Writing From a Place of Helping Others with Dave Pelzer

DAVE PELZER IS A bestselling author of many books, the first of which is the groundbreaking memoir about childhood abuse,  A Child Called “It”: One Child’s Courage to Survive. He is an inspirational speaker, an internationally recognized humanitarian, and a volunteer fire captain. His life’s work is centered on providing care. Listen in and read along as we discuss how to write from a place of helping others, and so much more.

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Marion: Today my guest is writer Dave Pelzer. He’s the author of nine inspirational books. The number of years his combined works have spent on the bestseller list is thirteen. His book, A Child Called “It“ spent over six years as a bestseller. He’s the first author to have four number one international bestsellers and to have four books simultaneously on the New York Times bestseller’s list. His new book just out is Return to the River: Reflections on Life Choices During a Pandemic. It’s published by Health Communications Inc. Dave has dedicated his life to helping others, and it is an honor to welcome him to QWERTY.

Dave: Hello. Good afternoon. Good morning. Hello America and the world at large. It’s my honor, you have over 100 shows under your belt and your breadth of work is just amazing. So, thank you for having me, particularly on writing, because writing is an art and I’m just glad that I can look at Monet’s pieces every once in a while.

Marion: Me too. And I’m very glad to be able to read your stuff. So let’s set this up for the listeners and remind them of your beginnings. Yours is perhaps the most ghastly story of abuse I’ve ever read. Your mother inflicted torture on you, keeping you in the basement, starving, abusing you at one point, stabbing you, poisoning you, burning you, statistically isolating you from your siblings on whom she showered attention. Inexplicably, your father was unable to intervene. You were bullied at school, you enter foster care and in your series of books, you have chronicled not only this abuse, but you write passionately and convincingly about what you drew on to stay alive to weather this adversity and to find love. My audience is writers. I teach memoir and I’ve worked with many writers for whom abuse is their story. So, if you would please just reflect back to the beginning and tell how and when you turned your gaze toward writing your tale.

Dave: You know that’s a long, I feel like this film director and I kind of feel my way into this art. I think it really began, as a child I lived in the basement. And my mom, I hate to say it, she was very sadistic. And to quote my foster mother, two words, absolute evil. So, my mom tried to control every situation and make it private about the abuse and bullied me that I was slow and stupid. So I figured out a plan that I’m so slow, I’m so stupid, I’m going to bring home extra homework, which means she couldn’t beat me as much as she wanted to because to keep the facade of the secret. So, I would read books by Stevenson on Treasure Island, and adventure stories and fantasize my way into these tapestry of tales. And while boys my age wanted to be an astronaut or a baseball player, I thought, wouldn’t it be nice to travel the world and become a writer? It was just a fantasy thing.

And many years later, I’m in the Air Force, I’m flying for the Air Force. I’m slowly getting involved in child abuse prevention and foster care, and I thought it would be a nice niche to write a thank you letter to my teachers and present it to them on the 20th anniversary per se. And I interviewed my teachers and other people, and that eventually became A Child Called “It”. And I’m proud to say the first copies, and it was a printed book. It wasn’t published. And your listeners know the difference between printing, self-publishing and actually publication. I didn’t know that the book was printed, I thought it was published, but I’m proud to say that on the 20th anniversary to the exact day, the book that was dedicated to my teachers was given to my teachers. That was in 1993, then in 1995, the book was picked up by Health Communications.

And then two years later, we made the New York Times with that book and we were basically off to the races. So, it was just a slow roll build. And I say this, and I don’t want to make people cringe, but I think I’m a good storyteller. If you look at the maxim per se of A Child Called “It”, it’s written by an eight-year-old boy. It’s very graphic. It’s fast paced. And if you look at the lens of the writing, to me, I can’t find one word that’s over three syllables because boys think differently. So, that’s why it was kind of like an action movie. The setup of chapter one is always the first act as Tom Cruise hanging on the airplane. Now we go to the body of the film. Why is Tom Cruise doing this? What is going on? You know the beginning is the end so my character is already rescued. I have my little formulas and I study film and I try to make that into writing.

