Neil Genzlinger, a staff editor at The Times, wrote a scathing but informative review of four memoirs the other day.

His fourth point to the would-be memoirist is so well written, and so applicable to what we have been discussing in class about writing in first person that I am going to quote most of it here.

If you must write a memoir, consider making yourself the least important character in it. That is basically what Johanna Adorján has done in An Exclusive Love (translated by Anthea Bell), her spare, beautiful exploration of why her grandparents killed themselves.

Adorján, a journalist in Berlin, artfully “tells the story of Vera and Istvan, Hungarian Jews who survived the Holocaust, fled during the 1956 uprising in Budapest to Denmark and in 1991 in Copenhagen took their own lives. They were found in their bed, hand in hand. It is the story of an unusual love. The story of my grandparents.”

Although Adorján is part of the story, she wisely keeps herself on its edges, occasionally noting personality traits or mementos she inherited from her grandparents, but mostly bringing the two of them to life through her recollections and the memories of contemporaries she interviews.

“We all felt the force of her thrift,” she writes of her grandmother. “Her presents were always received apprehensively: what were we not going to be pleased to get this time? I remember T-shirts much too small for me, and you knew from the smell of them that they had been in my grandparents’ house for a long time (in fact they smelled as if they had been stored in an ashtray). A book that looked as if it had been read. A bottle not quite full of bath foam.”

This fascinating couple, who had survived the Holocaust and the Hungarian uprising of 1956, come slowly into focus for the author and the reader simultaneously, or so Adorjan makes it seem. That’s what makes a good memoir — it’s not a regurgitation of ordinariness or ordeal, not a dart thrown desperately at a trendy topic, but a shared discovery.

Maybe that’s a good rule of thumb: If you didn’t feel you were discovering something as you wrote your memoir, don’t publish it. Instead hit the delete key, and then go congratulate yourself for having lived a perfectly good, undistinguished life. There’s no shame in that.

Read entire New York Times article here.

How to Post on this Blog

This is not the be-all-end-all definitive instruction. There are probably ways to easily post from your email too. Please share the way you do it in the comments below this post and then we can read all the methods and choose which one works best for each of us. I am writing this because a couple of people asked for instructions.

Here is the way that works best for me. Log into your Google account. Then go to this blogs home page - which is where you are as you are reading this. Now look at the thin banner along the top of the blog. Over on the far right you will see your Google User Name and right next to it you will see New Post. Click on that and you will be good to go. To preview the post before you publish it just click on the blue Preview at the right end of the post box toolbar.

Larry sent everyone an invite to this blog. By following the link in the email you should be able to log in and accept the invitation. If you need to set up a Google User account I am sure Google will provide you with prompts.

The only problem I could imagine people running into is if the email address Larry used is not linked to their Google account. Then it is just a couple of steps to add that email address as an alternate email address associated with your Google account. (Settings/GoogleAccountSettings/
- you will need to log in again - then click on - "edit your personal info" - Scroll down to "Add an alternate email address to your account")

Reading for Feb. 8

We'll have another guest speaker on Feb. 8: Hugo Kugiya, who writes on the Seattle food scene for Crosscut.com. His January 14 piece on Canlis is a fine example of RBHA, and he'll talk about how he did it when he meets with us. Please read the piece before class and bring a print (or your laptop) with you for reference.

http://crosscut.com/2010/12/16/food/20454/Canlis:-The-hidden%2C-human-scene-behind-the-dining-institution-Seattle-doesn-t-really-know--/

What to read for

Here’s what I’d like you to be particularly aware of as you read your chosen nonfiction book, below. (Making notes or flagging passages with stickies may be helpful, since I’ll ask you to illustrate your points with a few examples from your book):

· The writer’s voice.

· The research or experience behind the book: how did the writer gather and process the information? For example, in A Walk in the Woods (which no one chose), Bill Bryson hiked the Appalachian Trail, structured casual encounters along the trail into funny or dramatic scenes, researched many aspects of the trail from archives (geology, bear behavior, history of murders, etc), and so on.

