Intuitive

Bhanu Kapil and Voice/Memoir and Counseling

April 27, 2013 by janellmoon Leave a Comment

Bhanu Kapil was in town from Naropa University and did a performance piece as a red bundle
on the floor. With words from her voice on tape we saw her life as a living body, a body
downed by migration and loss. She shows through the small movement of her body through the
cloth that she is alive and moving but barely so, a human under assault.

The idea of a voice from the body is one that we all need to consider. How would our story
be told from the body? Are you cut off as many are? Would you need to use your body to be
in present time and it would have to be your practice? What words are left out of your
narrative if your body is barely alive? Joyous, liberty, spunk? What verbs are not being
used?

Bhanu has the quality of a writer who writes in a revealed/concealed way where the narrative
takes you along barely allowing you to know the story and yet you respond to it and it
becomes your story along with hers. This is the benefit of having not a full narrative of
logic. This is a voice then that is totally hers and then shared to become “our”.

In counseling the process of being alive or becoming alive after trauma is common. Actually
journal writing helps clarify your concerns. Many find counseling as helpful, journal keeping
as extending the session, and then swimming or walking a way to be in the here and now.
The voice of being is the body, mind and spirit and you can chose to develop the parts of yourself
left behind.

Filed Under: Blog, Books, Counseling, Creative Life, Identity, Intuitive, Memoir, Poetry, Sensate, Stage-of-life crisis, Transition, Writing, Writing as Process, Writing Coach

Counseling Medical Problems Give Meaning to Memoir

April 14, 2013 by janellmoon Leave a Comment

In the last few months I have worked using hypnotherapy and counseling to help with the emotional
part of pain and illness. We never create illness but there is always an emotional component and
this is the component we can lighten or eliminate. There was a student who started to be afraid to
fly and needed to do so for her research. Using hypnosis there were two stark memories of losing
someone suddenly. Not to plane crashes but instantly. The sorrow and fear had transferred to flying.
Rashes started up on her arms as she readied to fly. By linking the events and teaching her to deeply
relax on her own after her body had had some experience with me as a facilitator, her body knew how
to find relaxation. By the way, the rashes were due to anger, anger at what had happened and how she
thought it was unfair to lose her loved ones in this way. Once taught to release her anger in positive
ways and steadying herself with self hypnosis using the affirmation “All is well” and sometimes sneaking
in “The Pilot doesn’t want to do either.”

After listening to her and helping her with her anger and fear, I started thinking how interesting it is when feelings transfer from trauma to something in the daily life. It would be an interesting creative memoir to read the story of how the imagination (mind) can link events and the imagination (mind) can heal events. The same. What the mind is capable of. What we have in our control. Memoir and life. How to
make it in a story. Where to start? In the counselor’s office with problem? Long ago in loss. Anxiety
is a difficult concern. No one should live with high levels of anxiety, it’s too life draining and you
deserve a better life in the here and now.

Filed Under: Anxiety Reduction, Blog, Events, Hypnotherapy, Identity, Intuitive, Medical problem, Writing, Writing Coach

The Sense of An Ending by Julian Barnes

October 29, 2012 by janellmoon Leave a Comment

I changed my mind and it feels good to do so. I didn’t enjoy the lackluster voice of the protagonist in The Sense of An Ending until I sat down and read it for a length of time; sometimes reading a chunk of a book at one time makes a difference to me in how I can register a book’s tone and voice. Well, I settled in with in and came to like this 60′s man who was really an ordinary “every man” who took what life gave him and made it enough. Not pro-active until the end. The book became an alternative to Catcher in the Rye with the same sensibility. The book was forming a puzzle I was unaware of and once caught in the puzzle and given the ending, I find myself rereading the book and enjoying it even more.

The Sense of an Ending is an excellent book for a memoir writer to study the voice of the protagonist. The memoir needs to be written in the author’s natural voice, a tone that includes others and is not too congratulatory. Recently, according to news reports, ex-Prime Minister Tony Blaire wrote a memoir he called The Journey. After payment of $3.6 million for an advance, at the last minute, he was asked to make himself less self important. The title was changed to A Journey.

You know what I am taking about. The perfect aunt who could have been a better mother to her niece than her own sister. The older brother who could do nothing wrong in childhood and became a champ in adult life. No stumbles on the way. Sometimes the tone is too self involved, other times the tone relies on editing out difficulties. We’re not interested unless it’s a telling of a the ups and downs of a real life.

Watch any sour grapes. Grapes don’t taste good when over ripe. The tone will put your readings off. If you have been the victim as a child, that’s not your fault. To write only from the victim place as an adult, is hard to believe and read. If you had a terrible childhood and want to write how you not only survived, but thrived, please wait to write your story, important that it might be, until you’ve done some forgiving of yourself and your abusers. No one wants to read about someone being all bad or all good. It may be how we feel at times, but it isn’t going deeply enough into the experience. You probably need more healing before you’re ready to get it out of your journal. That’s what is exciting about memoir. The author shows others how they left their miserable horse behind and became stronger for the difficulty or more compassionate. Not all healed, no unaffected, but able to make a life for yourself and we want to hear about it.

