Consider this a story that gives you a bit of insight about me but also an example that has you think back to that earliest moment when you felt that first tug to write.
Oct 25, 2022·edited Oct 25, 2022Liked by Jennifer Lauck
Back in 2009, I left the Marine Corps a disabled veteran and had been introduced to painting as a therapeutic practice to help manage my chronic pain and its underlying elements. "Paint whatever makes you happy," they'd say to me, and so I chose sea turtles; they make me happy.
Painting ushered me through the ups and downs of a botched early-life marriage and divorce at 27 and the slew of life's hardships that followed. The happiness of the sea turtles carried me on their wings, and the therapy evolved from painting to variations of psychological modalities, the reckoning of abuse from childhood, the searching for truth in therapy rooms and self-help books, and facing the moral inventory of my 'self,’ making space for its ego death and surrendering to greater spirituality.
I landed in 2017 with a renewed sense of being and discovered my love for sea turtle wings actually related to literal flying, so I listened and trusted myself; I flew. My path of following my passion led me to a flight instructor who swept me off my feet, and now we're married and have a baby girl; we named her Adena.
Adena burst open within me a prioritization of inner-knowing and self-revolution. She empowered me to erect a firewall of fierce boundaries from my old life and the abusive family relationships, which needed to be lovingly detached and properly distanced. Adena now blesses me with a daily reckoning of past-life coping mechanisms which no longer serve me.
The ego death triggered the painted sea turtles to suddenly fly free and disappear into the deep blue abyss. I felt as if I were floating in it -the abyss- now devoid of the joyful beacon I once relied on for navigation, lost in a sea of nothingness. Some would call this postpartum depression. I call it divine intervention.
My desperation led me to Julia Cameron's "The Artist's Way" last November, which helped uncover my inner secret. I had hidden from myself my want to be a writer after getting in trouble in the first grade for writing a book when I should have been paying attention to the lecture. In January (this year, 2022), I hopped on google and found the Blackbird Studio. I signed up for Bones of Storytelling and continued to listen to the faint voice of my inner child from first grade who continues to whisper, “write.”
Okay! I'm fricken loving this!!! TY. You are a powerhouse of a writer and human. I'm honored you're here and I get to be on your journey to realizing the fullness of yourself as a writer. Sea turtles. So cool.
When I was five, she gave my brother and I a roll of pennies. She told us to call her Ginger. Every time we called her mom, she took a penny. I called her Ginger most of my life.
I was named Rosemarie Jeanne’. That was what my father wanted. That’s the name that went on the birth certificate. Since the day I was born my mother called me Tracy. Everybody calls me Tracy. (Except my husband, he calls me Pinky : )
Ginger was a writer. She wrote poems and short memoir prose. Years into a project of putting her poems and prose together for a book, my mom passed on, book unfinished. Her desire was to be a beacon of hope and light to others that may have suffered a tragic childhood and survived to tell the tale.
I decided to take the project on. I would finish putting Ginger’s book together. As I started sorting through and organizing what she had completed and what she was still working on, the enormity of the task hit me full force. I ran straight into my own messy, tangled life. I couldn’t deal with my mother’s story until I faced mine.
When I was nine Ginger gave me my first diary. I’ve journaled off and on throughout my life ever since. I’ve written many poems and even songs. Now, at fifty, I was going to get serious and write memoir. So, I signed up for a seven week online memoir writing class. I loved it! I took a couple more. Being in the class structure helped to keep me focused and on task. Then my life took some interesting twists and turns and the writing project took a backseat. I have speculated on the inner workings of what that was really all about but will save that for later. For now, it’s been ten years since I started the project, seven since I set it down. Lately I have been feeling the tug, a whisper in my ear, “it’s time”……time to pick it back up……..
Well done. Ginger who charged a penny (I'll never forget this story! How much did you end up keeping of that roll?) I'm so glad you're here. Welcome to Tracy who is Rosemarie Jeanne who is also Pinky. That feels like a post...all our names. Welcome again.
Hello Jennifer. A year or so ago I took your Bones of Storytelling course and enjoyed it very much. Was inspired to think about writing by the fact that I had retired from a pretty intense career in politics and government. I had heard from younger women and peers that I should leave something for the next generation. A grandson was born, and I had begun to think about family history and what to pass along to him (or any other grands that might come along). Hadn't yet committed to actually write, however. Right at the end of the Bones course I was diagnosed with breast cancer and now after chemo, surgery, and radiation treatments I am again hoping to pick up my pen and produce something to leave behind. I have many ideas and stories to tell but need to get up and flying.
Oh my gosh, Jeanne, hand to heart...of course I remember. And welcome. How touching you are back and I'm grateful you are okay now. Welcome in. And thank you for this update. You have much to leave behind, of course and your family will be blessed for it.
When I was 43, my dad died and my mom (married 47 years) moved to Florida near me from Iowa where they had lived and I had grown up. For four of the five years my mom was here, all I did—when I wasn’t managing work, raising three children, helping my 10-year-old manage his OCD--was try to please her, make her happy, give her the life I thought she always wanted.
I remember sitting in my car on a sunny spring afternoon. I had just left my mom and I was screaming and sobbing in frustration, thinking “Why is she so difficult? Why can’t I make her happy? Why do I let her make me so crazy?” and this last thought got my attention. I realized I had some responsibility in the way I was feeling and reacting. I started to relax, breathe, and knew in that moment that I had to explore that. I knew I had to write about it.
That was seven years ago and up until the summer of 2021, I had just written dribs and drabs of a story. Some things that needed to come out, came out, and I housed them in a “Book” folder on my computer. Last summer I was introduced through a friend to Creator Institute and I dove blindly into writing a book that I had longed to write for so long.
