Writing is therapy – let it happen

By Kandace Chapple

In September 2018, I squeezed my eyes shut and hit “submit” on one of the saddest essays I’ve ever written. And when the editor said yes two days later, I felt two things: glee and terror.

I was totally elated. Someone liked my stuff! But.

My family might read this. It was an essay in Motherwell about the new woman wearing my deceased mother’s jacket. I wasn’t sure, suddenly, if I should let the essay see the light of day.

But I knew that I had written the truth. And, just as importantly, I had kept the essay in my POV, framed from my very own eyeballs and heart. I had not projected anyone else’s thoughts, motives or ideas onto the page. Instead, I had focused on MY experience.

At the end of the day, even though not everyone would be happy with my publication credit, I realized that this was still my story to share.

And the experience made me a different writer. I had to cast off the old guilts and worries about others in order to take my writing to the next level, to really dig in and share what turned out to be a pretty universal experience. I got several emails from others who had gone through something similar.

I knew I had done something special: I had told my story. The people who needed to read it, who could identify with it, were my readers. Not necessarily my family. Maybe it’s time to write about something that matters to you. That will bring you healing. Here are some tips on letting yourself go deeper.

MAKE YOURSELF A CHARACTER

One morning I sat down to work on my memoir. But instead of a piece on my mom, as I had planned, I switched gears and wrote in third person. I turned myself into a character and she headed out for a bike ride at dawn (it was still mostly dark), during which a deer darted across the dirt road. And she hit it! With her bike! She was fine. The deer was fine. But she was shaking, she was scared, she was… laughing.

The story was true, I had just lived it a week earlier.

And it ended up in my Mom book because as I wrote it, an epiphany arrived. I realized that I didn’t fear the dark, not like I used to. I feared losing my mother, illness and loss much, much more. My “main character” wasn’t the same anymore. She was stronger. She was bolder. She was braver. (It’s way easier to say things like that about someone else, than yourself!) In the end, the scene was a picture of what grief does to a person.

Write what comes to you. Trust your intuition. Take a real-life episode and see where it goes on the page. It just might be your mind working something out. Let it.

BEST KEPT SECRETS

What are the things you’d tell your friend over coffee? What are the things you’d tell your BEST friend over wine? Two different versions of the same story. One for public consumption. One for private.

When it comes to writing a personal essay, you need to give yourself permission to put that best friend conversation down on paper. You can always cut and delete what seems too personal later.

But I have found that when I put stuff down on paper, it isn’t as scary as I think it is. I can write tough things, but have found that in doing so, it takes the edge off them. I am able to share things I wouldn’t have dreamed of sharing if I hadn’t written them down. It’s wild the way that works. Just put it down, tell it like you would tell that one person you trust the most in the world. Write now, edit later. Nothing you say will be held against you. But, bonus, that first version carries all of your healing.

UNEXPECTED TURNS

I had no idea where that Motherwell essay was heading when I wrote it. At first I was just venting and grieving on paper. Then, I thought about that coat on another women and all the other things my mother had left me (love, memories, family), and suddenly, a wonderful calm came over me. I didn’t NEED that coat! I had so much more.

I was delighted. I had healed, another layer of my grief soothed. All because I had written that essay.

So, take time this week and see if you can sit with yourself and write about something – that thing that hurts or niggles or just sits there on your mind. See what happens when you put it on paper, as yourself or as a character. Epiphanies, laughter, healing. It’s all up for grabs, thanks to the power of writing.

