SHIRLEY SHOWALTER IS an award-winning educator, author, and speaker who has joined us on The Qwerty podcast to talk about how to write memoir. Listen in and read along as we discuss that, and so much more.
Powered by RedCircle
Marion: Welcome to Qwerty. I’m Marion Roach Smith. Each episode I talk to writers from all genres to discover what makes a good read. And along the way, we discuss their writing process, discover their tips, and talk about what matters most to writers. So step away from the computer or typewriter for a bit and join us. Today, my guest is writer Shirley Showalter. She’s an author of essays and opinion pieces published in places such as Forbes and the Minneapolis Star, as well as an author of two books. Her newest book is The Mindful Grandparent: the Art of Loving Our Children’s Children, co-authored with Marilyn McEntyre, and it’s just out from Broadleaf Books. Welcome, Shirley.
Shirley: Thank you so much. I am thrilled to be here, and I’m the big fan of the podcast.
Marion: Oh, thanks. Well, that’s great. We’ve known each other and of each other’s work for a long time, and I’ve long wanted to talk with you about how to write memoir. I mean, you’re a pro, not only at writing from your own life, but also at promoting the books you write with essays, opinion pieces, public speaking engagements. And all of these writing decisions will be of the utmost interest to our audience of writers.
So let’s set this up a bit. Your first book is called Blush: A Mennonite Girl Meets a Glittering World. And I read it when it first came out, and loved it and learned a lot from it. Your recent book takes on grandparenting. And in between, there have been these essays and opinion pieces that predominantly support and promote the topics of your books. In other words, you do all of this and you do it right. You choose topics from your own life, you get the books done, and then you populate media with your essays and opinion pieces that promote those books, making you the perfect person to ask this question. What is the appeal in writing from one’s own life?
Shirley: I think the appeal is that, my life and your life are linked to each other. And that, when I read about someone else’s life in their memoir, I can mull over questions, some of which I didn’t have before I read the book. Other times, I can say, yes, exactly. I know exactly what that’s like. I feel more a part of the human race, and I feel more a part of the invisible forces that I believe are tying us all to each other, that we cannot necessarily name, or certainly can’t see, but are still there.
Marion: I love that. I was raised by newspaper people. Both of my parents were journalists, as is my sister and my husband, and on and on it goes, and my friends. And in our culture we say, “Go with what you’ve got”. It means many things, not the least of which it means to stop researching and start writing. But, it also applies to what we have on us when writing memoir. You’re a Mennonite, an Anabaptist Christian denomination that applies to perhaps 65,000 people in the United States at this time. But, it’s what you had on you. But it’s not what most of us have on us, so it’s not well known to most of us. So, how did this spiritual side, this religion, and this lack of popular understanding of that religion factor in your decision to write your first book that takes on your Mennonite upbringing?
Shirley: It’s a combination of many things. One is the, just natural desire to be known in the world and to explain who I am to myself, as well as to other people. And it’s also because, Mennonites, like Amish, are mentioned in the popular press sometimes, but often without very much understanding or context. I was aware when I was writing this book that there were millions of people reading Amish romances. It’s not why I wrote the book. But I felt that there would be space for an authentic voice of someone who has a particular, very small, but persistent group of believers, people who have been part of a movement that began in the 16th century, and is 500 years old now. And that, explaining the seeming peculiarities and the real peculiarities of my people seemed to be a worthy ambition.
One of my favorite writers is Willa Cather. And she talked about being the “Virgil of the plains.” That’s a high aspiration, and I’m not sure I’m the Virgil of the Mennonites. In fact, I know I’m not. But I understand the calling, the sense of, if I don’t tell the story, maybe it won’t be told. And therefore, it felt like I was going beyond my life to that of many others, and giving to my readers a sense of connection to the past, and to a particular form of belief. Especially, the belief in pacifism and in peace, and being willing to die, rather than killing.
Marion: You reveal so much in that answer, and the previous answer about living your spirituality. I’ve read interviews with you in which you’re really literate in scripture. You quote scripture in some interviews. I read an interview earlier in your life, and there was some beautiful scripture quoted. And I started to wonder, and I wondered if I’m making too great an assumption that, you may have had to do some real genuine spiritual inquiry on the road to becoming a published author, and if you did. . . Because for so many people, there are so many blockages to writing. And one of them, it turns out, is a lot of what we learned at home, about being modest and about not raising your voice.
