How to Write A Difficult Family Story, with Kristin Jarvis Adams

KRISTIN JARVIS ADAMS knows how to write a difficult family story and make it work for the reader. Listen in and read along as we discuss how she did it with heart, humor and panache.  

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Marion: Today, my guest is writer Kristin Jarvis Adams. Her website refers to her as “author, advocate, champion, mom.” And I heartily agree with those four, but I would also add “fine writer.” Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, Parent Map, Journey and The Autism Blog and has received attention in The Wall Street Journal and on NBC News. Her book, The Chicken Who Saved Us: The Remarkable Story of Andrew and Frightful is a Gold IPI Award winner, a Nancy Pearl Book Award winner, a Washington State Book Award finalist and an Eric Hoffer Grand Prize finalist. It’s a joy to welcome Kristin to QWERTY. Hi, Kristin.

Kristin: Hello, Marion. Thank you for having me.

Marion: Well, this is just a delight on so many levels. Your book gave me hope on so many levels, not the least of which is for other storytellers. And I’m going to set it up a little bit, but then we’re going to get into it. Your son struggles as a small child, not communicating, appearing to be someone with autism. And as he grows, he lives in a world of story. Story he creates, stories that are read to him, stories that calm and form, educate him. As he’s diagnosed with something called Trisomy 8 Mosaicism, and he endures catastrophic illnesses and treatments, but he tells the one creature to whom he seems to communicate vast, a chicken named Frightful, that his body is trying to kill him. And he’s right, it is. And the wonder of the bond, of the story itself, of learning to hope unfolds, it is wonderfully done.

But American publishing is notoriously squeamish when it comes to some topics, some of which include children who are ill. They say it’s too hard to sell. So you published with Behler Publications, whose mission is to publish, “Personal journeys with socially relevant themes, stories about everyday people who end up doing extraordinary things due to a pivotal event that alters their perspective about life.” So I just want to bust right through and be a little subversive here for all the writers listening who have been told they cannot publish stories that have such complex topics. How did you find this publishing home?

Kristin: I was actually at a writer’s conference in Seattle and had an opportunity to pitch a few different publishers and editors and agents. And I knew that she was going to be there, that’s Lynn Price at Behler, and I actually wasn’t able to pitch during the pitch session, but I pretty much ambushed her just before breakfast, at about 6:30 in the morning and said, “Can I tell you a little about my book?” And I knew what types of books and stories that she looked to publish and I walked up to her, and I guess my elevator pitch, but I didn’t even know at the time, that’s what it was called, I just said, “My son’s best friend is a chicken named Frightful.” And she stopped walking and put down her breakfast plate and said, “What are you talking about?” And I went on and I told her this story over breakfast and I think we talked for 45 minutes. And I just felt an instant kinship with her because I could see that she was interested in the uniqueness of this story.

Marion: Oh, “My son’s best friend is a chicken named Frightful.” Yeah, that’ll do as an opening line. Well, you’ve got a lot of lines that I fell into, but I teach memoir and one of the great devices I teach writers to use is to hook a reader with a gap at the beginning, showing us the worst of it and then jumping back to the best or showing us the best of it and jumping back to the worst. And it gets the reader to say, “Oh my goodness, how is that person going to sober up or leave that relationship?”

And you open with a gap that I literally fell into. It’s riveting, terrifying, it shows what you as the mother of this wonderful child, Andrew, cannot do as well as what you’re up against. It reveals the depth of your despair, your son’s physical suffering and then it introduces this remarkable bird. But you leave us hanging at the end of that prologue, breathless. And then you jump out and open chapter one. And we’re going to discuss chapter one in a minute. But I want to discuss that gap. It’s hard to start with the worst, how did you get yourself to do that?

Kristin: That was very hard to do. I struggled when I was writing. It took me about four years, start to finish, to when the book came out. And I really wasn’t sure where it should start and I was too scared to alienate the reader right off the bat. And I think with a prologue, I talk about, Sue walked into a room folded with a vomit. Yes, it was jarring, but that’s exactly how my life was every day when I woke up. I didn’t know what I would be stepping into that day. And it was actually the editor that had come back to me and said, “Kristin, I want the gritty of the gritty when you were just at your wits end and the fear.” And I’m like, “Why would we want to do that upfront?” And she was really good at encouraging me, having conversations with me. And as she was having a conversation with me, she’d say, “Stop. Right there. That’s the gold nugget.” And I would be bursting into tears or trying to tell her a story and I would catch my breath. And she said, “That’s what you need to write.”

Marion: This is wonderful.

Kristin: Yeah, it was a great experience working with an editor who wanted to draw out the little gold nuggets of the story.

Marion: Exactly.