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1-2-3 PERSONAL ESSAYS: WRITE REAL, HONEST, JOYFUL (SOMETIMES SAD!) ESSAYS WITH WEEKLY FEEDBACK by Kandace Chapple starts on Monday, January 9, 2023. Reserve your spot here! Kandace Chapple published and edited Grand Traverse Woman Magazine, a regional women’s publication in Michigan, for eighteen years before closing it to open Michigan Girl, LLC. She has spent 18 years coaching writers in her publication and helping them polish their personal essays. Her own essays have appeared in Writer’s Digest, Chicken Soup for the Soul, Literary Mama, Motherwell and more. She hosts weekly #Friday500 coaching sessions where writers submit 500 words every Friday (or else!). She is also a well-known freelance writer for publications in Michigan, including Traverse Magazine. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Education with a minor in Journalism and a Bachelor’s degree in Business. She loves to mountain bike on Northern Michigan trails, hike with her dog, Cookie, and spend time with her husband and two sons. Visit her at www.kandacechapple.com. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Would you like to participate in Friday "Speak Out!"? Email your short posts (under 500 words) about women and writing to: marcia[at]wow-womenonwriting[dot]com for consideration. We look forward to hearing from you! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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Interview with Julie Lockhart, Q4 2022 Creative Nonfiction Essay Contest Runner Up

Julie Lockhart spent most of her career in academics, publishing extensively in peer-reviewed journals, such as Critical Issues in Environmental Taxation, and Advances in Accounting Education. During the last years of her career, she led a grief support nonprofit, where she discovered the beauty and depth of personal stories, sharing her own experience as well as that of others to help grieving people feel less alone. Her essays have appeared in the Medford Mail Tribune, Ashland Daily Tidings, Women on Writing and the Journal of Wild Culture. Julie’s website is: www.julietales.

interview by Marcia Peterson

WOW: Congratulations on your top ten win in our Q3 2022 Creative Nonfiction essay competition! What inspired you to write your essay, “Lego Girl?”

Julie: Thank you for these questions! Lego Girl came out of a writing class with Chelsey Clammer. She had an assignment choice to write about a special toy from childhood while weaving in some research. I pretty quickly came up with Legos since they enhanced my creativity as a child and occupied me for hours. When I write about the challenges I’ve faced in my life, I also strive to show how I’ve moved through them so the reader may be inspired to grow through their own stuck places. Lego Girl evolved into such an essay.

WOW:  That's great, and we love to hear of your successful experience with  Chelsey's class. How did your essay develop, both in your initial thinking about it and in the revision process?

Julie: Sometimes I know my story line right away, but for this one I had to work it out as I went along. The assignment required taking a different look at how to tell my story. I started out with researching some of the basic facts about Legos as I told the story of building Lego mansions as a kid. The writing then reminded me that my messiness around Legos followed me into adult life, which brought me to the relationship with my first husband where my messiness triggered his anger. I started to see how Legos could become a metaphor for the mold my parents and other relationships tried to put me in. I know I’m not alone in the challenge of breaking molds to become who we are, especially for women. Next, I looked to the research to see what benefits Legos have for Attention Deficit Disorder, which I was happy to find. I hoped to take the reader through my own understanding that ADD was actually a good thing; the way my brain works, once I was able to understand it, has allowed me to have a very successful career. Intuitively, I chose to write the essay in third person. This is the first time I’ve done this, and I really like how it came out. As I edited the piece, I worked to weave appropriate metaphors of Legos into the essay, such as “hard plastic hurts,” and “…they broke the mold…” I also found the writing process to be cathartic – where I came from, and where I am now. I didn’t know how I would construct the essay until I did; the different aspects of the essay and the ending surprised me, which is fun!

WOW: Thank you for sharing your essay writing process. What are you reading right now, and why did you choose to read it?

Julie: I’m often in the middle of several books at the same time, part of my ADD nature. Priest Daddy, by Patricia Lockwood, is a wonderful memoir that I recommend. I am also reading a lot of literary magazines online to get a feel for where my essays might be accepted. I have a lot of unpublished pieces, and a “stack” of rejection letters (part of the process), although I’ve had some recent successes. This comes from studying these magazines and persistence in continuing to submit!

WOW: Are you working on any fun writing projects? What’s next for you?

