Join us at the Story Works Round Table for an insightful conversation about Memoir with special guests Candace MacPhie author of Finding Color, Randi-Lee Bowslaugh author of Good-bye too Soon, Dr. Roger Leslie author of Light Come Out of the Closet, and Michael Hingson author of Live Like A Guide Dog.

From taking a piece of your own life and crafting it into a story, to the challenges of examining your life in such a vulnerable way, discover how to craft a compelling story from your own experiences.

AUDIO

TRANSCRIPT

This transcript is AI generated. If you notice any inconsistencies or errors, blame the bot.

Alida Winternheimer: Hello and welcome to this week’s Story Works Round Table. Today, Kathryn and I are joined by four fantastic memoirists so we can talk all about the craft of writing a memoir. And I am going to let these authors introduce themselves to you so that you can immediately associate the name, the voice, the title, and what the book is about. I think that makes so much more sense than listening to me read a bunch of bios in one voice. So let’s see. Brandi, would you start us out?

Randy Lee Bowslaugh: Sure. Oh, on the hotspot. My name is Randy Lee Bowslaugh. I am in Canada, kind of close to the border. and I mean, I’ve written actually a few memoirs, but the newest one I did as a poetry version, and it actually comes out on December 7th, so it’s probably out now. And it’s called Thoughts of a Warrior.

Alida Winternheimer: that’s me in a nutshell. Thank you. I’m glad you could join us. Candace, your turn.

Candace McPhee: my name is Candace McPhee. I have written, well, I am writing a five part, series based, called Back in a Year. It’s based on backpacking around the world in the 90s and pretty much all the shenanigans and troubles you can get into as a woman during that time period. And my first book is called Finding Color. The next one is called Life Strikes Back. And the one that I’m publishing, coming out next March is called hello, I’m here. That’s it.

Alida Winternheimer: Awesome.

Michael Hinkson: So be.

Alida Winternheimer: Sorry.

Candace McPhee: Okay.

Alida Winternheimer: Background audio somewhere. So Roger, your turn.

Roger Leslie: Hi. yes, my name is Roger Leslie. The memoir I’m talking about today is called Light Come out of the Closet Memoir of a Gay Soul. And it is the story of my journey from the time I was about elevenill about I was 16, where I needed to come to terms with the fact that who I was as a person seemed to be in conflict with what the world was telling me I was like through my society, my family and my religion. So it was the epiphany that I had to have to come into my own as a gay person, as a gay child in the 60s and 70s. Light come out of the closet.

Alida Winternheimer: Welcome. Right, Michael, you’re up.

Michael Hinkson: I am, Michael Hinkson, although you can call me Mike to tell you why. I don’t care which one would take much more time than we have. My book, my most recent book is entitled Live Like a Guide Dog. True Stories from a Blind man and His Dogs about being brave, overcoming adversity and moving forward in faith. And it’s all about trying to help people learn how they can control fear, rather than letting it, as I would put it, blind them or paralyze or overwhelm them. And it all stems from the fact that 23 years ago, I worked in New York city on the 78th floor of Tower One of the world Trade Center. And on that day, my guide dog, Roselle and I escaped. And there are reasons for it that we talked about in my original book, Thunderdog, the story of a blind man and his guide dogs, and the triumphal trust at ground zero. But I get to go into it a lot more in this book, mainly because of the pandemic and that I realized I hadn’t taught people about how to control fear. So we’re doing that and live like a guide dog. And speeches that we do.

Candace McPhee: Very.

Alida Winternheimer: Yes. Yeah. So my first question to all of you collectively is, what is a memoir? Let’s define it as its own literary animal here. I’m gonna let the collective come up with it.

Roger Leslie: I’ll be happy to start if you like.

Michael Hinkson: Ye.

Roger Leslie: Go for it. So in my mind, a memoir is a snippet or a slice of an autobiography. And what focuses a memoir is there should be some transformation that takes place. It’s about one element of our lives or one period in our lives when there is some pivotal shift that happens. Because like good fiction, nonfiction should be dramatic. It should move the story forward. And ideally, it should have a climactic scene where the main character, in this case the memoirist, has some epiphany that allows that person to see life or the world or him or her, theirselves in some new way. For me, that’s memoir.

Candace McPhee: I think Roger should answer all the questions right.

Randy Lee Bowslaugh: I’m like, I’m done. I don’t need to say anything. You’re good. I knew that was gonna happen, though. He’s been on my show. so. Oh, okay, Candace.

Roger Leslie: That’s why I asked permission if I could go first.

Randy Lee Bowslaugh: Definite. You think that I’m just gonna keep talking. O, yay. See how it is.

Michael Hinkson: Blah, blah, blah. But anyway. M. I agree with Roger, except it’s interesting because I would think that both of my books have been more autobiographical than memoirsh, based on Rogers definition, but people including publishers and others, still call them memoirs. And I’m not really totally sure why, but they call them memoirs. And Thunderdog was about primarily my experiences in the World Trade Center. but we went back in each chapter to lessons I learned in life that helped me on that day. But live Like a guide dog is really more of an evolutionary thing that goes through, essentially 60 years of working with guide dogs. but I suppose you could say there are epiphanies along the way with it too. So, either way, I think Roger has a good handle on it.

Alida Winternheimer: Yes. Yeah, definitely he does. I could have defined it better. And, you know, before the call, I was thinking about this question and landing on the same basic definition that Roger gave us. And then I was thinking, well, but is that always true? What about, like, the humorist? like a David Sideds memoir. He’s an essayist, of course, but our road, Fever by Tim Cahill is one I read a long time ago that had me, laughing out loud. And I don’t know that there was the epiphany or the transformation. I mean, it was a long time ago when I read it, but I was like, so maybe. Right. And then maybe some memoir can also cross over a little bit more into self help. But it’s based on the memoirs experience. Yeah.

Candace McPhee: Candace, a bit of leeway if you’re famous, like, I think you have a little more leeway just to sort of amuse folks. But, I think if you are not and you’re telling, like, a piece of your life and you want to share the journey, like Roger said, then I think you do need to stick to more of the rules that Roger laid down that I’m not going to repeat. Because they were really good.

Randy Lee Bowslaugh: Right? Yeah, he had it down pat. But I think you’re right. Celebrities always get a little more leeway because people are just, oh, it’s a book. M. From a celebrity. let’s be real. They probably didn’t write it themselves, but, yeah, they definitely have a little bit more leeway because they’re already entertainment.

Alida Winternheimer: M M Now, Candace, you’re writing a series of memoirs, right?

Candace McPhee: Yes, I am.

Alida Winternheimer: So how does that definition fit with the series? Does each book have its own transformative epiphany at the end?

Candace McPhee: And yeah, I’m with Roger on that. And, my story, the Back in the Year series that, I started to write, I thought was one book because I thought, oh, this will be a bookus. I experienced a transformative journey during it. my mom passed away when I was quite young, and I was the primary caregiver during my formative years and just didn’t have a chance to kind of get to know what I liked. So I took off on this big trip, say, okay, this is it. I’m going to figure stuff out. So a lot of things happened along the way, and my goal of, the series was really to. To just dump you into that time period. What it was like in the 90s before the smartphone, when you had a travel guide and a backpack and you didn’t know where anything was, you didn’t know what anything looked like. You had to take trains forever and there was snail mail going home and just is such a different experience than it is now. So in order for me as a storyteller to be able to bring you along properly, I had to break them up. So each book does have its own journey, but, it’s one continuous trip that I take. So you can read each book in isolation. but it’s much more interesting to read the whole thing if you like the backstory and stuff. But, yeah, so each one takes place, each one has its own transform made of time, and each one takes place in a different geographical location.

Alida Winternheimer: Fun. It sounds really fun. And I would not mind going back to the 90s doing some travel. Yeah. So why memoir? You’re thinking, okay, I’ve got a story, I need to tell it. You know, you could fictionalize something or just write fiction. you could write personal essays, you could write letters, diaries. Where, as a storyteller, is that moment when you think, nope, this story wants to come out as a memoir. It’s that significant. I have that much material. It’s going to be that meaningful. Right. Why this form of literature? To put your story into the world.

Michael Hinkson: But before answering that, if I may, being technologically oriented in some ways, I just asked my lovely little Amazon echo what the difference was between a memoir and an autobiography. And, it’s fun to have technology. What it says a memoir is basically, is about an event or a stream of events that are related, but it defines that as being different than just having a complete story of one’s whole life. So do with that as you will. But for me, I can see how Thunderdog was a memoir because it really revolves around the World Trade Center. But I think that Live Like a Guide Dog, is a little bit more, arguably, not as much a memoir. But by the same token, you can say that there’s an event which is all about the reality that we fear, and we can learn not to fear, or we can learn to control fear, which is what Live Like A Guide Dog is all about. And I use the examples of lessons learned from, as I said, eight guide dogs and my wife, service dog, about the Fact that you can learn to control fear and not let it overwhelm you so that you can use fear to help you make decisions. so it isn’t necessarily my whole life in that sense, but, I do think, for me, both stories just kind of naturally came out, and I didn’t even think about, well, this a memoir and autobiography. We just wrote them. and so people have classified them as they have. and I’m fine with that.

Alida Winternheimer: M. Yeah, Yeah.

Randy Lee Bowslaugh: I. With Michael on this one. So I never thought, hey, I’m going to write a memoir or an autobiography. I went, I want to share about depression or losing somebody to addiction or autism. Those are my three main ones. so I just started writing with a purpose in mind. So the purpose of A Mother’s Truth was to share the journey of raising my kid with autism. The purpose of embracing me was to share the journey with depression. The purpose of Goodbye Too soon was to share about losing my brother to addiction. Y. Yet there’s gonna be a little bit of overlap, because, I mean, they span my time, my life, but they’re all very different. And, I mean, there’s not a heck of a lot of overlap, because I really do focus on that one purpose for the story. And by focusing on that purpose, I mean turns into a memoir. But, I wanted to be as transparent. Cause you asked. Well, you could fictionalize it. I wanted to be transparent because my whole thing is all about letting other people know they’re not alone. So to me, if I was to fictionalize it, well, I’m reading this book. Yeah, okay. It’s good. But I still feel alone because I don’t know if it really happened or not. Whereas in my stories, you know, they happen. I’m telling you, they happened.

