The Secrets to Great Personal Essays with Nancy Aronie

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Voice Rising with Kara Johnstad. Enjoy weekly conversations
with leading luminaries, pioneering visionaries, singers, poets, musicians, and sound
healers as we explore the profound role our voice plays
on the path to self realization and global enlightenment. The
internationally acclaimed singer, composer, author, healer, recording artist, voice expert,

(00:25):
creator of Voice Your Essence, and founder of the School
of Voice, Kara Johnstad uses her extraordinary spiritual gifts to
empower others. Everything in this world vibrates, everything has a frequency.
A pioneer in the field of voice work and transformational songwriting,
her breakthrough methods are helping thousands of people worldwide fine

(00:48):
tune their body, mind, spirit system and unlock the energetic
frequencies of limitless creativity, health and abundance. Share your voice,
ask your questions, join in the conversation, receive life changing
positive transformation, and rise together to create a sound world.
And here's your hust Kara John's dad.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
Hi everybody today, it's a pleasure to welcome a true
master of the written word to Voice Rising, Nancy Slalom A'roni.
Nancy is not only a celebrated writer and a teacher,
but a fearless champion of authenticity on the page. As
the founder of the legendary chill Mark Writing Workshop, she

(01:35):
has spent decades helping writers shed their inhibitions and tell
their stories with heart, humor and unflinching honesty. And today
we are diving into her latest book, Seven Secrets to
the Perfect Personal Essay, crafting the story only you can write,

(01:55):
and exploring the wild, wonderful world of writing from the heart.
Nancy See Welcome to Voice Rising.

Speaker 3 (02:02):
Thank you, sweetheart. I am honored to be part of
your It's.

Speaker 2 (02:07):
So good to have you back. And congratulations on yet
another book. It's a it's been a pleasure to have
it in my hands the last week. So how do
you feel.

Speaker 3 (02:20):
I'm very, very harry because over the years I have
wanted to share the brilliance of all of these writers
that come to the workshop. You know, I'm a good writer.
There are brilliant writers that come to the workshop and
I'm like, why aren't you famous? Why aren't you published?
And lots of them have tried and they don't get there.
It's not part of the journey, whatever the reasons. But

(02:42):
in the book finally got to put forty essays of
writers that have come to the workshop. I could have
chosen four billion, four thousand out, but they're just purchased.
They're all the different voices, and they're just I'm really
I'm compelling over here? Which needs now? Is there a
German word for telling.

Speaker 2 (03:05):
Yelling, bursting bins of vansate? Is platza? Plotza is like
I'm exploding? Is platza for Freud for gluck?

Speaker 3 (03:18):
Yeah, plat with joy over there.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
You said, Nancy, that writing a personal essay is like
playing strip poker without enough layers. And as a Minnesotan,
you know, I do know about putting on tons and
tons of tons of layers when you feel a little
bit frozen out there. So why do you think writing
and losing our layers is so terrifying and yet so thrilling.

Speaker 3 (03:49):
It's terrifying, I believe that someone's gonna still love you
if they really really And it's ratifying because when you
really come right down to it and you're willing to say,
this is Hawaii, this is what happened to me. Everyone
who's reading you, yeah, me too, Not that they have

(04:12):
the same experience, not that they have the same details,
but they have the same broken heart, and it's really
comforting to know you're not alone.

Speaker 4 (04:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (04:22):
Yeah, I've made that experience myself, and I think that's
why writing is so powerful in a group of beautiful souls.
Put it like that, right, because when we will.

Speaker 3 (04:36):
There's some called narrative medicine now, and I think it
started about ten years ago. A medical doctor Plumpy University
put together data that proves when you tell your story
and it's received, it's read or listened to by someone else,

(04:56):
you both experience healing literally faster. So people who had
heart attacks, they write their story and someone hears it.
So I did a workshop with a lot of professionals
it's called narrative medicines, and there was a guy one
of the presenters. I was a presenter in the writing
and this guy had us all in a circle. There
were about thirty of us and we all had a

(05:17):
partner and you had two minutes to tell any story
to your partner. So usually you're going to tell the
one that broke your heart. So I told the story
of my son Dan, and then he rings a little
bell when you're done, and then your partner tells her
story or his story. And my partner said, you know,
I grew up with a lesbian mom and I was

(05:38):
so I had no idea what she was. I was
a little kid, and when my friends would come over
and they would see that there was only one bed
and they would take me, and I had so much
same around it. And then he rings the bell and
then you go around the circle and you tell the
partner's story as if it were your own. You don't
say this, my partner told me, know you say, my mom,

(06:01):
so I told her a story. You're telling house the
story and you start to cry. You are so pathetic
that you feel exactly how she felt. And he does
this with our kids and English kids. He does this
with some Protestants, he does with Palestinians, and you end

(06:22):
up thinking, you know, there is no other there's just
there's just us. We're the same, and that's that's what's
missing now.

Speaker 2 (06:31):
It is missing. I think we have such a longing
to belong right, and it's the divisiveness out there is
just unbelievable. And the empathy is so important. And while
you were saying the word empathy, I just saw the
word path. It's like it that's got to be our
path back to Uh, I guess, back to our hearts,

(06:56):
back to the community is empathy and compassion.

Speaker 3 (07:01):
Wow, and you saw the word task car. You're unbelievable.

Speaker 2 (07:06):
Yeah, I I Well, I think that's my weird uh
thing between as a singer, I hear sounds, and then
as a songwriter, I can see words and then I
hear the sound. So suddenly when you talk, I'm I'm
literally seeing the words and hearing the sound. And yeah, empathy,

(07:26):
it's it's a path back to belonging I've never heard before.

Speaker 3 (07:31):
And you're completely right now. I think of it as
at home.

Speaker 2 (07:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (07:37):
Whatever home is, whether it's to God, which you know,
I'm married to a scientist. He's rolling his eyes right now.
Pass home to your your true self. Yeah, that's like
the best to your your soul, whatever, whatever, whatever, close
your boat. But home is where you're the most stick
and you're the most comfortable, and you're the most you.

Speaker 2 (08:01):
So talk about the so called perfect personal essay, which
your book is definitely pulling on the authenticity of each person.
And so the question I guess here is why do
we think there's a perfect personal essay? And well, is
that just another way that writers tend to torture themselves,

(08:23):
or we tend to torture ourselves with the idea of
that we need to be perfect, which we never can be.

Speaker 3 (08:30):
Right, there's really no perfect personal essay. But it's alliteration.
I'm all about sound, just like you're all about sound.

Speaker 5 (08:37):
And the perfection really is about using your vulnerability, humor
and your own real voice, not trying to be a
writer in the intelligent but.

Speaker 3 (08:50):
Being you so perfect. You're not perfect the world.

Speaker 2 (08:56):
Yeah, Whenever, whenever I'm coaching class and singing in voice
and they go into this whole perfection thing, I just
kind of have them through out the window and look
at a beautiful tree and then they'll see that the
branches are, you know, and some places broken, and the
bark is all sharp and you know, rough in some places,

(09:19):
and then well in the in the winter there is
basically very naked and raw. And so that's gorgeous, right,
And it's just we we are. That's that's it, Like,
that's how it is. We're blossoming and we're wilting and
dying at the same time.

Speaker 3 (09:38):
And that, you know, our definition of perfection has to
change because you know I was thinking today. Actually, my
son's birthday's October eight, And when he was a kid,
for at least four years, I used to go from
pumpkin patch to pumpkin patch pumpkin patch, trying to find
the perfect orange orbs with no marks, with no bunk,

(10:02):
with a perfect hack, and I get about, you know,
we're twenty kids coming. I'd get about twenty of them,
and then I put them all over the back of
the deck on the deck, and I get yarn and
glitter and all kinds of stuff that they could decorate,
and the kids would come and they'd all choose their
pumpkin in one year. Because I started getting stoned at
some point. Now it's legal, I can say that. And

(10:24):
I went to a pumpkin patch, and what I saw
as beauty was not perfection, but the one that had
the big green clump come out of it, and the
one that the pop marks, and the one like, oh
my god, that is so beautiful and everywhere, no beauty
really is in the eye beholder. So anyway, I bought
all these odd ones, a couple of perfect orange things,

(10:46):
but mostly very very sported. Some weirdly, I brought them home.
Do what I always do. The kids came and they
ran out on the deck and they went ew grow
with say as soldiers, they would have seen the beauty
because kids really don't have those kinds of opinions. But

(11:09):
you know, by the time you're eleven, they have opinions
and they already know what they're supposed to think as beautiful.
I was already or was exactly right. It's everything is beautiful.
It all is, you know through your eyes.

Speaker 2 (11:24):
Yeah, I was already fantasizing with glitter. I've never put
glitter on a pumpkin, and that's amazing. We back in Wisconsin,
we got handed a big butcher knife and that if
anything was ooh and ikey, we just would chop it out,
you know, and like make big triangle nose.

Speaker 3 (11:41):
You know.

Speaker 2 (11:41):
It's just like it'd be gone, or we'd integrate it
and make green hair or something. I don't know, it'd
be crazy.

Speaker 3 (11:48):
But the season in the oven, yeah.

Speaker 2 (11:51):
We did it all. We also did the at Christmas time,
which I'm trying to bring this tradition to Berlin, because
the Berliners in Germany where I'm sitting at Christmas time,
they take the trees and they put them out onto
the streets after Christmas and they just sit there and
they're all dried and looking sad. And what we did
as a kid is we would string popcorn with cranberries

(12:14):
and then the birds would have the Christmas after Christmas.

Speaker 3 (12:20):
It was constantly so story.

Speaker 2 (12:23):
Yeah, it was just we would, you know, we would.
We would get the tree on a sled. We'd go
to the forest, and of course we always chose. We
chose what we called the Charlie Brown Christmas tree. So
I remember one one winter my father took us to
the forest and we chose a tree that was had
only grown on half, like how to say, one hundred

(12:47):
and eighty degrees, so it wasn't three hundred and sixty degrees.
And then to make it look good he had to
take twine and pull it up against the corner of
the wall and then put nails inside into the wall.
And we were like, we are truly choosing the tree
that nobody else wanted. And he's like, well, we could
we could have a fuller tree. No, daddy, this is

(13:09):
the tree that nobody wanted. We need to give it
a home.

Speaker 3 (13:14):
Of course we have.

