#AmReading Patty Dann’s THE BUTTERFLY HOURS:
transforming memories into memoir

I found THE BUTTERFLY HOURS by chance. I had stopped in at the bookstore one Saturday afternoon for an author event. First thing’s first: I bought the author’s book (KRAZY by Michael Tisserand) and a new pack of stationary. Then, I settled into a plush chair two rows back from the speaker podium. I figured I’d thumb through the book while I waited, but I was twenty minutes early and the author had just arrived and people were still setting things up. So instead, I decided to browse the tables of good reads nearby.

With the store set up for author and audience, furniture had been rearranged. The table of current staff favorites that’s usually parked who knows where sat off to the side but steps in front of me now, with the last copy of Patty Dann’s book directly in my line of sight.

The book’s appearance, meek and thin with a simple cover, drew me in. Its subtitle, transforming memories into memoir, clinched my attention, since I’m in the last stages of editing Family Stories from the Attic with Lisa Rivero and in the midst of my online Flash Nonfiction course. After reading through the first three pages, I didn’t hesitate in my second run at the cashier; having finished the book, I’m eager to recommend it. Dann offers chapter after chapter of advice, encouragement, and examples of how writing prompts work–really, how writing in general works.

You have to do the messy part because even if you write ten pages and you only like one phrase, three weeks later, during lunch or in the middle of the night, you might feel compelled to continue that phrase. If you don’t have that one phrase written down, there will be nowhere to begin.

People sometimes freeze up at prompts, get stuck on the literal meaning of a word or the exact image in a phrase. But Dann suggests that the point of a prompt is to start. Write awkward; write clunky. Prompt or no prompt, just write. Last Sunday I “just wrote” the opening scene to a new story–200 words of awful and 10 words of “this might work” (with those 10 being part of a definition from the dictionary). Still, if nothing was written, I would nothing to revise.

Shut your eyes and listen to the church bell, the train whistle, and the snow falling on the roof. Open your eyes and see how children speak into one another’s mouths rather than their ears. Recall the lilac smell of your grandmother as she bent to kiss your cheek. Touch the dried snakeskin on the ground and imagine the way your throat burned the first time you tried hot peppers.

Paying attention to sensory details like touch, smell, and taste can bring a story to life or a memory back to life, benefitting the writer as well as the reader. For writers, such focus on our surroundings can “open us up,” as Dinty W. Moore says (THE MINDFUL WRITER, another of my favorite reads), “help us to see the story or poem or play or monologue or memoir in everyone and everything.” For readers, intimate specifics make way for greater connections with the work.

There are days, even weeks, or certain months of the year, when you simply cannot write. Don’t bother to feel deflated. Accept the fact that you have time off and fill the well.

Ah, there is my saving grace.

Taste new foods, listen to music from childhood, hike trails you’ve long forgotten, try your hand at watercolors, recite the names of the presidents of the United States, and interview your elders.

Because it’s been several months since I opened the draft of my novel. When anyone asks, How’s the book coming along? I cringe, silently berate myself, dance around my answer, hope they won’t notice the shame in my eyes. I wonder what’s wrong with me, worry about whether or not I will ever finish.

All good questions; all good food for though. But as Dann reminds us, nothing to be ashamed of.

digital sketch of woman looking out of window
self portrait: unfinished sketch

Look at the other creative things you’re doing during those quiet weeks or months. There’s much to be said for how a simple sketch or a twist in the recipe of your favorite meal or a day with the camera may feed your creative side. There are plenty of ways to engage in the work, even with your pen tossed aside. And we need that bounty as much as we need to fill the page.

Every essay I read brings me closer to my idea of how I want ( or don’t want) to write. Every story I edit reminds me of structure, what works and what doesn’t. Every book I find by chance re-energizes and renews my affection for the craft and for the power of story. Some might say this is not writing, but others, like Dann, would suggest that respite from one piece of work or another gives way for a writer to “fill the well” once again.


About THE BUTTERFLY HOURS (from Indiebound.org): Sometimes all it takes is a single word to spark a strong memory. Bicycle. Snowstorm. Washing machine. By presenting one-word prompts and simple phrases, author and writing teacher Patty Dann gives us the keys to unlock our life stories. Organized around her ten rules for writing memoir, Dann’s lyrical vignettes offer glimpses into her own life while, surprisingly, opening us up to our own. This book is a small but powerful guide and companion for anyone wanting to get their own story on the page.