· Structure of the book

· Added value: What did the writer add to the basic factual information in the book through his/her own intelligence, experience, or interpretation?

· And finally, your critique. Did the book work? Was it an enjoyable read? Did it add value to your life? Why or why not?

That’s it. Enjoy!

Nonfiction Book List

Below for your browsing pleasure is the updated list of nonfiction books I've been promising for the last two weeks.

To select the book you'd like to read and critique in class next quarter, note it in a "comment" attached to this blog entry. Each class member selects a different book, so it's first come/first claim. If you'd like to do a book that's not on this list, you may, but it should be (1) quality nonfiction, and (2) something you haven't yet read. If you go that way, e-mail your choice to me first for approval. I haven't yet vetoed one, but who knows?

UW NONFICTION SPRING 2011

RECOMMENDED NONFICTION BOOKS

­­­­­­­­___________________________Encounters with the Archdruid, John McPhee. Farrar, Straus & Giroux 1971. A classic work of Reporting by Hanging Around, in which the author stages encounters between David Brower of the Sierra Club and three of his enemies.

___________________________The John McPhee Reader, Farrar Straus & Giroux 1982. A collection of McPhee’s early RBHA for The New Yorker.

___________________________Essays of E.B. White, E.B. White, 1977 (various editions). The classic collection of White’s finest work from his decades at The New Yorker.

___________________________Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader, Anne Fadiman. Farrar, Straus & Giroux 1998. Essays on the love of books, reading, and the writing life.

__________________________­­ The Worst Hard Time, Timothy Egan, Houghton Mifflin 2006. The National Book Award winner on the devastating American Dust Bowl— history made vivid, personal, and compelling. Also by Timothy Egan: ___________________________The Good Rain, Knopf 1991. Reportage and essays on the people, natural history and environment of the Pacific Northwest.

___________________________High Tide in Tucson, Barbara Kingsolver. HarperCollins 1995. A diverse collection of eloquent essays on the natural world, parenthood, travel, and the writing life. Also by Barbara Kingsolver:________________________Small Wonder, HarperCollins 2002. More fine Kingsolver essays, mostly on environment and nature.

­­­­­­­­­__________________________Hunting for Hope, Scott Russell Sanders. Beacon Press 1998. A diverse collection of eloquent essays on the natural world, family and spirituality. Also by Scott Russell Sanders:________________________Secrets of the Universe, Beacon Press 1991. More superb Sanders essays.

­­­­­­­­­­­­___________________________In Cold Blood, Truman Capote. (various editions) The 1965 book about the murderers of a Kansas farm family that launched the modern genre of literary journalism.

___________________________My Kind of Place: Travel Stories from a Woman Who’s Been Everywhere, Susan Orlean. Random House 2005. A tour of the world through humanity’s quirky subcultures.

___________________________Passage to Juneau: A Sea and Its Meanings, Jonathan Raban. Pantheon 1999. Raban skillfully weaves the history of Puget Sound and the Inside Passage into a travel memoir of his solo sailing voyage from Seattle to Juneau.

___________________________Population: 485, Michael Perry. HarperCollins 2002. A nurse returns to his fading home town to live and work as a volunteer fireman. Eloquent, intimate, and quietly devastating.

____________________________Pugetopolis: A Mossback Takes on Growth Addicts, Weather Wimps, and the Myth of Seattle Nice, Knute Berger. Sasquatch Books 2009. Collected commentaries by Seattle’s crankiest (and best) columnist, the former Seattle Weekly editor.

___________________________Rowing to Latitude: Journeys Along the Arctic’s Edge, Jill Fredston. North Point Press 2001. A thoughtful memoir of wilderness rowing in Alaska, Greenland and Norway. A National Outdoor Book Award winner. Also by Jill Fredston: _________________________Snowstruck: In the Grip of Avalanches, Harcourt 2005

­­­­­­­­____________________________Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion (various editions). A modern classic, often cited as Didion’s best work. Essays on ‘60s California and other places, originally published 1968.

____________________________The Solace of Open Spaces, Gretel Ehrlich. Penguin 1986. A beautifully written memoir on the unforgiving life of a Wyoming ranch.