Michael Hinkson: And when you’re writing fiction or nonfiction, I should say, people know it. I mean, people can sense if you’re really telling the truth or if you’re trying to fictionalize something. I believe very firmly that most people are smart enough to be able to tell the difference. So I agree with your point. I’m sorry, Roger.

Roger Leslie: I was going to agree with Randy’s point as well. I think no matter what, if the audience is thinking about being a writer or starting writing, really, the very first thing you should think about is, what is your purpose? Why are you writing this book? And I think the benefit of writing memoir over fiction, especially for those people who may not be as experienced with writing, is that staring at a blank screen with anything that’s possible, which fiction Is. Can be very daunting. But you know your own life, you know your own story. So it does require a great deal of creativity because you have to pick and select the moments in your life that are worth sharing, and then you have to stream them together in such a way that there’s some dramatic forward momentum with the story. So it’s not like you’re just, oh, I’m just gonna tell my whole life story. I’m gonna tell every detail of everything that happened. As Randy pointed out, she has three different books and three different themes, all sometimes

Roger Leslie: overlapping in the time period, but she knew her purpose for each.

Michael Hinkson: Oh, I’m sorry. Go on.

Roger Leslie: I was just gonna say. So if someone is thinking about writing a memoir is a great place to start, because not only do you know yourself very, very well, but you will discover new things about yourself by writing the memoir that you didn’t realize you knew about yourself.

Michael Hinkson: Do you think that a autobiography is kind of more, if you will, from the standpoint of a reporter, where you’re talking about your life and so on, but it isn’t as much of a story and maybe as engaging, for the most part, as a memoir would be.

Roger Leslie: I think that memoir is more targeted. It’s definitely more lasered, because, as Randy pointed out with the idea of theme, there’s got to be a very strict purpose, a very clear, distinct purpose for mine. Light, come out of the closet. Here’s what happened for me, because I’ve had people, interviewers ask me, you know, all these years later, why would you write a book about your experience from ages 11 to 16? And what I discovered through those conversations is that for most of my life, I avoided remembering those years because they were so painful. And then I had an epiphany before I wrote the book, and that is, well. But that background and that pain had to help me become who I am. So I had to have the courage to go back and visit those years that I avoided for so long to figure out, okay, what blessings or what benefit did those hardships give me that enabled me to say, you know what? This religion or this particular philosophy is not for me. Part of my ability to leave that religion came from the disciplines that religion taught me. And so from that perspective, it’s like, wow, I’m gonna learn a lot about myself because I’m willing to look at something that I’ve avoided for a long time.

Michael Hinkson: But do you think it came out more as a story or had more storytelling in it than maybe an autobiography would have it?

Roger Leslie: Was definitely more lasered.

Alida Winternheimer: M. Candice, ah, what about you and your choice to tell your story through memoir?

Candace McPhee: Did you ask me?

Alida Winternheimer: Yes.

Candace McPhee: Yeah, Sorry Candace, you say that I completely agreed with Roger. I had to, I don’t know, I think I had to let my story germinate for awh. While in my mind it kind of wasn’t so much happened. It’s a completely different story, Roger. But the journey I think from a writer perspective was probably similar. So much happened during that time that. And it hurt and it was funny and it was sad. It was all the feels and I really needed time and probably some space and, and some maturity as a person to be able to do the story justice. So now as I write about myself back then, it almost feels like a character because I’m such a different person now than I was during the time period that I’ve captured and shared. And by doing that as well, it’s easier to show the growth of the character throughout the book because I don’t think if, if I’d had the experience and then told about it, I would have been able to objectively go through the growth and to be able to tell the story in a way that really engages the reader and you can take the journey too. So I think for me that time that I and space I put between it has helped and it also helped with one of the more difficult parts I think about writing memoir about what to cut. So you think everything’s important, but it’s really not. So being able to, say ask, objectively ask yourself, does this further the story? Does this further the purpose? Know, okay, well maybe it doesn’t belong in the book. I’ll just keep it in my memory. It’s not something that should be part of it. So for me it’s that real challenge to tease out so that to keep true to the time period, to keep true to the journey and to be able to keep the stories crisp and clean and to make sure that they progress the overall arch of what you’re telling. Because it’s still the same thing, as telling a nonfiction like you’re still trying to compel the reader, you’re still trying to give someone a good, give them the value for the time they put into reading your book. So yeah,

Alida Winternheimer: Yeah, definitely. So two things have come up that I want us to discuss. the first thing is in the process of writing your memoir, discovering things you didn’t know about yourself. And the second thing is what Candace just said about time and space and maturity helping you as author, create that distance between narrator and character on the page and what that means to you as a person telling your own story, but also to you as a writer crafting a narrative. So I’m just setting those up to get wheels turning. But first, did you all discover something you didn’t already know about yourself in writing? Or was the act of writing its own kind of transformative journey? Let me throw that one out.