Shirley: Yes.
Marion: Right? So could you just dive into that-
Shirley: In spades, if you’re Mennonite.
Marion: In spades, if you’re Mennonite, and in spades in a lot of other cultural religious background. Can you just show us, tell us a bit about the manner of questions that you had to bring to yourself to get yourself to feel that you were supposed to raise your voice?
Shirley: I think I started that in childhood. Some of what gave me the courage to speak and to write was the fact that, even though my mother, who is a high school graduate only. . . She never went to college, and she is the product of generations of people who lived on the land and did not go to college. But she still had aspirations. She was a reader, she was a storyteller. She actually told stories in churches. And I would go with her sometimes to listen to her, and was proud of her that, even though there were no women preachers in our church at the time, and there weren’t many other mothers doing these kinds of things, she showed me, by her example, that a voice that is genuine, sincere, ardent, and a person who feels called to share one’s stories with others, can and should do that.
That was not what was being taught to me in the church at large, but it was this unusual example I had in my very own home. My mother is still living, and she’s still an inspiration for what I do. And whenever I have a new book or new article, I want to share it with her, and she’s always shiny-eyed and proud that I am doing this.
Marion: I love that. I love the word “ardent” before. It’s a good word to get under if you’re thinking about becoming a writer and wondering what you’re ardent about. I’m thinking, still, and we’re going to talk about your most recent book in a minute, but I want to stick with your first book for just another minute. Blush: A Mennonite Girl Meets a Glittering World. It came out in 2013. And at that point, when you wrote it, you had already served as a college English department faculty member, as well as a college president.
In fact, you were the first woman president of Goshen College, one of the five undergraduate-based institutions in the Mennonite Church, USA. In other words, you knew a great deal about accomplishment, particularly accomplishment in a woman’s life. And while English professors and college presidents are called upon to write, memoir is not the first genre that comes to mind when we think of academia.
I think a lot of people struggle with the idea that, they’re accomplished in one field and that they should just stick to that field. But they long to become a writer. Instead of that, or on top of that, or along with that, but that it’s just not justifiable. So, let’s just take this one step further with your mother in mind, and this idea of being ardent and having a genuine voice. Just talk to us a little bit more about just saying, I can do this too, or I can pivot, or I can do this along. How did you view it as you moved from academia into publishing your first memoir?
Shirley: Well, I was very fortunate in that, I was an English professor. In a small college, every English professor teaches writing. And when I taught one of my favorite classes, which was expository writing, we did a number of subtypes, all of which were called expository, but different styles and types. One of them, of course, was the personal essay. I discovered, in the classroom, that even those guys in the back with the baseball caps on backward-
Marion: I know those guys.
Shirley: . . . Could get caught up in the stories of a really good writer, who knew the form of the personal essay, and who could draw us in and help us to be connected, help us to care about the character. And then, even to feel that lovely resolution when it ends. Once they could see that each essay had a form, and they could read it, I mean, it’s as absorbing as a novel. And that particular piece of the class was always the favorite. Maybe it was the favorite because, I loved the personal essay. But I began writing personal essays, even as a professor. I had essays published in various collections. I did a lot of speaking that was memoiristic. So I was being prepared, without ever having a conscious thought that I’m going to write a memoir someday. But it was a really good preparation.
And when I completed my professional career and asked myself, what is it that I want to do with the rest of my life? I found that, instead of conflict between my career as an academic, as a administrative leader, both in higher education, and in the foundation world later on, that there was a lot of continuity between the things that I was doing before, and the things that I did after I retired. Writing and speaking, and particularly, in a personal voice, always came naturally. So I began to think, even while I was at The Fetzer Institute, which was a foundation in Michigan, which was my post-college presidency position, I began to write personal essays. And I even submitted one to the local newspaper, the Kalamazoo Gazette. That was selected for their prize for the best adult memoir.
That’s the kind of encouragement that I always enjoyed. I like to reach for the gold ring. And when an appropriate sized pool for the beginning writer presented itself, and there was a reception that was encouraging, I continued going on. Then, I came across the piece of advice that many authors, probably many memoir writers have seen. I think Heather, I’m blanking on her last name, but a writer of an advice book for memoir writers, made the suggestion that, you read 100 good memoirs before you attempt to write one of your own. So I aspired to do that. I began a blog called 100 Memoirs, and I read and I shared what I was learning with my tiny little audience, and that got me launched.