And my style is, I kind of write backwards, but I must say this, I’m crawling on glass. It takes me six to eight hours for one paragraph. I have a friend of mine, Richard Paul Evans, Christmas Box, super nice gentleman, you can talk on the phone with him. And he’s writing and after 20 minutes he’s got a chapter. Darn that Richard Paul Evans.

Marion: Darn that.

Dave: Darn that nice man.

Marion: Well, you’ve given us remarkable amount of information there about your pace, about the printed piece and how it became this remarkable bestseller. And along the way, also this idea of giving back. Giving back to your teachers-

Dave: Yeah.

Marion: … And you’ve dedicated your life to helping others, you’ve received personal accommodations from four US presidents. You have been given the Outstanding Young Person of the World Award. You’re a recipient of, which is the National Jefferson Award, which is the considered the Pulitzer Prize for public service. You’ve been a fire captain in two separate districts, and you’ve really got this astonishing record of public service that may be without peer and reflects this life dedicated to what you believe. And that’s mirrored in your writing, you want to help.

Dave: Yeah.

Marion: So, let’s talk about how and why we write from a place of helping others. What does it do, do you think, for people to read about the transcendent change of others?

Dave: It’s weird because I look at my life as this massive adventure that I’ve been given. And part of it is I’ve had certain things happening at certain times when I was so close to the edge, I was rescued, placed in the foster care hours before I thought my mother was going to kill me that weekend.

Marion: Yes.

Dave: And I mean, I have faced such amazing things and yet mission impossible at the last moment, boom, the bomb doesn’t go off or something nice happens. So what I’m trying to convey is when you’re less than zero, when you’re nothing, you live in a basement. I think Mark Twain once said, “The coldest winter I ever spent was in the summer of San Francisco,” and we lived just south of San Francisco. I had no food, I had no clothes, no social skills, no motor skills. And yet, I was granted things that other people can barely dream of.

So for me, there is a quiet… I act affable and I’m very humorous. I can make Robin Williams laugh. God, I couldn’t believe that. But, I have a strong sense of knowing where I came from and a deep sense of appreciation. What kills me, what saddens my heart is when folks who come from a negative situation survive it. And yet they walk around with this cancer inside. I’ve never met anybody who says I’m a victim of cancer. I’m a survivor of cancer, every day is a blessing. Hence Covid, I think, taught us to be humble that anything could happen to anybody at any time and place. And I’ve always had that in my heart. And the fact too, that I survived and I had people that were praying for me or I had foster… If you look at my kindness, it definitely was not from my mother, it was from my social services and foster parents.

I feel like sometimes I used to feel like I’m an alien living amongst the normal people until I discovered, no, I’m normal. No matter what I do, everybody’s normal and this is my life. And I have a strong sense of trying to make people better. I have a program, basically I do three nice things a day. I try to make people laugh three times a day. And I never forget where I came from. My big thing, Friday is very personal. It’s called “Clean Sheet Friday,” every Friday is clean sheet Friday. If you remember in A Child Called “It” after my mom stabbed me, I was thinking, oh my gosh, we’re going to the hospital. I wasn’t thinking ice cream, I wasn’t thinking any, I was thinking clean sheets. It’s the little things in life that can add up and make your life richer and fuller. So, I try to write about what’s happening in my character, what’s happening in life, and then put yourself in that position. That’s why I really believe Return to the River is kind of like a spiritual self-help yet an already haunting love story about family dynamics. And-

Marion: It is.

Dave: … A deep sense of appreciation.

Marion: It is. And you mentioned the “Clean Sheet Friday.” So let’s talk to Return to the River: Reflections of Life Choices During a Pandemic, your new book. And you do this remarkable thing with the sheet story for instance, with the stabbing story. You show us how we draw from what we have on us to move into our future. And that structure you use has to fill us in on your terrifying and confusing time as a child when your mother stabbed you and what you did with that wound that works around sheets. And allows the first time reader to be able to read this book without having read everything else. It’s kind of remarkable, even though I have, a person could pick this book up and get that backstory. And so that flashback, that moving back and forth is harder than it looks. That sheet story that later reveals itself to be what you do in this life as an adult with your bedding and how you provide for yourself these clean sheets is really a tremendous payout for the reader after they’ve got that stabbing story on them. So let’s talk about those flashbacks. You can give your reader whiplash if you’re not careful. So, what would you say is the best way to deploy a flashback like that? That one was really critically deployed.

