Dirty Secret: Writing Through the Mess

Blog Hiatus

Jessie — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 23:17:39 +0000

Dear readers,

I have enjoyed this blog and very much appreciate the comments and emails I’ve gotten, so this wasn’t an easy decision, but I’m afraid I’m so swamped with deadlines and other personal and professional commitments that I need to take a hiatus from blogging.

That said, feel free to email me: jessie [dot] sholl [at] gmail.com, or find me on Facebook or Twitter — the links for both are to the ~~left~~ — and that’s my geographical dyslexia kicking in — sorry, links are to the RIGHT.

Thanks for all of your support for Dirty Secret and for me, personally.

Jessie

The Accidental Creative — an excerpt

Jessie — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 00:00:28 +0000

My fantastic agent, Melissa Sarver, has been raving about this book, The Accidental Creative: How to Be Brilliant at a Moment’s Noticefor a while. So the other day, I picked up a copy and was charmed immediately. And inspired. Since this blog is about writing of all kinds (and, yes, also about hoarding) I thought an excerpt from the book might be helpful to and appreciated by my readers. So I emailed the author, Todd Henry, and he very kindly agreed to let me post a short section of his book. Here it is:

Are You Limited By False Assumptions?

A few years ago my family visited Lake Erie for a long Fourth of July holiday. As evening approached, we were preparing to walk to the pier to watch the fireworks when our five-year-old middle son started getting nervous. We explained that fireworks are fun and that there was no reason to be afraid, but he was having none of it. We finally persuaded him to make the trek to the lake, but he protested all the way. When we arrived at the perfect vantage point and began setting up our blankets, his protests grew frantic.

“Owen,” I said, “fireworks are perfectly safe. They’re not going to fall on you.”

“I’m not worried about them falling on me,” Owen replied. “Fireworks make my feet fuzzy.”

“They make your feet fuzzy?” I replied, puzzled.

“Yes. Like at Disney World.”

We had taken a vacation to Disney World the previous year, and because his short legs prevented him from keeping up, Owen had ridden my shoulders around the park. At one point an unexpected plume of fireworks startled him. At the time, he had been sitting on my shoulders for an hour or so, and his legs had fallen asleep. Shaken out of his reverie by the fireworks, he realized that he had lost all feeling in his feet. His four-year-old mind assumed that it was the fireworks that had made his feet “fuzzy.”

For more than a year, I realized, Owen had carried this assumption with him and had lived in terror of feet-zapping fire- works. I was eventually able to convince him that fireworks have absolutely nothing to do with what he felt in his feet when he was on my shoulders, but to this day he is still a little nervous around them.

What my son experienced is something we must guard against in our creative work. Our minds are excellent at solving problems and forming patterns. It’s the primary reason we’re able to survive past the age of two. We learn from our experiences, and some of those lessons keep us from making mistakes that could significantly harm us, like touching a hot stove or punching some- one bigger than us. But this ability to connect the dots can also cause us to adopt false assumptions about cause and effect.

For example, it’s easy to assume that because something has always been done a certain way, that must be the one and only right way to do it. We sometimes develop the assumption that because a system or method brought us success in one instance, it will always do so. Or we may assume that because something didn’t work in one instance, it will never work under any circumstances. Any of these assumptions can, over time, be disastrous to our creative process because they limit how we look at problems.

False assumptions can limit the options we have at our disposal as we attempt to generate ideas. Can you think of any false assumptions that have limited your ability to do your best work?

Excerpted from THE ACCIDENTAL CREATIVE: HOW TO BE BRILLIANT AT A MOMENT’S NOTICE by Todd Henry. Learn more at http://www.theaccidentalcreative.com

Thanks, Todd, for letting me use this excerpt here. Readers, what do you think? As Todd asked above, can you think of any false assumptions that have limited you?

I have news! Hoarding related.

Jessie — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 03:17:36 +0000

My mom and I, sometime around ... well, I'd rather not say the year. Let's just say I'm four. That's why I'm sticking out my tongue like that. By five, I'd totally stopped doing that.

