Toronto, Ontario
Canada
This interview appeared in the book Mentor Me: Instruction and Advice for Aspiring Writers, edited by Heidi Stock (2017).
Heidi: Memories Into Story: Life Writing [was] the name of your University of Toronto SCS writing course and your website at www.allysonlatta.ca. What are some of the challenges writers face putting their memories into story?
Allyson: I called the University of Toronto SCS courses (intro and advanced) Memories into Story because, in a nutshell, they’re intended to help writers take memories, which are in their head and might otherwise remain so, and record them to be shared and appreciated. The curriculum applies whether students want to write for themselves, or for family (children, grandchildren, etc.), or hope to publish and reach a wider readership.
Among the biggest challenges is convincing early writers that their stories are worth sharing. “My life hasn’t been that interesting” is a common lament, until students discover how fascinated they are by their classmates’ stories and have had positive response to their own shared writing. Mark Twain said: “There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility. Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy, and a tragedy.”
Writers also worry (too early in the process) about how to reduce a whole life into a story, which in fact isn’t the point of memoir. A memoir isn’t an autobiography — an entire life from birth to old age) — nor is it necessarily chronological. It frames a single memory or a series of related memories, and explores their significance to the writer’s life. But my approach is to encourage students to write whatever they remember, in no particular order, for a period of time – say, six months, a year, or longer – before considering which stories to share. Many published writers have expressed in different ways the idea that we may have to write to find out what we really want to say.
Honesty and vulnerability, too, are difficult to achieve for writers. It often takes many drafts and much mental and emotional digging, not to mention courage, to create a story that resonates with readers, a story that shares the secrets of the writer’s heart. If those secrets are, in some form or another, similar to ours as readers – we human beings are not so very different, after all – we will respond. That’s how the magical connection between writer and reader happens.
Heidi: Just from my own personal perspective, I found the experience of the workshop process in memoir class when compared to poetry class different. Poems have the soul of the poem in them but are well masked with mystery and tend not to be literal. Memoir is writing about your own life and opening up your memories and experiences to an audience, who, weeks before, were strangers.
Allyson: It seems to me that all writing – prose and poetry – is in essence personal. Many novelists I’ve worked with as editor have revealed, either to me or publicly, what settings or characters or even storylines derive from their past. And on the receiving end, most readers are intrigued with which parts of stories are fact and which made up. Some writers complain about this questioning, saying a work should be accepted for what it is, not what went into it — but such curiosity seems natural to me. Are we any different when we view any work of creativity? We’re curious about what lies behind it, about its connection to the artist’s own life.
Recently I read a fascinating essay by someone who’d published both memoir and fiction, and he said he felt more exposed by his fiction. A reader, he said, knows a memoir relates what actually happened – the writer is not responsible, in terms of the story, for what he or others actually did, only for how he relates the events. Whereas, fiction lets the reader into the writer’s mind and imagination – a potentially dark and complex place that might reveal even more about the person than a memoir would.
That said, yes, in a memoir class, students are often timid at first, wondering how much to reveal personally and how their stories will be viewed. I respect their feelings, and in the peer-critiquing component, I encourage them to comment on the “narrator” [in the third person] and how the story is told, rather than to talk about the narrator/writer as “you.”
Heidi: As a literary editor, you routinely read memoirs of well-known authors. What are some common features of a captivating memoir?
Allyson: Almost without exception, captivating memoirs are character-driven. The reader must find the story’s narrator, even if flawed (and the most interesting narrators often are!), intriguing. The reader must want to keep turning pages, take the journey and discover how it changes the narrator. The best memoirs read like good novels, making use of techniques like scene, description, metaphor, and believable dialogue. And they are honest and vulnerable. They don’t have to be about an experience the reader has had, but the emotions explored – fear, pride, sense of loss, joy, shame, and more – must resonate with the reader’s own experience. The ending of a memoir should leave the reader with what I call a “gift” – some emotion or way of thinking about human nature or the world that the reader can keep and hold, mull over some more — something that makes reading to the last page worthwhile.
Heidi: You run annual writing retreats at remote locations. By taking the “class” out of the “classroom,” how do retreats enhance and enrich the writing experience?
Allyson: For my first offshore teaching experience, I was invited to lead workshops at Los Parronales Writers’ Retreat in Santiago, Chile. It was a fabulous couple of weeks of travel (including visiting Pablo Neruda’s home in Isla Negra) and discussion about writing. I was gratified and humbled to see how participants’ confidence and storytelling “sense” improved even in that time. Since then, I’ve organized more than a dozen of my own retreats for small groups in Canada and abroad (including in the U.S., Grenada, Costa Rica). My Fall 2016 retreat was in British Columbia’s scenic Okanagan Valley.
Of course, any writer serious about improving, serious about being published in some form, needs to learn to plant seat in chair and write anywhere. We can’t all live in quaint cottages with views of the sea, nor have most writers who’ve written enduring memoirs or novels or poetry done so (well, okay, Neruda did). That said, there is something wonderful about going “away” to write — shaking up one’s routine, looking around with new eyes at one’s surroundings in a foreign place, carving out a special time to write and to commune with other writers. I find that shake-up really helps emerging writers to hone the art of paying attention – but the challenge is to take that experience and, once home again, build on it.
I try to leave participants with more than a good time and short-term “inspiration.” My workshops are instructional and focus on specific aspects of writing, providing tips on craft and tools I hope writers will find useful well after the retreat. I know they won’t remember and apply everything we discuss, but if they come back with even a few nuggets, their writing as they go forward will benefit. Something as seemingly simple as realizing what it means to read like a writer can make a huge difference. I also encourage them to submit short works to journals and contests, and to join or form their own writing groups. Writing tends to be a solitary act, and by its nature it needs to be, but in my experience, writers progress more quickly if they have trusted others – the key word being “trusted” – read and respond to their writing on a regular basis. Not to mention that having writing deadlines – whether once a week or once a month – never hurts!
Heidi: What recommendations do you have for aspiring writers to encourage daily writing and to combat writer’s block?
Allyson: I don’t believe there’s any such thing as writer’s block. To paraphrase something one wag said, “Is there plumber’s block or surgeon’s block? Thankfully, no.” Writing is a creative endeavour, but if you’re serious about it, you must treat it the same way you would treat a job, or even a hobby at which you wish to excel. If you’re learning tennis, you don’t sit around waiting for the tennis muse to appear. Nor as a writer can you afford to wait for a muse to seize your writing hand. Inspiration grows out of the act itself. I tell students, “Memories beget memories.” (I may have stolen that from someone!) And writing ideas beget more writing ideas.
Sit down and free-write regularly, at least three times a week, even if just for twenty minutes. Set a timer. (Write longer, if you’re on a roll!) Over time, ideas will blossom and skills will improve. I guarantee it. Don’t use writer’s “block” as an excuse. Just take a writer’s “break.” If you’re stumped in the short term over a particular piece of writing, take a walk, clear your mind for an hour, or read something wonderful by a writer you love and whose work will stoke you up again and increase your determination to create something of your own that makes the same connection with readers. Then get back to your writing chair.
Reprinted with permission from Heidi Stock.
Editor’s note: Allyson is no longer teaching Memories into Story through University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies.