Telling Your Story

In his novel The Abortion: An Historical Romance 1966, Richard Brautigan wrote about a library where anyone with a story to tell could write it out and put it on the shelves for others to read. The overseer of the library, which was open 24 hours a day, lived there. The fictional library was based on the Presidio Branch of the San Francisco Public Library,

Inspired by Brautigan’s idea, in 1990 the Brautigan Library was founded in Burlington, Vermont, by Todd Lockwood, a Brautigan fan, together with poet Robert Creeley and Brautigan’s daughter Ianthe.. Instead of the Dewey Decimal System used by most libraries, the Brautigan library categorized its books according to the Mayonnaise System, referring to the fact that the library in the novel used mayonnaise jars as bookends.

My unpublished novel, The Dioscuri, registered with the Brautigan Library May 25, 1990, was given the Mayonnaise catalog number LOV1990.05.003. The 325 books of the Brautigan Library archive (which included Brautigan’s typewriter) traveled to Seattle for a book fair, then back to its basement home in Vermont. It changed addresses in Burlington a number of times, finally winding up in the public library. In 2005 the Fletcher Free Library in Burlington decided it would be fitting to ship the collection to the Presidio branch of the San Francisco Public Library. Whether or not the collection actually made it I have not been able to find out, despite many inquiries. The last posted information about the move was a 2005 story in the Boston Globe.

What I wanted to talk about, however, was not the Brautigan Library itself but rather the idea behind a library where everyone could tell his or her story without the assistance of agents, publishers and editors. True, there is the Internet. But not everyone has access to a computer, and some people still like the idea of something written on paper.

I spend at least four hours a day writing at the computer, mostly for fun these days, though occasionally I will send something off to a magazine, and once in a while something will be published. I am a hundred pages into Murder at the Parthenon, a mystery novel set at a Tennessee newspaper in 1954. Certainly this effort is spurred by the love of the old newspaper technology, with its Linotypes and locked pages. I meet regularly with a writer friend so we can toss ideas back and forth and nag each other about keeping our noses to the grindstones.

I am working on a biography of the pianist and teacher Egon Petri, part of which has appeared in magazines and on a piano pedagogy website originating in Finland, of all places. I am editing a wonderful work in progress by a friend who wants to tell her story about meditation. And I am proof-reading an exquisite collection of songs by a composer friend.

There is a modern facility which somewhat resembles Richard Brautigan’s library. My nonfiction mystery, Searching for Anna, was published in February by this organization, Lulu.com. Lulu is an international print-on-demand publisher, some of whose thousands of titles strongly evoke those of Brautigan’s fictional library, such as “Growing House Plants By Candlelight”. Anybody can tell a story on Lulu. For a small fee, a book book can even get an ISBN number and be entered into Books in Print, which means it is available through outlets such as Barnes and Noble and Amazon.

Everybody has a story. Jung said that in most disassociated “normal” living, one’s story was often interrupted. He said psychology’s primary function was to retrieve that story and reunite the individual with it.

One of the best pieces of writing I ever encountered was by a Skyline College student who had brought his essay to the Tutoring Center, hoping for help with his English. The story, laboriously written in longhand, was about how to wash dishes. The student’s grandmother had taught him the proper way to wash dishes, and in the telling of the story, the student revealed himself: Loving, respectful, obedient, attentive to detail, humble. The language was awkward, but the story was truly touching.

How to tell your story: Hemingway said to place the seat of the pants on the seat of the chair and move the hand from left to right, or something to that effect. I would add a bit about spelling and grammar, but really it seems to be mostly about having something to say, saying it as honestly as you can, and then hoping somebody reads it and understands what you meant.

(Reprinted from June Morrall's Half Moon Bay Memories)

How To Write

“I wish I could write.” I hear this all the time. “I wish I could play the piano.” And I say (or think) “Well, why don’t you?”

Everybody has a story. Telling this story in words, paint, dance, music is a good thing in many ways. It breaks through the isolation so many people feel; it may teach; it may inspire. It doesn’t matter that other people have told the same story, because each person has his or her own point of view.

But how do you do it?

In newswriting, it’s a matter of telling something: Who, what, when, where, how.

But in fiction-writing, journaling, poetry (not to mention painting, sculpture and music) it is much more a matter of showing.

As an exercise, take an object, say a coin dug up while hoeing the garden, and write twenty thoughts about it.

1. It is a metal coin.

2. It seems to come from another country.

3. It is probably silver. It is not gold.

4. It seems to be English or Australian.

5. It is small.

6. There is a picture of Queen Elizabeth on the coin.

7. The date on the coin is 1973.

Now you see the difficulty in coming up with twenty thoughts. Already we are in the area of speculation: Did someone deliberately bury this coin? Who? Why? Was the coin lost? Who by? All sound proceeds from silence, and much good writing proceeds from mystery.

A trilogy by the great Canadian writer Robertson Davies begins with a snowball which has a rock inside.

Looking closely at something, almost anything, primes the pump for creative activity. It is just as simple as can be. It's even simpler if you have something you really want to say. Then it is more a matter of paring away the nonessential.

You notice that I have not mentioned spelling or grammar. This is craft, and I have been talking about art. Bad spelling, bad grammar and punctuation tell things about their user which that user would rather not have known. And if the writer has any hopes of success in a college essay, a job interview, or published work, there simply isn’t any way around writing the best you can in your native language. Many manuscripts have been rejected the first time an editor came across a possessive its with an apostrophe.

I have been writing, either as a job or for simple pleasure, for quite a long time. I love to tell a story, and I love to hear other people tell theirs. What's yours?

Made-Up Words

The Metropolitan Museum in New York City has mounted a retrospective of the works of J.W.M. Turner, the 19th century British painter. In the current New Yorker, Peter Schjeldahl accuses Turner of "smooshing" paint on canvas. I don't object to made-up words, especially if they are sound effects or exclamations. I especially like blogger Camille Offenbach's "Geh!" In the case of the New Yorker's bit, however, I dislike "smoosh" because I have never seen any evidence of smooshing in Turner's works at the Tate in London or the Museum of Modern Art in New York or elsewhere, in books. I like Turner; Peter Schjeldahl does not. Why can't critics just make "I" statements instead of cosmic pronouncements?

Having Something To Say

One of the best pieces of writing I ever read was an essay on washing dishes. The author was a Mexican student who was trying to learn English at the community college where I was volunteering. His work was written by hand, with many deletions and erasures. He described how his grandmother had taught him to wash dishes in very hot water with lots of soap, the glasses first, then the plates, and last the cutlery and pots.

All the while I was reading, the student apologized for his poor English. I am sure he didn't believe me when I said I thought his paper was wonderful.

The essay was wonderful because it revealed things about the writer: That he was respectful, that he was trying to learn, that he was modest and disciplined. His love for his grandmother was revealed in every word. He had something to say.