Breaking: This Friday, August 5th, I am going to appear on ABC’s 20/20 to talk about being the child of a hoarder. Other COHs (that’s what we cool kids call “children of hoarders”) and some hoarding parents — including my mother — will be there too. If you’ve read my book and have any interest in seeing the real Helen (which is not her real name, though she begged me not to change it), tune in! Please.

And then after you watch it, please tell me what you thought of it. In a nice way, of course. Perhaps by carrier pigeon.

UPDATE: Click here for a preview of the show!

In other news, most likely to the irritation of my neighbors, I’m playing this song over and over again. Just listen to it and tell me you don’t want to hear it at least once more.

I don’t believe you.

Making the Switch: Writing Fiction, Memoir, then Fiction

Jessie — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 22:57:23 +0000

Sometimes I almost forget that when I began writing — a million years ago, as an undergraduate — I was only interested in fiction. I wrote short stories, dozens of beginnings to novels, and eventually an actual novel (that didn’t sell). Around 2005, I began writing personal essays. Then health articles. And then my memoir, Dirty Secret.

Now I find myself drawn to writing fiction again … a novel, in particular, that picks up where my previous attempt at one left off. But it’s hard to put my brain back into fiction mode. Nonfiction seems so easy in comparison: the scenes, character traits, turning points, and endings are already there. The writer’s responsibility is to choose what belongs in which particular story arc. EASY.

No, not really. It’s not easy.

But writing fiction is seeming … less easy. Or it was until recently. Now, it’s getting better. It’s getting better because I found something to ease the mental whiplash I was experiencing from switching between fiction and nonfiction and back. (I will not call what I was experiencing writer’s block, because I don’t believe in writer’s block.)

What was it I found? A book, of course.

Backing up a bit: A while back I had the honor of being a guest on Barbara DeMarco-Barrett’s radio show, Writers on Writing, where we discussed the difference between writing memoir and writing fiction, amongst other things. (Her show is really good, by the way — if you’re interested in writing, you should listen to it!) Then, a few weeks ago, I picked up a copy of Barbara’s book, Pen on Fire: A Busy Woman’s Guide to Igniting the Writer Within.

The first thing I did was the 15-minute exercise, which involves freewriting for 15 minutes. I couldn’t believe how, well, freeing it was. And the funny thing is — or maybe it’s not funny — that I tell my students about this exercise all the time. It’s one of the things I usually say on the first day of the semester: “If you’re stuck, write for 15 minutes without censoring yourself or stopping. Just write.” For some reason I’d forgotten just how helpful freewriting is. And the book has lots of other helpful exercises and tips, too.

I’m so glad I picked up Pen on Fire. It really is reigniting me.

Question: what are some good writing tips you’ve gotten? And if you’re not a writer, there’s certainly something creative you do. How do you stay inspired and active?

Memoir Monday: Q&A with Rebecca K. O’Connor

Jessie — Mon, 09 May 2011 13:45:17 +0000

Rebecca K. O’Connor is an author, animal trainer, and conservationist. She’s the author of natural reference books, a parrot training manual, a romance novel, and most recently, a memoir. It was this memoir, Lift, that caught my eye last year. I love birds, which is why I was originally drawn to Lift, but it’s about so much more. It’s a beautifully written tale of a mother-daughter relationship, a love story, and the fascinating sport of falconry. I found it unputdownable. (Yes, that is a word.)

I read this quote by you: “There are two journeys when you have a memoir. There’s the journey of the memoir itself and the journey of writing the memoir. Writing the memoir is the harder, deeper journey than what actually happened.” I couldn’t agree more, from my own experience. Can you tell me a little about the process of writing Lift, in terms of that harder, deeper journey?

In the books I love the most characters evolve, because in life people grow. I was the main character in Lift and I wasn’t entirely sure what had changed in me. So I started asking myself the hard questions about my motivations, my stumbles, my fears and hurts. I had only lived the story in the book. When I wrote it I had to find the meaning in it. Some of things I decided about who I was or had been were a surprise to me. A lot of them were painful. In fact some of the hardest things I wrote about didn’t even make it in my final edit of the book. I went to the dark places though and I think that still bubbles up through the text. Whether that work I did makes it a good book or not, it did make the writing of Lift a life-shifting experience and I am grateful for that.