Candace McPhee: I might jump in again. Candace, here just for me, I think. Again, when I started out, I had journals, so I would transcribe the journals to tell the story, but it wasn’t very interesting. It was like an agenda. So what I had to do was really dig deep to understand how I was feeling at the time and to be able to. And that’s where the work came for me, was to really dig in, to say, okay, how did I feel at this time? And what was going through my mind? How do I share that in? Economically, because you don’t want to go on and on, but economically, to add to the story, to be able to add those moments where you reflect and say, okay, this is how I felt here, and that’s how I felt there. And to m. Move it along and to be able to learn that about yourself and to learn that, for example, in my book Finding Color, I realized when I was writing it that, wow, I thought I was over my mom’s death, but it totally wasn’t. And I made all these twoupid choices because of it, but it got me on a journey. So each time I went through, I realized, okay, I was still in this place mentally. So really understanding that. And to be honest, as I’ve been writing for the last few years, it’s helped heal me even more. I feel so much more confident now. I feel like I can articulate, the feeling and the time period. And now it’s fun because it can go in. And for me, it’s about, like I said, being economical with my words, being impactful with my words, to be able to make the story move along and give it a really crisp journey so the reader has a good time too.

Alida Winternheimer: Wow. Yeah, I love that. But who wants to comment next on this idea of the transformative, the self transformation?

Roger Leslie: I’ll be willing to go. So I realized only while I was writing and then after I wrote Light, Come out of the closet, that part of why I was avoiding the pain of that period in my life was not only the negativity or the concerns I felt about my society and my family. And my religion. But the negative self perception I had about me. I thought that I had bought into a, lot of negative stereotypes about who I was and was disappointed in myself. I felt like I wasn’t masculine enough. I wasn’t, outgoing enough. You know, I was kind of an introverted, you know, m. My journey to becoming a writer was so obvious. It’s like, oh, okay. I was destined for this from the beginning because that was my personality. By going back to that time period, I found elements of my personality that I didn’t realize were rooted so far back. And that was affirming to me because I either thought I was not strong enough or willful. But I didn’t see a middle ground. By writing my memoir, like come out of the closet. I got a more full bodied image of who I was back then. And it was affirming to realize that there were more dimensions to me than I’d given myself credit for. That was helpful for me.

Alida Winternheimer: Yeah, it’s powerful.

Randy Lee Bowslaugh: So I’ll jump in now. So as Roger was talking there, I was like, oh my goodness. Yup. When you’re looking back, because especially, in most of my books, I’m talking about mental health. I had to go through a lot of therapy to get to there. But he’s talking about that personality change and how back, you know, what you think of yourself as when you were younger can define you now. But we can transform, we can change. We’re using all that funlingo there. But the big thing is when I was writing, not so much thoughts of a wanderer. Cause that really was in my depression and what depression looks like, but more when I was writing, embracing me because I was sharing how I had went through therapy, how I had found medication that worked. And so learning that I actually was much stronger than, than I had previously thought and that I feel safe now. I feel safe enough to share my story. I feel safe enough to go, I’m not a horrible person. I’m actually pretty cool. and then the other big thing was when I was writing, Goodbye Too soon about my brother’s death. The big theme for me while I was writing was forgiveness for myself. And I wanted that to come through the book for other family members who may have lost somebody to drug addiction because there’s all this guilt about, oh, could I have done something more? What, what should I have said? What should I have done? And so there’s a huge theme of that in that book. And I knew I needed to get that across. But as I’m getting that across, I go, oh, this is for me too. I have to. I always have to forgive myself, because I did not. So you learn some things as you’re going, even if your head knows them. I feel like emotionally it’s a completely different story. I mean, Candace even mentioned, oh, I thought I was over my mom’s death. But when those emotions start coming, they’re. They’re tricky, tricky things. So as you’re writing, it definitely gives you a completely different perspective because you’re like, oh, I’m not over these things yet, but I can still share my story with other people.

Alida Winternheimer: Yeah. Mike, your thoughtses?

Michael Hinkson: Well, I come from a little bit different perspective, mainly because I tend to analyze a lot. And I grew up in the sciences and have a master’s degree in physics and so on. So for me, after September 11th, I started getting requests for interviews from reporters. And as I tell people, I learned a lot more about myself. And I also found that, by talking to reporters, it made me talk about what happened on September 11, because you never know what question you’going to be asked. Literally, I was asked many thousands of questions, and they came from all sorts of different directions. And I had to learn how to respond to those without being upset and without throwing the reporter out of the house or whatever. and so I think that’s where I learned more about myself, which eventually led to writing Thunderdog and then later Live Like a Guide Dog. and Live Like a Guide Dog came about because the pandemic began. And as I said earlier, I learned that I had never talked to anybody about how they could discover how to control fear. So I used lessons that I had already thought about, and some of which a little bit, were included in Thunderdog. But to write Live Like a Guide Dog. And I also love collaborating. So I did Thunderdog with Susie Florey, who’s a good Christian writer, and then Kerie Wyatt Kent help with Thunder with Live Like a Guide Dog. Because I love bouncing ideas off people and the two of us work together to create, I think, a much better book than I would have created alone. In both cases, I think that’s the case. But for me, I think the biggest thing I worried about as I was writing was how do I communicate in a way that people will understand? Because the average person doesnt know much of anything about blind people, and they think that blind people cant do much. I mean, even the doctors, when I was born told my parents have stuffed me at a home because no blind child could ever grow up to amount to anything in society. And they still do that a lot of times to kids. Stay. So for me, the bigger challenge was how do I communicate in a way that will draw people in to understanding that there’s more to life than what they think and that it’s not just about fear, but it’s that a blind person can talk about that as well as anyone else can. And I think we were very successful at doing it. But that’s still the issue that we had to deal with a lot.

Alida Winternheimer: Yeah.