____________________________The Third Chimpanzee, Jared Diamond. HarperCollins 1992 Diamond is a true polymath: geographer, anthropologist, world-class birdwatcher and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer. These essays investigate fascinating accidents along the path of human evolution, physiological and social.

____________________________Traveling Mercies, Anne Lamott. Anchor 2000. In a funny and irreverent voice, the author lays out powerful ideas on faith, spirituality and facing life.

____________________________Walden, Henry David Thoreau, 1854 (various editions). An American classic with remarkable relevance to today’s world—a weave of memoir, philosophy, cranky commentary, and natural history.

____________________________A Walk in the Woods, Bill Bryson. Broadway Books 1998. An overweight, middle-aged man who knows nothing about backpacking tackles the 2,200-mile Appalachian Trail.

_____________________________Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell. Little, Brown 2008. A fascinating and provocative book exploring the accidents of fate and culture that determine success.

_____________________________Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, Amy Chua. Penguin Press 2011. A prickly and controversial memoir of a Chinese-American mother’s unyielding approach to raising her children. It rocketed to #5 on The New York Times bestseller list a week after its release.

­­_____________________________The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court, Jeffrey Toobin. Doubleday 2007. An intimate portrait of the justices and their world. A New York Times “Top 10 Books” pick in 2007.

A workshop that might interest you

I've just signed up for a 3-night publishing workshop that you might like to attend, too. A number of times on NPR I've heard Jennifer Worick and Kerry Colburn discuss their experience working in the publishing industry and the travails of being nonfiction writers. They sound not only informative, but also entertaining. They are based in the Seattle area and often do workshops for would-be writers. Their upcoming one sold out so fast they've added a new series and it will take place on Thursday evenings this spring. You can attend just one night for about $40 or sign up for the whole series for about $100. The dates are April 14th, May 12th, and June 9th and it's from 7 to 9 p.m. each time. It's entitled "The Business of Books" and tickets are available through Brown Paper Tickets.

Evernote

This is the first of a few posts about programs that I find especially helpful in terms of writers' tools.

The top of my list is Evernote.

Evernote's tag line is Remember Everything however the beauty of Evernote is that it does the remembering for you and supplies it back to you through its powerful search function. It also does the backing up for you - storing all your information encrypted - if you choose to activate the web-based side of the program by setting up a profile.

Evernote is the perfect tool for us writers who are forever seeing an interesting quote, a piece of information or photo or compiling research for our articles or book. Information can be entered into Evernote from everywhere - a clipping from the web, a photo you take on your phone, a dictated memo, typing information in, or photographing a business card with your webcam. Documents such as pdfs or other files can also be added to notes in the Pro version.

Evernote makes a note for each piece of information you add. You can group notes in Notebooks which can be nested within each other in the Mac version of the program. Notes can also be tagged with key words.

The search-ability is what I love most about Evernote. You do not have to remember what you titled a note, where you put it, or what tags you used. Type a word into the search box and Evernote will find every note with that word, including if it appears in photos. Evernote has a powerful word recognition software embedded in the program.

Evernote works on Windows, Mac OS and other less popular operating systems. It has apps for iPhone, Android, iPad and other phone and tablet devices.

Evernote is entirely free. It is fully functional with no trial period. However, I personally find the bells and whistles of the pro subscription well worth the $5 per month or $45/year fee plus I like supporting a piece of software that is so well designed.

Writing for Earshot Jazz

My first assignment to preview the Portland Jazz Festival for Earshot Jazz will appear in the February issue. I just got another call to profile bassist Chuck Deardorf for the March issue. Wow, I'm getting paid to write! The articles will be online at http://www.earshot.org/Publication/publication.html.

Anyone Interested in Guest Blogging?

Hi Everyone:

Today, I put an official invitation out to my readers to guest post on my blog. I would love it if you would consider posting as well. The parameters - such as they are - can be found here.

Cheers!

Sarah

Class blog update

I have added all of you, I think, to the permission list of authors for posting directly on the blog. If I messed up the process, let me know.