Marion: Great. It’s such a good reminder of getting launched and trying something, and building a readership. And particularly, I love the part about the personal essay. When I first started teaching memoir, I taught only the art of the personal essay. I genuinely believe that, if you master the essay, you can master anything. And that, you don’t want to start big, you want to start small. You want to learn how to tell it tight, and tell it short, and tell it accurately. I’m a huge believer in learning that before anything else. So I agree with everything you just said there. Let’s move on to this most recent book. It’s called The Mindful Grandparent: The Art of Loving Our Children’s Children. It’s coauthored with Marilyn McEntyre, as I said before.
In which, you take on a whole lot of topics, which I really love. They include cultivating curiosity, helping children explore difficult topics, building a grandparent team, honoring adult children’s boundaries. Wow, that’s a big one. And my favorite is, managing technology. Because, I treat my daughter like my own personal IT staff, and I think I’m not alone there. So with this massive and very, what could otherwise be an overly sentimental topic of grandparenting, which you don’t fall into that trap at all, how did you choose these topics? Did you just look out at the landscaping of all grandparenting and say, this, this, this, and this? Because, you really had to go at it topic by topic, I think, to make this book work.
Shirley: Yeah.
Marion: How did you make that selection?
Shirley: Well, this book is actually a conversational book. It started by a relationship with Marilyn, who is a much more accomplished author than I am. I think she has 20-some books in print. She and I were on a panel together. That panel was going to be turned into a book proposal. The book was going to be about memoir, and there were going to be five of us authors. I agreed to be part of it, just because I enjoyed being with Marilyn so much, and I admire her writing so much. And when the publisher got cold feet on the topic, I wasn’t disappointed by that, because I wasn’t thrilled by the topic itself. But I was a little disappointed that we didn’t have a chance to write with each other. Later on, when I was writing in my own journal, it occurred to me that, even though I didn’t think I had more books in me after I finished writing Blush, that actually, I’m beginning to feel something bubble up again.
And what is bubbling is, the fact that I am passionate about being a grandmother, and that I know many other people are too. And I didn’t even know what Marilyn’s personal family story was when I wrote to her and said, is there any chance you’d like to do a book on grandparenting? She responded by saying, “Well, yes. I would love that topic.” She and I have very different types of families. She has a blended family. She was divorced, her husband was widowed, and they have nine grandchildren, stretching in age from babyhood to college student. So she had a great palette with which to paint. I have three grandchildren, and we’re different sides of the country. I’m from the east, she’s from the West Coast. We felt that we had a lot of interesting contrast, and yet, a very similar kind of commitment to words, to faith, to community, to family, to peace and justice, some of the things that bound us together, that we knew we could make a good conversation out of this.
When we decided to do a book proposal on the topic, we imagined about 20 essays, and we thought they would be a little bit longer. But fortunately, our editor was very liberal with us, and allowed us to let the structure evolve from the conversations we began to have after we got the green light to write the book, and the contract to write the book. So what we did was, to talk to each other every Monday at 11 o’clock, which was early for her, and midday for me. And we would read each other the 800-1,000 words that we had written the previous week, either along the lines of the outline that we proposed, or some new subject that came from the conversations we were having. And we were writing this book, of course, almost everybody now who is bringing books out this year, we wrote it during COVID.
So, we had new topics that we had to discuss. The topic of racial justice was very much on our minds. And thinking about our country, thinking about health and the fragility of life, and recognizing, not only the joys we have as grandparents, the natural ones, but the ones that are being impacted by this disease and therefore highlighted. So our eventual settling on 52 topics. . . Once we got past 40, we began to think, well, maybe it should be 52, and give people a way to, if they choose, to read the book, meditatively, little bits and pieces. We like what we ended up with as a method for the reader to get into the book, wherever they want to start, and to find something of benefit and common interests wherever they are. They don’t have to plunge through it from beginning to end.
Marion: Yeah, I like the 52 a lot. It feels like a weekly meditative thing that you can do. I like the tips that we just got about working with somebody, that you don’t have to be in the same room, that you can work. You can read to each other, you can respond to each other. Are there any downsides that you can name about coauthoring? I’ve coauthored. It can be great. It can be hell. It depends on the person, it depends on the discipline. It depends on a lot of things. I’ve done it more than several times. I bet a whole lot of people listening to this right now are thinking, “I would love to write a book with my sister. I would love to write a book with my business partner. Oh, wait a minute, this is such a good idea.” How about, since you learned so much, since you wrote so beautifully about boundaries with your adult children, what might be the boundaries with a co-author that you have to put up?
