Beth Kaplan - True to Life: Fifty Steps to Help You Write Your Story

S ome years ago I went to a writing workshop in Siena, Italy, run by Torontos School for Writers at Humber College. My reasons for going to one of the worlds most sublime countries were obviouspasta and paintings, for a start. I wasnt sure, though, why Id submit my writing to a workshop when I myself had been teaching writing at a university for more than a decade. Id also recently finished my first book, a massive biography of my great-grandfather whod once been known as the Jewish Shakespeare, and at that moment, a respected New York agent was looking for a publisher.

For my presentation to the workshop, I selected the books first fifteen pages, which introduced both the old man and me, his great-granddaughter. But as I sent them off, I thought, I have an agent. I dont need to work on this.

And yet I knew I did. It was on those few pages that Wayson Choy, the extraordinary workshop leader, novelist, memoirist, and master teacher, would base his comments. And when it was my turn to be critiqued, he let me have itright, as my dad would say, in the kishkas. The tender bits, deep inside.

Beths pages are journalism, not creative non-fiction, Wayson announced to my classmates, who had all read my piece. There are two voices. Every so often we hear the heartbreaking, personal, honest daughter and great-granddaughter. And then she vanishes into the objective journalist again. Wheres the story? Wheres the dirty laundry? Where are the hot bits? Without these, all weve got are details on a tombstone.

He turned to me. Where are you? Wheres your father?

But, I said, this isnt about me or my father. Its about the Jewish Shakespeare. I burst into tears.

As far as I can see, said Wayson, its also about a woman struggling to know her father by learning about his family. You lack courage to tell the whole story, the real story. Your view is buried by nos from your father, your mother, yourself. Youre being a good child, living in fear.

He came close to me, intent. You must risk telling what is true. If you dont tell the story truthfully, it isnt worth telling.

I felt like Id been plowed under by a tractor. A wise, helpful, ten-ton tractor.

Cut the psychological umbilical cord, the teacher said to the class, as I patted my eyes. The duty of the living is to heal the living. The dead owe us their stories. They can set us free.

WAYSON HAD SENSED that I was ready to hear his tough words, and he was right. Hed cracked open a great vulnerability: My charismatic, brilliant, sometimes terrifying father, whod been dead for fifteen years, was haunting me.

The class broke for lunch, and the others vanished discreetly, leaving me on my own. Dazed, I walked into the perfumed air of Siena in October. I wandered to the magnificent Piazza del Campothe towns central plaza and sat outside at a trattoria, gazing at the great bowl of the open arena in front of me. Crowds of citizens and tourists were walking by or sprawled on the ground, warming their limbs on the ancient stones.

And I invited my fatherthe ghost of my fatherto join me. He and I sat side-by-side, our faces to the sky. How he loved travel, Italy, the hot sun. How he loved the black espresso I was drinking for us both. As we sat, he was devouring the scene, wanting everything: to eat all the food, to sleep with all the beautiful women, to argue with all the men.

And I was looking at the miracle of human creativity the graceful medieval buildings of Tuscany, beautiful in a way nothing in North America is beautiful. Im not hungry like Dad was hungry, I thought. Im not fearful as he was fearful. I have hungers and fears, but theyre not the same as his.

I turned to him, the great force I loved profoundly even when he caused me pain. Such intelligence, humour, and love in the eyes; incomprehensible fury, too.

Dad, I said, I dont want to protect you anymore.

Write what you need to write, bella Pupikina, he replied, using my favourite nickname, a mixture of Italian and Yiddish. Im proud of you.

And I knew he was.

I FINISHED THE bitter coffee and walked to the bell tower in the Piazza. Because it had started to rain, I was the last person admitted to climb the four hundred steps to the top. Once there, I stood alone, enraptured, before the timeless sweep of the city: the dark red roofs, the golden Tuscan stone, the grey-green hills and olive groves beyond. In the sky above the marble-streaked clouds, there for me alone, was a rainbow. The shimmering arc was such a clich, it made me laugh out loud.