Tag Archives: writing

Urgency of the Story

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Barbara Wolf Terao

A guest post for Women Writers Women’s Books on the process of writing my memoir. So many of us think we are too ordinary or too weird to write about ourselves, yet once we start writing and sharing, we may be surprised by how many people appreciate our stories!

Urgency of the Story

Before there were podcasts, there were call-in radio shows, and listeners would often identify themselves as “long-time listener, first-time caller.” Similarly, I’m a long-time writer, first-time author, and it really has been a long time!

I began a youthful writing practice when my parents gave me a blue “journal” (actually, a record-keeping account book) for Christmas when I was eleven. Alongside the candy cane in my stocking was a pen. Already showing signs of being a tormented author, the first thing I wrote in my journal on December 29, 1967, was “Dear Journal, I should’ve written sooner.”

Keep Writing

Writers are not required to be procrastinators. It’s not part of the job. But it seems common among us creative types—until we are seized by an urgency to get to work. I was a sporadic writer with the notion that “someday” I’d write a book.

I write nonfiction and an occasional poem. The first topics I tried to turn into books twenty years ago had to do with the power of nature and the power of Indigenous teachings. I even had a month-long residency at Ragdale in Illinois to focus on those projects. But then such impressive books about nature, such as Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv, showed up that I relinquished my plan. I did, however, write a grad school dissertation about intercultural learning called Indigenous Ways of Knowing. Yet, as a European American, I felt it best to leave the topic up to Native Americans to speak for themselves.

Then, starting in 2017, my circumstances became so dire and compelling I felt I had to lay them out for my own understanding and, I hoped, for the encouragement of others. I had moved from the Midwest to live alone on an island in the Pacific Northwest, and—less than four months later—I was diagnosed with cancer.

Daily Practice

By the time I recovered physically and emotionally from cancer and its treatments, there was a pandemic that kept me isolated at home. Millions of people were struggling to cope and endure during the spread of a sneaky and often deadly virus. I had some things to say about those kinds of struggles, so I sat down at my desk one day and decided, “I’m a working writer.” I’d aspired for decades to write a book and now I was going to make it a reality by showing up at my laptop to write my way toward synthesis and understanding. There was no need for contrite apologies of “I should’ve written sooner,” because I was butt-in-chair almost every day for a year, until I had something I could show to an editor.

You Are Enough

Author and writing teacher Phillip Lopate observed that people generally feel they are either too weird or too boring to write about. I wouldn’t say I’m unusually weird, but I do have my own perspectives on life that I want to articulate on the page. You might be surprised how much you have to say, once you get going!

Cancer was not a story I wanted to tell; rather, it was overcoming disease and weathering rough storms I wanted to talk about— to muster the courage of both me and my readers. Finally, at the age of 60, I had enough serious, humorous, and spiritual material to fill a couple hundred pages.

This is how I learned to write a book: By writing it, especially learning to write scenes and dialogue. This is also how I learned a whole lot about myself. As memoirist Linda Joy Myers wrote, “Memoir writers have to undergo a major deconstruction of self while learning how to construct a book!”

A professor on the island where I live read an advance reader copy of my memoir and told me he could relate to my story because he has cancer. Now, he said, he doesn’t feel so alone. A woman who is a breast cancer survivor wrote of how she drew inspiration and guidance from reading my book: “The ways Barbara copes with her reconfiguration can benefit anyone going through changes.” With affirmations like that, I’m ready to start my next book!

This was my tale to tell. You have yours. The urgency of the story leaves no time to waste.

Death at Glen Grove

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She disappeared off the face of the earth in February 1977.
Her body was never found, nor was a murder weapon, much less her killer.   But the spirit of Helen Brach lives on at Glen Grove Stables near Chicago.

My fellow nonfiction writers may know what I mean when I admit to wishing for interesting things to write about.  All I can say is be careful what you wish for.

I came across a cloth-covered journal I kept in 2003.  My bright idea at that time was to take the journal with me to my 14-year-old’s riding lesson at Glen Grove Equestrian Center next to the forest preserve in Morton Grove.  The stables had a waiting area with an old fireplace, two beat-up picnic tables, and a window into the arena where Emily had her lesson with her trainer, Paula.  My plan was to sit on the wooden bench of the picnic table and write while also watching Emily jump with her horse.  I was always looking for more time to write.

Seemed like a plan.  My only worry was what to write about.  Would I observe the secret life of the equestrian set?  The personal connections riders made with the horses?

Time to ride (and write)

One thing I knew about Glen Grove is that it had a colorful past, associated with several tragedies.    The stables were once owned and run by Richard Bailey, a con man who swindled wealthy widows by selling them defective horses for huge amounts of money.  One of those widows was the Brach candy heiress, Helen Brach.  She was too sharp for him and just as she was figuring out his dastardly game, she disappeared.  Her body was never found.

The girls who rode horses at Glen Grove liked to stay late some nights and have a little séance with the spirit of Helen Brach, just to spook the heck out of themselves.  Several nine-year-old girls told me, with solemn conviction,  “Helen Brach is buried in the fireplace.”

So there was that mystery (since solved, if you believe the confession of a man who said that Brach’s body was smelted into oblivion at a steel mill).  There was also a sad story of three boys murdered at the stables back in the 1940s.  Horses as well were killed as one way for Bailey to collect insurance money on his overpriced steeds.  The thug he hired used electrocution.  Bailey was eventually tried for conspiracy to murder and sent to prison for life.  The actual killer has never been named.

But now Glen Grove is a peaceful, pastoral equestrian center run by the park district.  I wondered what I would write about as I sat there for two hours.  At least, I figured, I would save on gas by not driving there twice, and I could watch Emily’s progress.  So Emily and I set out on July 24, she with her riding gear and me with my cloth-covered journal.

We drove west past Old Orchard Mall and turned on Harms Road, but there we stopped.  We couldn’t get in the Glen Grove gate because the police were there stooped over a man on the ground.  A man with blood on him.  The police put the poor fellow in a body bag and waved us through.  Emily and I looked at each other as I parked the car.  What is going on here?

It turned out that Paula, Emily’s trainer, spotted the corpse at the edge of the forest preserve, next to the entrance of Glen Grove, and called the police.  (Strangely, when WGN News showed up, Paula disappeared.  I guess she didn’t want to be on TV.)  The man died from a gunshot wound, apparently self-inflicted.  It was a sad story.

I did write at Glen Grove Stables for a few months, but I never again worried about–or wished for–something interesting to write about.