Kristin: So that’s how that prologue came to be.

Marion: I’m so glad that you had that experience. A fine editor can see things in our stories that we might be afraid to open with or put down. And that kind of community allows for this kind of tale. So let’s talk about how you open chapter one. Let me preface that by reading the opening line of chapter one of your book. After this riveting prologue, you leave us hanging and then you write chapter one. “My son was kicked out of preschool because he kicked a clown in the balls.” And just to be clear, you don’t mean the kind of balls one juggles with?

Kristin: Exactly.

Marion: How many other ways did you open chapter one before you got to that remarkable sentence?

Kristin: Many ways. I had initially had chapter one as stepping into the crisis, when my son is a teenager. And again, it was the editor and my agent who read through the manuscript and then stepped back and I got an editorial note and it said, “Start at the beginning, we want to know this little boy and fall in love with him before we can handle going through this harrowing journey with him.” And again, it was just through this conversation and I was just really comfortable with my editor sharing these stories. And then it just came to me was, what was the first inkling that I had that my son was different, that something was off? And it’s that mommy gut feel that you get.

But I was 25 when I had him, my peers were going to graduate school or they were in their careers. And I had this young boy and I was trying to do my career, but I didn’t have peers to compare to. And so I remembered that very vividly when I got the phone call from the preschool and they said, “Come and get him.” And I show up there and it’s, okay, this little boy just marches to his own band. It wasn’t even to his own drummer. I mean, he had instruments that I did not even understand or know. And then you come to find out later on in that chapter and the next chapter, what that first line is referring to, kicking the clown in the balls. So there you have it.

Marion: There you do. And once you put something like that upfront in a book, there’s no backing down. You can’t drop into a lesser voice or some mushy vague point of view, you got to stay up there. And yet you’ve got this remarkable vulnerability. The Chicken Who Saved Us: The Remarkable Story of Andrew and Frightful is brilliant in your vulnerability, I will be the one to say it. Your son tells his secrets, his fears, his reality to a chicken, things he cannot, will not tell you. And you stand mutely by, as you say, “drowning in confusion.” This whole book is a lesson in how to write from vulnerability and where it takes the writing and where it takes the reader. But being vulnerable can feel really bad, particularly when you’re going through it the second time, you lived through this and then you’ve got to write about it again. So what have you learned about writing from a place of vulnerability that maybe you could share with the people who are listening, who are just afraid to drop down into pure vulnerability the way you did?

Kristin: Yes. I think what I did when I started writing, I wasn’t intending necessarily to write a book that I was publishing. And I started out by writing little snippets and thoughts that were, as I was in the hospital with my son, on the back of brochures, on the back of the Starbucks receipt, something out of my pocket that I just shoved in there. And I was trying to get all of these difficult emotions that were tangled up like a knot in my brain, out of me, out of my body, so it would feel like this thing that I could take a step back from and take a breath. And one of the earliest memoir type writers that I’d ever read was Anne Lamott. And I fell in love with her because she’s gritty and she gets down there and she used words that, “Oh, I’m not allowed to say that. Write your shitty first draft.”

And it was just like, “Oh my goodness, I guess I have the freedom to do this.” And then after that, reading how Brené Brown or Elizabeth Gilbert or Glennon Doyle are also very vulnerable and listening to brave women being willing to be vulnerable. So as I was writing and I was doing one draft and a second draft and a third draft and a fourth draft, I really was drilling down into saying, if I’m going to put it out there, I’m going to put it all out there. And it happened in layers because believe me, I had originally started with a blog. My son had been very ill for a very long time, he was living in the hospital and we were living with him in the hospital, in the room on a plastic foldout chair.

And I started writing a blog. And I always say they were vanilla with sweet cream on top. “Well, today was a nice day, Andrew was a little ill so they gave him some medicine to help with the nausea. And here’s a little picture.” And no response, nobody responding. Well, then I got a little more brave and I’m like, “Well, today was not a good day.” And the more I was willing to do the truth telling and talk about the nitty-gritty and say, “Actually, today I was terrified.” This is what it felt like inside my body. This is what it felt like when the doctors came in white coats and said, ‘Hey, have you considered putting your kid on hospice care? We can send him home with a hospice nurse.'”

What does that feel like for a mama to hear that? And when I was finally willing to be honest in my writing, it was like the blog that I was writing that was just family and friends exploded. And I realized that people crave that honesty. And everybody wants to know, I am alone in this. I’m not alone in the hard places in my life.