Kathryn: I’m getting a deep sense of all of you guys as teachers. Hearts like you just want to share these experiences so that other people can learn and grow and experience these things that maybe they’re struggling with. And I just think that’s such a valuable thing to, to have that impetus, right? To share some piece of your life in a way that’s very approachable and very vulnerable. and also very, like you said, purpose driven, thematic to try and convey that across. So I just had to throw that out.

Michael Hinkson: I think that’s a very good point because I think that in reality, I know for me, and I agree with what you’re saying, but for me it really is about teaching. I used to, say to people that I like to record my speeches because I like to listen to them so I could learn about how I could do it better. And mainly I did it because I was my own worst critic. And I’ve realized over the last year, wrong thing to say. I’m not my own worst critic, I’m my own best teacher. Which makes it a lot more positive and it’s a lot more relevant. And the reality is I am my own best teacher. And I think that teaching and helping people to understand is extremely important. And so for me, that, and I suspect all of us here, that’s very relevant. I think you have a good observation.

Alida Winternheimer: Yeah, definitely. And you know, I think a lot of people, including writers, think when someone puts a memoir out, you’ve already done the work to get to the point where you can tell your story and you can share it in a meaningful way so that it’s, significant, impactful, inspiring teaching, whatever that driver is. But what I’m hearing is that yeah, we might have done a lot of work to get to the point to be able to tell the story. But then in the process of creating the memoir, we’re still doing work and we’re still evolving and we’re still discovering things about ourselves and growing so much.

Michael Hinkson: I agree.

Randy Lee Bowslaugh: I think that’s a good point about memoirs as a whole though, because just like Candace, who’s doing a series, mine aren’t necessarily a series, but they are new discoveries in my life focusing on a certain purpose. So I think it’s really nice as a reader if, if you like an author’s book and you’re like, oh, hey, they have another one, out that compliments it. Maybe it’s not a continuation, but compliments it because then you can realize things change. And like, so the book that I have that’s about to come out, Thoughts of a Warrior, it really is the second part of Thoughts of a Wanderer, which was my first one. And so it shows from those depressive moments to these, oh, there’s light at the end of the tunnel. It’s still up and down. We still have roller coasters in there, but it changes. And I think that’s what’s cool about doing a memoir as opposed to an autobiographies. You can go, h m. Here’s a new snippet of my life because you read this and this was, oh my gosh, but now look at me now. So I think that’s really kind of cool because you have that transform, transformative part to it. And we can kind of learn and grow as we’re going.

Alida Winternheimer: M. Yeah. So let’s go to that next question. I put forth a little bit ago about time, space, maturity, and talk about looking back on yourself as a character. Because now as the writer, you step into the role of narrator, the storyteller, crafting what’s on the page for the reader. But then you have to look at that past version of yourself and create that self as a character on the page. So what’s that like? I mean, we can touch on what it’s like emotionally, what the challenges are, crafting it, technically, kind of wherever you feel inspired to go with that question. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Randy Lee Bowslaugh: I’ll go first because it kind of goes with what I was just saying, on the emotional side of things. Right. You’re looking back at this person and younna write about how you were in that timeframe for it. Even though nail is, So for instance, when I was writing Embracing Me, right, About going through depression, about trying to find services to help, I’m in a good space. That’s why I can talk about these things. But I need to get the point across to the readers that what does depression actually feel like when you’re feeling it so it really does take an emotional turn. Like emotional toil. When you’re trying to go back and get emotions onto a page is hard enough. But remembering what they’re like, especially when they’re not necessarily great ones, and trying to convey those, but at the same time, not at least for me, and not getting yourself down on them. You’re like, noe, I am not that person anymore. I’m this person. But I need to get that old person on the page. So it is definitely an emotional, roller coaster. I love Life is a roller coaster. I use it so much. But it really is an emotional roller coaster as you’re trying to convey a different version of yourself and using the correct verbiage so that other people can understand what it is you’re talking about.

Michael Hinkson: One of the things that I think about in this whole process is I believe that going back and reading my book, like Live Like a Guide Dog, several times as we were writing it always clarified things for me. And I probably learned more, about me from reading it then maybe I knew when I first started writing it. And so I’m saying I believe putting myself in the position of a reader was a very valuable thing to do. And I think that’s still the case. If I go back and read it now, I’ll discover some things that I maybe don’t think about but now think about again. Oh my gosh, thats really true. Or thats a good point. or, not even so much negative. Well, that didn’t go well. But not about the style, but rather learning lessons from the book. I believe I should be able to have as much to learn in some senses from the book as other people who read it.

Alida Winternheimer: M. Yeah.

Candace McPhee: I found it very frustrating and very challenging at the same time. it’s very, very tempting to forgive yourself in the past on paper and just to sort of maybe not be as honest about the things you did or you, be as blunt or brutal. but those moments where I was cringing writing it and almost angry, at myself were the best parts in the book. And I couldn’t change that. Those are the transformative moments. And it was really hard to step away and just write as it happened and as what was going on in the time because it wouldn’t have been story otherwise. It’s part of your, I think it’s part of your, goal and what you need to do as a writer to be able to stay true to that time period. It’s like if you were writing nonfiction and your Character was going through all of this stuff. You couldn’t just give them all the end knowledge at the beginning. Right. You have to keep those things back until they’re ready to come out. And a lot of times they weren’t even ready to come out. and so, you know, maybe you never did. You got to a certain point only or whatever. But, yeah, I think that to me was the hardest part. And that’s where it was easier for me to look at myself as a character and just say, because I was, I wasn’t. That’s not the person I am now. I’m writing about a different me.