Shirley: Well, it’s really important that you begin with deep respect for each other, and each other’s work, and each other’s values. And if you have that, and if you’re committed to honesty, you really can work out a wonderful relationship. And you’ll begin to see things in your work and hers, that you wouldn’t otherwise have seen, because of the conversation. I’m trying to think whether there were any conflicts. I don’t think there were. We lightly edited each other’s work. Sometimes we used Google Docs, other times we use the track comments in Word.
And once we had an editor working with us, my biggest fear was the jumble. Since I’m not all that adept at Word, I was afraid we’d get our edits mixed up, and the various iterations of the manuscript could get screwed up by having so many people working together. It didn’t, mostly because Marilyn volunteered to be the one who put everything into the manuscript, and then send it to the editor. So those kinds of technical things can get a little complicated if you have different styles, or if you prefer different editing platforms. But those were minor things that we ironed out by going with who had the better strength in each instance.
Marion: That makes sense. I recently interviewed an author who chose to write a book based on the reality that, there was not a book on the shelf in the topic she needed to read at that moment. So she wrote the book she wanted to read. And it’s an adage, writers get told this all the time, write the book you want to read. This book feels like that. And if so, can you instruct us on how to respond to that feeling? It’s a big one when you say, there isn’t this book on the shelf. I need to write the book that I want to read. But, it can also be a tricky emotion. It feels so pretentious or something. I don’t know. For some people, I hear, I think it’s the best way to look at the territory. I want to read this book, so I guess I’ll write it. How about you? What can you bring to that, in terms of giving encouragement to the people who are listening, who believe there’s a need for a particular book? And what would you say to them at this point?
Shirley: Well, I think it’s a very excellent point. I think we may be living in a time when we both value expertise, and we also value personal experience. And we value a voice that seems authentic and genuine. So that gives people opportunities. Marilyn and I are very careful to point out the few times we have been together and talked together about our book, that we are not experts, that we don’t have the platform of a gerontologist, sociologist, or whoever it is, that could be thought of as an expert on grandparenting. But we do have our experience, and we have the ability to read and research. So we did include some research that fascinated us, and that we thought other grandparents would like to know.
I think we are doing this at a particular time. And now, I’m going to talk specifically about the subject of grandparenting. Because, not all subjects would necessarily be in the same category, but I believe this one is ripe for the writing. And that is because, we have undergone, in the history of human development, we have gone from a time when childhood wasn’t even recognized, to a time when adolescence was a new word, and was naming a stage of life that people previously hadn’t thought of as unique. Then in the 1960s, we had this term “parenting” arising on the scene.
And today, as everybody knows, there are parenting books all over the place, parenting magazines and podcasts, and mom this and mom that. So it’s a time of burgeoning interest in the family. But, if you go to Barnes and Noble, and you look at the parenting books and you say, where are the grandparenting books? Well, you will find a few, most of which are going to be guided journals, blank pages for you to write your story. Or, other ways to make sharing your family history easier, and a hardback book that you can do it in. Which is a wonderful idea, but it leaves a lot of room for a lot of other kinds of books.
Because of writing this book, I’m engaged with a number of other writers and podcasters and parenting and grandparenting experts, who are recognizing the fact that we may be at the beginning of a movement. New York Times columnist, Paula Span, threw out a wonderful tease about six or seven years ago. I think the name of her title, of her grandparenting column that week was, Where Are All the Grandparenting Books? And of course, when we wrote our book proposal, we cited that question, and wrote our version of a grandparenting book, partly in response to a felt need, to a perceived need. That, we were writing a book that we would like to have had as guidance before we started our grandparenting journey. And we also believed that we were living in a time when there was an interest in these kinds of stories in the general population.
Marion: Yeah. Well, there certainly seems to be. And I think that does encourage people to look around. I have a feeling a whole lot of grandparenting books are going to come out of this conversation. A lot of proposals are going to hit the publishers after this. As we start to wrap this up, I had mentioned in my intro that you have this real talent for building op-eds and essays, as well as public speaking engagements in and around your books. And it’s wonderful, and I’ll direct people to your website, where they can go and see what you’ve done. But I think this is confusing to people sometimes. How do I do this? I’m writing a book. So do I leave out certain things that I’m going to use as an essay? Or, do I wait till I’ve written the manuscript, and then figure out what I didn’t use?