Speaker 2 (13:15):
Of course, we had holes in the wall, you know,
for the rest of my childhood. But that's how it was. Yeah,
So Nancy, tell me because I know, well you might
you're out on the East Coast, and I know you
spent time in New York. Maybe you uh, maybe you
know about cocktail. So I was going to ask you,
if a personal essay were a cocktail, what would the

(13:38):
one key ingredient be? And two is there ever such
a thing as too much bitters? But don't don't do.

Speaker 3 (13:45):
Didn't like I'm not a drinker, but I but I
get the bitter thing. And yes, well number one, anger
doesn't work in a in an essay because you could
push us side of the store. What you should do.
What you can do is just tell the story and
let me be angry on your behalf. So, oh, you

(14:08):
don't tell me, don't manipulate me and tell me how
to feel. You just tell me the story and believe
do me. I'll be so angry at the guy. I'll
be so angry at that woman that did that to you.
So that's number one. Is there too much?

Speaker 5 (14:20):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (14:21):
I think if it's too sad, there's no resolution or
there's no teaching. I really feel like a personal ends
up with some kind of suff even if the insight
is momentary, even if you get this flash of oh
my god, I get it now, even if you forget
and you're an asshole. Twenty minutes later, you got it

(14:41):
for a minute, which means you can get it for
ten minutes next time, and you can get twenty minutes
and maybe you can even start to live that tea.
So it's really there can be too much fitter, I think.

Speaker 2 (14:53):
I love that. Is it the same with ecstasy or
joy because in singing it is like that. It's our job,
probably in acting too, to tell the story, but to
allow the audience space to feel from their experience, from
their imagination, from what they want to do. So we

(15:14):
actually are not meant to be emoting on the stage.
We're meant to be a channel for stories and for
the a channel for the emotions maybe, but we're not
meant to I mean, I love that. So would it
be the same if somebody was I mean, not only
with anger and sadness, but let's say ecstatic and joyful.

(15:36):
The same sciple probably applies, right.

Speaker 3 (15:39):
I wouldn't believe it, That's why.

Speaker 2 (15:42):
Yeah, So it's basically the essences to write a good
essay or to write your essay is to really find
the story that you want to tell. And by being
a good storyteller, the reader or the audience will feel
your story so much that they will have that that

(16:04):
will be the emotional impact exactly.

Speaker 3 (16:06):
There has to be a balance. You have to be
willing to tell the truth, but you cannot tell me
how to feel. Yeah, yep, you have to trust. The
big thing is that that you don't top down to
people and you don't explain overly, and you don't tell
people this is now now, you're really going to see upset.

(16:28):
You trust us that if you're using the right words
and you're writing from the heart and the gut and
your brain can kick it, trust us, we're going to
get it. You don't have to overexplain. You don't have
to tell us what we're supposed to be feeling. Trus
trust your human.

Speaker 2 (16:46):
That is a gold nugget for all of you guys
out there listening and exploring writing. So what do you
do when someone comes to you or maybe it's you
yourself who knows I mean and I'm also you know,
to attempt at writing sometimes and they just don't think
that their life is interesting enough to write anything that matters.

(17:10):
It's like, what can I do? I'm just you know,
waking up every morning, brushing my teeth and having my breakfast,
getting in the car, going to work, coming home and
watching television and falling asleep. I'm a nobody. I don't
have anything interesting.

Speaker 3 (17:26):
Yeah, feel that way most people. When I was writing
my wrote a memoir. It's got seventeen rejections. But I
wrote a memoir, and many times I thought, well, who's
going to care about this? But because we identify and
so it's much more about being willing to dig and

(17:47):
be vulnerable and talk about the stuff where it's not
a perfect person. You don't just for teeth, you know
that this cellophone and you were so ashamed that you
had to go took three weeks off from work. Well,
implant got put in everybody's story. Everybody, everybody, everybody's stuff
happened to every nine year old, everybody had something that

(18:07):
happened that shape them. So there is no there's no
life that's not worth examining.

Speaker 6 (18:13):
And and how do you get people to sound like
themselves and not like an imitation of what they think
they should sound like?

Speaker 2 (18:24):
Do you also dashes and I would love it. I
want to be in your class like dash dash dash
question mark, question mark, question mark, Comma kamma, comma comma,
Like I was. I love dashes, and nobody let me
dash around like I had to do so how much.

Speaker 3 (18:42):
Alike it's unbelievable. I want to get people. Number one.
I start out when in the beginning of every workshop,
I tell the story of how my kind of evolution.
And one of the things that happened right at the beginning,
years and years ago, is set the story to a
really ur of a magazine. He called me and he said,
take you to lunch. I want to talk about your manuscript.

