I would like to share with you an interview I did a few days ago with Hannah Thomas of Heart Rising for her series about the value of Story.

The podcast can be accessed through iTunes HERE or the web HERE.

From Heart Rising website about my talk:

How can the act of telling our stories shape our direct experience of life and lead us to deeper understanding of ourselves?  Can telling our stories lead us to enlightenment?

Nancy Wait takes a unique approach to answering these questions.  Her passion for writing and enthusiasm for life bubble up out of her voice into a river of wisdom that is just too good to miss.

The Nancy Who Drew, The Memoir that Solved a Mystery by Nancy Wait (2011)

In her recent book, “The Nancy Who Drew: The Memoir That Solved a Mystery”, Nancy shares how the act of writing out her personal journey has led her to unexpected places, unlocking secrets she never imagined.

Join us as Nancy shares with us from her book, and from her heart.

For more information about Nancy, visit her website at:

http://nancywait.com/

If you are interested in telling your own story and would like some help, Nancy is also a writing coach.  Please feel free to contact her through this website: http://alchemyofmemoir.com/

For more information on her book (and to enjoy a free excerpt) visit

http://thenancywhodrew.com/

https://www.facebook.com/TheNancyWhoDrew

I’ve moved on. Really.

Really? Where did that expression, “I’ve moved on,” come from anyway? I seem to remember it from Seinfeld. Seinfeld was a comedy. That should tell you something right there.

Seriously though, where are we moving to when we move on? Our next best thing I suppose.

Well, I don’t mean for this to be a downer, and it isn’t, in my opinion, but I don’t believe we can move past things. Only through them.

What’s the difference, you might ask. Well, moving past signifies linear movement. The calendar is linear. If I broke up with so-and-so on such-and-such a date, and now it is three months or three years later, I might say I’ve moved past that breakup. Moving through it is a different proposition entirely.

To move through an experience (we’re talking pain here) usually means we have felt it, probably down to the depths of our being, and are possibly, possibly – out on the other side of it now.

May I suggest one surefire way to tell if you’ve moved past an experience – having passed it by calendar-wise, and are through it, so to speak? Try writing about it! Could be a journal entry. Or something more ambitious like a memoir.

I was interested in the process of transformation, or the complexities of changing ourselves, long before I hit the keyboard. My first expression of an inner being, an inner self that could grow and change in a way unrelated to the outer manifestation of my physical form that was maturing through life, was through drawing and painting. This was because I wasn’t able yet to deal with my experience in words or attempt to make language out of it. I was in my late twenties then, and I saw plenty of time ahead for writing. Meanwhile, making pictures was just plain easier.

Making pictures was also less explicit. A picture may say a thousand words, but with so many “words” to choose from, how can you be sure the viewer is getting the message you intended?

You can’t be sure. That’s the thing. Inevitably I grew frustrated. To my mind, or my way of seeing, I was spilling my guts, vomiting up my innermost fears along with my hopes and dreams – in the most artistic and beautiful way I knew how. And then someone would come by to look at my work and say, “What a lovely blue!” The viewing public cannot be counted on. Not long ago I was enthralled by canvas of Pierre Bonnard at the Met, and overheard a woman say to her friend how much she loved the maroon color of the vase containing a bouquet of flowers. She said she was looking for just that shade for a new couch. Ouch. Nothing about the lilting beauty of a masterful work of art that gave us more knowledge about the intricacies of life and one man’s ability to make us feel the flowers through the paint.

Saying I’m over it or I’ve moved on, is good for a sound bite. It’s good shorthand-speak when you just don’t want to get into it right now. But if we’re really interested in moving on, i.e., changing, transforming, altering our state of mind/emotions, the only way is through the heart. Straight through until we stop weeping. Or maybe not. Because tears, beautiful cleansing tears, can crop up when least expected and are not always about feeling sad or even happy. They might come when something needs to flow outward, or the eyes need a wash.