Currently, I have the first draft written—all the chapters are there in their pathetic little paragraphs, half-stories and gag-me references begging for me to come back and massage them or put them out of their misery altogether.
My initial writing intention was to get it out. Something inside would not let me go and I had to write it. During the writing, however, more things about my life and upbringing came to light that I realized should be shared and openly discussed. I talk about my mom’s (apparent) depression, my depression, dysfunctional family dynamics, and what losing a child and sibling does to a family. I introduce my discovery of something called childhood emotional neglect and share how that manifested in my life and affected me into adulthood.
So, my new intention is to relate to people who struggle or have struggled in a rocky relationship with their mother, and anyone seeking to understand personal battles with depression, dysfunctional relationships and/or emotional disconnection and neglect.
It’s good. Mother was abusive, then Laura needed to care take before she died. Laura’s a friend and the co-writer of the original The Courage to Heal thirty years ago.
My earliest memory or thought about writing my story is split between two memories. One was a vision of me signing my book, the cover was yellow and purple. The line was out the door. That was back in like 2006 maybe?
The second memory is a reality. It wasn’t that long ago, but back in 2018 I had the opportunity to stay with my ultimate bestie, my Wheeza. Her family was stationed in Germany. The house they rented just so happened to have had an apartment attached. I stayed for six whole weeks writing and finding my voice with my story and quality time traveling the world with my best friend (and even a few weeks with my husband) Ever since then I have been driving myself mad with physical and emotional healing and reparenting myself and trying to figure out who I am as an empty nester and my whole new life path and purpose all while experiencing life through a pandemic. Geesh, no wonder I’m so exhausted all the time! No, that's Fibromyalgia. Yay!
This is where we are today. I've done so much internal work and I am in a healthy balance with my mind-body connection that I do believe it is time for me to really work within the lines of memoir. I know that I have morphed and changed the blurred lines of my life multiple times inside my mind. In reality, I haven’t touched it since I left that version of myself, frozen in time when the pandemic began. I believe now it is time to start anew, with who I am today. This version of myself that has healed in some areas, is softer yet more firm. Not sure why I’m thinking of corn on the cob right now but I am. Short story long, I’m excited for this whole Flight School thing!
The universe is always providing and for that I’m grateful.
I graduated from college in 1985 from the University of Hawaii with a BA degree in Spanish.
I packed up my bikinis and moved to Sacramento where my parents and younger sisters had settled. Then, I floundered.
I worked in restaurants, which I was skilled at, yet always with my Dad's comment floating in my head: "Are you going to be a bilingual cocktail waitress all your life?" I had begun to perceive that my degree prepared me for...not much.
After much fruitless newspaper ad searching, I bought specialized Spanish-English legal dictionaries and began to study to take a test be a court translator. As I learned the Spanish words for so many crimes and misdemeanors as well as the legal processes, the glamor factor of my choice became clear.
I saw Pan Am's ad in a travel magazine for stewardess trainees and fleetingly felt that was the best use of my single skill - waitressing - and my half developed skill, Spanish translation. The (male) interviewer asked if I would be willing to wear makeup and fix my hair to maintain the certain look Pan Am required for its (female) stewardesses. I nodded compliantly. When I got the letter directing me to show up in a few weeks to the flight school training center in Miami, there was the briefest sensation of thinking my future was figured out.
At night, though, doubts multiplied.
Wanting to be a writer was always in me, that secret longing unconnected with daylight action. Also in me was a timid girl who could cried after the criticism of college-level creative writing attendees. That girl also craved a sure path, a figured-out future.
The few weeks after receiving Pan Am's letter might have been best spent learning how to do make up or blow dry my hair – I was proficient at neither. Instead I traveled south to Monterey, where I had heard there was a small language school for liberal arts majors. The 'campus' was a cluster of ramshackle houses still looking quite a bit like the waterfront shacks described in Steinbeck's Cannery Row.
In one was a 'café' - the parlor of the bungalow – with a cluster of tables and chairs, all filled with students. A single counter had a stained coffee machine and a cardboard box filled with plastic-wrapped cookies.
The music in the café as I stepped in was the languages being spoken – French and Spanish, Russian and Arabic, German and Chinese. I stood at the coffee counter and drank in the chatter. This was where I wanted to be.
I never made it to Miami and instead took a long grad school detour. After two years and many $$ I had a fancy paper proving that I had a master's degree but when it came to jobs bilingual cocktail waitress still fit my skills best. Desperation pointed me that first post-grad summer to the Poynter Institute for Media Studies in St. Petersburg. By summer's end I was no less clear on what to be, but clearer on what to do. Be a journalist! I became proficient, earned a living, wrote millions of words in articles and blog posts.
The moment arrived, though, at which that output turned meaningless. I could no longer put them together to make articles that floated out into the netosphere yet never seemed to make a bit of change in the world. I had only begun (!) to see that I had to write words that mattered to me, with the hope that someday I might figure out how to make those words into stories that would matter to someone else.
Lovely! Thank you. A bit more than the 400 words LOL. : ) But look at this new story hitting the page, meaning it's so well worth it. I'm touched you are here.
Hi Jennifer! You know me from a while back. Quite a while! I've been waiting to learn from you again until I had something kind of solid... more solid footing and more time in the trenches. That time has now come. Yey!