(19:05):
Pretty much of a thrill nobe he ever called anything
I wrote manuscript. So I met him at a restaurant
and he took out my manuscript, and he took out
a pen, and he circled the whole top third and
he took his pen and he banged it into the
top of my page, and he went the ship and
I'm like, oh, I never met an editor before. I

(19:26):
was like WHOA. And then and then he took ten
and he went to the whole bottom third of the page,
and he made this huge semi circle and he banged
his ten into the bottom and he said this, this,
this is garbage. And I was sitting there, and of
course I wasn't looking for the exit sign, but I
was looking for the exercise. And then he the whole

(19:48):
center and he said, this is gold. And then he
went back up to the top third and he said,
here you are quoting Shakespeare, Nancy. Everybody quotes Shakespeare. I
don't need that. And went to the bottom and he said,
and here you are quoting with the Alan. Yeah, yeah,
well the Alan's funny. Everybody quotes with you. I don't
need that. This entire center. Your piece is gold. It

(20:15):
is your voice. And I said, what's my voice? And
he said authentic. I believe this voice. You have strong
words together. I have never heard strung together before. You're
not trying to impress in the how smart you are.
You're not trying to impress me that you know Shakespeare.
I don't need quotes. I need your language, your rhythms,

(20:37):
your truth, your story. Go home. I want you here, here,
and here, And I begin my workshop by doing that
exact story. And then I say to people, take the
chance of sounding like you, take a risk. Don't worry
about grammar, don't worry about sounding smart, sound like you.
When you pick up the phone and you call a
girlfriend and you go, you are not going to believe

(20:59):
what happened. Oh my god, I'm sitting in the light
on Mountain Avenue and help me. And you tell a
story and every detail is right, and every emotion is right,
everything about your being. You're telling this passionate thing to
your best friend and you're almost sobbing on the phone,
and then you go to write it. You go, having
set in my automobile, It's like, what happened to you?

(21:23):
So I tell them that and go, please don't don't
don't try to impress the teacher. We're not doing grades here.
This is this is take a chance of sounding like you,
and it works. It works every time.

Speaker 2 (21:36):
That probably is deeply relaxing that we finally can just
do dashes and not capitalize and maybe make sentences just
like oh gosh, and not think of direct objects and
correct verbs, and.

Speaker 3 (21:54):
Don't worry about school. This is undoing the damage of school.

Speaker 2 (21:58):
Oh that's a good thing, undoing the damage of school.
I was also hearing sounds when you said manuscript. I
was like, I never even saw that before we have
emails and males and manuscript I'm like, how many men
do we have in the room? It's so funny? Damn right? Wow? Right,
I mean even in our name female, I'm like, God,

(22:21):
can't I be alone in the room? Shoot?

Speaker 3 (22:23):
Like wow?

Speaker 2 (22:24):
Even writing my manuscript, I'm female writing a manuscript. I
was like, dang, we gotta, we gotta, we gotta. We
have to well, either invite them in for a drink
or we have to that's so funny. Really, yeah, ladyscript,
girl of script. I don't know something, yeah, something, But
it's funny, right, funny, How funny how we are talking

(22:49):
about undoing the damage and it's it's, uh, it is
funny how when you look at beautiful children, they're telling
the most under full stories. I saw a girl the
other day. She was like, what do you want to be?
Like I want to be a mermaid or a astronaut
or you know, And you're like, yeah, right, you okay

(23:10):
go and then it's then we're told again, you know,
like you said, you know you need to do a
you know, you have to set your paragraphs up. You
need a topic sentence, and you need to put it
in this form and where's the Shakespeare And we don't
even get Shakespeare. We don't really understand how we're supposed

(23:31):
to study it. But we're we're not studying ourselves, right,
We're not. Yeah, we're not studying ourselves. So so finding
our own voice is a lot about honesty and letting
go of overstyling. So it'd be really like dropping the
Chanel costume and just being in our old jeans in

(23:53):
a big sweatshirt. I mean, just ye, that's.

Speaker 3 (23:58):
For you.

Speaker 2 (24:00):
Hi, I love you, Nancy, I love your bag. You
talk about the importance of a killer, killer first line,
It sounds like I should get out that butcher knife again.
What about what about that first line? The killer first.

Speaker 3 (24:17):
Line that con editor, which was a horrible job. By
the way, what I realized when I had the whole
pile of manuscripts lady scripts on my desk, I would
start to read and if the first line didn't grab me,
I moved along because there was no time. So your

(24:40):
first line has to grab you just have to go.
And so that first line is.

Speaker 2 (24:50):
Yeah, so you don't want the first line to kill
the editor, will You don't want the killer first line?
You actually want to grab her first line grabber. You
want to you want to grab her and pull her in. Yeah,
So what's the worst way to start? Like so you
can spare us from our future mistakes? So what is
the absolute worst way to start a script? Like Once

(25:12):
upon a time kind of thing.

Speaker 3 (25:14):
I don't like things like uh and so on, et cetera.
You know, I I think if if there are three things,
so if you had a first and so on, you know,
we went to all of these great rides on the
carnival and so on, don't tell me what the rides

(25:35):
were the specific when we have details. Yeah, I know,
I can do an example of a bad one, but
there are lots of them.

Speaker 2 (25:44):
Well, the ones probably that do kill you. I mean,
that's kind of weird. We say killer first lines, but
the ones that kill you are the probably the bad ones.
So they're like they leave you like dead, like no
emotion board.

Speaker 3 (25:59):
Yeah well okay, but killer first line meant got to
be a winner.

Speaker 2 (26:04):
Got to be a winner, a winning first line.

Speaker 3 (26:07):
But in my this gets written the next edition, I'm
going to use yours that killed the editor.

Speaker 2 (26:14):
Kill the editor, that's right, So you just remember that
when we're writing the first line, it's like how do
we kill the editor? And is there a universal trick
to crafting that opening line that's going to hook the
reader or is it just a gut feeling that's yeah,
it has to be a total surprise.