Anyway, this is about writing memoir. Writing down one’s life. I know no other way of seeing where I still hold shame. Where I still hold regret. Where I still hold anger and feelings of loss. It comes out in the way I try not to deal with it in the story. When I try and skip over things. When I feel the need to justify myself. Even when I just feel resistance to writing in the first place. Then I know. Then I see how I’ve been kidding myself. And that’s when I know I have to roll up my sleeves and plunge back in.

~~~ Nancy Wait is the author of The Nancy Who Drew, The Memoir That Solved A Mystery

She is also a writing coach and editor.

Contact: wait.nancy@gmail.com

watercolor by Nancy Wait

After publishing my memoir The Nancy Who Drew, last summer with little fanfare, (other than the joy of those who have known me any length of time as it took me over a decade!) – it took another eight months to be able to create a book trailer. This was because I needed time to get used to the idea that my book, my story, my life, my secrets, my family history – was now out there. And anything can happen Out There. Ridicule, criticism, ostracism, not to mention the disappointment of being ignored.  So, I needed time to adjust to my new status of being published. I felt so vulnerable suddenly. So exposed.

During those eight months I began work on a followup book, and wrote out many different kinds of ‘scripts’ for a book trailer. But none of them felt right. And then I wanted to talk directly into the webcam, which needed not only confidence, but a bit of expertise in Windows Movie-Maker. The weeks and months went by. I didn’t practice making videos. But I did something else.

I got clear in other areas. I had been doing a blog talk radio show for over two years called Art and Ascension. By the fall of 2011 I felt it was time for a change, and began a new show called Dancing in the Shift. Now, instead of calling myself Nancy Wait, my host name was NancyGo. I was definitely on the move. Then, as the calendar year swung into 2012, I found little excitement for ‘Dancing in the Shift.’ It seemed to have run its course, fulfilled its mission, in bringing me to the next place. The  moment I realized it was time for another dance was when I realized I did a show about baking muffins. What I needed and wanted to share was a lot more than a story about baking. It was time to step up to the plate with my real ‘mission.’

So a few weeks ago I began a third internet radio show, naming it after the title of my memoir so there would be no mistake what it was about or who I was. I can be Wait or Go – but I’m now going out there as The Nancy Who Drew Radio Show, stating my case. Which is, that Betrayal is Sacred when the Heart Can Encompass the Whole.

And that’s no small potatoes. So, a strange thing happened. After a couple of weekly shows, I woke up one morning and knew exactly what my video – my book trailer would be. I wrote the script in a couple of hours and then collapsed with exhaustion at the energy expended. Needless to say, the time was right. I was ready at last. LINK to book trailer.

Now that that’s done, some new space opened up in my mind. I started thinking about memoirs again, and what a release it is to spill the beans. To empty out. To tell what hasn’t been told. And to tell it in such a way that is informative and possibly even uplifting to others. How it clears the psyche. How it makes us ready for the next thing, whatever that might be.

And I started feeling immense gratitude and appreciation for all the writers of personal stories who have dared to go out on a limb and speak their truth. The upshot of it all is, I would like to honor them on my new radio show. Perhaps in some cases I will just read out the title and the name of the author, and post a link in the chat room. In other cases, for those that are open to it, I will ask them to call into the show and say a few words to us about what it was like to write their story.

The idea just came to me an hour or so ago. Because I had mentioned something about “Holding Space” for healing (healing betrayal specifically) on my inaugural show, and it made me aware suddenly, that those who I would like to reach, I may never be able to reach. And yet I am putting the thought out there. The thought-form of healing betrayal by opening the heart to encompass the whole (story). And memoir writers – those that write from the heart and express their truth no matter how painful it might be, are clearing themselves. Maybe clearing old wounds. Maybe finding redemption in the telling. And this is important. This is big. Not only for the writers themselves, but for those who come after. Because we are clearing our psyches. We are making the world a slightly less dense place, a somewhat lighter place, because of our efforts.

So, if you are a writer of memoir, or if you know someone who is, or if you have been moved by a particular memoir and would like to share, please leave a comment here, or send an email to wait.nancy@gmail.com

Thank you ~

