:: Thursday, March 15, 2001 ::

 

11:32 p.m. I'm listening right now to a lady on the radio who helps people write their memoirs. She used to be a screenwriter and she's written two very popular books on the subject, both of which I've acquired over the years and both of which I've tried to give away because I haven't found them very helpful, not personally.

It must be just me.

Not to give the lady short shrift: she's very successful and she sounds wonderful. She conducts workshops for folks who might want to self-publish, she teaches at UCLA, and her book The New Diary has been in continuous publication for 19 years now.

A cursory look at her website shows that the workshop costs $225 and she takes 8 people at a time. Getting out the calculator: that's $1800. Hmmm. Or, you can go on a retreat with her for 3 days for $390 if you're a member of her Center or $420 if you're not. She has 18 people at a time on the retreat, so that's another $7000 clams.

I've had the calculator out because I've been to the dentist today and had a full set of x-rays and now I have the schedule for the work required. The credit plan will cover some of it, almost. But here's the beauty part: I am a good candidate for some nice laminated veneers in the front, @ a mere $725 per tooth.

Now, I figure. If I gave a memoir workshop, I could get two new happy teeth; furthermore, one little weekend away with 18 people with lives to chronicle could net me all the front teeth plus some really good vittles to practice on.

Lord knows, I'm qualified. I've been a college teacher and I have one book that's gone through eight printings and another book that's been translated into seven or so languages, eight if you count the two old Germany halves, nine if you count England's English as totally different from our version, which I am not loathe to do.

Every word I write is based on my real-life adventures, as you can clearly see here on these pages. Voila: memoir.

The problem is, however, that I don't have a handy kit to hand out or a quick teaching plan to mimeo that is guaranteed to help each and every person create a "memoir that sells." The lady on the radio swears that you must learn dialogue, scene-setting, precipating events -- all the things that make a fictional story work, so that readers will "fall in love with you."

Maybe I'm contrary, but I look for the exact opposite in the memoirs and journals that I find compelling. The last thing I want to read is someone who's trained himself or herself into becoming a storyteller. Instead, I always look for a person who's been able to find that tiny closet deep within the psyche where his or her true voice is hiding and who is prescient enough to bring it some food, gotten its trust, and managed to lure it out.

Nobody can teach you this. You have to want to speak from way down deep and let the world see what you've been going through lo! all these many, lonely years. Here and there, somewhere, in all your scribbles, that authentic voice will appear and disappear. But if you keep all the scraps from all the diaries and reread them, you'll hear it for yourself. It will tear at your heart when you find it, and you will know.

I know it when I read it, and I really like to encourage it in budding new writers, if only for purely selfish reasons. All my life I've taken great solace from books. I turn to them for every possible kind of nurture -- for companionship, for entertainment, and most important, for spiritual climbing.

You just can't get a foothold in a book that was built from a kit. If you write or paint by the numbers, it isn't really going to count in the end. Some things, like grammar, can be taught. Some people, often those with time on their hands and cash in their wallets, can't be taught.

It's too bad, but that's the tooth.