Speaker 3 (26:34):
But here I'm just just randomly opened to Jan cook
Chapman story. And in the way old days, long before
small town hospitals and highways looked insantly matched in their
concrete and prick closed. I took my first bread room
that closed up alongside busy Tennessee Highway. That's a great opening,

(26:56):
isn't it?

Speaker 2 (26:56):
Yeah? It is?

Speaker 3 (26:58):
Yeah, And so there's no.

Speaker 2 (27:03):
Here's it to transport someone into a different place? Does
it have to do with I want them to be transported?
So she transported us into a place we fell with her?

Speaker 3 (27:16):
More that the line is interesting enough, so you want
to go to the next line. Here's another one. This
is Peter Myers, a holy baby. There I sat as
far from the altar the priest, and that way for
as I could. That's it perfect beginning. What is he
talking about? Can we go more? Here's another one? Had

(27:37):
the Caviard bowl pearl the Caviard bowl across the room,
so the black slops slithers down the wall like drying blood,
flame the smoked salmon at the toast points until they
slapped their wet spime on the grand piano, wipe the
champagne flutes off their mirrored tray with one broad swipe

(27:59):
of the arm, like a nice severing the top of
a board. That's the first sentence. Brilliant.

Speaker 2 (28:05):
Oh my god, it's brilliant. But I don't know if
I would continue there, because I mean, I played the
grand piano and just slithering caviaars, I would get scared.
It sounds like a horror film. But anyway, I mean,
but right, I am such a wimp. I'm such a wimp.
I if I read anything about caviar being splattered somewhere,

(28:29):
I'd be like, oh, I'm running away.

Speaker 3 (28:31):
Anyway.

Speaker 2 (28:32):
We're going to run away into a beautiful break for
our sponsors, and we're gonna take a quick break, so
everybody else out there grab something very strong and beautiful
cup of juice and coffee and get those creative juices simmering,
and we're gonna be back with more wisdom and crafting
the perfect personal essay with Nancy in just a little bit.

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Speaker 3 (31:04):
You came across someone struggling with hunger, how would you
recognize them?

Speaker 2 (31:09):
Would you notice an.

Speaker 3 (31:10):
Eight year old girl who's not excited for summer break
because she may not be having lunchicon until September?

Speaker 2 (31:16):
Or a war veteran who's having a heart time.

Speaker 1 (31:19):
I'm landing a job and getting back on his feet.

Speaker 2 (31:22):
I am the one Innidi Americans who struggle with hunger.
I am Hunger in America.

Speaker 7 (31:27):
Hunger can be hard to recognize. Learn why and I
am Hunger in America.

Speaker 2 (31:31):
Dot Org brought to you by Feeding America and the
ad Council, and we are back. If you're loving this
conversation with Nancy Irony as much as I am, don't
forget to subscribe to Voice Rising and share this episode
with your fellow writers, dreamers and storytellers. Every single voice matters,

(31:53):
and yours just might inspire someone to pick up the pen.
And so Nancy, let's get back to our lovely talk
on your new book. If someone is staring at a
blank page and sweating over that first killer or grapper
for a sentence, what's your go to piece of advice?

Speaker 3 (32:15):
Prompt to be in a group, get a couple of
people to write with you. Every three you know, every Wednesday.
Meet you can zoom, you can meet in a coffee shop,
you can meet. Somebody has to be waiting for it.
It's really really important, somebody that's safe. You have to
tell them that. The only rule that you want. You know,
my own rule is tell Kara what you loved. You

(32:37):
don't want criticism right at the beginning. And the other
thing is prompts are great because they narrow it down there.
So in my book, at the end of every chapter
there's a prompts. In fact, the book Memoirs medicine also
has prompted the writing from the heart my nineteen ninety
nine before born, Kara has prompts at the end of

(33:01):
every jet there. The prompts really gets me goings. Otherwise
it's too overwhelming, it's too big. So you need.

Speaker 2 (33:09):
Narrow, narrow. Oh, that's a good one.

Speaker 3 (33:12):
You need a narrow I should have or uh, school
lunches or music lessons or I can't believe those words
came out of my mouth. You know, things that are
just so specific that you're not going to hmm, what's right?
Very very and that gets you going?

Speaker 2 (33:33):
And how do you get the humor to come out
even if the says have heavy topics, Because even though
I'm kind of a little bit funny on this interview,
whenever I'm writing, I'm not. And it's very hard for
me to be funny. I'm very prolific and philosophical, but
it's hard for me when i'm writing to be funny.

Speaker 3 (33:55):
You can't you can't teach funny. It's it's either a gift.
You can be an appreciator of humor, but it's very
hard to tell someone how to be funny. Timing is
really important. Word choices are important. I would say one
of the best ways to learn is to read your
stuff out loud. You'll share when your sentence went on

(34:16):
too long, or you'll hear that you already said that
a different way. And then if you if you really
want to do humor, then you've got a features. You
got to read lots of humorous writers, so you might
get the hint. But I think it's a big gift.