Marion: You really build your authority beautifully in this book. Along with vulnerability, a writer’s reliability is all important. And that doesn’t mean we have to agree with you, it just means we need to know you’re telling us the truth. And you do it really well as you’re grieving and as you deal with the impersonality of American medicine and that medicine is letting you down at the beginning. But you managed to convince us that you are not going to preach or merely moan, but that you’re going to show us your way through this transcendent experience and you do it one small gesture at a time.

My absolute favorite one is really small, but I loved it. It’s when you simply describe a doctor in the ER and name him “Dr. No Socks.” It’s a great small moment. And he totally earns that diminutive appellation. He totally, completely does. Talk to me about… It’s like you arrived in that moment in many ways, you just said, “I’m just going to call it like it is.” Now, it’s much more effective than just changing his name. It completely lets us know that you’ve got some serious moxie happening here. So just talk to me about that moment when you decided, I’m just going to call him “Dr. No Socks.”

Kristin: Oh, nobody’s brought that up to me before. And yes, I think it’s very easy as a mom or a young woman who is trying her best to learn and knowing that she’s not that experienced yet, she doesn’t have a whole lot of experience under her belt, to allow someone in a position of authority to tell you how you feel or tell you how you should behave.

Marion: Sorry.

Kristin: Yeah. And it was the whole patting me on the leg, “Well, you’re a first time mom. Kids get sick sometimes. Oh, is he in daycare?” “No, he is not in daycare. I work. I have him at home with me.” “Well, sometimes moms just get really wound up. By the time you have your second or third, you’ll realize this is just a cold.” And it was at that moment when I’m looking at him and I’m thinking, Dr. No Socks, that I’m like, “No, I know what I’m talking about. I know what is going on. And you’re not seeing the whole picture.”

And I do think that there was a shift and there were many shifts along the journey where I’m like, “No, actually I am a smart woman and I’m a mama who has a really in tune gut and something is desperately wrong, look deeper.” So I was doing research alongside with the doctors and when there were doctors that could step in and be in partnership with me, I think that’s where we all feel seen and heard. It was like they stepped in and became part of my community and I felt the utmost importance of community. And what the reality of community is is not necessarily what we think it is or what it looks like. Yes.

Marion: Yes. In fact, I would go so far as to say this book is in no way a primer for how to live with a child with complex medical issues. “This story is about learning to live in the reality of your story and let go of the perfect plan you had counted on.” Which by the way, is a line you’ll recognize since it’s yours, near the end of the book. So it’s a story about learning to live in the reality of your story and let go of the perfect plan you had counted on. I mean, I just love that line, but when did you figure that out, while living it or while writing it?

Kristin: I think both. There were definitely layers that I had to let go of and I had to forgive over and over again. I had to forgive myself, I had to forgive my son. There were times where I thought, this child is just hijacking my life. And I had to forgive the doctors for not knowing the answers. I had to forgive the friends that couldn’t walk the walk with me. It was too hard and it was too scary and they backed away. And when I was able to look at them and step into their shoes, I could forgive them. This is too much for them or they don’t have the bandwidth for that. And I became okay with that. Certainly the act of writing the book was incredibly healing for me.

And at one point, my husband had come in and I’m over my keyboard sobbing and I’m wiping my nose and there’s Kleenex and he’s like, “Honey, stop it. Enough. Why are you torturing yourself?” And I turned around and I looked at him and I said, “Because otherwise you would be out $5,000 for all of the therapy that I need to get through this. I am doing this.” I said, “Instead of therapy, I’m writing 350 pages of my heart.” And in the end it proved to be such a healing process for me. And I tried the whole time to not be attached to what is this outcome going to be? What is it going to look like? Am I going to find an agent or an editor? Is anyone ever going to want to read this story? And I think because of that detachment, I was able to be even more honest and more vulnerable. Because I didn’t plan, oh, somebody’s going to see it. I don’t really want to admit to this scary part or this part that looks so weak or feels weak. That’s probably even a better description.

Marion: It’s a great description. And you give us the power of writing and you provide, at the end of the book, a survival guide to readers when big things go wrong. And it’s got 26 tips and you include in it, nurture your marriage, beware of online shopping, which I must say I was like, “Oh, she knows me.” And I got those two immediately. Okay, let’s talk about Frightful, the chicken. It’s possible that it’s because it’s a chicken who saves your son, that it’s so compelling, but equally possible that for other readers, this might seem like the most impossible aspect to accept.

So, I’ll say it for you. You achieve absolute success in portraying this chicken, the role this chicken plays, and how these two creatures, your son, Andrew, and Frightful, how they loved one another, bonded, literally spoke to one another. How Frightful spoke to you and how in fact this remarkable bird came to the rescue and sustained the caregiving of your son. And how did you do that? You did it in the writing, which is wondrous. So I’ve got to ask you about writing into a dangerous place. Animals can get over sentimentalized, they can get anthropomorphized, the whole thing can just go off the rails. What were your struggles with getting this chicken on the page?

