Each day when I go to write at our local library or our neighborhood coffee shop to write my memoir, Silence: What the Israel Defense Forces Taught Me about Faith, Empowerment and Courage, I’m already filled up with nervous anticipation:  will I make progress with this scene?  Can I get into the right mood and write without getting distracted?

Even as I’m writing this at home, I’m struggling. My nine month old is tearing the house apart. The morning dishes haven’t yet been washed and it’s already three thirty – almost time to pick up my nine year old from school. The poopy diapers has piled up. And today she’s a bit clingy – hardly letting me finish writing a sentence before she pulls on my pants wanting me to pick her up.

As you can probably fathom, it takes a great deal of creative scheduling to even get a chance to write. I have to pay a babysitter to watch my nine month old and I always have to leave the house. I’ve cried many times feeling unsupported trying to make it work. But I know that if I don’t write, the well will soon become dry.

Still, I have to move mountains to even get to write. I often question if the time away from my precious one is worth it. This sometimes fills me up with guilt. A mother’s guilt is never a good thing.

When I first started writing my memoir, I had a basic draft that was in “download mode” which I finished writing at the end of 2012, a few months before my mother passed away. Nothing in that draft made sense. Each scene was fragmented. Random names and their associations left the reader hanging. But it was a first draft. A first draft I had worked hard to create. A first “shitty” draft as Anne Lammott would say. And I was proud of that shitty draft.

How Badly Do You Want to Write the Bloody Thing?

A memoir is a collection of threads that when weaved together like a tapestry, tell a story that shows character transformation. The reader, who only wants to see him/herself in your story, doesn’t quite know what happens behind the scenes: they just see the physical or digital book. They don’t realize for instance, just how much courage it takes you every day to write your memoir and to get super-dirty in “memory-land.”

In January 2014, there were all sorts of voices leading me to all sorts of answers: You want to write to build a writer’s platform, and get my name as a memoirist out there. Maybe you’ll even make some money. I was also terribly excited to give voice to a story that the world at large does not know: there are no memoirs about a female who comes from another country to do the Israel Defense Forces. In fact to date, there aren’t any memoirs by a female about serving in the IDF. This is exciting news for someone like me!

When I allowed those voices to quiet down, I heard another rumble: “Admit it. You want to write the thing because you don’t just want to be stuck in “download” mode all your life.”

When I looked at my fragmented memoir draft, I felt like I’d been cooked. For the first time, I wanted to be THAT one who could write a story of transformation. With scenes that would stick together telling a hero’s story and with indelible characters that would make you laugh and cry and inspire you.

And so I came out of hiding.

With the condition that I would tell the REAL version of what I had experienced in Israel many years ago while serving in all those bases and on all those kibbutzim.

Learning to Be Proud of My Emotional “Story” Miles

Few people I know have left their comfort zones at eighteen for the sake of serving in the military let alone leaving another country.

Maybe I didn’t want other people to feel “less -than” because they’ve never left their country. Maybe I was afraid as to what they might think if I revealed my story. In any case, I kept these personal details and experiences but it kept me feeling less intimate with the story the minute I found out that I wasn’t just telling a military story.

At the end of the day, I saw a story that would culminate all these emotional impacts. It’s an immigrant story. It’s a  love story. It’s a story of military acculturation. It’s a universal story of finding a sense of belonging. It’s everything and more. And I’m the right one to tell it.

A story that is worth telling is a story the world needs to know.

How the Real Breakthrough with my Memoir Happened

I will be honest and say here that the only way I was in fact, able to experience a breakthrough was to write EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. (and I still do)

I know what you’re thinking – that’s impossible. Well, if I can do it, you can too. Seriously.

I write 15 minutes of Morning Pages from Julia Cameron’s “The Artist Way,” and I do a complete mind-dump. (I generally have a lot to say.) By the time 15 minutes however is over, I don’t fret if I’ve filled enough words for three pages as Cameron suggests. But I’ve learned to write fast and so, by the time 15 minutes is up, I’ve almost reached the three pages.  Then, my writing muscles are stretched and I’m ready to write my memoir.

You see…the more you write, the more comfortable you feel in it.

So I began to do a number of things with writing my memoir I’d never done before:

1. I got deeper with my character’s desires and wishes? For each chapter, I asked the timeless question, “What exactly do you want? What’s pressing you?

2. I approached this character “Dorit” and her emotional miles from NYC to Israel as if I didn’t quite know her story. I started seeing myself as writer and a reader and this prompted me to make stylistic decisions: how much of her backstory do I need to tell? What information about the Israel Defense Forces do I really need to tell for the reader to understand?

3. I began to see myself as a storyteller and NOT just someone with a story.

Oh and the other thing is that I began to access the deep farthest corners of my memory – the kind that were covered in cobwebs after years of lying dormant as a result of getting older and taking on more adult responsibilities. I heard the voices. I saw the clothes. I smelled the smells. I touched their face. And suddenly, just by magic, the scene – came alive!

When I was able to approach the writing in this way, I began more grounded in the scenes and driven by the story. That’s really what good writing is – good storytelling.

 

So… how about you? Did you make any breakthroughs – small or large — lately?

israeli-defense-forces-idf-t-shirtNow, if you’re just starting to get your story OUT there, then you’ll want to follow a step-by-step system that feels easy and authentic to you. Start with downloading the FREE e-workbook, “Three Steps to Writing a Kick-Ass About page” located in the upper right hand corner of this page.

If you have a quick sec, I’d love it if you could “LIKE” my author page for my memoir: Silence: What the Israel Defense Forces Taught Me About Faith, Empowerment and Courage.