Monday Must-Reads and Watches (August 25, 2014)

Photo: Linda Nylind for The Guardian

Back-to-school week is kicking my butt--in a good way. Hope all you parents out there can say the same! Here's what I noticed this week on this here Internet Web Thingy:

Not sure what happened in the Michael Brown shooting? Watch these eyewitness accounts spliced together that create a very consistent storyline. 

I haven't read Kate Conner's Enough: 10 Things We Should Tell Teenage Girls, but I am digging this blog post where she shares the best advice offered by her readers.

Also from Kate Conner: why exaggerating the story about ISIS's persecution of religious minorities in Irag is not helpful: The Truth Does Not Need Your Help.

Turns out that doodling during work meetings promotes better processing of information.

Also, Ginny at Random Acts of Momness interviewed my friend and fellow Ovenbird author, Tarn Wilson--all about her new book and how we gain perspective as we write about our families. Tarn's book is ah-mazing, moving, and profound! I highly recommend you head over to Amazon and buy a copy! 

THIS WEEK: The Kindle Version of Dear Boy, is only $0.99!

Hey readers! Amazon is promoting the Kindle version of Dear Boy. You can pick it up for only $0.99 today through August 14! Happy reading!

Perfectionism, Self-Worth, and Why We Write

Is it okay to take a moment to say that perfectionism is killing me? There are a lot of checks a writer must make before a book is finalized, and in my case--because us Ovenbird authors retain more control than usual over the interior--there are a lot of checks. But honestly, everything's looking pretty good right now. It's just that the anxiety of there being some sort of unseen problem with the book is almost overwhelming--it's almost enough to keep me from ever stamping my approval. Sometimes, I have to tell my OCD-self that my editor-self made an editorial decision that is just, simply, out of my hands. Tough luck. Deal with it. This is a collaborative effort, after all, between editor-, artist-, and OCD-me.

That aside, I've had a few readers purchase the Kindle version (thank you!) and I've already heard back from some of you (mostly friends and extended family). You are reminding me that I opened wide a window to my life that doesn't normally get cracked in the day to day. Obvious, yes. But when you spend so much time objectively and robotically proofreading a manuscript, you might forget that it's about something; you might forget that what it's about has to do with things that move people, things that make people feel connected with you in a way you weren't even thinking about when you wrote those things.

Now, in truth, there is a corner in my mind rooting for this book to make some sort of impact, some kind of (splash is entirely. the wrong. word.)...maybe what I mean is that I am hoping it will color the world in some way, if only by hue or tint--some shade (nuanced is fine) that reveals its having been here. I'm rooting for a plop into the pond that will send ripples (minute ripples are fine!) to the farthest reaches of the water. And, let me be perfectly and shamefully honest, if those ripples did happen to shimmy all the way over to Oprah's living room, I'd be ecstatic.

But forget about books and writing for a moment: don't we all feel that we want our very existence to make ripples that reach the far side of the pond? To find out, at the end of the day, that we made a difference, that we made some contribution that shifted the landscape of a soul or altered the dialogue of a community or a world? That Oprah would find us interesting and meaningful enough to sit us down in her living room and ask, ask, comment, ask, offer her two cents, mention Nate Berkus, and, when it's all said and done, give us a car? 

I remember Anne Lamott describing the faulty expectations of insecure writers that, once they were published, self esteem would arrive by phone, fax, and mail. Thank God I didn't publish in my twenties because I'd be an absolute basket case after having found out that a book in print wouldn't do anything to soothe my raging need to BE OKAY. So, if it's not self-esteem we slightly less neurotic versions of ourselves are after--what drives us? What do we want? Conversation? Dialogue? The catharsis that comes by storytelling? Or, to be so dramatic: the healing of the world?

I don't know. I really don't. But, like any author, I hope this book is widely read. I hope it matters to strangers.

On the Occasion of the Boy's Birthday, an Excerpt:

I'm told that Ovenbird Books' new web site should be up and running in the next week or so, and Dear Boy is set to release shortly thereafter in print (so many considerations in the first stages of founding a press and its first releases!). And, ironically, today is the Boy's birthday, in honor of which I'm posting an excerpt, the memoir's opening letter:

Dear Boy,     

I wrote you an email last year, addressed to your tattoo shop. Did you ever get it? It was about our cousin’s wedding—you were invited, but she didn’t know where to send the invitation. You know, your house really was out in the middle of nowhere. How many houses are there in that tiny town, anyway—five? And a church? And some railroad tracks? And just a little bit up from the churchyard, that narrow country road where you landed after flying out of a car.