Speaker 2 (34:33):
And uh, I think it's a gift too. I'm it is.
I've taken a couple of creative writing classes, and it's
always with that funny thing that I get hung up
and I don't really understand it because I actually feel
like a very funny person when I'm speaking, but when
I'm writing. So maybe that is the thing, to read
it out loud and to try to write like we

(34:55):
speak more. I think that is maybe the clue.

Speaker 3 (35:00):
Because when you'll hear, you'll hear when the word purple
is too guttural and you need and you'll hear when
you've asked three words when if you drop those three
words about that was the joke right before that, but
you went on too long. So I think you've become
a really good editor of yourself. If you the practice,

(35:22):
you've got to practice this stuff.

Speaker 2 (35:26):
So you do a lot of free flow writing or
stream of consciousness writing before you bring the editor in
the editor part.

Speaker 8 (35:35):
Of us not free flow, I think you. I mean,
I don't ye gold piece. I'm in a writing group
with five other women and they're all we're.

Speaker 3 (35:47):
All writing different stuff, and they're all very very good
at listening. And I'll read the people and someone will say,
you know, I love that middle. I think start with
that middle. That's what that kind of thing. But not
free flowing. I don't do just an exercise to just write.

(36:10):
I usually have a thing that's bothering me right now.
Trying to write to my grandchild, fourteen year old boy.
I took them snowboarding, and his head was on his phone,
in his phone almost the whole time, and it's just
about room and I and he was with a friend,
and the friend was doing the same thing. And I
want to write a letter from all the grandmothers to

(36:33):
all the grand grid just beg them. I mean, for
us to have the phone, it's phenomenal. I love my phone.
But I also go walking, I swim in a lap pool.
I'm doing little art things. You know, they're just we
have another wife. But they've been born into the phone
and this is their whole reality. That's so sad and scary,

(36:56):
and they can't have imagination because it's too quick, and
they aren't reflected, not self reflective. They're not sitting there
saying I say that they're not having a broken heart
because there's no for it, and so they're just going
sort of on the surface of things. And not all kids.
But I want to write a piece. It's just sort

(37:18):
of marinating right now, and that's kind of how I write.
I keep thinking about it, and I keep I take
a walk, and I think, what's going to lecture him?
And I think I'm going to I think I'm going
to apologize the world that he inherited, that I ruined
for him. And I'll start with that, because you know,
I should have known about global warm. I couldn't have

(37:39):
known about it. But you've inherited a world. No wonder
your face is in the phone. It's too scary and
too overwhelmed. There are too many things to fix. So
I guess I'm going to take that all of us
grandmothers were sorry that we didn't have the foresight to
know what the world was going to become. We thought
there was a We didn't know there was a finite

(37:59):
amount of resources. We thought oil would always last, Elector
city would always be here enough, we'd have enough listium.
We have enough thorium. But that's not the case, and
we've left to with nothing. So I want to apologize.
I want to write it as an apology letter, and
I haven't written it, but that's what I'll do. I'll

(38:20):
let that marinate, I'll think about it and then when
I go. But I don't just sit down and write stuff.

Speaker 2 (38:28):
Yeah, yeah, I mean it's a it's a very it's
a very hard topic. Actually, this whole thing of phones
in our pockets, because although they I mean it's it's wonderful.
I mean, we're connecting now over a phone, for example.
It's wonderful to be connected into the world. But it's
a lot of distraction from what your gift is is

(38:53):
helping us all come back to our authentic voice and
from myself also as a musician. I remember when we
used to sit and listen to an album together, or
we would even watch the same TV show. I don't
have a TV but I mean when we were kids.
We would all sit as a family around the Carol
Burnett show, How's that or whatever show it was, right,

(39:17):
And now everybody has their own channel, everybody's in their
separate rooms, on their separate iPads or separate tablets, and
they don't have any common story. So that's I guess
that's a question. I didn't even have planned to write you.
But what do we do now if we don't have
a common collective Let's say TV show we're watching, or

(39:38):
I mean, maybe we still do have some Netflix film
or something, But it seems like there's so much individualization
that you see friends sitting on the park bench with
their own headphone next to each other's totally different films.

Speaker 3 (39:54):
Right when The Bond first came out and you go
into a restaurant, you see four young women and they
all not be talking to each other, and they all
be on their phones. And we thought that was horrible.
And now I'm sort of doing that. I won't really
do it to that extent, but I think probably what's
going to have to happen is we're going to have
to have a crash of the Internet somehow and get

(40:15):
back to smart O're not connecting. There's no connection. And
if you don't have connections, then you don't have empathy,
then you don't feel for anybody. And that's culturally where
we are right now. We're hurting people.

Speaker 2 (40:29):
We are hurting people. And and the craziest thing is
that the kids that are being born now they're born,
they're being born into the world of AI. So our son, right, So,
so they're being in the born in that that you
are something else writing your stories. It's literally like AI
is taking our voice. It's it's working so fast. I

(40:53):
mean I have worked with you know, with chetch Ept
and everything, and it's just so quick to take our
scraps and make it into a meal. You know, we
can just throw anything at it. We can say you.

Speaker 3 (41:07):
Just said that was great, take our into a meal.
You are brilliant. Yeah. No, this is scary. This is
very science fictiony what we're going through right now.

Speaker 6 (41:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (41:16):
Yeah, I think a whole couple of generations of non
feeling automatons.

Speaker 2 (41:22):
Yeah, you know, rumatizing the world.