What about the logistics of writing — do you believe in outlines? Do you write every day or in spurts?

I write in some way most every day – in morning pages or in inspired bursts or methodically on a piece or book that I’m determined to finish. I start and stop on projects and try to forgive myself when I stall and get back at it a page at a time. I believe strongly in outlines, but I’m always rewriting them. It’s like life. I can’t stand not having a plan, but I’m willing to constantly change the plan as I go.

Did you read other memoirs when you were working on yours? Are there any that you’d recommend? What are some of your other favorite books?

I read stacks of memoirs when I was writing and looked for opportunities to work with the authors of the books that resonated the most with me. Kim Barnes was one of these writers and her affect on my work was huge. Some of my favorites are here. My all-time favorite novel is Mark Helprin’s Winter’s Tale. I’ve always loved magical realism. I think Aimee Bender is wonderful too. The literary book that I most recently adored was Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin. I don’t normally fess up but I love good fantasy, horror and adventure too. (Gillian Flynn, Joe Hill, Cherie Priest.)

What advice do you have for aspiring memoirists?

Memoir isn’t so much about the author’s life as it is about the reader’s life. I didn’t understand the totality of this until Lift was published and readers started telling me what they thought it meant in the context of their own lives. So don’t write memoir to tell the world about yourself. (The world won’t listen.) Write memoir to explain the world to yourself. (Everyone is looking for an explanation of this mystifying place.)

What are you working on now?

I am halfway through and struggling with a post-apocalyptic wilderness novel with a strong young female protagonist journeying across a re-wilded but uninhabited west. (Think Jurassic Park meets Castaway with maybe a bit of Hunger Games thrown in.) Funny thing is I thought it would be a relief to get away from memoir for a bit, but I find myself asking hard questions again about who I am and what this book means. Every time I think I’ve made huge strides in this journey of writing, I realize I’ve really only made baby steps. Like I’ve often heard it said though, writing is cheaper than therapy…

Thanks so much, Rebecca! Readers, for more information please visit Rebecca’s website. And good news: July 1st Lift will be released as an eBook, along with Rise, a companion book of essays, poetry, and short stories. Here’s the trailer for Rise.

A Hoarding-less Post! This Time: Phobias! (One, Anyway.)

Jessie — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 14:26:29 +0000

Anyone who has read Dirty Secret, or knows me at all, is aware of my pretty much paralyzing snake phobia. I won’t go into the reasons for my phobia here — hey, read the book! — but let it suffice to say, it’s severe.

Prior to yesterday, the last time I saw a real, live snake was about four years ago: My husband and I were hiking when we came upon a fat one sunning himself in the middle of our intended trail. As if he had every right to be there! How did I react to the sight of the coiled creature? By bursting into tears and refusing to take another step, of course. My poor husband had to pull me past it (him? her?) with my eyes closed.

We have another big hiking trip coming up in May. The serpent-themed nightmares had already begun when I saw a posting from The Institute of Living in Hartford, CT. They were seeking phobic subjects for a study on exposure therapy — specifically, they wanted snake phobic people. I signed up right away.

My first session was last week. I was strapped into an MRI machine to get scans of my brain, specifically my amygdala, the brain’s fear center, as I looked at pictures of snakes. Normally, photos of snakes in magazines, images of them on television or in movies — even simply imagining one — sends me into a panic. I won’t even eat eel sushi because of the resemblance. In the MRI machine as I looked at the images, I did freak out, but not as badly as I’d expected. The images were behind me and reflected off a mirror above me, sort of like a submarine scope, and I think it was that layer between myself and the images that kept me from having a full-fledged meltdown.

Yesterday, I went back to the clinic. To meet a real snake. As in alive. As in able to bare its poison-filled fangs and strike at any second.

The purpose of the study I’m participating in is to examine how an antibiotic called D-cycloserine affects brain activation in phobic patients receiving exposure therapy. The hope is that this antibiotic may accelerate the exposure therapy process, so that fewer sessions will be necessary. Like maybe even only one.

At the clinic, I took the dose of either a placebo or the antibiotic and an hour later, it was time to see … IT. A corn snake named Shazaam. As soon as Andrea, the clinician leading the study, opened the door to the room where Shazaam lay waiting in his aquarium, I burst into tears. Yup.