Filed Under: Books, Creative Life, editing, Essay, Identity, Intuitive, Memoir, Sensate, Stage-of-life crisis, Transition, Uncategorized, Writing, Writing Coach

Reading and Writing Helps Memoir

October 16, 2012 by janellmoon Leave a Comment

Read for Benecia Literary Arts and audience seemed to like the female touch in Salt and Paper: 65 Candles. Cooperative, peaceful, spiritual, living life with meaning of contribution and higher calling.

Reading Julian Barnes for a book group led by Pat Holt, former SF Chronicle’s book review. We’re thinking of what would make a modern classic where woman are portrayed realistically as powerful as they often are. Enough of the put downs of women and what is womanly. Julian Barnes book is The Sense of an Ending and is about memory. I’ll let you know what I think of this novel.

I find that anything I read helps me with my own writing. The Barnes book has a voice I don’t much like but the story is different. I want to follow this voice and see if it takes any turns that makes me change my mind and if I would consider it for a modern classic. More later.

Filed Under: Books, Creative Life, Intuitive, Memoir, Sensate, Uncategorized, Writing, Writing Coach

Writing and the Egrets

June 3, 2012 by janellmoon Leave a Comment

Went on a walk in Alameda, CA, about thirty minutes from where I live on the marsh in Emeryville, to see the egrets nesting. Although we have egrets here, I understand there are about twenty places in this San Francisco bay area that they actually build a nest and lay their eggs. They nest in colonies and the trees they pick and return to year after year are often called colonized trees because many nests are built in one tree or an several close by trees.

Last night I saw three huge nests in an evergreen overlooking the swampy canal and about twenty-five snowy egrets and the larger yellow billed egrets building nests in the same tree. The snowy egrets have black bills and black larges with yellow (boots) feet. The yellow billed egret has, of course, a yellow bill and yellow legs. Easy to distinguish by color and size. They were easy to see and fun to watch them gathering twigs and adding to the huge nests and even fighting over a twig or, perhaps, territory.

I had never heard them “talking” to each other and marveled at all the sounds they make as they build a nest. They “talk” in two syllables of two tones so it sounds like Rare-bit or Lar-ry. One unaccented syllable, one with the accented down beat.

How does this related to writing memoir? How can nature make memoir richer? You may already know that part of the magic of memoir is that everything you experience makes you who you are and if you give yourself magical experiences, you become more magical yourself. Your relationship to awe shows in your writing.

In other words, you may never write about the time you went to the marsh to see the egrets, but you have in your body a time of observing nature’s cycle in these beautiful birds, some with fluffy white headdresses and the long s of a neck carrying bits of trees in their long beaks.

Filed Under: Books, Communication problems, Counseling, Creative Life, editing, Essay, Events, Hypnotherapy, Identity, Intuitive, Memoir, Poetry, Sensate, Stage-of-life crisis, Transition, Visual Art, Writing, Writing Coach

Alison Bechtel’s new book Are You My Mother?

May 12, 2012 by janellmoon Leave a Comment

Just saw Alison Bechtel at San Francisco’s Booksmith Height Street. (What a neighborhood to remind us of the 60′s and the “flower children” we once were.) It was a crowd of all ages and orientations and the store actually felt warm and inviting with the energy of the crowd coming from folks that wanted connecting. This is what Alison does for us. She helps us connect with her experiences of family and allows us to appreciate the truth in what we have lived, rather than the illusions of our defense.

As she tells the story of her mother, she answers the title’s real question, who am I? Her wavering sense of self is displayed and we understand what it’s like to be with her mother and how that relationship helped form her.

As a graphic art memoir, she brings a whole new audience to reading books and shows her talent through text and drawing. She is remarkably talented and a boon to outsiders everywhere. A lesbian who shows who she is and asks us to share with her.

Reading her form from a memoir editor’s eye,I see she plays with time as associated memories, it shows one of the many ways we can approach our own story. She shows us that just as our experiences are unique so can our approach to the retelling be done in our own way.

Filed Under: "As Told to...", Aging, Anxiety Reduction, Books, Communication problems, Counseling, Creative Life, editing, Enneagram, Essay, Events, Hypnotherapy, Identity, Intuitive, Memoir, Poetry, Stage-of-life crisis, Transition, Visual Art, Writing, Writing Coach

Adrienne Rich

April 20, 2012 by janellmoon Leave a Comment

The passing of poet, Adrienne Rich is a milestone. A time that has come to an end when she is among us to talk of sexism and with the courage to “tell her truth.” . She was always the voice of the oppressed and the one of few women let through the “old boys network” to have her work be part of the poetry canon. I believe her talent but also her great intelligence found a way to her acceptance. I met her once in San Francisco at a reading for Diving into the Wreck. She was a wordsmith for sure.