Randy Lee Bowslaugh: So.

Alida Winternheimer: Mmm, Yeah. I love that. Roger, you were writing about your younger self as a child even. Yes, yeah.

Roger Leslie: And I wanted to also add something that Candice brought up earlier about writing in the 90s. In addition to the importance of having space between when you lived the memoir experience and when you write about it, the setting, of any work is the time, place and atmosphere. And that atmosphere is a political and a social and socioeconomic atmosphere. So the story that Candace tells about her journey in the 90s would not be the same today. Cause the world is different. The same thing was true for me. The issues that I dealt with as a child, very young, knew he was gay, and at the time thought I was the only one in the world because there was no social media there. There was either no or very limited or very negative representation in media. So part of the joy of writing a memoir is that you can include that setting as part of the characterization that determines in part who you are and how you respond to your world because of how you perceive the world at the time. So for me, setting is a character that’s hugely relevant to memoir because when we look to our past, life in general was different then than it is now. And so readers who don’t have that background can be fascinated by how things were and realize, oh my gosh, you mean you couldn’t just do this back then? Or women weren’t allowed to just go vote, or women couldn’t wear pants, you know, any whatever time period you’re talking about. I like history in that way, because our history, our time periods, determine who we are as people and as characters in our works.

Candace McPhee: You, Roger, I TR to add in as much stuff that happened during that time. Example, in my first book, Princess Diana dies. So we talk about that and I talk about sporting events or the Olympics or the World cup or whatever was happening at the time and who was playing. And so it just kind of immerses you a little more. I even take it a step further. I don’t know if you do the same Roger at Google words to say okay, well how would I have said that back then? There’s so many different vernacular for stuff now. But you can’tlude it. It has to be the words have to match the time period too.

Alida Winternheimer: Yeah. And I want to talk more about this. Catherine and I recently had Grishma Shaw on and she wrs she wrote a novel in which 911 is a major event and she’s also a professor and she mentioned that she’s got students, college students.

Michael Hinkson: Right.

Alida Winternheimer: So people in their early 20s and 911 predates them, which you know is.

Randy Lee Bowslaugh: Kind of like all of us go ah.

Alida Winternheimer: At that much time have already passed. And so what you’re saying is so interesting from a writer’s perspective, you know, because we aren’t just trying to capture what it was like for us when we were living it, but we also have to communicate it to people who have no clue. Right. For them it’s not nostalgia, it’s like ancient history. So how much attention did you pay to your setting and getting those details right? Candace was just talking about some of that. How important was this aspect of world building to your particular story that you’re telling and whatever else you want to share in around that question.

Randy Lee Bowslaugh: No one else will jump in. I’ll do it. Oh no, somebody else is gonna do. You can do it. I just was waiting.

Roger Leslie: Go ahead.

Candace McPhee: Okay.

Randy Lee Bowslaugh: well, my answer is short and sweet because my books are very emotional based side I don’t put a lot into building the world so much. because I’I just convey the emotional. So I’m gonna say your inside world, inside of yourself kind of world. And so yeah, I might do a little bit of like in Goodbye Too soon with my brother because some of this stuff happened 20 years ago when he was a teenager. Yeah. I might mention we didn’t have a computer, we didn’t have the Internet back then to research things. But I don’t need to go into much more depth than that for the purpose of what that book was with conveying the emotional side of losing somebody to addiction. But it definitely was important to say, you know, no, we couldn’t just Google where is a addiction treatment center? You had to get the yellow pages out.

Candace McPhee: Yeah.

Candace McPhee: in my second book, Life Strikes Back, the main, one of the main antagonists is really the environment. So just traveling as A woman on trains and not having like phone books and phone bookoths and not being able to communicate with home and the challenges that that brings. It’s so different from life now. like gosh, I just pick up my phone and I can call whoever, look, whatever, order my food, I don’t even have to leave my chair and my whole world happens. So. But it was so different then. It was just, it was so much harder and the languages and trying to min your way through the world and all of the things around you. So for me the world building is really important and that was also a very important part of the journey because I wanted that snapshot in time and for someone just to be able to either relive it because they did it and didn write it down, or someone new to experience it, say who’s backpacking now? And O my God, that’s hilarious. We have sort of some of the same things, but not everything’s saying so.

Roger Leslie: And for me it was essential because I was so young, my character is so young. I didn’t have a personality formed that I was aware of yet. So I was creating who I was and my understanding of who I was through television and through my religion and through what my parents said and how my parents responded to those elements in religion and television. So for me that was everything because I wasn’t, you know, I was only from 11 till 16, 17 in the book. So I was creating a discovery of who I was based on those elements of the world outside me. So as Brandi Randy said, you know, she was all interior. I was creating my interior based on the input that was coming from my outside world. So for my book light come out of the closet, that was paramount.