Dave: I got to tell you again, I study a lot of film like Citizen Kane. What a beautiful, amazing story. And I studied Christopher Nolan who gave us a interstellar inception, the Batman series, Oppenheimer. And I’m always looking for threads or what’s going on behind the scenes. And I have to tell you the truth, Return to the River was not a planned piece. Because usually I think, ‘okay, you’re on this project, what’s your next project per se?’ And it just came out of nowhere. And I did not know I had a book until the end of chapter seven, because originally there was nine chapters in the book. But what I wanted to do was set up a situation that involves everybody, stress, feeling overwhelmed, lonely, I mean just all the things in life. And then add the war of the world, pandemic. And I wanted to discuss, okay, I’m doing this, people are… Because being a fire captain in the middle of the pandemic, I was all over the place and I didn’t know how stressed out I was.

I mean, I got to see beautiful people on their absolute worst days. So I thought, what if I can make a universal message about just one day at a time, one box at a time, two little things for yourself. We are going to get through this. Because what kind of set me off too is it was the first time in the history of our planet that politics ruled the day rather than scientists per se, and all the division and amping people up. And I thought, okay, this might be a good story. But then I had to have, why is my character doing this? Or unexpected situations in the middle of the pandemic? Why am I triggered and going down this one pathway? And I was very careful and very slow to throw out Reese’s pieces, an Easter egg per se. I remember my two editors, God bless them, they were so sweet.

But I can tell I was really on mark when they said, “Oh my God, you mentioned your wife. Kay, is she dead? Are you guys divorced? What’s going on?” I said, “Slow down. That’s a thread. We’ll tie that up”. And I give that to the James Bond genre. And the second act bond will get all these gadgets. You know Bond is going to use, I mean, okay, something, the exploding pen-

Marion: Yep.

Dave: … That suitcase that has the atomic bomb the car, blah, blah, blah. And I wanted to really make the Return to the River a beautiful, quiet, engaging love story because it’s got a lot of “Casablanca” to it. And that to me, Return to the River is like a metaphor. Wherever you’re at should be your heart, your home. There’s an overwhelming pandemic. But then if you’re facing cancer, that’s overwhelming as well. Or a divorce or a change, a medical situation. So I wanted to put all these little pieces in there and really make it about the reader, hence a self-help type book. And I have to say this, and I’m not trying to sound overly weird, but as a writer, as a scribe, I think it’s my best piece because it’s very, very deep and there’s a lot of threads. And I loved how they just carefully came together at the very end. Boom.

Marion: Yes, they do. They come together beautifully at the end. I think you’re the guy I’ve been waiting to ask this question from-

Dave: Uh-oh.

Marion: Yeah, I know.

Dave: Okay.

Marion: Get ready.

Dave: Okay. I say, yes, I do. Okay, let’s go.

Marion: I was teaching a class one day a few months ago, and a question came from a student and it’s this, “how important is vulnerability in writing?”-

Dave: Oh.

Marion: … And I thought-

Dave: Wow.

Marion: … It’s everything.

Dave: Oh, my goodness.

Marion: And then I thought, wait, but I have Dave Pelzer coming up, so I’m going to ask you.

Dave: Oh gosh, here it comes.

Marion: Talk to us about vulnerability. As you said, you put in the story of your marriage in this one.

Dave: Yeah.

Marion: Talk to me about the vulnerability that it takes to open up this way.

Dave: Oh gosh. I don’t know how to answer that. I really don’t because I want to be as honest as possible. But I really think in my genre per se, it’s kind of autobiographical and a kind of a self-help thing. And there’s always little threads. Like A Child Called “It”, a lot of people thought it was about abuse. I says, no, you’re absolutely wrong. This is resilience –

Marion: Yes.

Dave: … It’s universal. So that’s when I teach writing, I say, okay, you want to write a book about whatever. That’s big to you, but it’s not a universal message.

