NON-FICTION: DEAD IN THE WATER
In my family, we were all told, all four of us sisters, that we were "Writers". that is, with that capital "W"...
We all read before age five, and very, very well. and, we were all talented writers...
part of this was simply being Midwestern...from Illinois...near Chicago. All of we children of the forties, fifties, and sixties were born, at a time in the Midwest, when schools were Great. our education was Great. the Country was Great. our State was Great. Americans, generally, were Great. the future was going to be Great...as had been the past, and of course, the present....but, mainly, naturally as rain...We Children were Great.
We were going to do many great things. all we had to do is to work hard and be of Midwestern United States of America good will...that is...be Willful..full of Will. Writing was one of those constant projects which we were to do greatly. and, hopefully, be published. and win contests, and so on....
We Everitt Girls were all attentive, willful, diligent, attracted-to, and eager for this Goal. We spent much time and effort and creativity working on our short stories, poetry, and essays. We all won contests in grade school and high school...maybe my sisters did in college, too...I can't recall...then our adulthoods came...we all kept writing...chasing the elusive part of the 'Goal': Publication....
We had mixed reviews in our lives about that 'Goal'...as all true Writers do. my sisters had poetry published here and there, all of their lives. they all sent out copies of their published work to me and to one another. One sister's husband published a small novel. all three published their Master's theses. One published her Phd Thesis...
I went to 'Nursing School', instead of Northwestern University, where I had too-small a Creative Writing Scholarship....
My plan was to become a Nurse and support my Writing Habit that way, until I became a Famous Writer....
That's not what happened....
I've told a 'story' or two about my 'Scribbles'...my Writing....
this one is about what Non-Fiction has meant to me...writing Non-Fiction has been my Passion all these years of Writing since those early years...
Writing Non-Fiction has also been my Great and Glorious...Failure!... so far, that is....
My first Non-Fiction was all for Nursing...it was writing up Programs for both Home Health Nursing Care Agencies. and then, years later, for Psychiatric Programs for Home Care/Public Health Nursing....doesn't sound all that creative. but, it was!
I made up ways of doing nursing care that hadn't been before...as if it was all real....and, it became real!...
I began to be aware that I could write the elusive Non-Fiction, with talent. and, some skill!
I worked as an RN for twenty-five years...writing for Nursing, all that time...and sometimes, a little poetry as well....but, the Non-Fiction for work-and-pay prevailed.
I was published in an Anthology of Wisconsin Poets, in the seventies...in a couple of magazines...a bit of prose..
that was it, until the late eighties...
Finally, my Kids were grown enough that I could take a bit of time to do some Real 'creative work'! I began to Write!... Real Non-Fiction...just as I had planned....
I knew I was "good" at interviewing...at least, everyone I ever had worked with as a Registered Nurse, told me their entire life stories very naturally....staff and patients and families alike! So I knew that part wouldn't be hard at all....what I didn't know, is what folks do when they agree to have their stories told by somebody else...the way things change for them...the ways they can't cope as well as they thought they would...
It turns out people's stories are not only personal to them....they're too real, too personal, too private, maybe. they own their stories, and can become very serious and 'precious' about their lives... they may start feeling they want their stories told. then they feel 'invaded' somehow, even if the writer or interviewing person is very gentle and kind and accurate...then, they can decide suddenly, or over time, that really only they can write their own story. then they fire you, the writer. then...they never ever write the story. and, you've lost them as well. because, you remind them that they never have - and are never - going to write their story....
Here's how that happened, four times for me, a writer of Non Fiction!
Kate was going to be the Photographer. I was going to interview the Weavers. In the San Francisco Bay Area, there are many Weavers. some of them teach weaving. some weave for a living. some weave as art. some weave artifacts. others do all those arts...
some are old, and telling their story would be a very good thing, before they stop this work, too infirm to continue...
We had six Weavers interested in the project, to become a book, of photos and interviews, to be called "Weavers of the East Bay".
We managed to get three sets of fine interviews done...an older woman Weaver and her Weaving son...a middle-aged Weaving Teacher...then it began to unravel....
while every one wanted their stories told, and had much liked both the photos taken so far and the interviews begun so far, one by one the Weavers began to worry and worry.
They felt strongly, in a short time, that they were capable of writing their own book. lots of money issues were discussed, although Kate and I were working for free at the time...
For the first time, I heard these Fateful Words: "We are going to write our own Book."
We understood... We kept our stuff... I still have the interviews and some of the pictures....
No book, or even an article, was ever written by any of these Weavers, about anything about weaving. Weavers. Weaving in the East Bay...nothing even close...ever....
The next brilliant idea I had was to help my friend Peg write the story of her ancestress...a family-story character who had been said, in her family's folk lore, to be a Prostitute in New York. in the Jewish Ghetto of New York City in the early 1900s...or so the story went...
Peg was all excited about writing this 'Book' with me!
Peg had read a book called "Five Times The Price"...which was, well, the price for a Red-headed Jewish Prostitute, back in the day...
Peg had reddish-black hair, too....
she had me read the book...then we went to classes. one night a week for weeks. at the local synagogue...a class on the Jewish Underground in New York city in the late 1800s and early 1900s...they were good classes....
I don't suppose you have to guess that the Book about the errant Redhead never was written...
Peg began to be embarrassed as time went by...her family was especially mortified that this possibly fictional woman was really possibly related to them and could be the subject of a book, that would, somehow, imply that they had had such a person as an ancestress...
talk about awkward!
By the time the scene was done, it was almost considered my fault that the whole history had even come up!
I became part of their collective shame. I was starting to feel very guilty in a very Jewish sort of way...
the subject, and interestingly enough, the friendship with Peg, was quietly dropped....