But then, over the next 90 minutes, at Andrea’s gentle urgings I got closer and closer … until … this:

This is me, holding a snake. And not dying! Or crying!

And this:

That's right, a real live snake around my neck. And I'm fine!

My new buddy Shazaam is actually kind of cute. His head looks like a puppy’s. My fingers are crossed that this new, non-phobic me lasts; I really want to enjoy the hiking trip in May, and I want to stop being such a fearful, messy burden on my husband if we do encounter one of Shazaam’s kin. What about you? What phobia interferes with your life?

Memoir Monday: Q&A with the Fabulous Janice Erlbaum!

Jessie — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 17:02:32 +0000

I’ve ~~written~~ gushed about Janice Erlbaum’s two memoirs before. But now, for the first time in Dirty Secret history, she is going to speak for herself. Right here! Right now! Read on and I guarantee you’ll become as big a fan as I am.

Your first memoir, Girlbomb, chronicles your experience, as the subtitle states, as a “halfway homeless” adolescent. How did you feel after writing the book as opposed to before you began? Did anything change for you through the process of writing it?

YES. I found so much empathy for people like my mother, my friends, my old roommates, ex-boyfriends — even my stepfather, whose violent temper caused me to leave home at fifteen. He didn’t ask to be born with bad chemistry; underneath his mental illness, he was a very intelligent man with a sardonic wit. I realized that my mother was thirty-six around the time she was first trying to leave him; she had a two-year-old son and an emotionally disturbed fourteen-year-old daughter to care for, and she was self-employed. Meanwhile, I was thirty-four, I had neither kids nor a violent spouse, and I still could barely keep my shit together on a daily basis. So I had to start seeing my mother as a frightened young person, and not a mean old one. And my friends, even the ones who deserved air quotes around that word — they had it just as bad as me, I just didn’t recognize it at the time. The first draft of the book was, like, “They all sucked and I was great!” By the second, I realized that I sucked too, and that sucking is the universal condition because it’s basically everyone doing the best we can do.

What advice would you give to the 15-year-old Janice now?

“You don’t have to actually have penetrative sex with all those guys — if you spit in your hand, you can get away with a handjob.” Also, “Only do half as many drugs as I did, which still leaves you a hefty half, but hopefully keeps you from nearly dropping dead.” Oh, and, “Don’t steal.” Otherwise I’d pretty much do it all the same, or so I think now, from the safety of my (really nice and comfortable) apartment.

Was the writing process different with your second memoir, Have You Found Her, and if so, how?

The process was much different. In the first book, I was writing about stuff that happened eighteen years before, stuff I’d had a lot of time to process. The second book was written while it was happening, while I was still an emotional mess over it, with no perspective on it at all. If I thought the first book was emotionally taxing, I was soon to find that the second was even worse. There were times while writing that I was so overcome with sadness or anger or adrenaline that I had to go into the bathroom at my public workspace and cry it out for a minute. (Actually, that happened with the first book too, but I worked alone from home back then, so I just cried at my desk.)

Have You Found Her takes place in the same shelter you stayed in as an adolescent, only now as an adult you’re volunteering there. Do you still volunteer (either there or other places) and if so, has anything changed in either the way you approach volunteering or your expectations from it, as a result of the events in the book?

I do volunteer! I decided, after the Unfortunate Incidents described in the second book (which I usually call “Flounder,” for brevity’s sake), that I should stay away from the place that reminded me so much of my past, because volunteering wasn’t supposed to be about me. Since then, I’ve worked with organizations like Girls Write Now (girlswritenow.org) and GEMS (gems-girls.org), where I’ve had the chance to talk with young women about writing and its role in creating a better life for yourself. I’ve also done some fundraisers, which I recommend to people who are looking to volunteer — start with a fundraiser, a small thing with friends even, and drum up some donations. Some organizations need money more than they need bodies, and this way you can start small and not overcommit.

Both of your memoirs, but especially Have You Found Her, read like novels. Have you written novels before this? Do you plan to write one?