Marion: Right.

Dave: You got to look at the demographics and the actual publishing business itself. But I believe in my case, I’m completely naked. I’m completely vulnerable. And some people can say this or some people get that, but you kind of have to have a certain honesty about what you’re doing or trying to do. Because a lot of people think, “Oh”. It’s like when you go to a Hollywood home and you meet your favorite actor or actress and they’re in sweats and they don’t shave and they’re just regular people. But when the fit hits the shin on the premiere, da da, it’s go time. Okay, I’m so pretty. Look at me. So, I think vulnerability is a necessity. And in my case, because what I like about my adventures is I’ve had a lot of misadventures as well.

I remember in The Lost Boy, there were scenes and people would say, “Oh my gosh”, they would yell at the page. They say, “Dave, don’t open that door”. “Dave, don’t do this”. “Dave don’t, look out behind you, Dave”. It’s hard. Unless you’re John Grisham, it’s hard to engage people constantly. You know what’s going on in the emotional content? If you look at my style, I do a visual cue, I put emotion behind it, and then there’s a sense of action or reaction in a sense. And half the time, the truth is, as much as I study film and dissect books, I have no idea what I’m doing half the time. Again, I’m crawling on glass, and I’ll look at a paragraph and go, you know what two words, I got to edit two words or put in an adjective, or I got to… It’s like I’m a cook and I’m very picky about my spices. I’m a cooker. I’m a cookaholic by the way ladies and gentlemen, thank you.

Marion: Thank you. I’m glad for that admission. So, I think that the way you choose your spices is something that we should dig into a little bit. So you sit down to write, and so much of your story and your books and your public appearances relates to this particularly difficult assignment for men in learning to ask for help. You show us your vulnerability, you talk from the smaller moments of life, and you show us, as you just said universally, you show us these trials and you show us how these small moments are illuminative of large life lessons. In this book you’ve got talk it out, that you are conveying to another human being. It’s advice, but you don’t give us a bulleted list of advice at the end of the book. You don’t shout at us, you don’t grab us by the shoulders and say, ‘and here’s what people need to know’. You don’t preach. So here’s the question. Did you set out and write down a number of life lessons you wanted to share? Or as you’re crawling across that glass, you crawl across while you’re writing, do these come up, these lessons, these truths, do they come up as you’re writing?

Dave: It’s the latter because I’m kind of what I call a weird agent. I used to do, I remember one year I was on the road like 330 days, 16 hours a day, seven different presentations, whether it’s comedy, fundraising, visiting military bases, going to juvenile halls, blah, blah, blah. And yet at the same time, I deliberately was the opposite of the professional motivational speaker extraordinaire. Oh my God. And I would gas this or mess up that. Or sometimes you step on a toe, you don’t want to, but I try to be as real as I can. So, there’s no master plan. I think the only master plan I wanted to do at the end of Return to the River is have my character finally find a home in Covid in the Bay Area, which was impossible. Because of Covid, because the concrete jungle of San Francisco people came up to this area and just everything was going crazy. We had a home that wasn’t listed, that sold for over $100,000 over the asking price.

And, here I am. I didn’t have time to stop my world, which is obtuse because I thought, okay, I’ve got to do this. I’ve got to be a firefighter. I’ve got to save this person. I’m on call. Because you can kind of put yourself in a box and you can’t get out of it even though you put yourself in it, in a sense. So my thing, the only thing I wanted to deliberately do in Return to the River is slowly tie the knots to the threads and have my character just finally finding a home. And it can be a cardboard box per se. And there is a scene that I thought was beautiful. The Monet scene at the end of the book, and the story very quickly is many years ago I had a couple of Monet, Claude Monet’s replicas, and they’re very, very refined. And one of my favorite ones I thought I lost when I was moving from Northern California to the Russian River.

