Barbara Abercrombie - Courage and Craft: Writing Your Life into Story

MORE PRAISE FOR COURAGE & CRAFT

With Barbara, I found the courage not only to write with honesty and compassion, but to submit my work. In her class, I wrote an essay (with her guidance and encouragement) that was accepted into an anthology for Random House. That led to my selling a book, which included stories spawned directly from the exercises I did in Barbaras class. It was as if I was writing the book all along only in separate pieces. Barbara is a unique and inspiring teacher, smart, generous, encouraging, and skilled.

Monica Holloway, author of Driving with Dead People

Barbara Abercrombie is a truly gifted teacher this book is her gift to the writer within us all, whether accomplished professional or raw beginner.

Jacqueline Winspear, author of the Maisie Dobbs mystery series

Courage & Craft is the perfect guide for anyone who has ever been passionate about telling a story but feels too frustrated, nervous, unsure, unworthy, clueless, or terrified to proceed. Barbara Abercrombie grabs hold of your hand, gently pulls you along, and doesnt dream of letting you go until youre steady on your own two feet.

Jennie Nash, author of
The Victorias Secret Catalog Never Stops Coming

Barbara Abercrombie has been a hugely significant influence in my life as a writer. She taught me to take the critic off my shoulder and write without fear. She gave me the courage to take a short story and turn it into a novel that has just been published.

Linzi Glass, author of The Year the Gypsies Came

Barbara is an inspiring teacher she understands the heart, mind, and soul of a writer and with positive and constructive feedback, brings out the best in her students. Barbara taught me more than the craft of writing. She encouraged me to persevere. I am forever grateful for her guidance and support.

Nancy Minchella, author of Mama Will Be Home Soon

Barbara Abercrombie was my first fiction writing teacher, and the best. I learned so much in her Courage & Craft course that I took it three times. All of Barbaras exercises were designed to encourage her students to take risks, to try different styles, to consider undertaking larger writing projects. We, who were at first shy of reading our work aloud, began to look forward to it, and to getting feedback from this kindest of tough critics. I left her classes inspired to go home and do what writers must, face the blank screen and fill it.

Lisa Pearl Rosenbaum, author of A Day of Small Beginnings

One of Barbara Abercrombies writing students called her a Zen master of nurturing talent, dispelling fear, and communicating the art of writing. Courage & Craft is a true gift for aspiring writers. They now can experience Ms. Abercrombies special combination of encouragement, candor, discipline, and sheer luminosity as a teacher.

Linda Venis, director, UCLA Extension Writers Program

C OURAGE & C RAFT

ALSO BY BARBARA ABERCROMBIE

Novels

Good Riddance
Run for Your Life

Nonfiction

Writing Out the Storm

Poetry

Traveling without a Camera

(with Norma Almquist and Jeanne Nichols)

Books for Young People

Amanda & Heather & Company
Bad Dog, Dodger!
Cat-Mans Daughter
Charlie Anderson
Michael and the Cats
The Other Side of a Poem
The Show-and-Tell Lion

WRITING YOUR LIFE INTO STORY

BARBARA ABERCROMBIE

New World Library
Novato, California

Copyright 2007 by Barbara Abercrombie

Sections on journal writing and the personal essay have appeared in different form in The Writer magazine and online at Barbara Abercrombies website, www.WritingTime.net. Dark Saddles of Greed was originally published in the Santa Monica Mirror.

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, or other without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

For permission acknowledgments, please see page 143.

Text design and typography by Tona Pearce Myers

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Abercrombie, Barbara.

Courage and craft : writing your life into story / Barbara Abercrombie.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-1-57731-601-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. AutobiographyAuthorship. I. Title.

CT25.A23 2007

First printing, October 2007

ISBN-10: 1-57731-601-0

ISBN-13: 978-1-57731-601-5

Printed in the United States on 50% postconsumer-waste recycled paper

New World Library is a proud member of the Green Press Initiative.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Brooke

1. GETTING STARTED:
MUSES AND JOURNALS

2. PERSONAL ESSAYS:
SHORT TAKES

3. MEMOIR AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY:
WRITING YOUR OWN HISTORY

4. AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL FICTION:
WRITING LIES AND TRUTH

Here is my goal for you with this book: by the time you finish it youll have written a crafted story about your life, either a short piece or the opening chapter of a book. Maybe your life is free and clear right now and youll do it in six days, or maybe your writing will have to be wedged into an already full schedule of going to work or to school or both; taking care of kids, house, pets, family; and itll take you six months. But the deal is that after years of dreaming about writing, or feeling stuck and unable to write, or not knowing what to do with your writing, youll write something that has a beginning, a middle, and an ending. Youll finish a story or a chapter or an essay.

This book is about finding the courage to put your story down on the page no matter how disjointed it is or how sloppy your first draft may be, and no matter how revealing and personal it is. Its also about crafting your story, shaping and editing this piece of your life into an essay, memoir, fictional story, or family history. Writing is about discovering who you really are, where youve been, and where youre headed. Its about turning the messy, crazy, wonderful, and sad stuff in your life into something that has order and clarity and meaning a piece of writing that other people can connect to and be moved by.

Only you can tell your story, your version of what really happened. Only you know what you heard, what the weather was like that day, the view out the window, the smells and sounds, the phone call, the hilarious moments and the dark ones, the adventure, the frustration, and what it was that made your heart pound. Only you can write about what changed, what will never be the same again. Only you can write what you felt.

Maybe the story you want to write is just one phase of your life, a memoir: your coming of age, becoming a parent, your divorce, the death of someone you loved deeply, or any passage of time or event that changed the direction of your life. Or perhaps your story is a short piece, a personal essay about frustration that turns into humor or a serious event that causes you to look under the surface of ordinary life. Or fiction might be the way to write your story, covering your tracks with a blend of the true and the made-up. Or maybe you want to tell it all in an autobiography your whole life up until now, including a family history of past generations.