There will be a celebration of her writings at the San Francisco Main Library the evening of April 25, 2012 at 7 pm.

Celebrate the talented among us for they shall lead the way!

Filed Under: "As Told to...", Anxiety Reduction, Books, Communication problems, Counseling, Creative Life, editing, Identity, Intuitive, Memoir, Poetry, Stage-of-life crisis, Transition, Writing, Writing Coach

Linda Sexton’s Reading, Anne’s Daughter, A Memoir

April 14, 2012 by janellmoon Leave a Comment

Linda was one of the readers at 333 in Sausalito, CA, Thursday night reading from her memoir, Half in Love: A Story of Surviving Suicide. Her famous mother took her own life when Linda was twenty, after years of depression. Linda, struggled with her own depression and suicide attempts, and writes of her life with honesty and compassion to her troubled mother and herself.

She shows us that depression and mental instability is a generational problem and that the person suffering today may have generations of relatives who suffered from depression or mental illness. What is important with Linda and others is that they can decided to get treatment and stop the hurtful patterns for their family. She is doing well today and writes well of her road to recovery.

I talked to her at some length and she is open-hearted to other writers who are trying to get out the message of healing.

Filed Under: "As Told to...", Anxiety Reduction, Books, Communication problems, Counseling, Creative Life, editing, Ghost writing, Identity, Intuitive, Memoir, Poetry, Sensate, Stage-of-life crisis, Transition, Writing, Writing Coach Tagged With: Wtiting as healing

Visaul Art As Poetry

April 10, 2012 by janellmoon Leave a Comment

I have talked before about how all the arts feed into an artist’s sensibility. I went to the play RED at the Berkeley Rep which was a two man show of Mark Rothko and his assistant. Rothko had an interest and talents in music, writing, philosopher and was, of course, one of the leading artists of Abstract Expressionist. In his large works of color blocks he wanted to show an absolute, uncompromising purity. His signature works were large single colored rectangles over a hovering ground. Even in the years of poverty he had a piano or other instruments and a record player so he could play Bach. He wrote a book and essays on art and was an arresting thinker. However, he used the arts to “feed” his paintings and finally gained recognition as did his friends Jackson Pollack or Andy Warhol. Rothko’s last work showed the complex emotional truths of isolation and connection.

How to tie to counseling? It is better for us to search for connection. Isolation can come on it’s own. Better to have have times of solitude chosen for ourselves or accepted and then connection to others built in. To be an artist in any field calls for long times alone.

However, we must learn to seek out others who want friendship and can add to our aliveness. It might seem we want others in the arts for friend and groups where art is discussed. That is true, in some measure. I have learned though that it is others who have their own sense of aliveness that will make up feel alive. We can share our aliveness back. All we can is share aliveness and connect in that energy! So, there’s no special field to find that in. We look for the energy of excitement, interest, humor and grow. We are filled with each others’ energy and go back into our solitude to create.

Filed Under: Aging, Anxiety Reduction, Books, Communication problems, Counseling, Creative Life, editing, Essay, Hypnotherapy, Identity, Intuitive, Memoir, Poetry, Sensate, Stage-of-life crisis, Transition, Visual Art, Writing, Writing Coach Tagged With: embracing all arts, isolation and solitude, solitude and connection

Ghost Writing or “as told to…”

April 7, 2012 by janellmoon Leave a Comment

In ghost writing or “as told to…” you have a story to tell and it may be difficult for you to write it down. Maybe you trust the story but not your own writing. Maybe you don’t have time but want a book out in your name. When you work with a ghost writer or “as told to…” writer, it is up to you of how you want to be helped and whether you want her name on your book.

I’ve worked in various ways and currently am trying to use a new software, Dragon, so the author can tell me her story on the microphone that comes with the software and is put on a Word.doc. the Word.doc, of course, can be sent to Apple or a PC. What the author has said is on the document and the ghost can edit the language, add to it, subtract from it, and/or note where there are flat sections and ask the author to flush out the scene a bit more. The ghost my also explain how to write a scene, establish a physical setting, or write better dialogue. Or, the ghost may write it better herself.

It really is up to the author/story teller. The payment is done in all kinds of ways. I charge by the hour and ask for a deposit. We sign a simple contract that states if the author or ghost is having any troubles with working together after the lst chapter has been sent to the author, the contract is voided. This way you don’t go too far into the process and not like your ghosts writing. It is also a way to relieve yourself from someone difficult. Then the remained of the deposit is returned. All fair in writing and between those who have an investment in books!

Hope this helps you know the various services you can hire. Maybe next time I’ll write about what a writing coach does.

Best in writing.