Michael Hinkson: Yeah, I would agree. for me, world building was a definite significant part of it. For me, I think probably the bigger issue was balancing it. That is, it would have been easy to talk about every old little old thing about being blind and live like a guy dog and thunderdog for that matter. But I also knew that would make for a very boring book and I would lose people. So it was a matter of creating or finding a balance, of talking about the world, talking about how I did things and doing it in a way that I guess as Catherine said, would be a teaching moment and at the same time wouldn’t become too boring because it’s so tempting to see that if you watch a lot of TV shows where there’s a blind person, they focus so much on everything except what’s really relevant. and I collect old radio shows as a hobby, and old radio program is the same thing. They didn’t deal with the world in a balanced way, and I also didn’t deal with it generally in a correct way. So for me, it was a matter of balancing it and making sure that we talked about the world while at the same time, m staying true to the story.

Alida Winternheimer: Yeah. Such a great craft point, I think, for anything that you write fiction or nonfiction and finding that balance of representation and moving the story forward. So I would love it if each of you thought of something, some challenge you faced in writing your memoir, whether it was technical or like technical craft or personal and emotional, or maybe dealing with family and friends who are going to be included, whatever that looked like, and share one of the challenges you faced and how you overcame it. So I don’t know if anyone’s ready to.

Roger Leslie: I’m happy to begin.

Alida Winternheimer: Go for Roger.

Roger Leslie: So I tell my I’m a writing coach and I tell my writing clients, in the first draft, you have to bear your soul. And the way that you can do that if you’re afraid is you realize that that first draft you write for you, ultimately you don’t have to share that first draft with anyone, not even your editor. So you have to go where you’re scared to go. You have to relive some of those experiences. And Kansace brought this up and Randy brought this up earlier also. Sometimes you have to go in the places that terrify you because as Candace pointed out, those are gonna be the best moments in the whole book. Those are the ones that are gonna resonate as real. And so to overcome the fear of bearing your soul, I just tell my clients, realize you don’t have to share it with anybody, but you do have to go there to see where it takes you. Ultimately, they will probably discover that it’s the best part of their book and that they wa wantna leave it in. But you’ve got to have the courage to go there.

Alida Winternheimer: Is there a moment in your published memoir that was one of those moments for you where you had to tell yourself, yep, okay, do it. Practice what you preach and burar your soul. And it made you know, it turned into one of those best parts of the book.

Roger Leslie: The climactic scene at the end is a very painful moment to relive, at least the painful part that led up to the epiphany, which of course was pivotal. So yes, it was difficult to go back there because it was such an emotionally draining experience to live through. And so I had to go back and relive it as a writer. So it was tough. But I think that is the whole point of the book. That’s where the message comes through. That’s where the light comes through.

Alida Winternheimer: Right, Right. Yeah. I always, I have that same conversation with coaching clients and have some personal essays out in the world. And so I know what you’re saying. And, I think it’s wonderful when we as the teachers can set the example and say, you know, you can see it in print. Here it is. It’s been done as well. Yeah. What challenges have the rest of you faced and overcome in writing your stories?

Randy Lee Bowslaugh: I’d say when I was doing Goodbye too soon, because it was about my brother and I wrote it about. I started writing it maybe about three months after his death, so still very fresh. and I told my mom that I was going toa do this. Well, she was not overly pleased at first, because she was really, I mean, obviously heartbroken that, that Brandon had died, but also so ashamed of how he died because it was a drug overdose. Like, she didn’t even want to look at the death certificate at first until I said, nope, it doesn’t say that on there. So you’re good, mom. but she didn’t wa want toa tell people because of that stigma all around. It’s. When I told her I was gonna write this book about Brandon’s death, she goes, oh. And it gave me like this awful look and I’m like, no, but it’s gonna be a book to help people. Like, Brandon always liked helping people. So it’snna and she ended up actually really liking the book. And, on the one year anniversary of when it had come out, she had me go, go to my brother’s grave and we took pictures with my brother with the book. Like it was this whole big thing, but it was a really big challenge. When I’m like, no, this needs to happen. Not just because I think it will be helpful for other people, but it’s gonna be good for me, to get it out there. And

Randy Lee Bowslaugh: I think in the end, ultimately, that really helped her see his death in a different way too. But it was probably the biggest challenge out of all of my books was cause anytime I was like, mom, I’m gonna write about my depression. Okay, that’s your story, Mom. I’m gonna write about raising my kid with autism. Yeah, that’s your story. But when it came to the other one, that was right yes.

Alida Winternheimer: Yeah, I totally get that. The mom thing. M. Yeah. M. Candace and Mike.

Candace McPhee: For me, I’ll pick something a little different. There was lots of challenges. This was a very learning, transformative journey for me personally. But I think my first challenge was stepping into writing altogether. I worked in the corporate world for a really long time. I traveled, I. I worked in Brazil, I worked in London, I worked in Australia. Like, I worked all over the world. And to actually say, okay, draw a line under that and say, okay, what I really want to do is write. And, to both from two points. First point was I thought I knew how to do it. I totally didn’t. So learning the competency of writing was huge. A long, long, long, humbling journey. And for me, I would recommend anyone who’s doing it to find a partner you can trust who’s going to give you honest developmental feedback. I think finding that person was the best thing I could have ever done. I interviewed loads of people and I was like, no, no, no, no, no. Too soft, too hard, wants to change me know, Until I landed on the right person. That was the first thing. And then the humbling journey and just keeping at it from a tenacious perspective. Edit again, write it again, write it again, write it again. And then the other part was my family. So when I went to work and I came home and I had my paycheck, that made a lot of sense to people and people understood that. But when I sat in an office for years with nothing to show for it other than I have lots of things to show for it, but nothing tangible to offer to people, to say, okay, this is the culmination of all of my work, was hard. It was hard. My husband’s a very visual, must see kind of thing, and he would peek over my shoulder and I’m like, I’m not ready, don’t read it. so having. Getting my family, bringing them along for the ride was hard. It was much easier once. So I had published something and they could read it and go, I see, I see. Well, okay, this makes a lot of sense. So it was. That starting point was very difficult for me. from that perspective.