Speaker 3 (41:25):
Yeah, yep, No, it's it's bizarre. I'm glad I'm old
because I don't think this is sustainable.

Speaker 2 (41:33):
It is very touching, though, and I don't know about
your grandson. But I'm a mother with a daughter who's
going to be twenty five, and she's studying in Paris
and I flew in for Christmas and she has an
old record player and she's like, mom, would you like
to listen to some chappeine? And she takes this old

(41:55):
scratchy record. I'm like, yeah, I love that. I'm like
something I did right. She goes flea markets gets really
old jazz albums from chet Baker or whoever Chopin, and
because she doesn't have very much money as a student,
she's decided that she's gonna buy all the records. It's
probably to Charlie Brown Christmas Tree story that are you
know one euroine nobody wants and then nobody I mean

(42:18):
basically they got sorted out. So a little bit of
chet Baker and Chopin. But she has things like the
alpine horn, the German alpine horn, whatever group playing Silent
Night or whatever with alpine horns. There's something. And then

(42:40):
she has an analog film camera and gets her film
developed even though it costs her so much money, and
I'm like, wow, that is just so wonderful. She still is. Yeah,
so I do I do sense or I do know
some kids that were so distracted with their phones that

(43:00):
they now have just a phone without it being a smartphone.
They went back to really old phones. I know kids
that are now an analog everything is they're they're they're
trying to to strip it down because they are just
so scattered that they don't even know where they are anymore.
So I'm hoping that maybe that your grandson can get inspired.

(43:24):
There is a well a renaissance of like black and
white camera, analog cameras and LPs, and maybe you have
to give him a record player for like an old
one with like a needle and they can drop in idea.

Speaker 3 (43:42):
I don't know, they got they got to know real.
It's not real what they're living. I mean, it's a
it's a reality, but it's not Uh, it's not serving.
It's definitely hurting. They're so isolated. And you what you
just said about them all being in their separate rooms.

(44:03):
You know. One of the things I think that really
hurts culturally was the laugh track. Is that people were
told when to laugh at what, and I think what
their own gut would tell them was funny. Yeah, And
and that kind of thing of being being h told
what to care about and what to buy. I mean influencers.

(44:26):
Oh my god, that's the scariest thing so far. That's
like the Man's Great flannel suit. It's like, uh, you
know what happened with Madison Avenue, but now it's on
the internet, so the influencers will tell you what jacket
to buy. Oh my god.

Speaker 2 (44:40):
But you know what word is inside an influencer. The flu.
It's like we get the flu when we when we
have to. It's like they give us a flu, we get,
we get well, they think we're getting a fever for
the the new suit, but actually we're really we're really
getting sick. You need, you need. They're making us sick.

(45:03):
The flu answers, They're making a sick. That's it. That's it. Yeah.
So if a writer is afraid of offending people or
just making them uncomfortable, how do they push past that fear?
Because I think we're getting onto we're touching issues of
like how do I say that I don't want to

(45:25):
hurt my audience or I don't want to hurt my grandson.
I definitely would never ever want to hurt my daughter
or whatever, and yet I need to say the truth.

Speaker 3 (45:36):
I think one of you cannot think about is who
you're writing to. I'm really first the first draft. Just
get the story out there, Just get it out and
not worry about we well they think of me, They'll
think I'm weird. You know. I have a perfect illustration
of this. I was filming my son Dan when he
was sick. You know, he died twelve years ago. It's unbelievab.

(46:01):
He had diabetes and got diabetes at nine months old.
You probably remember this from our interview. And then at
twenty two he got MS and he got sicker and
sicker and sicker and angrier and angrier and angrier. And
then at some point I said, hey, Dan, do you
want to make a film of this? And we did.
We did a documentary, and he ultimately surrendered and became

(46:25):
My husband called him the prospective Guru. He really like
a teacher. He used that illness to make people feel
I was going to say comfortable, but he would make
people laugh. You know. I stood at the end of
his bed once and I said good night, O, King
of Kings, and then I looked at him and I bowed,
and then I said good night, oh Lord of Lords.

(46:48):
And I bowed and then he said good night, Oh
fruit of loops. He became absolutely adorable and beautiful. So
I was filming him when he workeded them with art surgery,
and he always had a girlfriend by the way, and
he came home from the hospital. The day he came home,
she was lifting him out of the wheelchair onto the bed,

(47:09):
and I was filming because I said to him, do
you want me to turn the camera off at any point?
He said, no, film everything. So I'm filming and she's
lifting them onto the bed and she goes, oh my god,
the urine bag. It's stuck in the wheelchair. And she
is very strong and she holds him up and she
flips the urine bag onto the bed, and I filmed it.
About a week later, I got a call from Hartsford,

(47:31):
where I'm from, Connecticut, and it was a gallery owner
and he has a theater in his gallery and he says,
nance you abandon us, you moved to the Veneye, you
left us. We want you to come back, and we
want you to get on the stage and we want
you to tell your funny stories. And I said, I'm
not laughing. We have no funny space. My kid is

(47:52):
very sick. I'm crying all the time, and he didn't
hear me, and he said, no, bring your friends. And
all of a sudden, I thought, wait a minute, I
have fifty hours of Dan. Maybe I could bring like
twenty minutes, and I could bring Dan in the wheelchair
and he'll get a standing ovation because it's our town
and he'll see that what he's doing is not for naught.