Kristin: Yes, that was a process. So when I first sent my manuscript in to this publisher that I had pitched the story to, the editor went through, looked at it, wrote this editorial note and at the end she simply wrote on one line, “More chicken.”

Marion: My favorite editorial note ever.

Kristin: It was the best. And I looked at that and I was talking to some of my writing friends and I’m like, “What am I supposed to do with that?” And I’m thinking, okay, I can add more scenes or this or that. And I had one writer friend who said, “Just make the chicken talk.” Jokingly over a glass of wine. And I looked at her and I thought, can you do that in memoir? And she just put this idea in the back of my mind and I said nothing to the editor and I went out and I took an iPad and I wired it to the outside of the chicken coop and I set it on a FaceTime Play and I recorded the chickens for six hours.

And we grew up with chickens, chickens were in our house all the time because my son was bringing them in, hiding them. And I took that audio and then I sat and I just tried translating, how would you spell buck-buck-buck or whatever it was? And I thought, this is completely crazy. But I took about three or four chapters and I added those little pieces in of the bird and how I was observing this bird follow my son everywhere, in the house, all over, on his lap, on his shoulders, zippered up to her beak inside of his sweatshirt as he played Xbox for hours.

But she would kind of sing and talk to him. So I just transcribed a few words here and there in scenes and I handed it to the editor and then I just turned my computer off, I thought, oh my gosh, she is going to flip out. Not like it at all. And I think within two hours I got a phone call from her phone and she said, “Bingo, you nailed it. I love it.” And I was still scared like, “Oh my gosh, I’ve never seen a memoir where you have a talking animal.” And it worked. And I’ve had people reflect back to me, “How could you have come up with that?” And again, it’s just different people speaking into your writing life and trying something pretty novel.

Marion: Yeah, it’s pretty novel. And I think it’s because of the way your son responds to the chicken and talks to the chicken, the way when we first meet the chicken and he goes to the animal and you look at your husband and you’ve never seen your son respond like this. This is a child who doesn’t like to be touched, this is a child who doesn’t want you to cut his hair, this is a child who just isn’t communicating. And suddenly there are a few complete sentences, there are loving gestures toward this animal. It shows that they’re communicating. There’s not a doubt in my mind that they were communicating. And when I first heard about this book, I said, “What?” So total convert right here and loved it.

And the other thing I want to ask you about is you have a friend in the book who tells you that God will show up in the mess and God does. And yet, faith is not a big part of this story, it’s something you’re packing, it’s something you have on you, but you deploy it in very measured ways. And I just wanted to remark on that because I would not say this is a faith-based memoir at all, but I was fascinated by how you had it in there without it overshadowing the story. And I wondered too about that, about your decision to put it in, it’s clearly a part of your life, but keep it as part of the story. Do you know what I mean?

Kristin: I know exactly what you mean. That was something that I gave a lot of thought to because again, like you said, I did not want it to be a faith-based book. I wanted it to really show, when I add the bits of faith and where I’m struggling with like, “God, are you going to show up in this? And what do I think about you, God? And I’m mad at you.” And my whole world view on faith was shifting and changing and morphing and being challenged.

And I think what I really wanted to convey was, I believe that all of us, whether you come from a specific faith background or not, have times in our life where we question, is there something more? Is there something bigger? Is there something bigger than me? And so what I wanted to convey is that essential part of faith was me learning how to let go and trust in the unknown. And everybody has different language that they use for that or different ways that they will relate to the unknown. And so I wanted to honor that and say, my faith background came from this area, but I know that this is a universal human desire to want to know, what is this great unknown? What does it look like to me and how does it play into my life?

Marion: Well, everything about this book worked. And you come a long way in this tale, as does everybody else in it and have all of your readers. And where we come to is hope. A kind of hope that I must say feels pretty mighty. And I’m not going to give away a thing here because I want every single person listening to this to read this book and buy this book by the box. Whether you be a writer, a parent, a skeptic or a well-worn editor, I think this is the holiday gift for us all. I can’t thank you enough, Kristin, for coming along. I honestly wept, laughed, howled my way through this book and I’m deeply indebted to you. I learned a lot. Thank you so much, Kristin, for coming along today.

Kristin: Thank you, Marion. It was my honor.

Marion: The writer is Kristin Jarvis Adams. See more on her at kristinjarvisadams dot com. The book is The Chicken Who Saved Us: The Remarkable Story of Andrew and Frightful. It’s published by Behler Books and is available online at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and IndieBound. 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 Jaquelin Mignot. 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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