The Nancy Who Drew, by Nancy Wait

First Published at Women Writers, Women Books

All art is expression.

All expression is a way of putting it “out there.”

As soon as we put it out there it’s no longer inside us, or merely inside us. It has been expressed outwardly. So we can now hear it, feel it, see it, touch it – outside of  us. And so we get to know ourselves better in the world. And so we become more knowing.

This is especially true of memoir.

Memoir is the story of us. It is about who we are, who we think we are, who we think we might have been, and who we were.

We write our stories with the hope they will be read and that readers will have a response, that they will be moved in some way.

But whether or not they respond in ways we expect or desire, whether or not our books fly off the shelves, something utterly amazing has occurred within us along the way of transforming our  memory into prose: we have become conscious of who we actually are.

We live in a world of doing. A world that constantly changes with the changes measured in degrees and percentages and various graphs and scales.

Experiences are felt or not felt, and slip by, replaced by the next experience. Time might seem to be hurtling by. Those of us who write, slow it down. We slow down time. Writers of memoir slow it down further, because of this going back and reliving events from the past. We have to relive them in order for these events to feel real again. For them to come alive to the reader—as alive and real as they were for us at the time.

It wasn’t until I was well into the process of writing down my life that I became aware that there was a force working through me. I felt this force as an energy, as a spirit of soul consciousness. This was because of the depths I traversed. Not all memoirists wish to turn their lives inside out to find hidden meanings, or send plumb lines down to the depths of their subconscious. Nor is it required. Yet if we do choose this kind of delving, the benefits are immeasurable. For we are doing nothing less than putting our lives in order—our psyches, really.

In the myth of Psyche and Eros, Psyche’s first task was to make order out of the pile of seeds and sort them all out. Sorting out our experience is soul work. It means taking the time to step out of the hurly-burly and look back at where we have been. I can’t think of a better way to know the  way forward than to step back and look at where I have been. The writing creates a map of sorts. Where was I and when was I there? Why was I there?

The way forward then is in the looking back, the stepping back.The reader may find my story interesting or not. For me it is fascinating. For I have unearthed stories that I may have hidden from myself until now. And aside from sorting out “what happened when,” I may have found the underlying reasoning. I may have made connections, connecting this feeling to that event.

Nancy

Truth is always interesting. We first write for ourselves, and then we write for others to read, and with each revision the story becomes richer and more vibrant and more real. And we become more real as we become more aware of who we truly are inside.

Yet it is in the sharing of our stories that we really take off. In making them public, in reading them aloud, we are honoring our experience. We are also empowering others to take that leap of faith into their own lives. We don’t know what we might touch off in another, what trigger or spark we might ignite. And it may only be on a subconscious level. But truth is catching. When we can open up, another sees that it is possible. And so we all move forward. We all grow.

Who knows, but that by unearthing the first stone, what the next stone might uncover.

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What’s your experience in working with memoir?

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Nancy Wait is the author of The Nancy Who Drew, available at Amazon. She is also an artist and a former actress, and hosts a weekly blog talk radio show called Art and Ascension

Follow @NancyWait on Twitter. Read and subscribe to Nancy’s The Nancy Who Drew blog. Visit Nancy Wait’s website. Listen to her on Art and Acension on Blog Talk Radio.

When I began my memoir, The Nancy Who Drew, I do not think I knew the extent to which I would have to relive past experiences. And that is probably a good thing, for had I had known what was ahead I daresay I would not have attempted the mammoth task it ended up being.

In order to remember a scene and picture it in my mind, I would often think of the light. Where was the light coming from? What color was it? What time of day was it? Because I knew that everything is recorded in the light. For me this was a way of unlocking memories.

There were years during my writing of the past when I felt more connected to my younger self, to those years long ago (past and gone forever? I think not!) than I did to my current life. And this made my current life somewhat difficult. Yet it was a passage I had to undertake. And it was during this passage that I became a time-traveler. I went back into the past and unraveled all the knots that had gathered. I sorted out the threads. I made myself whole again.