Julie: It’s all fun, especially since I’m retired and looking back at my life from a place of peace and contentedness. I’ve been focusing on learning and experimenting with the different forms of writing personal essays, such as collage and braiding. I recently revised a personal story by braiding in another story from my childhood. I watched the piece magically transform from a good story to one with so much more depth. And then there’s my memoir. I want to get back to it as winter sets in, but I’ve been having so much fun writing short essays where my ADD brain loves that the finish line is in sight. I’m starting to look at classes on writing a memoir so that I get an outside push to finish it!

WOW: Thanks so much for chatting with us today, Julie. Before you go, can you share a favorite tip or piece of advice related to creative nonfiction writing?

Julie: The best thing I’ve done for myself is to loosen up my writing and experiment with different forms of constructing essays. My professional career started in academics (accounting) where I stuck with all the rigid writing rules I learned in school. Creative nonfiction writing has given me the opportunity to explore and break out of rigid molds. I encourage it for everyone!

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For more information about our quarterly Flash Fiction and Creative Nonfiction Essay contests, visit our contest page here.

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Friday Speak Out!: What I Learned About Personal Essays From Judging A Contest

by Kelly Eden 

When I launched a writing contest at my small publication I was worried I wouldn’t get any entries, but every day another collection of “lives told in under 2000 words” made their way to my inbox. I’ve never read so many personal essays in one week, but what I learned was worth the effort. 

The contest was open to experienced and emerging writers and I was amazed by the variety and skill level in both categories. There were essay topics I was expecting: falling in love, childhood trauma, sickness, and loss. But there were also essays that surprised me, like the one about a bike race, or the story that started in the kitchen eating raw steak. 

Reading hundreds of entries, I started to notice patterns. Fantastic personal essays have aspects in common, as do terrible ones. 

Here are 4 patterns I noticed:

1. Great stories pack a punch from the start

Generally, the first line told me whether a story was going to be good. Great essays began with a bold statement that set up the whole story.

Here are the three winners’ opening lines:

J. Edgar was colored by blue.

The neurologist’s secretary handed me an envelope.

Writers are lunatics whose nonsense has shaped my dreams.

The rest of their stories unpacked that first line. It was the central idea of their whole piece.

2. Clarity is a priority for good writers

The finalists all told their stories in a way that was easy to understand. Even when their sentences were creatively and beautifully written, they stayed readable. The “no” pile, on the other hand, often left me baffled. My note on one story was simply, “Huh?”

It’s fun to write flowery prose, I get it! It’s important in our creativity, though, to remember our readers and edit our work for clarity.

3. There needs to be a worthy story

There were a large number of essays that were “nice” to read but didn’t reach the finalists’ pile. They wrote about how wonderful or awful their parent/teacher/nana was, but with no defining event to show why. They wrote about their career, but as a list of events rather than a story.

There was no story arc: no tension or action, no conflict, no moment when the writer learnt or grew or had insight. Nice personal essays are fine to share with friends and family, but great ones need a story.

4. Reveal the Goldilocks amount

There is a difficult balance in personal essays between being vulnerable and oversharing. The best stories were open about thoughts and feelings, honest, and sometimes painfully raw and confronting. Then there were stories that slipped straight into the “unpublishable” pile.

If you’re writing a story to be published, a blow by blow account of your traumatic experience is often too much. Personal essays lend themselves to heavy subjects, such as rape, abuse, death, suicidal thoughts. Words are powerful--using them sparingly and thoughtfully is more impactful than oversharing every detail. As the saying goes, less is more.

* * *

Kelly Eden lives next to a beautiful rainforest in New Zealand and has been a professional writer for over 12 years. She coaches new creative nonfiction writers. Grab your free pitching template.

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Would you like to participate in Friday "Speak Out!"? Email your short posts (under 500 words) about women and writing to: marcia[at]wow-womenonwriting[dot]com for consideration. We look forward to hearing from you!
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