I decided to be a writer at age 7. I lived with my grandma, and she wanted to be a writer, and I wanted to be like her. Also, I loved words and language from as early as I can remember. I wrote my first "memoir" in high school, about becoming a Christian. I never finished it, but I worked on it, with permission, during English class while others wrote about the prompt on the board. In my mid-20s, I came out of Christianity, and wrote another "memoir" about that experience, and about being mixed race and living in an "interesting" family. All that not-so-great writing helped prepare me to be a better writer. I got my BA and MA in English Lit, but creative writing kept tugging at me. My dad passed away when I was 24, and I knew I had to write about that. I wrote what I thought was the last page first (part of it is now the first page, and another part the last page). I kept rewriting and rewriting and participated in workshops (including one of yours, of course Jennifer!), then was chosen to be a featured writer at a mixed race festival and got even more serious about it. Over the past few years, I've been published in a number of places, including the New York Times and Real Simple. I also had an essay go viral, about being mixed race during police brutality.
My goal has always been to be a published book author. Exactly a year ago I signed with an agent, and this past week I got an offer for my book, and another publisher is interested. I'm beyond excited.
Jennifer, your workshop has been the biggest help to date with crafting my voice and writing scenes. I'm part of an online Facebook group for women writers but also wanted to connect back to you and to your writing community. This seemed like a great way to do so.
You did. And hello Shannon. Good work getting your work in the world and for this update. Now...exactly what is your hope for your writing? What do you see from this work (beyond publishing and reaching readers...which again, is great). See how I'm already nudging? ;-)
I appreciate the nudge! Writing has a couple uses for me: My head always feels full of disparate, out of order, flashes of memories... fond ones, hurtful ones, banal ones... Writing my own story helps me mentally put these memories into some sort of structure, not just on the page but also in my brain. It almost feels like cleaning (which I don't do enough of, but always enjoy its effects). There's space to breathe, and to meander through events that are neatly laid out before me. The other benefit is getting to another level of understanding my connections with loved ones. I realized some things about my dad that I wouldn't have realized without writing all that I have for the book. Sometimes I think I won't get further clarity, that I've reached a certain, finite level of understanding, and then something will click that makes things even clearer.
Thank you for putting into words what it feels like for me....."feels like cleaning, space to breathe.....understanding my connections with loved ones....." and learning there is no "finite level of understanding". There is always room for "further clarity". Thanks again : )
I am a child sexual abuse survivor—my dad, who also emotionally abused my sister and my mom.
I escaped from that situation after putting myself through college and followed my dream by traveling and backpacking all around the West and Southwest, living in several different states.
My second husband was a therapist and convinced me to get therapy, thank goodness. We are now divorced by are best friends getting along better than ever.
I discovered writing in my 60s, though I have always loved reading, and recently published my first novel, "At What Cost, Silence?" this past October with She Writes Press. I discovered that expression through writing gives me control over what happened and over my feelings, which lacked when I was a child. I write about people outside the norm who must struggle to find their true selves. My historical novel is about the damage done when one feels they cannot speak out.
Karen: Wow. What a story. I’m so sorry for the pain you’ve undoubtedly been through and honored to have you here on Flight School. I hope you find a lot of solace, support and inspiration in the posts. 😊
My sister and I have good lives now. I express myself through writing, and she does so through her amazing art. We have always been close, though we live physically in different states. I have much to be grateful for.
I have found the most difficult part is not writing the novel, but getting it read. The few people who have read it love it. But how do I reach all those others without spending a fortune? (Which I already have.)
Sep 23, 2023·edited Sep 23, 2023Liked by Jennifer Lauck
I was 10 and dreading the moment my father, an award-winning journalist, came home from work to discover that I had almost failed my English Grammar paper. I was usually at the top of my class, but essay writing had kicked my ass and now I had to face my father’s wrath.
Horrified that anyone carrying his DNA could “almost fail” essay writing, my Dad devised a program where my two younger sisters and I had to write 3 essays a week or we couldn’t go out to play all summer vacation.
I raged and protested, but Indian parents don't care about their standing in the polls.
To his credit, he made things super interesting.
We each had a scrapbook. He’d encourage us to cut images out of magazines and create fictitious characters. We wrote autobiographies of inanimate objects. We wrote book reviews of our favourite bedtime stories and reports on family outings.
Each weekend, my father would sit with me and painstakingly critique my writing. He showed me how to write a strong headline and how to use metaphors. He explained how connecting a conclusion to the intro of a piece made it stronger and more satisfying. He showed me the power of a well-placed adjective.
By the end of that summer, I was hooked. I realized that I’d discovered the thing I was born to do. I kept writing. Essays, short stories, terrible poetry and my father both encouraged me and helped me hone my craft skills with careful critiques.
When I was 12, I wrote a short story called “Crash Landing” that was inspired by a dream I’d had where I was in a plane crash and helped rescue some of the other survivors.
My father decided it was time to show me how to pitch. This was before the internet, so we typed out my story and cover letter and sent it off to a youth magazine in Dubai.
A few months later, I received my first acceptance letter and a paycheque for the princely sum of $110 dirhams. It was CRAZY money in rupees. I was rich!! AND I’d broken my Dad’s record of having first published at age 14.
Wait, I could do this thing I loved doing AND make money?! I was completely and totally hooked and have been writing ever since (33+ years now).
And to continue the family tradition, I homeschool my son and he published his first piece at 11, breaking my record and winning a laptop in a writing contest.
Fourteen years ago now, I was sitting in a treatment room with my mom while she received chemo. We were talking about life and what I wanted to do with mine. I was in my early thirties with two degrees but still didn't have a clue what would make me happy. A classic "malcontent" as my mom liked to describe me. "Maybe write a book," I said in passing though I would have never for a single moment imagined myself worthy of such a thing. "I could see you doing that," she had said. So it was my mother, all those years ago, who planted a seed.