Going into those dark shadowy areas, shedding light upon events that happened long ago, reinforced what I already knew—that there is no such thing as time as we know it. It’s true we need our clocks and calendars in order to make sense of our world in 3D. But these are only constructs. I saw that when I used to stay up painting all night. The next morning was not a new day to me; it was the same day. The light had gone and come back, that was the only difference.

My mind can comprehend the statement that we are living all our past lives and all our future lives now, in this moment. My mind can comprehend that. I even have visions of these past and future lives. I think this is because I have delved so deeply into this life that I am living now. I feel I have bent myself backwards, done a back-flip, gone through a wormhole and come back, into the now. Memoir. Remembering the self.

http://www.boypoet.com/

Tuesday, January 11, 2011 Blog Talk Radio 5pm Eastern

The New York Times Book Review said of “Track Conditions” – “Klein, a poet, tells his story with dignity.. .Track Conditions illustrates the thin line separating the victor from the defeated – the bone fissure that in an instant derails a champion, the morning a  man wakes up and decides not to take a drink.”

Of his memoir, “The End of Being Known” Publishers Weekly said, “Klein’s prose style, like his poetry, is dreamy, allusive, repetitive in that way that admirers term ‘hypnotic.’ ”

Among the praise for his book of poems, “then, we were still living” is this from Lynn Emanuel: “Several years ago I heard Michael Klein read a four line poem from what was to become this remarkable new collection, then, we were still living, and thinking that he had gotten to the heart of the new, changed world. Now, I am sure of it. Everything in this book is terrifying and beautiful and necessary and there isn’t one syllable that isn’t absolutely required by the times we live in. This is a wholly original and essential book.”

Michael Klein teaches at the MFA Program at Goddard College in Vermont, read here what he says about teaching: http://www.goddard.edu/michaelklein

Visit his website http://www.boypoet.com/

And his blog http://www.notesfromtheinterior.blogspot.com/

As a child I used to hold a magnifying glass over a piece of paper in the bright noonday sun and wait for the light to bore a tiny hole through it. This required not only a steady hand but a profound willingness to wait. Writing memoir has also demanded the utmost patience. It has been like turning the lens on myself, putting my life under a magnifying glass and staying in the hot seat until the light burned a hole clear through to my soul.

The past is an alive thing. It pulls you away from the present. At night it keeps you awake, ruminating. Whole segments of the past might elude us. Might remain unsalvageable. Time might have long ago dissolved them into a miasma of shuttered memories. But just because they are out of reach doesn’t mean the memories don’t exist. Whatever has been touched or seen, smelled or tasted, lurks somewhere in the universal mind, pulsing in eternity.

To become a character in your own right is to change position, seeing yourself from a different perspective. Seeing yourself historically. It is a process of reordering experience, breaking down the past into different components. This is life on the idea plane, and it is separate and apart from physical plane life.

On Blog Talk Radio: interviews and insights of memoir writers and the process of transformation through the journey of self-discovery.

We write our stories with the hope they will be read, and with the hope that readers will have a response. That they will be moved. And whether they respond in ways we expect, or way we didn’t expect, the main thing to remember is that we have written down our experience. And the main movement that occurs is beyond whether or not our books fly off the shelves. The main movement is what occurs within us, the transformation of memory into prose, and in the process  becoming conscious of what your life actually is, and who you actually are.

For me, the value of writing down my life was to consciously go beyond this life of the personality. To see it for what it is, the gains, the losses, the dramas. And to move into this other area, a separate place apart from the arena of the personality where I am conscious of a larger force working through me, working through the stage called the Present – and to be in touch with what feels like soul consciousness.

It is the part that observes and comments, and sees beyond the masks of bodies and faces and chronological ages, to the real being inside. And to the real beings around me. I know of no other way to become so profoundly engaged with the Real. I call this process the Alchemy of Memoir.

© Nancy Wait 2010