You are welcome to post anything even loosely related to the art of writing and our class, at any time. Just use common sense and courtesy. Controversy and vigorous debate are fine. Disrespect of others isn't.

Here's the list of people who'll be primarily responsible each week:

Jan. 19-25 Viv Ilo

Jan. 26-Feb. 1 Aleta + Renata

Feb. 2-8 Heidi

Feb. 9-15 Sturgis + Samantha

Feb. 16-22 JoAnne

Feb. 23-Mar. 1 Sarah + Catherine

Mar. 2 -8 Anna + Laura

Mar. 9-15 Amanda + Nora

The really important stuff

For easy reference, here's the sign-up list for bevs and snacks. Note that we still need a bev volunteer for March 15, please.

Jan. 25 snack Sarah

bev Renata

Feb. 1 snack Samantha

bev Denise

Feb. 8 snack Anna

bev Amanda

Feb. 22 snacks JoAnne

bevs Heidi

Mar. 1 snack Linda

bev Laura

Mar. 8 snack Steve A.

bev Catherine

Mar. 15 snack Aleta

bev ?

January 25 guest speaker

Our guest speaker for next week's class will be Diane Mapes, who will talk about voice, humor, and establishing a platform as a writer. Her specialties are modern lifestyle and especially the travails of single women; she wrote a book irresistibly titled How to Date in a Post-Dating World. Here's her website: http://www.howtodatebook.com/

Before Jan. 25 please read these two of Diane's pieces, which she'll talk about. It might be helpful to make prints to refer to, or bring your laptop.

Single Shot: Dogs are men

http://www.seattlepi.com/lifestyle/331249_singles13.html

Holy water on dog food? Pet-sitters face odd requests

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38282753/ns/health-pet_health/

July 20, 2010

Author's strategy on "Shitdiggers"

Here's an interview Bill Roorbach gave on how he got the "worm men" to talk with him (or at least put up with him):

http://www.creativenonfiction.org/thejournal/articles/issue09/09roorbach_ai.htm#top

My story in NY Times

For those who are interested, here's my Sunday story in The New York Times. (It's not required reading!)

If you've read any of my other writing—architecture reviews for the P-I or Crosscut.com, or The Year of the Boat, you'll instantly see that the voice here is very different. In keeping with the tone of the Times, it's pretty formal. Okay, stiff. Not my natural or preferred voice, for sure. But freelance writers have to learn to shift among different voices without feeling constrained or oppressed, because different assignments require it. Think of it as dressing differently, depending on whether you're hiking in the Cascades or going to a business meeting.

My first piece for the Times, a year ago, was an essay instead of a news story, and they let me use something closer to my natural voice. But I used the phrase "...for damn sure..." which was just too much for them; the copy editor took it out. Such strong language!

If you read today's piece, note that I use an anecdote from one of the architects to get into the story. If you're writing about an issue or a trend like this, use a person (or people) as an avenue into the story. Readers identify with a person's experience or feelings much more closely than with the broad outline of a trend.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/16/business/16build.html?hp

StoryCorps questions

Samantha came across this list of interview questions and wanted to share it with the class. Many of them are good, provocative questions. But if you're interviewing someone who's reticent or vague, I suggest reshaping questions like "Do you have any regrets?" The answer will be no, which doesn't add much to your picture of the person. Instead, ask it more pointedly: "What's your greatest regret?" Your interviewee will be less likely to duck it.

http://storycorps.org/record-your-story/question-generator/list/

Seattle Times reports startling new development in physics

Actual sentence in the Seattle Times, in a story about Seahawks vendors selling 16-ounce and 20-ounce beers for the same price:

“The team says the smaller 16-ounce cups actually contained 20 ounces of beer.”

Snow problem?

I apologize for not checking on how the snow was accumulating Tuesday night. I was foolishly counting on the accuracy of the temperature forecast, which predicted temperatures would stay above the freezing point. That was wrong. I hope you all made it home safely. I spent the night in a motel in Seattle, as I was pretty sure I wasn't going to make it down/up the slopes to and from the Whidbey ferry.

If we have another snowy evening, we'll watch it more carefully and leave early if it seems prudent.