Three years ago I was living in NE Portland. I would drive down Sandy boulevard on the daily, usually to shuttle my kids to and from dance class or basketball or some other activity. There was a sign post on the sidewalk that read, "Blackbird: A Studio for Writers." I never bothered to learn more, because I just didn't see myself as worthy to call myself a writer. Until one day, I read the email listed on the sign. Jlauck. What?! Jennifer Lauck is like my favorite writer. She lives in Portland?! She teaches in Portland?! I paid her to read my crappy manuscript. I've been working with her ever since.
I don't know if I'll ever publish my book (but I have a feeling I will.) But if I never do, I am grateful for the journey. And what a journey it has been. Who would have guessed that it was the memoir that would take me so deep into myself, to re-experience my past in a way that has made me whole again. I couldn't be more grateful for this journey and to you Jennifer for your wisdom, your dedication to your students and to this craft. And for your wicked sense of humor and well timed snarkiness. I adore you.
You know how I adore you too. And I wish I could say, "Oh yeah, baby! You're getting published," but you know how I feel about all that. More on this site later...but for now, the rewards we generate for ourselves, for the world, for our soul...well, they are the biggest prize of all. Publishing is actually kind of a let down, I've found. LOL. Just sayin'. (Lovely story too. Very concise and tidy arc line. Very much feeling your Mom).
I didn't understand the world around me at age eight. I still don't--but I try and writing provides that vehicle. Everything around me was deafening and so I sought to make sense of it all through writing.
When I was a kid, an only child, I had no siblings to play with, so I turned to books and began to explore the world, then as a teen to explore speculative galaxies and medieval adventures, then as an adult to explore my mind as well as a better understanding of this world.
I have written five books (under a pen name), and my fantasy trilogy ended up selling over 1,000 copies and getting very nice reviews. That was a decade-and-a-half ago, and sales have diminished so I thought I would take the book down from all of the stores, and serialize it on Substack. Seems like the perfect type of tale to serialize over, oh 18 months or so. So far so good, as the saying goes for the person falling from a great height…
I had just read the final page in a novel called, I believe, _I, Robot_. The robot had died at the hands of an ignorant human mob, and within the space of a few seconds I went from a state of calm absorption to freakish fury. I hurled the book across the living room, knocking over and breaking a lamp. My fit may have been accompanied by a shriek of some kind, as well, but in any case, my father darted in from the kitchen, looking totally confused and a little alarmed. “What’s going on in here?” he asked.
“I hate that book!” I screamed at him.
He bent down and retrieved the old paperback from amongst the shards of the lamp, reading the cover. “Hmn,” he said, “Must be a good book.”
So, good books make people feel overpowering emotions? I wanted to be a writer.
2.
Arthur was the name of the handsome, young teacher, and Arthur was also the name of the main character in the book we were reading in my gifted and talented class. “Gifted and talented” was the official phrase public school administrators used for kids everyone else ridiculed as “nerds.” The book was _The Once and Future King_ by T.H. White, and from it I learned that history was long, much longer than back when Gramma was young and there was no TV. I also learned that all throughout history, people lived as personally and relevantly as I did, but informed by experiences I might never even guess at. And, finally, I learned that magic and unicorns were real. I made my parents take me to The Cloisters in New York City to see the unicorn tapestries, and then I wrote an essay about them.
I wanted to become a writer, but first I became a medievalist.
3.
Forty years later, I read through writing advice on Substack over morning coffee and despair over my flawed novel draft. It has magic, but no unicorns. I feel it says something important about how people live in relation to one another and the world all around us, but it doesn’t yet say it well. I have an exhausting but meaningful job, and I probably watch too much TV. I have 38 journals full of writing in my bedroom closet no one has ever seen. It probably hasn’t felt so much like the end days since the the decade of the papal schism and the Black Death, or the arrival of European explorers in the New World, and there may be no one around to read my journals the way people pored over _The Book of Margery Kemp_ for centuries.
Hi Jenny and major welcome! Great writing here. Love the way you sort them, too.
And love this: “So, good books make people feel overpowering emotions? I wanted to be a writer.”
Yes!
While I do not want to be that person, I highly, HIGHLY suggest Bones of Storytelling. Everything will fall into place (and if you’re a paid subscriber, you get a 20% discount) you’ll find it over at www.blackbirdstudiopdx.com and it’s such a great teaching that will sort out this frustration. I promise.
No matter what though, welcome to FS!! I hope you stay and share and enjoy. Xo j
I was always afraid to write in a journal because I knew that I couldn't write down what was truly in my head and heart. I had a kid and a marriage and a mortgage, and I couldn't look at the fact that I was unhappy. During the pandemic, however, I started writing daily, and eventually the truth started to come out on the page, and it did lead me to blow up my life. Fortunately, my daugther was nearly grown and I had some savings by then. So here I am, a few years later, after getting a divorce, leaving my careeer as a professor, and selling my house and nearly all of its contents. I set out to Paris with a one-way ticket and spent a year on the road figuring out how to remake my life. And now I'm writing about it in earnest, not just for myself but for others.
Back in 2009, I left the Marine Corps a disabled veteran and had been introduced to painting as a therapeutic practice to help manage my chronic pain and its underlying elements. "Paint whatever makes you happy," they'd say to me, and so I chose sea turtles; they make me happy.
Painting ushered me through the ups and downs of a botched early-life marriage and divorce at 27 and the slew of life's hardships that followed. The happiness of the sea turtles carried me on their wings, and the therapy evolved from painting to variations of psychological modalities, the reckoning of abuse from childhood, the searching for truth in therapy rooms and self-help books, and facing the moral inventory of my 'self,’ making space for its ego death and surrendering to greater spirituality.
I landed in 2017 with a renewed sense of being and discovered my love for sea turtle wings actually related to literal flying, so I listened and trusted myself; I flew. My path of following my passion led me to a flight instructor who swept me off my feet, and now we're married and have a baby girl; we named her Adena.
Adena burst open within me a prioritization of inner-knowing and self-revolution. She empowered me to erect a firewall of fierce boundaries from my old life and the abusive family relationships, which needed to be lovingly detached and properly distanced. Adena now blesses me with a daily reckoning of past-life coping mechanisms which no longer serve me.
The ego death triggered the painted sea turtles to suddenly fly free and disappear into the deep blue abyss. I felt as if I were floating in it -the abyss- now devoid of the joyful beacon I once relied on for navigation, lost in a sea of nothingness. Some would call this postpartum depression. I call it divine intervention.
My desperation led me to Julia Cameron's "The Artist's Way" last November, which helped uncover my inner secret. I had hidden from myself my want to be a writer after getting in trouble in the first grade for writing a book when I should have been paying attention to the lecture. In January (this year, 2022), I hopped on google and found the Blackbird Studio. I signed up for Bones of Storytelling and continued to listen to the faint voice of my inner child from first grade who continues to whisper, “write.”
Hello, everyone, I am Julia, and I am a writer.
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Okay! I'm fricken loving this!!! TY. You are a powerhouse of a writer and human. I'm honored you're here and I get to be on your journey to realizing the fullness of yourself as a writer. Sea turtles. So cool.
Welcome to a fun, productive life!🙂
This is beautiful! Welcome fellow writer!
My mother was named Rosemarie Jeanne’ at birth.
When I was five, she gave my brother and I a roll of pennies. She told us to call her Ginger. Every time we called her mom, she took a penny. I called her Ginger most of my life.
I was named Rosemarie Jeanne’. That was what my father wanted. That’s the name that went on the birth certificate. Since the day I was born my mother called me Tracy. Everybody calls me Tracy. (Except my husband, he calls me Pinky : )
Ginger was a writer. She wrote poems and short memoir prose. Years into a project of putting her poems and prose together for a book, my mom passed on, book unfinished. Her desire was to be a beacon of hope and light to others that may have suffered a tragic childhood and survived to tell the tale.
I decided to take the project on. I would finish putting Ginger’s book together. As I started sorting through and organizing what she had completed and what she was still working on, the enormity of the task hit me full force. I ran straight into my own messy, tangled life. I couldn’t deal with my mother’s story until I faced mine.
When I was nine Ginger gave me my first diary. I’ve journaled off and on throughout my life ever since. I’ve written many poems and even songs. Now, at fifty, I was going to get serious and write memoir. So, I signed up for a seven week online memoir writing class. I loved it! I took a couple more. Being in the class structure helped to keep me focused and on task. Then my life took some interesting twists and turns and the writing project took a backseat. I have speculated on the inner workings of what that was really all about but will save that for later. For now, it’s been ten years since I started the project, seven since I set it down. Lately I have been feeling the tug, a whisper in my ear, “it’s time”……time to pick it back up……..
So here I am : )
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Well done. Ginger who charged a penny (I'll never forget this story! How much did you end up keeping of that roll?) I'm so glad you're here. Welcome to Tracy who is Rosemarie Jeanne who is also Pinky. That feels like a post...all our names. Welcome again.
Hello Jennifer. A year or so ago I took your Bones of Storytelling course and enjoyed it very much. Was inspired to think about writing by the fact that I had retired from a pretty intense career in politics and government. I had heard from younger women and peers that I should leave something for the next generation. A grandson was born, and I had begun to think about family history and what to pass along to him (or any other grands that might come along). Hadn't yet committed to actually write, however. Right at the end of the Bones course I was diagnosed with breast cancer and now after chemo, surgery, and radiation treatments I am again hoping to pick up my pen and produce something to leave behind. I have many ideas and stories to tell but need to get up and flying.
Oh my gosh, Jeanne, hand to heart...of course I remember. And welcome. How touching you are back and I'm grateful you are okay now. Welcome in. And thank you for this update. You have much to leave behind, of course and your family will be blessed for it.
When I was 43, my dad died and my mom (married 47 years) moved to Florida near me from Iowa where they had lived and I had grown up. For four of the five years my mom was here, all I did—when I wasn’t managing work, raising three children, helping my 10-year-old manage his OCD--was try to please her, make her happy, give her the life I thought she always wanted.
I remember sitting in my car on a sunny spring afternoon. I had just left my mom and I was screaming and sobbing in frustration, thinking “Why is she so difficult? Why can’t I make her happy? Why do I let her make me so crazy?” and this last thought got my attention. I realized I had some responsibility in the way I was feeling and reacting. I started to relax, breathe, and knew in that moment that I had to explore that. I knew I had to write about it.
That was seven years ago and up until the summer of 2021, I had just written dribs and drabs of a story. Some things that needed to come out, came out, and I housed them in a “Book” folder on my computer. Last summer I was introduced through a friend to Creator Institute and I dove blindly into writing a book that I had longed to write for so long.
Currently, I have the first draft written—all the chapters are there in their pathetic little paragraphs, half-stories and gag-me references begging for me to come back and massage them or put them out of their misery altogether.
My initial writing intention was to get it out. Something inside would not let me go and I had to write it. During the writing, however, more things about my life and upbringing came to light that I realized should be shared and openly discussed. I talk about my mom’s (apparent) depression, my depression, dysfunctional family dynamics, and what losing a child and sibling does to a family. I introduce my discovery of something called childhood emotional neglect and share how that manifested in my life and affected me into adulthood.
So, my new intention is to relate to people who struggle or have struggled in a rocky relationship with their mother, and anyone seeking to understand personal battles with depression, dysfunctional relationships and/or emotional disconnection and neglect.
Wonderful, Tracy. Thank you for this generous share. Welcome in.