Very, very, very strange....
one would think I would be discouraged...but no...I kept looking for A Non-Fiction-Project...and one came along!
I was working as a Teacher at this point. I had gone back to university for three years. got a BA in Humanities...did a lot of writing there...the usual academic stuff...
went straight into teaching in a small private Jr. High/ High School called North Bay Orinda School. With one hundred completely maverick kids ages twelve through eighteen, it was the ideal teaching job! I was teaching some English, a lot of Social Studies...writing with kids...lots of fun!
Time to write some more!
One of the students who was especially resistant to conventional ways of learning, had spent her Junior year in Japan....she had a few photos and lots of ideas about what was fun and what was not fun to do in Japan, for a student-person...
we decided to write together... a handbook for Students Traveling In Japan....
Completed: Publisher's Proposal
Completed: Chapter Outlines
Completed: example of one Chapter
Not Completed: The Handbook itself. not ever, of course....
...in this case, the young person was a ...young person...she simply moved on to other non-projects....lost interest...lost drive...lost....
the Handbook.
ladedah. ladedah. ladedah.....
Then...then....came the BIG ONE!
there is always, is there not?, a Big One....
A.H. was a person with a very interesting past and present....I met her while I was learning how to weave. I was bad at it. she was good at it...
I was building a Navajo Loom to weave on. and I did weave on it. she was working for Navajo Weaving Women, helping them to keep on their land, to take care on their sheep, to weave their rugs and make more money doing it.
She wanted to write a 'Book' about her many, many experiences helping these Weaving Ladies over a decade or so. She had been to England with them to protest coal mining on their homelands. she had sold their rugs at shows for years, for only a ten percent commission. she had cooked for them for their Sundance Ceremonies, which were secret. she had lived with them. brought food out for them. had a baby boy with them. worshipped with them in their Native American Church rituals. suffered with them through legal battles. traveled with them to court rooms and board rooms all over the nation. played with their kids and helped them out. brought people out to work their crops with them. sweated with them in Sweat Lodges. helped bring sheep out for them so they could have their wool and their mutton. filmed them. fund-raised for them....
It was a wonderful story! I was honored that she wanted me to write it. I was drawn in, hook, line, and sinker....
What an adventure writing was, with her! she had so many stories! so many connections with the Navajo, the Dine'...some with the Hopi Elders too...
eventually she was barred from the reservations though. for meddling in the affairs of the Navajos with the Hopi. in the affairs of the US Government while it was relocating the Dine' off the Hopi Reservation lands...
in some ways, she was a Marked Woman....
In her last year of work for them, she went to New York and she went to Geneva, Switzerland with them. Human Rights Work.
Then she even married one of the guys who had been resisteing Relocation for years. it was not a great marriage. she wasn't happy.
but, she did have a contact with a possible agent for the 'Book'...that was real. and, the 'Book' was finally 'Real' too...
Good Publisher's Proposal.
Good, fleshed-out Outline of all the Chapters of the 'Book'.
Good Sample Chapters.
It had been five years of work...for it, I was paid $1000 total. one Gray Mountain and one Dazzler Rug. one Lacota Quilt (from supporters of the Dine' Women)...one Hopi silver ring....
we were looking forward to being published. maybe there would be a movie. maybe...
we used to pretend we were deviding any royalties...the Weaving Women's Cooperative would get half...each of us would get a fourth....
and then, she died.
A.H. was killed rolling over in a car she wasn't driving...she had no seat belt on...she was only forty-five or so....
At her Memorial Service, over a hundred folks there, people came up and asked about the book.
I told them the copywright had just gone through.
then they'ed walk away.
After that, her best friend on the Res, who was prominent in the book, died a month later. In Berkeley.
If there was ever a real end to the 'Book', that was it...
her oldest son had inhereted her "Intellectual Materials"....for over eight years, he hasn't come to get them. no matter how much I have reminded him to do so. eventually, over ten years later... he came and carried off her materials...nothing at all has happened since...
No one I tried to contact about the 'Book' ever took a nibble at it.
It's just like her death meant the death of all our work about all her work - and all her work as well...
maybe someday some one will want it....but not so far....
and, of course, all the other people who were in her 'Book' were going to write their own 'books' about their experiences and their lives and so on...
only...no body did...at least, up to now - as far as I know....
So there you have it.
I am not interested in writing Non-Fiction at present...not about other people's lives, anyway....
For awhile, I'm just writing about my life. I have 'stories'...more like mini-memoirs...and vignettes written...only a few people have read any of them...only one loved person has read all of them...there are around two hundred 'pieces' - all of them up on a blog: http://kathyanneriverperson.blogspot.com....
many of them are Lyrics...of these, a couple of dozen have been written into Song, and are being sung in The SFBay Area by performers/song-writers...that's an Honor, right there...
I don't have to get my own permission...I can write as I please...I can reinvent the past pretty much as I please, if I want to, as well! But, I don't...my past is OK in the Interesting Department, just as it is...so I just write it as a...
Non-Fiction.
But, it is all my own....I don't presume to tell anyone else's story anymore...yet....
Some day I will be on the Great Mississippi. I will travel down it with my Man in a Canoe.
I will interview...well, talk with...lots of folks on the River. for months...
I'll write their stories, if they like. But, only if they really, really want me to do that...
otherwise, I'm just going to listen.
maybe I'll just write Fiction now.
the Real World is so complex...Real People are so complex!
They are very private...
so many stories are just dead in the water
before they even begin...
the Mississippi may bring Life to the stories again....
maybe Non-Fiction will be carried on the waters of the River...
maybe the Stories will Live...
and I will be alive to take them down...
to write them all down....
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