Alida Winternheimer: Yes. You’re getting a lot of nods from Caatherine and me right now. Definitely. Mike, how about you?

Michael Hinkson: Again, I think for me the challenge was knowing me, knowing my life, knowing, how people react and did react to me as a public speaker. Getting the balance right was important. Specifically, again, huh? The book is entitled Live Like a Guy Dog, True Stories from a Blind man. And his dogs about being brave, overcoming adversity, and moving forward in faith. And I think that Kerie Wyatt Kent, who worked with me on the book, wanted to put a lot more about religion and Christianity in the book than I did. Not that I am any less faithful in that regard, but rather, that wasn’t the purpose of the book. the purpose of the book was to, help people learn to control fear and also, frankly, to teach people about being blind and so on. to encourage people to have faith. But you don not t do that by just inundating them with passage from the Bible after passage from the Bible. So we had to strike a balance. And I think that we did in the book, by the time it was all said and done so that I think what we were able to get was what people would positively react to. So far, people have said very positive things about the book. So I guess we got the balance right. But that balance, for me is really important. And it’s not just about the religious part. It’s all about how much do you say about how you as a blind person do stuff or how I, as a blind person do stuff, or, talking about so many different things in the course of it. So, again, I think we came up with a good balance that works really well, but it took a lot of work to get there, and it took a lot of understanding all the way around to make it happen.

Alida Winternheimer: Yeah, I love what you said about the purpose because it brings us full circle to something that was said at the very beginning of the conversation about sitting down to write your story and having a sense of your purpose in, ah, mind. And I think we’ coming to the time when we wrap up the conversation. So any final thoughts about memoir that you would like to share with our listeners?

Candace McPhee: I will say do it if you have.

Randy Lee Bowslaugh: I was gonna say that I was trying to think of something a little more, I don’t know, inspirational.

Candace McPhee: Exc.

Randy Lee Bowslaugh: Wow.

Michael Hinkson: Well, I would say it’s fun. and I agree. Do it. I think everyone has a story to tell. and if you don’t know how to tell the story, there are a lot of coaches and people like Roger and everyone on this phone call or this zoom call who can help you flush out the story. But I think that doing it is the most important thing of all. On my podcast, Unstoppable Mindset, it’s all about, people coming on and telling their stories and convincing people to do that. Randy has been a guest, and I want to ask all of you on this zoom call to become guests on the podcast. We’ll have to talk about that, but I think it’s, you gotta just step out and do it. And there’s nothing wrong with taking the initiative and asking for help along the way. That’s what makes it fun.

Roger Leslie: And I say along those same lines, you can do it for any number of reasons. One reason you can just do it for yourself. It is extremely therapeutic to just reflect on a stage of your life and write about it because you get to see it in a different light. If you want to move forward from there and do it for your family so you have a legacy to leave a story to your children or your grandchildren, that’s beautiful. If beyond that, you wanna share it as a published work and you go through the traditional channels of finding an editor and getting it in shape so it can be published, then that would be wonderful too. But do it for whatever reason you think will work for you. Just step out and try it and move forward. Consistency over time gets the job done. Just begin it and see where it takes you. I guarantee you will be enthralled by the adventure it initiates.

Alida Winternheimer: Well, once again, we’ve got mic drop words from Roger.

Candace McPhee: Thank you.

Alida Winternheimer: I wanna thank all of you for joining us at, StoryWorks Roundtable. This has been a fantastic conversation. We will have links to each of you in the show notes@storyworkspodcast.com but right now, before we end, why don’t you each give your name and your title to listeners? Because I know somebody out there is like, I want to get that title. I’ve got my phone open. I’mnna grab that book right away. So, Randy, go ahead and start us off.

Randy Lee Bowslaugh: so it’s Randy Lee Bowslaugh. And the one I’ve talked about most, is actually called Goodbye Too Soon.

Alida Winternheimer: Right. Candace.

Candace McPhee: it’s Candace McPhee. And, you can spell that a million different ways. It’s C A N D A C E McPhee. M M A C P H I E. And my first book called Finding Color.

Alida Winternheimer: Roger.

Roger Leslie: I’m Roger Leslie. L E S L I E. And the book I talked about today is Light Come out of the Closet. Memoir of a Gay Soul.

Michael Hinkson: I Mike Michael Hingsson. H I N G S O N. And the book we mostly talked about today is Live Like a Guide Dog. True stories from, a blind man and His Dogs about being brave, overcoming adversity, and moving forward in faith.

Alida Winternheimer: Excellent. Thank you again, everybody. And I hope we see you back here at the roundtable soon, all right?