I wonder if you have you read The Burning Light of Two Stars by Laura Davis? Terrific mother-daughter memoir with similar themes
Hi hi...no I haven't. You recommend it?
It’s good. Mother was abusive, then Laura needed to care take before she died. Laura’s a friend and the co-writer of the original The Courage to Heal thirty years ago.
Hey Jennifer, I’m Sara. Also, a PNW’er.
My earliest memory or thought about writing my story is split between two memories. One was a vision of me signing my book, the cover was yellow and purple. The line was out the door. That was back in like 2006 maybe?
The second memory is a reality. It wasn’t that long ago, but back in 2018 I had the opportunity to stay with my ultimate bestie, my Wheeza. Her family was stationed in Germany. The house they rented just so happened to have had an apartment attached. I stayed for six whole weeks writing and finding my voice with my story and quality time traveling the world with my best friend (and even a few weeks with my husband) Ever since then I have been driving myself mad with physical and emotional healing and reparenting myself and trying to figure out who I am as an empty nester and my whole new life path and purpose all while experiencing life through a pandemic. Geesh, no wonder I’m so exhausted all the time! No, that's Fibromyalgia. Yay!
This is where we are today. I've done so much internal work and I am in a healthy balance with my mind-body connection that I do believe it is time for me to really work within the lines of memoir. I know that I have morphed and changed the blurred lines of my life multiple times inside my mind. In reality, I haven’t touched it since I left that version of myself, frozen in time when the pandemic began. I believe now it is time to start anew, with who I am today. This version of myself that has healed in some areas, is softer yet more firm. Not sure why I’m thinking of corn on the cob right now but I am. Short story long, I’m excited for this whole Flight School thing!
The universe is always providing and for that I’m grateful.
//s.moore
//330 words
"I have morphed and changed the blurred lines of my life multiple times inside my mind." I love that!
Well done! And you word counted too. The second had that move through time, that story, I was asking for too. So again, well done and welcome!
I graduated from college in 1985 from the University of Hawaii with a BA degree in Spanish.
I packed up my bikinis and moved to Sacramento where my parents and younger sisters had settled. Then, I floundered.
I worked in restaurants, which I was skilled at, yet always with my Dad's comment floating in my head: "Are you going to be a bilingual cocktail waitress all your life?" I had begun to perceive that my degree prepared me for...not much.
After much fruitless newspaper ad searching, I bought specialized Spanish-English legal dictionaries and began to study to take a test be a court translator. As I learned the Spanish words for so many crimes and misdemeanors as well as the legal processes, the glamor factor of my choice became clear.
I saw Pan Am's ad in a travel magazine for stewardess trainees and fleetingly felt that was the best use of my single skill - waitressing - and my half developed skill, Spanish translation. The (male) interviewer asked if I would be willing to wear makeup and fix my hair to maintain the certain look Pan Am required for its (female) stewardesses. I nodded compliantly. When I got the letter directing me to show up in a few weeks to the flight school training center in Miami, there was the briefest sensation of thinking my future was figured out.
At night, though, doubts multiplied.
Wanting to be a writer was always in me, that secret longing unconnected with daylight action. Also in me was a timid girl who could cried after the criticism of college-level creative writing attendees. That girl also craved a sure path, a figured-out future.
The few weeks after receiving Pan Am's letter might have been best spent learning how to do make up or blow dry my hair – I was proficient at neither. Instead I traveled south to Monterey, where I had heard there was a small language school for liberal arts majors. The 'campus' was a cluster of ramshackle houses still looking quite a bit like the waterfront shacks described in Steinbeck's Cannery Row.
In one was a 'café' - the parlor of the bungalow – with a cluster of tables and chairs, all filled with students. A single counter had a stained coffee machine and a cardboard box filled with plastic-wrapped cookies.
The music in the café as I stepped in was the languages being spoken – French and Spanish, Russian and Arabic, German and Chinese. I stood at the coffee counter and drank in the chatter. This was where I wanted to be.
I never made it to Miami and instead took a long grad school detour. After two years and many $$ I had a fancy paper proving that I had a master's degree but when it came to jobs bilingual cocktail waitress still fit my skills best. Desperation pointed me that first post-grad summer to the Poynter Institute for Media Studies in St. Petersburg. By summer's end I was no less clear on what to be, but clearer on what to do. Be a journalist! I became proficient, earned a living, wrote millions of words in articles and blog posts.
The moment arrived, though, at which that output turned meaningless. I could no longer put them together to make articles that floated out into the netosphere yet never seemed to make a bit of change in the world. I had only begun (!) to see that I had to write words that mattered to me, with the hope that someday I might figure out how to make those words into stories that would matter to someone else.
April 💙💙💙
Lovely! Thank you. A bit more than the 400 words LOL. : ) But look at this new story hitting the page, meaning it's so well worth it. I'm touched you are here.
Hi Jennifer! You know me from a while back. Quite a while! I've been waiting to learn from you again until I had something kind of solid... more solid footing and more time in the trenches. That time has now come. Yey!
I decided to be a writer at age 7. I lived with my grandma, and she wanted to be a writer, and I wanted to be like her. Also, I loved words and language from as early as I can remember. I wrote my first "memoir" in high school, about becoming a Christian. I never finished it, but I worked on it, with permission, during English class while others wrote about the prompt on the board. In my mid-20s, I came out of Christianity, and wrote another "memoir" about that experience, and about being mixed race and living in an "interesting" family. All that not-so-great writing helped prepare me to be a better writer. I got my BA and MA in English Lit, but creative writing kept tugging at me. My dad passed away when I was 24, and I knew I had to write about that. I wrote what I thought was the last page first (part of it is now the first page, and another part the last page). I kept rewriting and rewriting and participated in workshops (including one of yours, of course Jennifer!), then was chosen to be a featured writer at a mixed race festival and got even more serious about it. Over the past few years, I've been published in a number of places, including the New York Times and Real Simple. I also had an essay go viral, about being mixed race during police brutality.