I unpacked it, put it on the wall, and one day I just stopped and stared at it and going, “Oh my gosh”. I’ve seen this painting a thousand times. But I really stopped. I slowed down. There was a metaphor there. I stopped my world, allowed myself to receive the beauty. And for the first time, I saw a couple in the middle of this painting, and I knew in my heart that they just got engaged, or she announced, “Honey we’re having a baby.” As people were strolling by them on a Sunday afternoon, I finally received it. Oh my gosh. And then I started, I got to tell you the truth. I have beautiful vases, I have flowers in my house, and I always put my vases away. When my beautiful bride came to visit, I always had the vases available for her. And I decided to heck with that, I’m going to put my vases out. I’m going to have flowers in the house every day. I’m going to have clean sheets, I’m going to do this, I’m going to do… So it’s kind of like a metaphor within a metaphor that you want to find your peace, your solace within yourself, and basically what’s that line? Explore your world.

Marion: Yes.

Dave: And I got to tell you, every day I am so blessed to have a cup of coffee. We had torrential rains for three and a half, four months. Noah would’ve drowned in our torrential rains in California. And now that the rains have passed, flowers are blooming. I’m a happy guy. And all I try to do is-

Marion: That’s lovely.

Dave: … Share my experiences, good or bad. And again, the vulnerability or affability per se. And as you saw in the book, Return to the River, I always loved what I called “The Superman Effect.” On the outside Clark Kent is geeky and he just doesn’t fit in. He’s not normal, he’s a clown. He’s not one of us. Really? Now on the inside, faster than the speeding bullet, more powerful than the locomotive. And that’s what my character was, kind of what they call a Gaijin in Japan, you live amongst us, but you’re not one of us.

Marion: Yes.

Dave: So, there is vulnerability but there’s also a sense, I believe. Someone said, “Dave, you have quiet celebration”. I’m going, “Yes, that’s my chi per se. That’s my peace.” And I’m just, again, just I’m so proud and honored of the gifts that I’ve been given, including to share a story. Everybody who has read The River has told me, or whatever they tweet or email, how that book made them change their life just a little bit. They get to see things in a different clean lens. It’s like, you go to the optometrist, number one, number two, better, worse, better, worse. They see it through a different lens. And that’s an awesome responsibility-

Marion: Yes, it is.

Dave: … To be a storyteller.

Marion: It’s huge.

Dave: And that’s why I try to be as honest as possible.

Marion: And so when we ask a memoir writer to go back into a trauma, and in this book, in Return to the River: Reflections on Life Choices During a Pandemic, you as I said before, go back and give us a very stark picture of your childhood. And I always ask this question when I have a memoir writer on, what are we asking a memoir writer to do when they go back into trauma? Are we asking you to relive it, reanimate it, or look at it from here coolly? Because a lot of people listening to this are going to be afraid to go back into their trauma. My audience is writers, and they want some guidance from you about what it’s like to go back and write those scenes again about being in a basement hungry with no clothes, no blanket, down on an army cot, being forced into certain positions of standing, being ridiculed by a brother, being abused by your mother. What’s happening as a writer? Are you reliving it, reanimating, or are you looking at it coolly from here so that you can report on it?

Dave: To be honest, and that’s a great question. I think a little bit of everything is involved. With this, this was a very difficult book to write because of the threads. And of course I wanted it to have the important dynamic of my mother and grandmother, which was not in the other series.

Marion: Yes.

Dave: And then I really wanted to have that father’s, son closure / confrontation. And with me when I write, I try to disconnect. I’m always thinking the audience, how are they going to receive that? What’s the vernacular? What’s the setup? What can they draw from this? You’re not just vomiting and spewing things out like a bad adult film.

Marion: Right.

Dave: Okay, we understand the genre. Thank you very much. Again, like a movie, you want to be surprised in terms of endearment. You’re like, ‘oh my gosh, I didn’t see that coming’. And then you see how the threads come back, they all come together. So for me, it’s a little bit of everything, but I must say in this particular book, when it was all said and done, when I’m usually done with the book, I never touch it again. I move on. But with this particular book, when it was done, I read it cover to cover, and then I did something interesting. I read it backwards. I read chapter 10, then chapter nine, and I have to tell you, after reading just two or three paragraphs, I would get very emotional. And that told me that I was on cue per se, on mark, because with this book, I’m trying to invoke emotions. I want people to put down that book and call their sister and mend that fence.

Marion: Yes.

