Last fall, doctoral candidate Rodney Merrill sent me a questionnaire about my approach to writing. He was surveying many writers while researching for his dissertation in the area of social constructionist views on writing. I was very taken with his inquiry and ideas and answered the questions. Soon, I interviewed Rodney so Writing It Real subscribers would have the treat of learning from him.  Later on, as Rodney worked on his dissertation, I received a second round of questions from him and I enjoyed answering those as well.

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Rodney
Why do you write? What is your motive in writing?

Sheila
I write to understand why I am feeling as I do and to investigate what hooks me emotionally. I write to explain myself to others and to myself. I write to find lessons and insight in life experience. I write because it is a pleasurable way to process images and dialog and events so that I can see some shape to my life and find meaning and if not resolution, some sort of peace.

Rodney
Is it to influence others? Is it to a share something about yourself with others? If so, say more about why you desire to share life stories with others?

 Sheila
As a poet first and then a personal essayist and finally an instructional writer, I see my personal writing as something I offer others from my experience. I think I am interested in moving others but most interested in presenting myself at the deepest levels of my perception. I believe that sharing writing creates an intimacy between the reader and the writer, and between the writer and herself.

Rodney
Do your stories have some “truth” to share? Yes. If so, do you think this truth is “universal” (that is, that is something true about all people or all times) or do you think this truth is more “local” (that it is something you learned that might be true of some people or sometimes)?

Sheila
This is hard to answer. I believe that people are most alike in their feelings and least alike in their thinking. Therefore, if your experience can evoke feelings, there is universal connection even if the reader may not have thought as you did or acted as you did. The readers will realize that in other circumstances they may have experienced the same feelings. They will recognize the feelings. “Feelings come first,” e. e. cummings wrote. When we move others to feel feelings we have felt, we become intimate, connected. That is the truth that gets shared in personal writing that succeeds.

Rodney
How did your interests in personal writing evolve?

Sheila
 I was compelled to write and read poems. They seem to me to be highly personal writing, even when poets declare that they are not being autobiographical or confessional. Poetry is an essence felt by or recognized by an individual who creates a vessel for others to have the same experience. I usually feel that poems, including mine, offer a personal view into the universal.

Rodney
Have you written personal stories for as long as you can remember or was there a specific time when the desire to write personal stories appeared?

Sheila
I wrote as a child and teen, but the desire to really take poetry writing seriously came about after my daughter was born. I believed strongly that to raise her to be who she was, I would have to learn who I was and poetry was what could teach me that. Writing poetry led to writing personal essays, which I believe are really very close cousins of poetry. They use images and sound and although they do not rely on line breaks, they loop back at the end to the beginning and they offer “earned” insight.

Rodney
In short, what is the story behind your story writing?

Sheila
The story behind my writing is that I always felt that poems and fiction were truer than my daily existence. When I need to learn to be true to myself, I turned to poetry and personal essay writing. Now I count on them to keep me true to myself.

Rodney
How are you drawn to certain story ideas? In other words, where do you think your ideas come from? How do you know that it’s a good idea or an idea with potential? Have you noticed that there are certain times or places or circumstances that precede a writing idea?

Sheila
I am drawn to write when a certain feeling won’t leave me or when a certain sound, or sight, or piece of dialog I’ve heard or said sticks around and asks me to write from there. I write to commemorate what I find important–whether that be deaths or births or weddings or noticing my mom acting old. I have to trust my way into material–when I visited Hiroshima I was very affected, of course, but when I wrote about my time there it was because I had shared that visit with my daughter and realized more about my admiration for her. I felt odd not writing about “humanity” but I didn’t have a personal way into the tragedy. My way in was small, but I think touches people. When my mother-in-law was dying, I found that I wasn’t writing for her but for my husband who was with her. Again, I felt like I might be diminishing the significance of the occasion but realized that I could only write from my immediate concern.

Rodney
How does an idea become a manuscript? Why are you drawn to writing them down? Why can’t you just have an idea and leave it at that?

Sheila
Sometimes I can have an idea and let it go. I get ideas frequently. Sometimes I write from them because I have an article due or someone wants to hear from me. But other times something won’t let me alone and demands I sit down and explore why that is so. That’s when the writing makes me push all other demands of my life aside and just write until I am satisfied. I have come to count on that happening. In this way, I don’t chide myself for “not writing” or for not making time to write when I am busy. I know that the writing will make me sit down eventually and one rich poem or personal essay is more significant to me than measuring myself as prolific writer or not. Something becomes a manuscript when I have a need to discover something I don’t believe I can do any other way than by writing to learn what I know.