It’s very strategic, how to build the interest in a book. What do you publish before the book comes out? Then the book comes out, and how much time and strategy you spend after the book is coming out to keep the book alive, and keep it in the public eye. Talk to us just a little bit, if you would, about how you plan what goes into the book, what stays out for an op-ed or an essay. Or, do you do the book first, and then figure it out? How do you do this? You’re good at it. And I think a lot of people just freeze at the idea of, you mean I can write an essay on the same topic as my book? How does that work? So how do you make this strategically work for you?
Shirley: Well, I think probably what they should do is take a Marion Roach Smith course in how to do. . . That’s only partly tongue in cheek, because I have learned a lot from you.
Marion: Thank you.
Shirley: Both in your newsletters, and in. . . I didn’t take a lot of the formal classes, but I’ve been grazing in your meadow.
Marion: Nibble, nibble, nibble. I feel it.
Shirley: To use a good farmer’s analogy. So, there is expertise. I actually took, also, a class from the op-ed project people. I don’t think that I’ve ever really planned out the pre-book writing and the post-book writing. And I certainly never kept anything out of a book to use it as an essay. I have written essays mostly when I get an idea. But you get ideas because, it occurs to you that there is a real linkage between essays, especially when they’re placed in a major publication. And getting the word out for anything else that you care about, that’s related subject-wise to that essay.
So there’s a lot you can do that is just plain education, like any other education. Go online and find out who the experts are and learn from them. And then, also, read the newspaper with your own radar, asking the question, what is happening in the world that matters, that connects to what I am passionate about right now? And if you can scan that way, you will get a lot of ideas. Then, trying to figure out how to write it succinctly, ardently, and accurately. And then, get it in a timely way to the right publication. These are all skills, and there’s some luck involved. The people who, I think you and others who have made an art of this have a lot to offer. Then the rest is the practice of reading with the intent to write.
Marion: Yes. It’s a gorgeous phrase, reading with the intent to write. I think you cover that well, the idea that you’ve got to consider what’s going on in the larger world, and how it stitches into what your expertise is. And your expertise, you don’t have to be a former joint chief of staff to write an op-ed. You just need to be someone who breathes the air, or swims in the water, or is a grandparent, or has adopted a dog, or has raised a child, grows a plant. These are areas of expertise.
It’s just a really fundamental way to think, how does this intersect with what my book is about, with what my interests are? So I so appreciate that. And you said there’s a bit of luck. Well, as we exit this interview, I want to wish you all the luck with this beautiful book. I’m giving it to people, the Mindful Grandparent: The Art of Loving Our Children’s Children. It’s a lovely, lovely book. And I just really want to congratulate you and your co-author, Marilyn McEntyre, on writing it and bringing it to the public. Thank you so much, Shirley. I so appreciate you coming along today and having this conversation.
Shirley: Thank you, Marion. I had a blast.
Marion: Good, thanks. That was essayist, opinion writer, memoirist, Shirley Showalter. Her newest book is The Mindful Grandparent: The Art of Loving Our Children’s Children, co-authored with Marilyn McEntyre. It’s just out from Broadleaf Books. See more on her shirleyshowalter dot com. I’m Marion Roach Smith, and you’ve been listening to Qwerty. Qwerty is produced by Overit Studios in Albany, New York. Reach them overitstudios dot com. Our producer is Adam Clairmont. Our assistant is Lorna Bailey. Want more on the art and work of writing? Visit marionroach dot com, where I offer online classes on how to write memoir. And thanks for listening. Don’t forget to follow Qwerty wherever you get your podcasts, and listen to it wherever you go. And if you like what you hear, please leave us a review. It helps others to find their way to their writing lives.
Want more? Come take a class with me. We now have both live and recorded classes on how to write memoir. Our live, online memoir classes include:
Memoirama, A 90-minute introductory class in how to write what you know.
Memoirama 2, a 2-hour live, online class in book structure.
How to Write Opinion Pieces, a 90-minute online class in how to write op-eds, radio essays, digital commentary and Substack columns.
The Master Class, a 6-month, class in how to complete a first draft of a memoir.
Our recorded classes include all of the above plus The Fine Art of the Personal Essay.
And please listen in and subscribe to my podcast. It’s called Qwerty, and includes interviews with stellar published writers who answer questions to help you with your work.