My goal has always been to be a published book author. Exactly a year ago I signed with an agent, and this past week I got an offer for my book, and another publisher is interested. I'm beyond excited.
Jennifer, your workshop has been the biggest help to date with crafting my voice and writing scenes. I'm part of an online Facebook group for women writers but also wanted to connect back to you and to your writing community. This seemed like a great way to do so.
Hopefully I answered the prompt correctly!
You did. And hello Shannon. Good work getting your work in the world and for this update. Now...exactly what is your hope for your writing? What do you see from this work (beyond publishing and reaching readers...which again, is great). See how I'm already nudging? ;-)
I appreciate the nudge! Writing has a couple uses for me: My head always feels full of disparate, out of order, flashes of memories... fond ones, hurtful ones, banal ones... Writing my own story helps me mentally put these memories into some sort of structure, not just on the page but also in my brain. It almost feels like cleaning (which I don't do enough of, but always enjoy its effects). There's space to breathe, and to meander through events that are neatly laid out before me. The other benefit is getting to another level of understanding my connections with loved ones. I realized some things about my dad that I wouldn't have realized without writing all that I have for the book. Sometimes I think I won't get further clarity, that I've reached a certain, finite level of understanding, and then something will click that makes things even clearer.
Hi again...took me a moment or two to get back in here...great. All good things. Perfect.
Thank you for putting into words what it feels like for me....."feels like cleaning, space to breathe.....understanding my connections with loved ones....." and learning there is no "finite level of understanding". There is always room for "further clarity". Thanks again : )
Congrats on the book deal! That’s such wonderful news!!
Thanks!
I am a child sexual abuse survivor—my dad, who also emotionally abused my sister and my mom.
I escaped from that situation after putting myself through college and followed my dream by traveling and backpacking all around the West and Southwest, living in several different states.
My second husband was a therapist and convinced me to get therapy, thank goodness. We are now divorced by are best friends getting along better than ever.
I discovered writing in my 60s, though I have always loved reading, and recently published my first novel, "At What Cost, Silence?" this past October with She Writes Press. I discovered that expression through writing gives me control over what happened and over my feelings, which lacked when I was a child. I write about people outside the norm who must struggle to find their true selves. My historical novel is about the damage done when one feels they cannot speak out.
Karen: Wow. What a story. I’m so sorry for the pain you’ve undoubtedly been through and honored to have you here on Flight School. I hope you find a lot of solace, support and inspiration in the posts. 😊
My sister and I have good lives now. I express myself through writing, and she does so through her amazing art. We have always been close, though we live physically in different states. I have much to be grateful for.
I’m so glad. Art is a wonderful outlet. How’s the novel going?
I have found the most difficult part is not writing the novel, but getting it read. The few people who have read it love it. But how do I reach all those others without spending a fortune? (Which I already have.)
That's the $1000 question. If you find an answer...let me know.
I was 10 and dreading the moment my father, an award-winning journalist, came home from work to discover that I had almost failed my English Grammar paper. I was usually at the top of my class, but essay writing had kicked my ass and now I had to face my father’s wrath.
Horrified that anyone carrying his DNA could “almost fail” essay writing, my Dad devised a program where my two younger sisters and I had to write 3 essays a week or we couldn’t go out to play all summer vacation.
I raged and protested, but Indian parents don't care about their standing in the polls.
To his credit, he made things super interesting.
We each had a scrapbook. He’d encourage us to cut images out of magazines and create fictitious characters. We wrote autobiographies of inanimate objects. We wrote book reviews of our favourite bedtime stories and reports on family outings.
Each weekend, my father would sit with me and painstakingly critique my writing. He showed me how to write a strong headline and how to use metaphors. He explained how connecting a conclusion to the intro of a piece made it stronger and more satisfying. He showed me the power of a well-placed adjective.
By the end of that summer, I was hooked. I realized that I’d discovered the thing I was born to do. I kept writing. Essays, short stories, terrible poetry and my father both encouraged me and helped me hone my craft skills with careful critiques.
When I was 12, I wrote a short story called “Crash Landing” that was inspired by a dream I’d had where I was in a plane crash and helped rescue some of the other survivors.
My father decided it was time to show me how to pitch. This was before the internet, so we typed out my story and cover letter and sent it off to a youth magazine in Dubai.
A few months later, I received my first acceptance letter and a paycheque for the princely sum of $110 dirhams. It was CRAZY money in rupees. I was rich!! AND I’d broken my Dad’s record of having first published at age 14.
Wait, I could do this thing I loved doing AND make money?! I was completely and totally hooked and have been writing ever since (33+ years now).
And to continue the family tradition, I homeschool my son and he published his first piece at 11, breaking my record and winning a laptop in a writing contest.
So the family tradition continues…
This is so wonderful. Thank you. Great to have you with us.
Fourteen years ago now, I was sitting in a treatment room with my mom while she received chemo. We were talking about life and what I wanted to do with mine. I was in my early thirties with two degrees but still didn't have a clue what would make me happy. A classic "malcontent" as my mom liked to describe me. "Maybe write a book," I said in passing though I would have never for a single moment imagined myself worthy of such a thing. "I could see you doing that," she had said. So it was my mother, all those years ago, who planted a seed.
Three years ago I was living in NE Portland. I would drive down Sandy boulevard on the daily, usually to shuttle my kids to and from dance class or basketball or some other activity. There was a sign post on the sidewalk that read, "Blackbird: A Studio for Writers." I never bothered to learn more, because I just didn't see myself as worthy to call myself a writer. Until one day, I read the email listed on the sign. Jlauck. What?! Jennifer Lauck is like my favorite writer. She lives in Portland?! She teaches in Portland?! I paid her to read my crappy manuscript. I've been working with her ever since.