The Editor as Poet

Deep into edits
of stories about family,*
I am reminded why
we explore
the boxes,
the stacks of old letters,
the clippings
from news,
pages of a journal.
Every word a link
to history.
Every image a glimpse
at our past,
Hand-held.
Pieces to the puzzle.

hand holding fountain pen

“Write what should not be forgotten.” ~ Isabel Allende


* FAMILY STORIES FROM THE ATTIC: Bringing letters and archives alive through creative nonfiction, flash narratives, and poetry. An anthology edited by Christi Craig and Lisa Rivero, coming from Hidden Timber Books in 2017.

CITY OF WEIRD, Stories to Evoke & Entertain

“I’ve been having this dream lately.
In this dream, I’m traipsing through the aisles of that big bookstore in Portland, Oregon.”
~ from “Aromageddon” by Jason Squamata in City of Weird

cover image for City of WeirdI have never been to Portland. But City of Weird, with its “30 Otherwordly Portland Tales,” offers a view of the Oregon metropolis (and its famous bookstore)–in slant. A collection of imaginative, surreal, and (at times) sardonic stories, Forest Avenue Press’ newest release makes for a perfect Halloween read, especially for the faint of heart like me.

When I was seven years old, I went against all reason–and my parents’ stern command–and watched Salem’s Lot when I was supposed to be in bed. I watched it only in bits and pieces, first because I was afraid I would get caught then later because I was afraid.

cartoon tv

I would tiptoe up to the small TV in the playroom, turn the knob just past the hard click to power up the screen, stare wide-eyed and wild-eyed at the current scene for two minutes, then promptly turn the knob to OFF (!), run back to my bedroom and hide under cover. A few intermittent peeks like this as the movie played out were enough to sear my mind with vivid, terrifying images of vampires. All of them bald, with gray faces, and teeth in need of immediate dental care.

So I appreciate a book like City of Weird, with stories packed inside that let me dip my toe into “fanciful, sometimes preposterous archetypes of weird fiction” (as editor Gigi Little says in her introduction), stories that touch on such things as my permanent bias toward vampires and flip them on end. I mean–sure, bloodsuckers are scary, but Justin Hocking turns them into sympathetic characters in his story, simply titled, “Vampire:”

The vampire has figured out that he can take a photo of himself with his cell phone, stare at his image for a long time, in a way he never could with mirrors. He looks for hours at his widow’s peak, premature baldness scratching its talons further and further up his scalp. He wonders, since he’s 382, if ‘premature’ is the right word.

This fragile fiend could easily be that frump, middle-aged man you pass on the street who, like you, worries about the effect so many years can have on a body, even if he is immortal. Poor guy. It must be tough. Bless his heart (at a distance).

Image of two orcas, mother & baby, swimming in ocean

Then, there’s Leigh Anne Kranz’s “Orca Culture,” the story about killer whales, which aren’t really killers when it comes to you and me. Except Kranz again leans on common knowledge just enough to push the question, “what if.” In her story, the “Seattle pod” has developed a keen taste for a certain species–misbehaving men–and swallows them whole:

She felt it was the natural order of things. The world was changing. If humans were to survive, men like him must go extinct.

You’ll have to read the story to find out why such men might need to be snatched from the shoreline. In any case, it’s an interesting perspective, predator eating predator (oops, did I just give something away?).

One of my favorite stories is Mark Russell’s “Letters to the Oregonian from the Year 30,0000 BC,” which sets up Portland in ancient times as a mirror to Portland today, a teasing reminder that humans haven’t really changed all that much.

We read of one letter to the editor written by a caveman millennial of sorts, who downplays the newest invention (and current trend) of fire, until using it for cooking proves advantageous:

In fact, we found cooking with fire so rewarding that we opened a mommoth-fusion food cart just west of the burned forest. We’ve taken to calling this area West Burnside.

We read the opinion of the Paleolithic conspiracist:

Personally, when someone says “fire,” I hear “gentrification.”

And last, but not least, a plea from the Peacemaker:

I like charred lizard as much as anybody. And carrying torches around at night, well, it just makes me feel important. But I’m afraid of what fire will mean for life here in Yak Village.

In the Village, as in Portland (& probably the metropolis closest to where you live), strange characters abound. And as Grub the peacemaker from Yak Village says, the “strange” are “treasures,” lost when we try too hard to conform to normal.

There’s more. A hefty book of sci-fi and speculative fun, City of Weird is chock-full and available for purchase in all markets, independent and other. If you live near Portland, stop in at one of the upcoming book events, like Pop-Up: City of Weird (with Stevan Allred, Jonathan Hill, and Karen Munro), November 5th.

* On images above, cartoon TV photo credit: Candyland Comics via VisualHunt / CC BY-NC; orca photo credit: Mike Charest via VisualHunt.com / CC BY