Dave: I want them to get out of the ambulance, quit crying about everything, and do something nice for somebody. I got to tell you, yesterday I made a mistake. I saw a single mom with two kids, overwhelmed at the post office. I saw her 10 minutes later at the grocery store, and I bought her food and I gave her 20 bucks. And I really am upset with myself. What I should have done was taken a huge shopping cart and said, “Get anything you want”. And given her a little bit more money. I want to do something that really makes a difference. You saw in the book, and this was a beautiful scene, Mr. Ziglar, my teacher, the clingy sort of teacher, fifth grade teacher, actually one time patted me on the shoulder, “You’re doing a good job, boy, keep up the good work.”

I was a sponge and I absorbed it. 20 years later, I meet the man and he tells me why I was rescued. I had completely forgotten about it. And I blubber “Sir, one time you said I’m doing a good job”. “Son, I don’t remember that”. My response, “Sir, I do.” And it was just all these little things. So, with this book in particular, I really believe, you can read it, put yourself in the situation. I would’ve done this. I wouldn’t have done that. But at the same time, give people courage, give them the permission to have the courage to step out of themselves and try something different.

Marion: Absolutely. It’s such good advice. And as we start to wrap this up, which I would prefer we didn’t have to do, but hey, I know you’ve got to get on and go promote this book elsewhere, and I love that. I’m so glad-

Dave: After your show, we don’t need to do anything, trust me. Okay.

Marion: As I said, my audience is writers, and many of them have endured trauma only defined strength and skills and coping strategies amid the worst of times. Your publisher, Health Communications Inc. or HCI, distributed by Simon and Schuster is really a wonderful place for you. It specializes in books that reach out and help others. I think many new writers think they’d be happy if just anyone would publish them, but I always suggest otherwise. That they do the deep research to find the publisher who just holds you like a bowl, gets underneath you and understands your work. But you’re the expert so as we wrap this up, can you talk about the importance of locating a home for your work at a place that relates to your topics?

Dave: Well, I have to say, I act half a bowl, and I act kind of goofy, but I’m what they call reconnaissance man. I did a lot of research before I even met HCI, Health Communications, and I did my background research and it was a perfect home. They did the first two books, and I thought with this book, it would be a nice nod, a nice gift for everybody. And at the same time, there’s just so much luck. People think, okay, I have a story, and it may not be a story. And at the same time, that’s just step one at 10,000 steps of getting the book to the reader’s hands. It’s arduous at best. But at the same time, you got to be persistent. Or what I try to teach is, particularly in the genre of a nonfiction, biographical, autobiographical, you really have to make yourself into the entity.

The entity, because I gave away the secret before. I was on the road 300 days a year, seven appearances a day. And then when you have these accolades, the National Jefferson Award, the press is going to follow you per se. So it’s like you’re running for senator. I’ve been doing this for many, many years, and again, there’s so much luck involved. So it is patience. And in this case, again, make a name for yourself, put yourself out there to become the Oprah Winfrey of, the Arnold Schwarzenegger of. And I was very lucky. And as we wrap up, I want to read something and I want your audience to really put down the coffee and just settle for a second-

Marion: Okay.

Dave: … This is so important. And I think you my dear, will love this.

Marion: Good.

Dave: And away we go. “The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.” And that’s a Bay Area writer, Mr. Jack London. My second quote, and I think you will smile on this one. “Live a grand adventure. So, to tell a great story.” North Sonoma Coast, California Fire Captain 4412.

Marion: Yeah.

Dave: Ho ho.

Marion: Ho ho. Lovely. Thank you, Dave. It has been a joy speaking with you, and I wish you just the best with this book and every book to follow. Thank you.

Dave: You are so sweet. And I want to thank you and I want your audience to take a deep breath and go, wow, wow. Because we need more people like you to settle things down and help others so we can all just move it along. So, thank you. God bless you.

Marion: God bless you too. The writer is Dave Pelzer. The new book is Return to the River: Reflections on Life Choices During a Pandemic just out from Health Communications Incorporated. See more on him at davepelzer 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 at 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, the home of The Memoir Project where writers get their needs met through online classes and 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.

 

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