.
And what music has taught me is to tolerate tremendous discomfort on a day-to-day basis. And I think that’s one of the problems that writers have is about procrastination. And now it’s even worse with the internet, you know? Oh my God, there’s so many things to click on, get off your page on the computer and just, “Oh, I’ll check social media.” And it’s procrastination. But mainly it’s about wanting to run away from the discomfort of the unknown.
David: You’re completely right about that. And I think that if anything our listeners take away from this particular interview, these many wonderful things you’ve said is that is the ability to tolerate the discomfort of sitting in front of the computer and then putting … Stringing words together that become sentences, that become paragraphs, that become chapters. Because nothing is more frightening and more difficult than tolerating and sitting through that anxiety. As I’ve said before many times, “My house is never cleaner than when I have a deadline.”
Marion: That’s great. Oh my goodness. That is so true. Absolutely. I’ve cooked an entire Indian, piece of Indian cuisine from scratch. My husband comes in and says, “What deadline did you miss?”
Marcia: Otherwise it’s just coming from the fridge Honey. I’m too busy to talk to you. But yeah, absolutely.
David: It’s interesting Marcia, because many times when I used to teach quite a while back, and one of the things I would always say is that writing a book, a long piece, well, anything really, but writing a book, it’s really like being the conductor of an orchestra. Because you need to know when to bring up the flutes and when to bring down the timpani and when to bring in the strings. It’s the same thing with when writing.
You need to know when to bring up some of the characters. You need to know when to push back on tone, when to bring up on metaphor, and there’s this constant balance that goes on. So to me, the reason why I was so curious, so excited that you were coming on the program, but also the fact of wanting to ask you that question is I see there being a great connection between the art and crafted music and the art and craft of writing.
Marcia: Yes. I believe that there is, and maybe that’s the answer to your question earlier in this interview is how did I do that? That they’re not that dissimilar. Music is a language and it is a language which actually transcends our common language, which is spoken. And it communicates every bit of emotion that writing does when a reader writes and connects with a narrator or a protagonist. And you know, the other thing that I’ll say is regarding this element of discomfort is to just say that the thing that pushes me through and which I say to other writers often is, is that only you can tell the story that you have. No one else can tell that story. And I think that’s something that I hold onto it every day. No one’s going to grab my story.
In writing there is no competition really on a real fundamental level, because the story is only that writer’s story. And I think that that’s freeing in a way, because it sort of brushes away the feeling that we’re in this big pot together and this one’s writing and that one’s writing. It’s like, “No, you’re writing your story. Only you know what’s going to come up. You will discover what will come up in the next chapter, sentence, whatever.” And that is sort of a bomb for me actually to just think of that.
Marion: Absolutely. Well, I know we have to wrap this up, but I have to ask you one more question that if you rolled over in bed and started writing Pickle’s Progress after writing the Skin Above My Knee, what did you roll over in bed and start after you handed in Pickle’s Progress?
Marcia: Oh my goodness.
David: She started a political career.
Marcia: Yeah, exactly.
Marion: Oh, you’re running, you’re running for office? How nice.
David: Exactly.
Marcia: Oh Lord.
Marion: No, never mind.
Marcia: I’m running from the country is what I’m running from.
Marion: So what did you start writing?
Marcia: Well, I immediately started writing another novel, which is, I have about, I have almost the first rough draft done. May I quote you Marion. It’s the vomit draft. Truly awful. But thank you for that, it’s so perfect.
Marion: You’re welcome. I give it to you with all love.
Marcia: Yeah. So this novel is about a moose who lives in Maine.
Marion: Oh yes it is.
Marcia: In fact, and this is a novel which is set in central rural Maine and it is about social class.
Marion: Wait.
Marcia: And the moose lives on these two family’s property and through this animal we travel the lives of these people. And you know it’s about moose. It’s about moose living, this moose living in me. Her name is Bindle.
Marion: Well you are my idea of just perfection.
David: Oh my.
Marion: So thank you. So Marcia, we can’t wait to read any words you write, you’re a memoirist and a novelist. I wanted to mention that your book, the Skin Above My Knee was one of the Washington Post’s “top 10” note worthy moments in classical music in 2017. I just love that. And that Pickle’s Progress was released in April of 2019, out now Central Avenue publishing. You live in New York city and write on, sister. We can’t wait to read what’s next. Thank you.
Marcia: Thank you. Is such a delight to do this. Thank you, David and Marion.
Marion: You’re welcome.
David: It was a pleasure. Thank you.
Marion: That was Marcia Butler, author of The Skin Above My Knee and Pickle’s Progress. Thanks so much for tuning in today, and please subscribe to QWERTY so you take us wherever you go.
Have you got a question you’d like us to answer or to ask our authors? Send it along to us and we’ll choose a few each week and answer them on QWERTY. Just drop me a line at my contact page.
Want more of a writing education? Come join me in one of my online memoir classes. They run all the time and all of them will help you get where you want to go in your work.