You never saw this house I live in, and you’d been living in your home for years before I ever visited. We weren’t too busy, but were we scared to act like brother and sister? Today I was thinking that it’s still July, a few weeks before your blood marked the gravel with a great brown stain, but the leaves on the silver maple in my front yard have turned sunny gold speckled with mildew. Meaning the accident already happened. Too late for me to ask you how the distance between us unfurled, why your once-tight grip on my hand loosened into a flat, retracted palm.

Too late now—but death demands an account. The closer the death, the more detailed its demands. And all this accounting I must do with you, Boy, is like sending a hundred years’ worth of birthday cards and getting none in return. But so it will be. I have no other way to speak to you.

#16 , In Which I Interview Myself about the Book and Matters of Truth and Memoir

I love how my mentor and friend Fleda wrote an interview with herself about her latest book, No Need of Sympathy. She's a fab writer, by the way, and many of us could learn a thing or twelve from her. For instance, I learned last week that conducting an interview with oneself is indeed a possibility and, not only that, a worthwhile venture. In praise of Fleda, I imitate:

I ran into my Self in my sunroom where I like to sit on the couch with a laptop (or two), my cell phone, a bottle of water, and whatever books I am currently reading. She wasn't busy, so I struck up the following conversation.

Heather: Hey, so glad to see you here. I've been noticing all this activity on Facebook about a book you have coming out--Dear Boy, An Epistolary Memoir. What's that all about? I thought you were a pastor?

Self: Yeah, I know. Crazy, right? Well, three years ago I actually completed an MFA program in creative writing at the Rainier Writing Workshop. Great place--great people. And my creative thesis has become this book, Dear Boy, that is being released by Ovenbird later this year.

Heather: So, what does "Epistolary" mean? I notice that word trips people up now and then.

Self: I know--it's an uncommon usage of the root word--epistle. Think about the Bible and the Pauline epistles--the letters Paul wrote to various groups of believers: so, epistolary has to do with letters, and at least half of the book is written in letters to different people in my life.

Heather: Wait--are these real letters? Letter that you saved from correspondence with family members?

Self: No--see, I borrowed the techniques of fiction to tell this story. The letters are made-up, but when they combine with parts of the book that are in third-person narration, they tell this story about my relationship with my brother (who died five years ago) against the backdrop of other complex relationships and dysfunction in our family.  It's also, in large part, what I call a "grief book."  Not that I think it's a guide for grieving people or anything like that, but I think there's something universal to the story that people who have suffered loss or are currently grieving will be able to relate to.

Heather: I know you're a very spiritual person and pastoral ministry is a very important part of your life. Is this a book that will help others?

Self: I think people could make a lot of honest assumptions about the kind of book that a "minister" would write--that it is, by design, intended to point people to God or give them insight about living a more God-centered life.  But I don't know if this book will do that for anyone. It wasn't written with that in mind. What it is is an honest picture of a part of my life, written during a season where I was experiencing some of the worst heartache and having to wrestle with questions I'd never had to wrestle with before. I don't pretty up any of that in the book, but I do think that there is a lens that I, as the narrator, offer--one of compassion to those who have hurt me. One of forgiveness.

Heather: So, there are people to forgive in this story?

Self: Sure, but the book doesn't use language like that.  There's the woman who raised me--my mother. One of the tricky things I and other memoirists have to work out is that the telling of our stories intersects with other people's stories by default. I did everything I could to protect her identity as much as possible because it's important to me to honor her in that way. She's just another human being who deserves to face the world on her own terms without anyone else interfering. I don't want the telling of my story to get in the way of that.

Heather: But why write this book and publish if there's a chance that this could hurt someone?

Self: That's a tough question, and I'm not sure I have the right answer. All I know is that I feel like it's the right thing to do. I have this faith that it's the right thing for an artist to tell the truth as best they see it and in as compassionate a way as they can. All of us writers have to grapple with the fact that truth and art can hurt. There are even those parts of the Bible that cause me excruciating anguish to read--like in Judges when an innocent woman is raped all night long; then her body is cut apart and distributed to all twelve tribes of Israel and used as an excuse for civil war. That's the kind of thing that you read in the Bible about God's "chosen" people and think, How did this get here?  How are we supposed to react to it? Why did the Biblical narrators put it there? What do we do with that? I think Dear Boy also begs that question of the reader: when evil happens--when people hurt us--what do we do?