Rodney
What happens between “an idea” and “a finished story”? (Or, what is your writing and editing process?) For example, when you get an idea, do you write it down and do some sort of concept map or storyboard. Or do you just kind of wait for more ideas to evolve? Once you are convinced that you have the makings of a story, do you map out your story before you start? Or do you kind of “free write” until you have something to work with? Do you write from an outline? Or do you write from a basic concept, then take care of organizing it later? Do you revise and edit as you write or do you pretty much write a draft, then return to revise and edit?

Sheila
I suppose I have approached writing in all of these ways at times. Most often, I think I start with where I am sitting and what I have been doing and then let the images I’ve been involved with show up in my writing. From there it seems like they just keep happening and I am not in charge, the words are. I know I can fuzz out and lose the trail of words and feelings and then the writing is “lesser” but I keep going because I think that is the only way to find the trail again, or to have it find me. I will show raw material to a writing group or editor because I can work with their response to make myself write more deeply, to get more onto the page, to call myself on the places where I just wrote away from the opportunity to dig deeper.

Rodney
Is your writing and editing process pretty consistent from one story to the next or is it circumstantial?

Sheila
I think it is consistent.

Rodney
Do your stories turn out pretty much as you conceived them or do they tend to change and evolve as you write them? If they change, why do they change and how do you know the change is for the better?

Sheila
I don’t think I ever know how I think they should turn out.

Rodney
Do you have any dialogical or feedback process that you can identify?

Sheila
Yes, I have delineated a process I use and teach called “The Three-Step Response Method.” Rather than go into it here, I’ll provide a link to an article about it as I have written extensively about it and using it. This process enables almost anyone to be of help to a writer, and it also ensures that the writer is in charge of using the response to fix the writing in his or her own way. It encourages a system in which the writer is interested in learning what happens inside a reader as the reader reads the writing- in-progress and does not have to become defensive to keep “editorial opinions” from overtaking the work. Moreover, it means that the responders don’t have any power other than to be truthful in telling the writer what happens inside them as a result of what they are reading–this can be harder than being the teacher with the red pencil–it requires let go of fixing something and just being honest and able to say what feelings come up! Learning to speak about writing the way I am advising helps the responders become better responders to their own work, too–instead of judging it, they learn to feel their way through revisions. I also make sure whoever is responding begins by letting the writer know memorable phrases and words–no one wants to hear anyone talk about their writing without first knowing that person really heard the writing! I believe as a writer that in the process of drafting we have to abandon the idea that there is bad writing and that we are creating it! I think we have to say instead that “bad writing” is only the opportunity for good writing, and where the writing is not performing, we have to find the opportunity for good writing, what it is that we are avoiding or overlooking.

Rodney
Do you discuss your story with friends, family, and colleagues at various stages of the writing?

Sheila
Yes, I do this with whomever is available–my husband who is a great reader, my writing group when it meets, and a poetry colleague who I email with.

Rodney
Do you consult the writing of authors you admire for inspiration before and during development of a new story?

Sheila
I think it is very important to read others continually to keep the sound of effective writing in your ears and to find a way to clear space for writing and for listening for deep perception.

Do you go to the movies or watch certain television shows when you are writing?

Sheila
I read poetry and essays. I do something physical like exercise or walk or garden or drive.

Rodney
Don’t let any of these questions box you in; I am interested in any habits you may have that help you write.

Do you have any internal dialog or feedback process that you can identify? If so, what kinds of inner conversations do you have about your writing? Is it very similar to the ones you have when you cook dinner or make up a shopping list or is it somehow different?

Sheila
I think I have internalized the three-step response method and do a kind of deep listening to my work as a result. But I have learned not to stop if I think I am not writing well–it seems better to keep writing and then to return to what I have down after a break. Stopping seems like giving in to the critic who still lurks around saying, “Oh, you’re not good enough to write well, to get things down as well as the writers you admire.” I think the response method has helped me really hear where the writing is honest and true and doing its work and where it is just writing, just something but not the real thing yet.

Rodney
Does the writing of personal narratives change or influence you in anyway? Do you discover or learn new things in the process of writing a story? Do you “see” or perceive things differently during or after writing a story? Please describe anything of this nature.

Sheila
I am calmer after writing. I have grown as an individual as a consequence of my writing. I know a lot more and have been able to claim my life, the one I want to live or the one that wants to live through me rather than the one that others want me to live. I have more energy for the rest of life when I am writing, although immediately after finishing something I can be drained.