Writing over the Ego

What keeps us from getting the story onto the page—the one that will knock their socks off? It’s that internal editor, the voice on your shoulder that has no backbone, no faith in your abilities, no nerve.

 If you’re writing a memoir, beware of this sniggeley little creature often referred to as the ego. It’s worried about what people will think, of hurting Aunt Gladys’s feelings—that the whole damn family is going to be mad. Never mind all that because if you’ve made the decision to write your story, you have to make it an honest story. No one wants to read the version of your life where you take out all the juicy stuff—the substance—and everything just sails along and you’ve done all these interesting things and met all these interesting people, but no one ever does anything wrong. No one has kept you up at night, betrayed you, or cheated on you. What about all those lies you told to get into graduate school? That’s going to make a great backstory, let people know you’ve done some brash business in your day—but maybe you just don’t want anyone to know about the real you. If that’s the case, put the manuscript away and take up painting.

       Trouble is, painting has the same danger zones. If the artist makes calculated brush strokes instead of letting the paint brush fly across the canvas without a thought about the critics, the result is flat. The painting lacks authenticity and does not evoke emotion or pull anyone in because there’s no real emotion behind the brush strokes.  It’s too calculated.

      Tell the whole story and don’t self-critique as you go.  Now I’m not saying go ahead and out Uncle Albert, I’m suggesting that the best writing flows freely from a place where the ego and the critical mind gets out of the way, steps aside and lets the story onto the page. Later on, during the second draft, make sure the reader knows what you know. Look for ways to improve your exposition, correct your grammar and enrich your story.

       The best writing is in the rewriting, but the first draft is a blank page upon which you are channeling your story. Knock that twerp off your shoulder, relax, and let the words flow from the deepest, most honest place in your soul with all the talent you have for stringing words together and engaging your readers. It’s a wild party, and you can clean up the mess later.

 

~Camille

schoolhouse2@comcast.net

Storytelling on a Radio on a Ship

On May 24 I pulled on my yoga pants, a fraying shirt from a long-ago running race, and the pair of boots I used to wear on snowy days in Minnesota but that I now clomp around in when I fear I might be going somewhere where something heavy might get dropped my toes. May 24 was a writing day.

So, this writing day was not going to be about actually putting pen to paper but about supporting the greater community, the greater writing community and the greater arts community.
I traveled to North Portland, to Green Anchors, a boat dock just north of the St. Johns Bridge, where a slate-colored 150-foot tugboat built for World War II was being transformed into a studio for the Steam Radio Syndicate, an audio recording collective. Specifically, the project's leader and his merry band of volunteers, among whom I was about to be counted, was readying the ship for its ambitious inaugural event, a four-hour live radio broadcast of music (a set orchestra and a lineup of bands big and small) and storytelling.
As a writer and editor, I was most interested in the latter--that Portland transplant Brian Benson, whose memoir is soon out from Plume, would be reading fiction alongside Joanne Rideout of the famous Ship Report radio program out of Astoria, Oregon, among others, and that they'd be doing so on a converted ship, one had been scheduled for the scrapyard, was so exciting to me.

Repurposing an old ship is a lot like wordsmithing, metaphorically, at least. I selected right-size pipe from the pile onshore and carried the tubes--some a little dinged but still serviceable, some jazzed up with fittings--to the ship, where they'd be used to repair a railing. I pulled electrical cable, choosing the right kind for the job, daisy-chaining when I came up short, taping the ends to protect against the weather. I might have been finding previously cut sentences that hadn't been useful in their original homes but would beautifully fill in gaps in new stories; I might have been writing transitions and shoring up the weaker parts.

And, of course, I was interested in being a part of an exercise in diverse storytelling. We may create alone, but expression only happens in relationship.

Learn more about the Steam Radio Syndicate


Kristin Thiel is a writer and editor based in Portland, Oregon. She reads from her most recent publication, an essay in the collection Spent: Exposing Our Complicated Relationship to Shopping, at Powell's on November 4, and fills her days helping others with their words, editing for independently publishing authors, publishing houses, and universities and other businesses. She can be reached at kristin@kristinthiel.com
 

An Eaux-mage to Karbohemia

Karbo Bakes Another Cherry Pie

...and makes my Oyster Stew!

How do we write? Why do we write? Where do we get the job done? These are the questions and discussions and buzz on every writing website on the planet. We write alone in our bedrooms in our pajamas,  at coffee houses, buried in laptops, at the kitchen table ignoring plates of stale pizza. We're alone in this, lonely mis-fits with our noses in our belly buttons, answering the call of the voices in our heads. We say thank-you or good-bye; we figure it out and make sense of the senseless, explain our meaning of life. But, if you are as infinitely clever as Karen Karbo, you create a series called Kick-ass Women and you let the women of your dreams do the talking. Alone? Shit no. You're having a party with some of the most entertaining women who ever lived: Georgia O'Keeffe, Coco Channel, Katherine Hepburn, and most recently, Julia Child. There are pies in the oven. I can smell them baking in my own corner of cyberville. Someone's in the kitchen with Karbo and she invited the entire writing community over to hashtag, LiveLikeJulia. Pick a chapter and go for it. Indulge your longing to hang out on social media sites and type in cute things. And do this about Karbo's upcoming and fun-filled episode of life with Julia. And I mean LIFE, because this woman knew how to live by the magic of her convictions. She believed in butter, cream, and everything French and trussed and caramelized. It was genuinely fun to grasp an enlightened concept of life, and I have become wiser for it, by living like Julia Child in chapter nine of the new book, Julia Child Rules. I was able to at least consider planting my flag in front of my true, if unworthy, self and not worry about keeping up with those who are more popular, more successful, and more deserving than I. That would be most people. But Julia didn't worry about such matters, she simply hogged the spotlight, liver spots and all, with glee. Living like her for a week or so helped me forget, for a moment, the worries of the adult world in which I live. She will always be a part of me and has joined the choir in my head. One day in the future Julia will appear to me, flour covering the front of her apron, and remind me to write the truth, my truth.