I don't know if I'll ever publish my book (but I have a feeling I will.) But if I never do, I am grateful for the journey. And what a journey it has been. Who would have guessed that it was the memoir that would take me so deep into myself, to re-experience my past in a way that has made me whole again. I couldn't be more grateful for this journey and to you Jennifer for your wisdom, your dedication to your students and to this craft. And for your wicked sense of humor and well timed snarkiness. I adore you.
You know how I adore you too. And I wish I could say, "Oh yeah, baby! You're getting published," but you know how I feel about all that. More on this site later...but for now, the rewards we generate for ourselves, for the world, for our soul...well, they are the biggest prize of all. Publishing is actually kind of a let down, I've found. LOL. Just sayin'. (Lovely story too. Very concise and tidy arc line. Very much feeling your Mom).
Yikes! “Heart”was supposed to be “heard”.
I could’ve said I put the error in to help you newbie writers see how important proofreading BEFORE hitting send is.
But, that wouldn’t be the truth.
To be honest, my first memory of actually being a writer was when I was eight, or nine. Maybe ten.
The assignment was to write a poem.
I didn’t like poetry and didn’t know where to start.
So, I read some poetry, picked one and turned it in as my own.
Plagiarism was not even a consideration—I’d never even heart of it, for goodness sakes.
Well, the poem was a big hit. My teacher bragged about it, told other teachers about it, and kept it up until sharing it on parent’s day.
I’m a Grami, and a for real writer. Honest.
The attention that deception brought me made me want more.
Plus, I felt so guilty I somehow wanted to make-up for what I’d done.
Hopefully this assignment will finally set me free.
I didn't understand the world around me at age eight. I still don't--but I try and writing provides that vehicle. Everything around me was deafening and so I sought to make sense of it all through writing.
Nice!
When I was a kid, an only child, I had no siblings to play with, so I turned to books and began to explore the world, then as a teen to explore speculative galaxies and medieval adventures, then as an adult to explore my mind as well as a better understanding of this world.
I have written five books (under a pen name), and my fantasy trilogy ended up selling over 1,000 copies and getting very nice reviews. That was a decade-and-a-half ago, and sales have diminished so I thought I would take the book down from all of the stores, and serialize it on Substack. Seems like the perfect type of tale to serialize over, oh 18 months or so. So far so good, as the saying goes for the person falling from a great height…
1.
I had just read the final page in a novel called, I believe, _I, Robot_. The robot had died at the hands of an ignorant human mob, and within the space of a few seconds I went from a state of calm absorption to freakish fury. I hurled the book across the living room, knocking over and breaking a lamp. My fit may have been accompanied by a shriek of some kind, as well, but in any case, my father darted in from the kitchen, looking totally confused and a little alarmed. “What’s going on in here?” he asked.
“I hate that book!” I screamed at him.
He bent down and retrieved the old paperback from amongst the shards of the lamp, reading the cover. “Hmn,” he said, “Must be a good book.”
So, good books make people feel overpowering emotions? I wanted to be a writer.
2.
Arthur was the name of the handsome, young teacher, and Arthur was also the name of the main character in the book we were reading in my gifted and talented class. “Gifted and talented” was the official phrase public school administrators used for kids everyone else ridiculed as “nerds.” The book was _The Once and Future King_ by T.H. White, and from it I learned that history was long, much longer than back when Gramma was young and there was no TV. I also learned that all throughout history, people lived as personally and relevantly as I did, but informed by experiences I might never even guess at. And, finally, I learned that magic and unicorns were real. I made my parents take me to The Cloisters in New York City to see the unicorn tapestries, and then I wrote an essay about them.
I wanted to become a writer, but first I became a medievalist.
3.
Forty years later, I read through writing advice on Substack over morning coffee and despair over my flawed novel draft. It has magic, but no unicorns. I feel it says something important about how people live in relation to one another and the world all around us, but it doesn’t yet say it well. I have an exhausting but meaningful job, and I probably watch too much TV. I have 38 journals full of writing in my bedroom closet no one has ever seen. It probably hasn’t felt so much like the end days since the the decade of the papal schism and the Black Death, or the arrival of European explorers in the New World, and there may be no one around to read my journals the way people pored over _The Book of Margery Kemp_ for centuries.
But I still want to be a writer.
Hi Jenny and major welcome! Great writing here. Love the way you sort them, too.
And love this: “So, good books make people feel overpowering emotions? I wanted to be a writer.”
Yes!
While I do not want to be that person, I highly, HIGHLY suggest Bones of Storytelling. Everything will fall into place (and if you’re a paid subscriber, you get a 20% discount) you’ll find it over at www.blackbirdstudiopdx.com and it’s such a great teaching that will sort out this frustration. I promise.
No matter what though, welcome to FS!! I hope you stay and share and enjoy. Xo j
I was always afraid to write in a journal because I knew that I couldn't write down what was truly in my head and heart. I had a kid and a marriage and a mortgage, and I couldn't look at the fact that I was unhappy. During the pandemic, however, I started writing daily, and eventually the truth started to come out on the page, and it did lead me to blow up my life. Fortunately, my daugther was nearly grown and I had some savings by then. So here I am, a few years later, after getting a divorce, leaving my careeer as a professor, and selling my house and nearly all of its contents. I set out to Paris with a one-way ticket and spent a year on the road figuring out how to remake my life. And now I'm writing about it in earnest, not just for myself but for others.
Love this: it did lead me to blow up my life...what a story Anne. So so great to have you here!