Oy. I could write a novel in response to this question. I have written a few novel drafts, but nothing has panned out yet and AUGH it pains me. Trying, trying, trying. We’ll see.

Thank you, Janice, for participating! Readers, please visit her at www.girlbomb.com.

Dirty Secret #77 — Highlights from the Book Tour

Jessie — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 18:01:11 +0000

I spent last week in San Francisco and Los Angeles, on a mini book tour. There are always so many reasons not to attend a reading: people are busy, sometimes the bookstores are hard to get to, and let’s face it, sometimes readings themselves are tedious. That’s why I appreciate it so much when people make it out to them! So thank you! You know who you are. Here are some snaps from the readings:

This is from the first reading, at the El Cerrito Barnes & Noble.

At Book Passage in San Francisco's Ferry Building. I love this store!

This is a sort of weird, head-cut-off shot — I forgot to bring my camera, so all the photos were taken on cell phones.

The Huntington Beach Barnes & Noble.

Here’s a shot from when I was on the San Diego Fox 5 morning show with the amazing and talented Cynthia Lester, whose film My Mother’s Garden has been an inspiration to many children of hoarders, including myself.

Click here to watch the whole five-minute clip!

C’mon, it’s just five minutes…

Thank you, California people, for making last week so fabulous!

And New Yorkers, guess what? You’ll have your chance next … I’m reading at the Barnes & Noble in Tribeca on Wednesday, February 2nd at 7pm. I would be eternally grateful if you’d come and say hi!

Dirty Secret: The Book, The Blog Tour

Jessie — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 03:57:25 +0000

This evening I saw my book on a bookstore shelf for the first time (in person, I mean, not in a photo). It was: bizarre, thrilling, and somehow it felt very sneaky to hold the book in my hands and pretend to be interested in it for reasons other than the fact that I wrote it. In this photo, if you look closely, you can see Dirty Secret in the back row, toward the right side.

In addition to the readings and interviews I’m doing, I’m embarking on a book blog tour. The first stop is Stephanie Elizondo Griest’s Around the Bloc, and the next is Caroline Leavitt’s blog. I’m grateful to my hosts and having a lot of fun so far … please stay tuned; as new blog tour posts are posted, I’ll list them here:

January 3rd: Book Addiction
January 5th: Cynthia Omololu’s blog
January 6th: The awesome Alice Bradley on her blog for Redbook
January 10th: The Girl from the Ghetto
January 11th: Meredithdias.com
January 12th: Books are my Thing
January 14th: Stacked
January 17th: Confessions of a Book Hoarder
January 18th: Girls Gone Reading
January 20th: Q&A on Confessions of a Book Hoarder
January 24th: The New Yorker
January 25th: Bibliophiliac
January 27th: At Home with Books
January 31st: Crazy for Books

PS: Check out the January 17th issue of People magazine … 3.5 stars out of 4!

Dirty Secret: the Book, the Events

Jessie — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 16:33:15 +0000

I arrived home last night to the snowiest New York, and what’s waiting outside my door but a box of books! Dirty Secret exists! So surreal.

Officially it comes out tomorrow, but it’s in stores now! Which means I’m way overdue for posting the Dirty Secret-related events I’ll be doing over the next month or so, including:

Tuesday, December 28th: I’ll be a guest on the Leonard Lopate Show on WNYC at 12:40pm EST. UPDATE–Here’s the link for the interview.

Tuesday, January 4th: I’ll be a guest on the Judith Regan show on Sirius XM Radio at 11:30am EST.

Monday, January 24th: I’ll be a guest on KVON-AM radio at 7:30am PST.

Monday, January 24th: Reading and signing at Barnes & Noble in El Cerrito, CA at 7:00pm PST.

Tuesday, January 25th: Reading and signing at Book Passage, in San Francisco’s Ferry Building at 6:00pm PST.

Thursday, January 27th: Reading and signing at Barnes & Noble in Huntington Beach, CA at 7:00pm PST.

Friday, January 28th: Television appearance on Fox 5 News in San Diego, CA. The exact time and more details to come.

Wednesday, February 2nd: Reading and signing at Barnes & Noble, Tribeca location, New York City. 7:00pm EST.

I hope to see you at one of these events soon!