(48:12):
So I said, let me call you back. Somebody had
just taken my workshop, who graduated from film school. I
called her and I said, if I gave you a
bunch of tapes, could you give me twenty minutes. It
doesn't have to have any continuity. I just want to
show it up on a big screen. She said yes.
I gave her a bunch of tapes. She gave me

(48:32):
back and one of the scenes was, oh my god,
the urine bag. But she cut that. No. When I
pick the workshop, I tell this story and then I
say to the group, shout it out, why do you
think she cut that? And everybody yells because it's uncomfortable,
And my response is, the urine bag is the story.

(48:57):
Do not cut the urine bag. Don't worry about people
being uncomfortable. That's the part they're going to remember. I'm
not going to remember the brushing of the teeth. They're
going to remember the year in bed.

Speaker 2 (49:08):
And that's again, in a way, that's the humanity. That's
the empathy, right, That is where if we circle back
into that empathy thing exactly. Yeah, did you ever write anything,
Nancy that you regretted and it was out in the
world and you couldn't pull it back?

Speaker 3 (49:28):
Yes, I have, I wrote in this book, actually I
wrote at the end of each chapter, I write a
thing called my take, and it's the door sitting in
the workshop. When somebody finishes reading, I usually talk a
lot about the piece and then I have everybody in
the class throw their comments out. And I have one rule,

(49:48):
and that is, when you finish reading, we tell you
what we loved. So there is someone's story who I
did on my take, and I didn't call her and
read it to her first for permission because I had
actually done it in class that way. But she called
me and she was very upset because her mother's alive
and she wrote about her mother and it just made

(50:13):
me feel I apologized a million times, and I will
change it in the next printing of this book. I'm
going to take it out, but it really I hurt her,
and I think she's fine. She accepted my apology. In fact,
she said, I love you even more now that you're
being accountable for that. But I had I just didn't
even think that this could hurt her, you know. Yeah,

(50:35):
but I haven't read many of my stuff. You know.
I wrote about having an age test way before people
were having AIDS tests. It was clear. I wrote that
Joe and I had been had an open marriage, and
I read it to my kids. They were fine. I
read it to my mother, she was fine. And then
my mother called me and she said, you can't. You

(50:56):
can't print that. You can't print the kids friends won't
be able to play with them. Everybody in the town
is going to know. And then, you know, I said, okay, okay,
we'll put my name on it, you know. And saw
me back and said, no, no, do it, do it,
do it. But I and I'm not, I'm not ashamed
at all at the story, but I would have actually

(51:16):
killed the story if if she had stuck to that.
I was going to have, you know, use a different
name or something.

Speaker 2 (51:22):
Yeah. Yeah, it's always tricky. Right, It's just it's very tricky.
I don't think anybody wants to hurt anybody out there,
and yet life is a canvas. I mean, all of
our stories are are the material.

Speaker 3 (51:37):
That's how a lot of people do. Say. My father's
still alive, and I'm so afraid that if I write
this that you know, I mean, he knows he insisted me.
I know he insisted me, but the family doesn't know.
And what should I do? And my advice is number one,
get permission from him. And number two, if you tell

(52:01):
the truth and you have to write fiction.

Speaker 2 (52:04):
Yeah, yeah, you have to write fiction. And but now
going back to narrative medicine, it is so important that
we bring the stories that we have lived, that are
still in our bones too light, and that we can
love every single nook and cranny of our body, of

(52:26):
our kneecaps and thighs and bellies and breath and everything else.
And it is it is such a healing art, whether
it's writing memoirs or writing personal essays. So I thank
you for being out there, Nancy and supporting and guiding

(52:47):
so many people with your books and with your workshops,
and also healing yourself because when you you know, when
I heal through my writing and you heal through yours,
we also are having better marriages, better relationships, for being
better grandma's and moms and everything. Yep, And it's a
joy to have you with me today. And your wisdom

(53:08):
and humor and love for storytelling are a beautiful gift.
So everybody out there go pick up her new book,
which is Seven Secrets to the Perfect Personal Essay. Then
there's a little colon which she used just because she's
so good with grammar crafting this story. Only you can
write right, any any, any final words for our audience.

Speaker 3 (53:32):
Well, but you is capitalized because it kind of implies
that AI is trying to write your story, but only
you can write yours. That's it, that's You're unbelievable. I
have so much gratitude for your huge heart and your
wise soul. I'm just kissing you from here.

Speaker 2 (53:51):
I love it. I love it. I'm soaking it all in.
I wish you much success as always, and some day
I'm gonna have the pleasure to join one of your
writing workshops and experience over here. Yeah, I know, I
have to get across a huge ocean. My goodness, everybody

(54:12):
out there go pick up our other books through They're wonderful,
and many many, many good things are coming your way. Okay,
all right, okay, have a good one. Bye bye, bye bye.

Speaker 5 (54:27):
It is.

Speaker 9 (54:31):
Wood takes a chance. Catslu B.

Speaker 6 (54:54):
Time me.

Speaker 8 (54:57):
Tom.

Speaker 6 (54:58):
We have a stream

Speaker 9 (55:01):
Stupi

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