Three seats are still available for this free workshop! If you're in the Seattle area and looking for some tips on memoir writing or want to meet others with similar writing interests, join us at 2:00 pm at the Fairwood Library this Sunday in Renton. Please register HERE.
Mill Creek Rocks! Leading this workshop last Saturday was wonderful. My thanks to the 27 participants, engaged writers all, and to the dedicated librarian who made it possible. Mill Creek Library and Jennifer Kierans host both a Writers Group and the monthly summer Writing Workshop series. Check out their website if you're in the area!
Next up ... Mark Your Calendars! I'll be taking Crafting the Memoir to the King County Library at Fairwood Library in Renton on Sunday, July 26. Register HERE for this free workshop.
In Novelist as a Vocation, Haruki Murakami writes, “This is purely my opinion, but if you want to express yourself as freely as you can, it’s probably best not to start out by asking, ‘What am I seeking?’ Rather, it’s better to ask ‘Who would I be if I weren’t seeking anything?’ and then try to visualize that aspect of yourself.” (p. 68)
Now in my seventies, I am seeking to maintain a balance between the life of a solitary writer shared with an artist husband and the life of continued and treasured involvement with my young grandchildren and their parents who have recently moved away from the beloved neighborhood we have always shared. Now more than ever before, my life feels cleaved in half.
If I were seeking nothing at all, I’d be a reader and
painter, cyclist and hiker, wife and lover, mother and grandmother. At times it
feels like too much, especially now with two homes 84 miles apart. Yet, would
it be enough? Probably not. At the very least, journaling is and has always
been an integral part of my life. I need to organize my thoughts by putting them
on the page – pen to paper.
In journaling, I am seeking mental and emotional clarity. When,
24 years ago, I took my first writing class, I did not intend to write a book.
Rather, I was seeking deeper understanding and emotional stability after family
tragedy. Now, four memoirs and three novels later, what am I seeking? Or
rather, who would I be if I weren’t seeking anything?
Life is full of changes and challenges, both personal and
societal, and perhaps is even richer because of them. That said, writing
continues to be my tool for examining those changes and challenges and
expressing myself creatively. If I were to stop seeking, stop writing, I fear I
would continue to feel this deep split in my life between the old and the
new, between a focused life and routine to one that feels fragmented with little
time to think and write. So I make time to write.
When I began my current project, I told myself it was about
my daughter and her family’s move. When their second child was born nine months
ago, I told myself I was writing a book for her as I had done earlier for her older
brother. I was dabbling in poetry at the time, so I decided to explore writing
a memoir in verse.
Listening to Ronit Plank’s podcast titled “Let’s Talk Memoir,”
with guest Debra Gwartney, I was reminded of key aspects of memoir. Namely, it
must be a story about the narrator’s journey played out through the main
character in a piece of work, whether it be poem, essay or book length.
As I work on my memoir-in-progress and try to answer these
questions and many more, I have also been planning a new memoir writing
workshop to be offered by the Mill Creek and Fairwood Libraries. As a teacher
for forty years, I’m not ready to give up that role either. In preparation, I
have been reading a wide range of memoirs written in a variety of
organizational structures. I enjoy prepping and teaching writing workshops, and
I enjoy what I learn both during my planning process and from workshop
participants.
I’m happy to invite you to a poetry reading – yes, I’ll be reading poetry. I’m working on a new memoir, this one written in narrative verse. More on that in a future post.
For now, I hope you can join my dear friends and talented poets Miriam Bassuk and Pamela Hobart Carter, and me, for an evening of poetry (& pie). We will be the featured readers for PoetryBridge at C&P Coffee Company (5612 California Ave SW, Seattle) on Wednesday, February 18 from 6:00 to 8:00 pm.
This is a return event! Miriam, Pam and I had the pleasure
of reading together a year ago February. I'm certain this will be another a fun-filled
evening.
I always enjoy seeing the flyers that libraries and bookstores create for my events! Isn't this one terrific? Thanks to the King County Library System and Fairwood Library for supporting these free opportunities to the community.
The leaves on the redbud outside my window slowly turn bright yellow before dropping to mulch the gardens below. Autumn holidays and winter calm lie ahead. Almost six months have passed since my last post.
The day after Christmas 2024, only a week after the publication of my last book, Pandemic Baby: Letters to My Grandson Before He Could Read, my husband and I learned said grandson, Jack, would be a big brother.
Less than three weeks after the birth of our granddaughter in August, the offer we'd made on a condo in the town our family moved to exactly a year earlier was accepted. In three weeks we had the keys.
After Pandemic Baby was released, I'd considered switching from memoir to a back-burner novel. But now, another memoir is calling me. Jack was born during the COVID pandemic shutdown and Trump's first term. Joleen arrived amid her family's adaptation to a new home and the turmoil of Trump's second term. What will their lives and world look like?
So once again I'm exploring memoir, both in prose and poetic forms. Not only by writing, but I am also teaching again. If you're in the Seattle area and have a story to get on the page, please join me for a free memoir writing workshop in the beautiful Fairwood Library just after Halloween. No costumes required!
"Hi, Arleen!
You might not remember
me; it HAS been a while! ... In the meantime, I
have purchased and read all your books: the trilogy, "The 39th
Victim", and just recently, "Pandemic Baby", and I've enjoyed
all of them!!
I'm dropping you this note to tell you how much I've LOVED your 'journaling' about your life, the birth of your grandson, and all the peripheral events around your time with him in the following several years!
You have entertained me with your activities, relationships with your daughter, your folks, husband, and especially, baby Jack. I remember those years with my first grandchild and honor all the feelings you expressed about that, as well as the fun of being around him and his family, and especially, the way you loved him -- allowing him to explore, get dirty, express his excitement with new things, and just let him be an active, curious little boy, loved by his family. I appreciate and enjoy your poetry in these regards also.
The challenges and worrisome times of Covid you shared were appreciated because I had forgotten some of them. I wasn't around a child at that time but your fears (for Jack, his mother--especially during her pregnancy--and the world!), confusion about the vaccinations, and general care for your family, the environment, and for the world touched me, and I wanted to tell you that! And, I wanted to compliment you for sharing your experiences and thoughts in the way you did, in your 'Letters to My Grandson before He Could Read'! I love that title too; it says a lot -- and set the stage for your concentrated care for him at such a vulnerable stage.
Good work, Arleen!! Your books have inspired me to write, and while I DO journal, I've never published anything but YOU inspire me too; I might someday yet."
I also want to take a moment to thank Librarian Zlatina Encheva for sharing the flyer above announcing the reading at Fairwood Library this Sunday. If you're interested in memoir writing and want to hear some passages from Pandemic Baby: Letters to My Grandson Before He Could Read, please join me. Books will be available for purchase at a discount.
Fairwood Library
17009 140th Avenue SE
Renton, WA 98058
3:00pm Sunday, May 4
For more information, click HERE.
